Setting Out

"I found something," Vivian said, lightly snapping her fingers. Hao Ren then saw a thin black mist spreading from the corner of the room. It rapidly contracted and condensed into several tiny bats, which fluttered up and down around Vivian's shoulders.

Hao Ren had been living with the two superhuman women in his household for some time, so he was no longer surprised by such supernatural things. He was especially familiar with Lily's tail and Vivian's bats. At that moment, he casually teased a bat that had flown in front of him, studying how it differed from an ordinary bat while asking curiously, "What did you find?"

"Hey, don't move it around. These bats are my clones, and we share senses," Vivian said, swatting Hao Ren's hand away before looking toward somewhere outside the window. "I sent several bats over to the old castle. They did find something abnormal—it was the scent of the undead, and it was at least several hundred years old. There were quite a few of them, too."

Hao Ren immediately felt the hairs on his body stand on end. Although he had made ample preparations—even prepared himself for his new tenant to be an undead—he still felt a chill when he actually heard the news. "There really are some? And quite a few? Raven 12345 said there was only one person... Should we pick one and take it with us?"

"Don't worry about that yet. I found that the undead aura there is different from the haunting rumors we heard outside," Vivian said, shaking her head. "The undead aura in the castle is being suppressed underground. My bats only noticed it when they burrowed into a collapsed tunnel. Although I haven't found the source or the entrance to the underground, I can confirm that the suppressive environment is still intact. Theoretically... there shouldn't be any vengeful spirits or the like reaching the surface right now."

Hao Ren thought about it and quickly realized what was wrong. "In other words, there really are ghosts over at the castle, but they're all being suppressed right now. In theory, there shouldn't be any hauntings around the castle? Then the hauntings reported by people nearby..."

"It's hard to say what's going on. If the undead were powerful enough, they could indeed affect ordinary people within a certain range through their own mental power even while sealed, making them see hallucinations or believe in false memories. But undead that powerful haven't appeared in many years... Theoretically, the Demon Hunters should have wiped them all out by now."

Hao Ren spread his hands with a bitter expression. "What kind of mess is this? I'm just an ordinary person, yet somehow I'm getting dragged into something like this."

He was just about to say something else when he suddenly saw Vivian's expression change. He immediately asked, "What is it?"

"That Nangong seems to be preparing to go out," Vivian said with a frown. "I still have a bat hanging outside his window. I saw him packing that whole box of 'tools'... He's gone out the door!"

"This late?" Hao Ren was a little surprised. "He's really dedicated. He just got here and he's already going out to 'work.' Could this Demon Hunter actually have some real skill?"

Earlier, Hao Ren had thought Nangong was probably a ghost-busting fraud. Even if he knew a little about Demon Hunters, he likely wasn't a true professional—his high-profile manner certainly didn't make him look like one. He had not expected Nangong to go out to work immediately after arriving, without even caring about the fatigue of travel. That sort of dedication was not something an ordinary ghost-busting fraud could possess.

Vivian said nothing. She immediately ran to the window and looked down at the street, waving for Hao Ren to come over. "Come take a look. He's already gone out. I'm curious how he plans to get to that castle. It's dozens of kilometers from here, and he's a stranger in town, so he definitely doesn't have a car. At this hour, he couldn't possibly find a taxi willing to go to such a remote wilderness either. Could he really know some secret Demon Hunter techniques?"

Hao Ren leaned over the windowsill beside Vivian and saw that Nangong had already reached the inn's entrance. He was standing there as if in a daze. He had not brought his enormous suitcase, but instead carried a smaller black case. He was still wearing a white shirt and black trousers, looking like an ordinary salesman on a short business trip. Just as Vivian had said, Nangong was a stranger here with no connections and naturally no convenient means of transportation. How did he plan to reach the castle dozens of kilometers away in the dead of night?

"If he's a true Demon Hunter, traveling at over a hundred kilometers per hour is very easy. Some Demon Hunters can even fly for short periods or teleport over short distances," Vivian said with a frown. "He's making strange gestures toward a certain direction. Could he really know some secret technique?"

Hao Ren's mind immediately filled with all sorts of specialized terms: shrinking the earth to a few inches, riding the wind, wolf spirits protecting the body, ancestral souls, and so on. In his imagination, Nangong was about to step onto auspicious clouds and shoot into the sky. At this point, he wouldn't have been surprised if a magic circle suddenly appeared around the little inn. Yet in the next moment, he saw a car emerge from behind the inn. The inn's fat owner, Angus, was driving it out. Nangong nodded at Angus and got into the car. Then an Indian man dressed like a monk and a European man dressed like Batman emerged from the inn one after another and climbed inside. Hao Ren clearly saw all three of them take out their wallets and pool their money before getting in...

Vivian awkwardly opened her mouth. "Uh, they're carpooling... Looks like the innkeeper has started offering a new service."

Hao Ren said, "...I was overthinking it too."

It seemed that the haunted castle nearby had truly attracted all sorts of strange people. It had even drawn in quite a few foreigners. Hao Ren had no idea why these paranormal enthusiasts from all over the world were so energetic. Perhaps they normally did nothing but keep an eye out for haunted places across the planet.

After Angus drove away with the three ghost-busting professionals from different countries, Vivian poked Hao Ren in the arm. "Let's follow them. We're taking action tonight."

Hao Ren was puzzled. "Didn't you say we should stay as far away from the Demon Hunters as possible, and preferably avoid meeting Nangong?"

"I've changed my mind. What if some of these ghost-busting professionals really have genuine skills and find our new tenant before we do? Besides, more and more people are definitely going to show up. We can't just wait for this craze to die down on its own. Who knows how many more days that would take? We can't afford to let things drag on."

Hao Ren found that reasonable, but he glanced at the bedroom door uneasily. "I've slept enough, so I'll be fine without sleep tonight. But we've still got a sleeping beauty—Lily won't wake up until the middle of the night. Should we bring her along?"

Vivian looked at the clock. "It's fine. She'll be waking up soon. We can just barely rouse her at this point. That girl has a marvelous ability: she can follow us around even while asleep. By the time she runs to the castle, she'll wake up naturally. Isn't that convenient?"

Hao Ren had no further questions. He followed Vivian to Lily's room. Sure enough, the werewolf girl was writhing restlessly on the bed, apparently making the last few turns before waking up. She was still wearing her usual clothes; she did not even change before going to sleep. Vivian had carried her upstairs, and the Vampire Girl naturally hadn't been kind enough to change her clothes for her. That saved Hao Ren the trouble now.

Although he had indeed been looking forward to encountering a Werewolf girl in skimpy pajamas like in the usual plotlines, that was clearly impossible.

"Look, the table leg." Vivian pointed at the table beside the bed. Hao Ren's eye twitched when he saw that the wooden leg had been chewed into something resembling a candied hawthorn skewer. A thick layer of sawdust covered the nearby floor, and wood shavings could still be seen at the corners of Lily's mouth...

There was no doubt about it. Lily had been dreaming of eating a giant bone at home.

"Hey, Big Dog, wake up and get to work!" Vivian stepped forward and roughly shoved Lily off the bed. The latter hit the floor with a thump and finally opened her eyes in a daze. The first thing she said when she saw Hao Ren was, "Oh, Landlord, breakfast?"

"Breakfast your head!" Vivian pulled Lily upright. "Get ready to go. We're heading to the castle. You're still not fully awake, so just follow us for now. I'll explain the details once you wake up over there."

Lily agreed in a muddled voice. She stood up with her eyes closed and once again entered scent-following mode. Before she completely fell asleep, she mumbled, "Landlord, I dreamed that you stewed pork ribs for me. The ribs were so delicious~~"

Hao Ren said, "..."

A moment later, the three of them had left the little inn without anyone noticing. Vivian's black mist concealed them, so ordinary people could not sense a thing. Since the inn was on the edge of town, they left the town not long after emerging from the building. As he looked at the boundless wilderness before them, Hao Ren suddenly realized a problem. "They carpooled... What are we going to do?"

A pair of enormous bat wings suddenly unfurled behind Vivian. She wore a dazzling smile. "I'll carry you and fly. Let Big Dog run along below!"