Chang'an stared at us as if his brain had overloaded.

Zhu Shi spoke in a calm tone: "Strictly speaking, I am not a superpower user, but a Demon Hunter from Mount Luo."

"Mount Luo? Demon Hunter?" Chang'an asked in confusion.

"Mount Luo is a government organization dedicated to handling supernatural incidents, and the Demon Hunters are the professionals in this organization," I explained briefly.

Chang'an looked at my face: "So... you're also a Demon Hunter from Mount Luo?"

"Yes," I shamelessly admitted, "I just recently joined."

Although my position as an External Wu Chang hasn’t been finalized yet, and even if it were, it wouldn’t truly make me a full member of Mount Luo.

But Zhu Shi didn’t expose me. Instead, she continued speaking to Chang'an: "Zhuang Cheng has already told me about the situation you encountered. You seemed unwilling to share the details with him earlier. But as you can see, we are professionals, and you should tell us all the clues you know."

Her attitude was businesslike, not like how she would treat her brother, but rather as if she were addressing an ordinary person involved in an anomalous event.

What she said made sense, but this impolite attitude would likely provoke Chang'an’s rebellious nature. Being spoken to like this by his own sister was likely making him feel embarrassed. As expected, Chang'an fell silent. However, he wasn’t a fool; he should know that telling professionals about his difficulties was the most reasonable choice.

I tried to understand Chang'an’s mindset as a friend. He was likely feeling very conflicted. His familiar friends and his sister had suddenly transformed into professionals handling supernatural. That said, the impression of being “professionals” likely couldn’t outweigh the impression of being his “friends and sister.” His emotions probably still lingered on “not wanting his friends to kill anyone” or “not wanting his friends and sister to get involved in his danger,” and he couldn’t quite process it yet.

Convincing him now would require not words, but time. I estimated that after a while, he would convince himself.

It seemed Zhu Shi understood this as well. She then said, "Let’s not stay here any longer. Let’s go back."

"Go back where?" I asked.

"My house," Zhu Shi replied.

---

Unlike Chang'an, who lived alone, Zhu Shi had always lived with her family.

However, her parents were both either missing or living in a military hospital, so the only family members living with Zhu Shi were her grandparents.

Usually, grandparents refer to the "father's parents," but the Zhu family's situation was different from a typical family. Since Zhu Shi's father had been adopted into the family, her grandparents were actually her mother's parents.

The Zhu family mansion was located on the edge of the city. It was large and had a small garden, which made me subconsciously refer to it as a "mansion." The entrance had a surrounding wall and an iron gate.

We arrived by taxi using a mobile app, and an elderly woman with a kind face was already waiting at the gate. She was likely Zhu Shi and Chang'an's grandmother. When she saw Zhu Shi dressed in a raincoat and conical hat, she didn’t show any surprise.

As soon as Chang'an saw the elderly woman, he instinctively shrank his neck, while the woman called him over, glanced at me, and smiled as she asked, "You must be Zhuang Cheng, the friend Chang'an always talks about? Thank you for being friends with our Chang'an, come in and sit down."

Zhu Shi spoke from the side: "Grandma, we have other things to do."

"Huh? Aren’t you coming in together?" Chang'an was stunned. "Then I’ll..."

I was also somewhat confused, but the elderly woman's voice turned serious: "Chang'an, you stay here."

"Okay... okay!"

Chang'an reflexively agreed. It was the first time I had seen him act so obediently.

"Well then, you go ahead and get busy," the elderly woman returned to her kind voice, then looked at me and said, "If you're free after you're done, make sure to come visit."

I nodded in agreement, and the elderly woman led Chang'an away. Chang'an kept turning back, seemingly wanting to escape, but Zhu Shi noticed and ignored him, leading me away from the Zhu family mansion while she stowed away her martial arts outfit in a guitar case she was carrying.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Why separate from Chang'an? He still hasn’t revealed all the clues. And if we leave him alone, he might be attacked again," I asked Zhu Shi as we stopped by the roadside, while secretly releasing a "firefly" to head back to the Zhu family mansion.

"You don't need to worry about my brother. I've already informed my family about his situation. The Zhu family mansion has special barriers and defenses against external threats, and my grandfather is here as well. Even if several Fallen Demon Hunters attacked with their main bodies, they wouldn't be able to make any headway in that area," Zhu Shi spoke with clear confidence about the Zhu family estate.

Hearing this, I was somewhat reassured, then asked, "So, the Zhu family really is a family of Demon Hunters?"

"Yes," she nodded.

"Does everyone in your family know about this, except for Chang'an? Why?" I asked curiously.

"Well..." She hesitated.

"Is it something you can't talk about?" I wondered if she really didn’t want to explain and was considering investigating it myself.

"It’s really not convenient..." She shook her head, then sighed. "Alright, I'll tell you. Otherwise, you might end up investigating it yourself."

She saw through me.

"First, you should know that my brother is the child of our father with another woman, a so-called illegitimate child." She seemed to carefully consider her words. "Actually, there’s a secret in all of this that even my brother doesn’t know. His mother isn’t human—she's a monster."

"—What?" I was stunned. "A monster? Did I hear that right? Did you just say Chang'an’s mother isn’t human?"

Having known him for so long in college, interacting with him as a seemingly ordinary friend completely unaware of the strange world, I always thought he was just a normal person—yet he was the child of a monster and a human?

"You didn’t hear wrong. That’s exactly what I said," Zhu Shi replied seriously. "My brother is half non-human. He naturally has the blood and power of a monster. Originally, my grandfather planned to make him the heir of the Zhu family."

"Wait... the more you explain, the more I don't understand," I tried to clear my thoughts and emotions. "Chang'an's father was an adopted son, and his mother is a monster. In other words, Chang'an not only doesn't have the Zhu family bloodline, but he's not even fully human.

"In that case, why did your grandfather initially want to make Chang'an the heir instead of you? Was it because your grandfather had extreme patriarchal views?"

"That's not it." She shook her head. "Our grandfather hoped that the Zhu family could slowly distance itself from the dangerous world of the strange and supernatural. During this transition, he needed at least one family Demon Hunter to fend off the dangers. Grandfather wanted my brother to take on this task.

"However, during his training, the monster side of my brother went out of control. To save his life, our grandfather had no choice but to seal away his monster blood, turning him into an ordinary human.

"After that, the task of being the heir fell to me."

I slowly processed these words and asked, "Then... why doesn't Chang'an know about this? Did he lose his memory?"

"Yes," she nodded. "The strange and supernatural world tends to attract itself. Not only people like my brother, who have monster blood, but even those who have come into contact with strange events or know about strange beings essentially form a bond with them.

"Therefore, sealing his power wouldn't have been enough to prevent him from being defenseless in the future when encountering strange beings. Grandfather had studied many secret methods for avoiding the supernatural, one of which was sealing all memories and powers related to the strange and supernatural from the person involved.

"As a result, by sealing those memories, not only could the person sever their connection with the strange, but it would also make it less likely for them to encounter supernatural events in the future."

I suddenly understood. "So the reason you didn’t mention the strange world to Chang'an was because you were afraid he'd remember?"

"Exactly. We didn’t expect him to encounter strange events on his own. Once would be fine, with the seal in place, he wouldn’t immediately form a bond with the strange. But two times in a row..." She sighed. "Perhaps it's related to the frequent strange events over the past two years. And that seal only makes it harder to encounter the strange, it doesn’t guarantee that someone won’t come across it."

Even so, I still felt that I had brought this trouble to Chang'an.

This time, it was the same. Maybe it was because I placed the "firefly" near him that caused him to get involved in the Fallen Demon Hunter incident. Although, according to Ma Zao, simply placing the "firefly" wouldn't have led to such a result, Ma Zao's experience with the "misfortune" constitution was based on the chaotic apocalypse environment and might not be entirely reliable.

It was my fault.

I had to end this incident as quickly as possible and find the mastermind behind the threat to Chang'an and eliminate them.

I still had to find Ma Zao quickly as well—it's truly true that misfortune never comes alone!

"Zhu Shi, you still haven't answered one of my questions. Why did we separate from Chang'an earlier? We haven't gotten any clues from him yet," I asked.

"The reason is simple. The clues from my brother are irrelevant; we don’t need to waste time convincing him. If you want clues, I have some here," Zhu Shi said, pulling several photos from her pocket. "Zhuang Cheng, do you remember who the Fallen Demon Hunters are targeting?"

"They target the rich and powerful, the upper echelons of society," I answered.

"Exactly. I initially thought Agent Kong was the killer, but in the past few days, there have been new victims. Once again, they are local elites, and the crime scenes are identical to the previous ones." She handed me the photos. "There are also other Fallen Demon Hunters, lurking in the dark nights of Xianshui City."

I took the photos and looked down at them.

Most of them were pictures from crime scenes—gruesome bodies either lying in a house or in the grass outside, as if they had been gutted by large carnivorous animals. The methods were brutally violent.

Some photos appeared to be street surveillance footage screenshots, with blurry shapes darting across the dark streets, the true form indistinguishable.

And when I flipped to the last photo, I almost dropped all of them in shock.

The last photo also looked like a street surveillance screenshot.

But instead of a body or a shadowy figure in the middle of the frame, it was a girl about thirteen or fourteen years old.

The girl was wearing a black cat whisker mask, a black hoodie with a print, a short skirt, cotton tights, and black short Martin boots. On her left wrist was a red GPS bracelet.