“What should we do? What the fuck?!” after coming to terms with the fact that one of the suspects, who seemed to possess a dangerous super power tried commited suicide on the spot in a crime scene, Detective Lee became agitated, horrified and started pacing in the room.

“He’s not dead yet. But regardless, let me take care of him for now.” Jason was quite calm, to an extent that he himself was surprised: “Let’s head back to the inn and see if our master or Ms. Wong could save him. And we can interrogate the other one and find out what he knows..”

“By code we should call this one in.” Aimee frowned and said: “But - but we can’t! Fuck!”

“Something tells me we shouldn’t get the cops involved at all.” Jason shook his head and waved his hand at the man in a leather jacket and silver liquid appeared around the body and started cocooning the body, while still leaving a tube out for him to breathe: “Bad things happen when you let the cops handle this kind of business.”

“...okay. Let’s go.” it did not take long or much to convince Detective Lee, for before today, he was still a normal detective of the SJPD, who though might be used to dealing with strange, creepy and weird cases, had never encountered people with superpowers and witnessed their fights this closely. Given this, it would not take a genius to figure out that this problem was well beyond the capabilities of the mere SJPD or any normal hospital: “I’m trusting you with this, please don’t screw this up.”

“You can count on us.” Aimee nodded and looked Jason in the eyes: “Let’s go back.”

Just this moment, the other man who came into the apartment to collect the grudge of the young women who was murdered in cold blood by someone having her body pumped with drugs and then draining her, the one wearing a grey T-shirt, started shaking and seizing the moment Jason and Aimee were about to carry him away. A grey smokey shadow of an old woman’s face burst out from the man’s open mouth and let out a screeching cry.

“What the - ” just when Jason was about to strike that shadow down and check on this man, he sensed a strange wave of energy sweeping through him. His Xuanli, and his power of mind and will activated automatically to protect him and repel whatever negative effect that might be imposed upon him.

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But Aimee and Detective Lee froze when they heard the cry. When Jason turned around and looked at them, he found that their eyes lost focus as if they were dreaming or hallucinating, and in a few seconds, their legs became uncontrollable and stopped supporting their bodies.

Jason immediately extended his hand at the living room and pulled two chairs through the wall and door, just in time to place them behind Aimee and Detective Lee, who fell into them like they just lost their consciousness and fell into a coma.

“Fuck.” Jason examined the pupils and breathing patterns of his two teammates, then snapped his fingers at the apartment door, which closed up and locked itself. Then Jason drew a small round seal in the air with his silver pen, then placed his left hand on it with his eyes closed.

If there was a normal civilian present, they wouldn’t notice anything, but when Jason concentrated, he could see that the minds of Detective Lee and Aimee had left them, and were dragged into something else.

“Fucking limbo.” Jason cursed as his mind left his body and followed the trail left by Aimee and Detective Lee. And unlike the two on chairs, his body was still standing even when his mind went fully into the same limbo that sucked in Aimee and Detective Lee’s.

Jason found himself on a road just under a broken street light and had a dark blue moon over his head. It was a grey world, somewhere suburb, from the looks of the surrounding area, and the skyline beyond, Jason could tell that it was somewhere to the south of San Francisco. But he was not at the limits of the city, and there seemed to be something impenetrable blocking the way into “San Francisco”. And all around him, he could see run down deserted single family houses and townhouses, with grass and weed as tall as Jason’s chest and signs of feral animals all around.

After looking around, Jason started moving in the opposite direction of San Francisco, and along the road with deserted houses on both sides. Everything was grey, and the environment was quiet, too quiet that it became a bit creepy. There were no light sources around beside the moon, but somehow everything was clear and pale and Jason didn’t even need to cast a spell to help him see.

What he did do, was that he chanted a short spell and conjured a silver needle floating above his left palm. Then he poked this needle at the air in front of him - though he was aiming the air, the needle indeed penetrated something and made a ripple, as if he three a small stone into a serene pond.

Jason kept his fingers on the silver needed as silver light and shadows of different scenery flashed in his eyes and tens of voices whispered in his ears. This was a detection spell that was designed for navigating the world in the limbo, one he started learning a while back and finally got a hold of when he was in the Grant Academy.

After looking for a while, he finally heard the trembling voice of Detective Lee: “What - what are those? Have you seen those things before?”

“Yeah, I definitely have.” this was Aimee’s panting voice: “Stay low - don’t make any sudden moves.”

“What - what are those things?” Detective Lee asked again: “There’s too many of them, we’ll need weapons.”

“I don’t think we’ll be able to find any here.” Aimee said: “I think I know where we are - I’ve read about it, it’s the limbo.”