The car stopped quickly, Jian Xie unbuckled his seat belt and opened the car door.
In the dead of night, everything in the community was immersed in deep silence, revealing a mysterious and peaceful atmosphere.
Perhaps it was because Cheng Li remembered that an A-level incident had occurred here, but he felt that the environment here exuded a gloomy feeling.
The community facilities and equipment that looked very ordinary also gave an extremely deliberate feeling. It was hard to imagine that so many residents lived here.
“Your phone keeps ringing.” Before getting out of the car, Jian Xie leaned over and said to Cheng Li, “A reminder, just in case.”
His train of thought was interrupted by these words. Cheng Li tried to remain calm and avoided his gaze.
“No problem,” He said with absolute certainty.
As if to slap him in the face, the phone vibrated in front of both of them the moment he finished speaking.
Cheng Li was stunned. He reached into his suit jacket pocket, took out his cell phone, and quickly hung up in front of Jian Xie. “No one’s looking for me.”
Jian Xie: “…”
He had no interest in meddling in other people’s private affairs, so even after seeing that Cheng Li obviously didn’t want to answer the call in front of him, he didn’t say anything else. He just said “goodbye”, closed the car door, and turned around to leave.
Seeing that he didn’t ask any further questions, Cheng Li breathed a sigh of relief.
At the same time, Cheng Li felt strangely lost in his heart, as if Jian Xie did not regard him as a reliable adult.
It was not that he didn’t want Jian Xie to know, it was just that…
He subconsciously raised his head to see if the other person had gone far away and whether he had entered the old residential building.
However, when he saw Jian Xie’s back through the car window, his brain, which had become a little dull due to staying up late, suddenly became clear and his pupils trembled uncontrollably.
Monsters—!
How could there be so many, countless monsters gathered in a residential area!
Even if their predation field wasn’t deployed, some low-level monsters would leave clues in the camera of ordinary people. For this reason, Cheng Li looked through the brown car window and saw the reflection of the terrifying and ominous dark cloud composed of the monsters floating around Jian Xie.
In Cheng Li’s point of view, the moment Jian Xie entered the community, long-hidden sticky monsters began to show up on all the residential equipment that he thought was extremely strange. It was unknown how long they had been waiting for their prey, but they were surprisingly patient and guarded the community, forming a black mass.
“Hungry……”
“It smells so good, so good…”
“Whee……”1This translation was so funny to imagine, I just decided to keep it for laughs. The immediate tl (for me) is ksksks. Funny either way.
Various groaning sounds of hunger came from the group of monsters which drifted into Cheng Li’s ears amid the overly silent environment. They were buzzing and pushing noisily, as if they all wanted to be the first to get close to Jian Xie.
Cheng Li saw the entire moon in the sky being obscured by the bodies of these monsters.
The existence of Cheng Li, a B-level investigator, didn’t reach the group of monsters’ eyes at all and they just followed Jian Xie closely.
The lower the level of the monster, the more they liked to live in groups, because this way they could work together to prey on targets that were too powerful for them.
Even hyenas could hunt lions.
But Cheng Li had a hunch that this was not an accident but a carefully planned one. The prey they were waiting for was none other than Jian Xie who returned at night.
He had never seen a human being who could attract such desires from monsters from the other world. Did this make sense? Could it be that Jian Xie’s flesh and blood would cause monsters to scramble for it? Could it be the unrest in the other world… was caused by the student in front of him?
Those low-level monsters that wanted to get close to Jian Xie had already impatiently devoured each other before they could really get close.
Just like the big fish eating the small fish.
He… could actually, in a sense, induce the birth of higher-level monsters.
If it was left alone, it wouldn’t be impossible for it to merge and become an A-level monster—!
Cheng Li’s mind was in a mess, but seeing Jian Xie still walking forward ignorantly, as if he had no idea what was happening behind him, and the fangs of the monsters attacking from all directions seemingly about to bite him in the next moment, he suddenly became anxious and didn’t care about anything else.
He opened the car door with a bang and shouted at Jian Xie’s back, “Get out of the way, right next to you—”
His voice stopped abruptly.
Because the moment the first bold monster tried to touch Jian Xie’s back, its tentacles appeared like they fell from a high altitude and hit a hard concrete slab. In an instant, it shattered into meat paste accompanied by a scream and soon disappeared into the air along with the spilled black blood.
It evaporated into thin air.
Cheng Li’s eardrums even faintly oozed blood due to the high-decibel scream.
He stumbled against the car door, his vision gradually becoming blurry.
All this happened in the blink of an eye. Even the monsters, which were much more sensitive than humans, did not react. Instead, they followed the trend and turned to a non-existent barrier. In an instant, it was like rain. Flesh and blood exploded and quickly disappeared one after another, like a silent horror fireworks show.
Within a few breaths, the dense mass of dark monsters were obliterated completely.
But it was easy to notice that the eerie atmosphere in the air had not disappeared, but had instead become even more frightening.
“…are monsters.”
Cheng Li finished the rest of his words slowly.
Having witnessed such a shocking scene, his last words were swallowed down and disappeared into the chilly night.
Cheng Li: “…”
Hearing his name being called from behind, Jian Xie turned around and looked at him. His originally amber eyes had turned a dark black amid the dark night.
Perhaps it was due to lack of sleep, but the dark circles under his eyes and the innocent drooping eyes gave him a very harmless look.
In Cheng Li’s sight, the teenager stood tall in the night, with the zipper of his sports jacket pulled up, and his slightly long black hair hanging in front of his eyes, blocking his line of sight. He didn’t seem to be nervous despite being hunted by the monsters just now.
“Good night.” Jian Xie said calmly.
Then he turned and left.
Facing Cheng Li’s horror, he didn’t seem to care at all about what horrible thing he had just done. His voice was slightly full of satisfaction after a full meal, which made people inexplicably feel uneasy.
This time, his “good night” was obviously different, carrying a warning.
——Since I am not curious about your affairs, you’d better not meddle in mine.
That was roughly what it meant.
“……”
After a while, Cheng Li slowly returned to the car. The phone he had just taken out of his suit pocket had fallen under the seat. Due to the continuous vibration, it looked like it would continue drifting behind the seat.
After letting out a long sigh, he crawled under the seat in a very embarrassing manner and took out his cell phone.
He reluctantly lay down on his seat and found that the name of the dialer displayed on the incoming call—
Yu Jinghe.
He was a very familiar person.
Just a few days ago, the Investigation Department borrowed this A-level investigator and asked him and Cheng Li to go to Jian Xie’s school to investigate the unexplained disappearance of a B-level monster.
During the detection process, Yu Jinghe, whose insight value was as high as A, seemed to have been unexpectedly polluted by It’s spirit.
When he returned that day, he seemed to be in a strange state. Cheng Li heard that he was recently receiving psychological counseling from the Bureau. Otherwise, his A-level investigator title… would most likely be downgraded to B.
The Bureau was helpless in dealing with the changes in his mind, because they had no idea what level of monster It was, let alone how It was born.
In order to recuperate, Yu Jinghe now refused to go on any missions, so he was only busy with the matters of recruiting new people in autumn.
This was also the reason why he went to find Cheng Li in the middle of the night.
Cheng Li hesitated again and again, but finally answered the phone.
“Are you fucking dead?” As soon as he answered the phone, Yu Jinghe, who had been preparing for a long time, started to scold him, “It’s not easy for me to review the data, what do you mean by revoking the internal recommendation? What happened to this simple high school student, Jian Xie, that you revoked without saying anything?”
Although he was not loud, he spoke in a very Zuan style2Zuan people is a popular internet term, originally referring to the players in Telecom District 2 (the name of the district is “Zuan”) in the game “League of Legends”. Because the interface where the players in this district cursed others became popular on the internet, the term has come to refer to people who are good at cursing and spraying on the internet. (from baike.baidu) Basically trashtalking players..
If he hadn’t been frightened by the aura coming from Jian Xie that day at school, he would have said more than Cheng Li and Jian Xie combined. It was especially prominent now because he was experiencing a relegation crisis and his temper was becoming more and more irritable.
What?
Cheng Li was stunned on the spot.
He himself wanted to revoke the internal recommendation——
Oh… yes of course, he came to the other because of this matter.
Because tonight was so exciting, he had forgotten what he did before going to bed.
Cheng Li paused and a little breathlessly said, “…I didn’t expect you to be busy with this in the middle of the night.”
“If you don’t want to be responsible for raising the child, then find someone else.” Yu Jinghe snorted coldly. “You know, people with insight values aren’t few now, but also not many. If your card doesn’t come through, I can just transfer the file to someone else—”
Hearing this, Cheng Li’s heart skipped a beat.
When he heard that the file would be transferred, his heartbeat quickened.
Every recommender was qualified to review the recommendee’s file. Of course, this was because they must sign their name to ensure the success of the recommendation. If something went wrong, all responsibility would be borne by the recommender.
In other words, it was a system of collective responsibility.
After Cheng Li checked Jian Xie’s file, his intuition told him that this young man must not enter the Supernatural Management Bureau.
——That was a time bomb.
Cheng Li could feel an unprecedented destructive force coming from him, like a roaring tsunami. This huge natural force would indiscriminately crush everything that stood in his way.
If Jian Xie hadn’t suddenly called him tonight, Cheng Li might have already posted the reasons he had compiled.
“……”
“What’s going on? Hello? Don’t pretend to be offline!” Yu Jinghe was angry.
Cheng Li subconsciously clenched his palms, and many thoughts flashed through his mind. The decorative doll that he accidentally bumped into when he rushed out of the car after witnessing the monsters surrounding Jian Xie was still swaying back and forth. His breathing went from rapid to slow.
Just tonight, Jian Xie killed a monster of at least A-level without the help of props.
He had no idea whether he could do it, but he still risked his life for a classmate who he did not often communicate with.
At the same time, at KFC, it was Cheng Li who was being humiliated by Fu Huanyu, but Jian Xie, who was not involved, was willing to stand up for him.
Even laying his own future as a bet.
……
That was a good kid.
He had no right to make such a cruel judgment.
After a while, Cheng Li finally heard his own voice, with a bit of deliberate whitewashing.
“Just wanted to upload it again.” He said to the person on the other end of the phone, “I’m thinking of bringing the original document over tomorrow and having it scanned at the Bureau. It’ll look better than if I did it myself.”
“…Just because of this?”
“Uh, yes.”
“Fuck, I really admire you.”
He thought it was a big deal and called him several times in a hurry, but he didn’t expect to get such an answer. Yu Jinghe was too lazy to pay attention to him anymore. In his opinion, Cheng Li was really bored and had nothing better to do than caring about these things.
Yu Jinghe hung up the phone directly. It was unknown if the guy would be going to sleep.
He must have been hated. Cheng Li smiled bitterly.
