If I really answered "It's inconvenient" here, would you really just let me go home? I had that thought, then answered, "It's fine."
Although I really wanted to go home first and check on Maza's condition, this was different from choosing whether to re-enter the cave earlier. Choosing to talk with Zhu Shi wouldn't cut off my connection with Firefly.
And on my way to this forest, I had already released several Fireflies to return home in my place and check on things.
"You said just now that this monster is a Fallen Demon Hunter?" I hadn't missed Zhu Shi's term for the demon. "In other words, it's actually... human?"
In other words, could this demon be Maza? Absolutely impossible. The current Maza wasn't just incapable of bouncing around like that—even walking normally on flat ground came with a chance of her tripping.
Maza could probably be ruled out as the Fallen Demon Hunter, or Serial Killer.
"That's right. You didn't know he was human before?... That's probably for the best. You shouldn't hold back against an evil fiend like this. If you knew he was human, you might find it difficult to strike directly..." Zhu Shi first nodded thoughtfully, then walked toward the demon lying on the ground. "You've probably heard from somewhere else that a Serial Killer has appeared in Xianshui City recently. In fact, eight months ago, he... Hmm?"
She suddenly hesitated, her gaze stopping on the demon.
The demon didn't move at all.
"What is it?" I asked warily, sensing through the embers remaining on the demon's body.
Zhu Shi moved forward again. She walked around the demon twice, then bent down and touched his chest before letting out a surprised sound. "He..."
"...is dead?" I reached the same conclusion. "Did you kill him?"
The demon had completely stopped breathing by now.
He wasn't pretending to be dead. I could tell when he had pretended earlier. Now, rather than a living being, he was more like a huge, lifeless chunk of meat—charred on the outside and raw within.
"No, I didn't." Zhu Shi shook her head. "I only knocked him unconscious just now."
"I only damaged his skin and some of his muscles. I didn't injure any vital organs or other lethal areas." I explained as well. "Although I shattered both his legs, I cauterized the wounds with fire soon afterward. He didn't lose much blood, so he couldn't have died from blood loss either... Could it have been burn shock? Did he die from shock?"
If the cause lay with me, did that mean I had killed someone?
I tried to dig up some guilt from within myself, but I couldn't find guilt—or even a sense of reality. This demon didn't look human, and burning him hadn't felt like burning a human, either. It was genuinely difficult for me to feel that I had killed a person.
"Impossible. For a physical-enhancement-type Demon Hunter at his level, as long as his brain and heart are unharmed, he shouldn't die from physiological damage of this degree in such a short time..." Zhu Shi shook her head again, then stepped forward. "In any case, let's have the organization come and collect the body first. We can perform an autopsy and analyze it afterward."
When I heard that she intended to perform an autopsy, I withdrew all the embers from the corpse.
Before doing so, considering that there was a one-in-ten-thousand chance the demon had suddenly grasped the essence of pretending to be dead while hovering between life and death, I sensed him carefully one more time. This demon—this Fallen Demon Hunter—not only wasn't breathing, but had no heartbeat either. His blood wasn't circulating normally, and I couldn't sense the slightest trace of vitality.
I concluded that he was truly and thoroughly dead. Even that one-in-ten-thousand possibility didn't exist.
Zhu Shi's method was even more direct. She drew the sharp sword from her back once again.
With a flash of sword light, she chopped off the Fallen Demon Hunter's head on the spot. Then she stabbed the sword into his chest and churned his heart to pieces, completing a perfect "life-or-death inspection"—as long as she personally killed him, an incorrect conclusion of death would become correct.
It was simple and brutal, yet it also revealed a professional's ruthlessness and efficiency. She seemed to have done this more than once. Unlike me, a novice experiencing an encounter with the supernatural for the first time, she was already extremely practiced.
She then swung the sword through the air, shaking the blood from its blade onto the ground, and sheathed it once more.
-
Zhu Shi took out her phone and made a call. Before long, several people in gray uniforms arrived at the scene. After loading the demon's corpse into a vehicle, they left.
She led me to another secluded place. Along the way, I carefully observed her clothes. With her straw rain cape, bamboo hat, and sharp sword, paired with her beautiful face, she looked just like the heroine of a period martial-arts drama.
Did this unusual outfit have some special significance? Or was it the uniform exclusive to Luoshan's combat personnel? Whatever the truth, the outfit fit my tastes perfectly, and I couldn't help taking a few more glances. It wasn't that I liked martial-arts-style clothing. Rather, on such an unreal night, she had intervened in my battle with the demon in an equally unreal outfit. Instead of ruining the mood, it made me even more excited.
Recalling her cold and seasoned manner when she had delivered the finishing blow to the demon, I found that she displayed exactly the battlefield style I imagined a "monster hunter" should have.
The only flaw was that beneath the straw rain cape, I could vaguely see that she was still wearing ordinary clothes and short boots. In a period martial-arts drama, that "flaw" would count as an obvious continuity error. But perhaps it had its own advantages. Beauty born from incongruity existed too, I told myself.
I wasn't the only one repeatedly sizing Zhu Shi up. Zhu Shi was also repeatedly sizing me up.
Although she had maintained a composed appearance the entire time, that look of disbelief at the beginning was probably her truest state of mind. Even now, she seemed unable to accept it. Her gaze searched me as if trying to find some flaw that would prove I wasn't the Zhuang Cheng in her memories.
I wasn't as unable to accept it as she was, but I could still understand her feelings. The younger sister of a friend had turned out to be a Demon Hunter working for a supernatural organization, handling supernatural incidents. Something so miraculous and coincidental probably only appeared in stories. Tonight truly felt like a night from a dream.
"You said that I also count as a Demon Hunter. What does that mean?" I was the first to speak.
Zhu Shi composed herself, then answered, "It means exactly what it says. Anyone who possesses power related to the supernatural is called a Demon Hunter."
"Can I understand it like this..." I said while thinking. "Suppose there's a superpowered person who merely has superpowers. They've never hunted monsters, have no desire to do so, and their ability isn't suited for combat... Would they also be classified as a 'Demon Hunter'?"
"Yes." She confirmed it.
"Isn't that a little strange? Why not just call them a superpowered person, or a sorcerer, or even an extraordinary person like in online novels?" I asked, puzzled.
"I don't know either. That's just what everyone calls them." She answered casually.
After thinking it over briefly, a few vague, wordless ideas surfaced in my mind.
Clearly, she had no intention of continuing to dwell on such a minor issue of terminology. She simply asked directly, "Zhuang Cheng, when did you become a superpowered person?"
Don't you usually call me Senior Brother Zhuang? Why are you suddenly addressing me by my name now...? I swallowed the words.
In the past, whenever Zhu Shi called me that, I always felt as though she were putting me on a pedestal. It made me somewhat uncomfortable, and I had even suggested that she address me by my name instead. Now that she was actually doing it, I felt uncomfortable from another angle instead. I really am troublesome.
But those were minor details. I answered her normally, "I awakened my superpower more than four years ago."
"More than four years... That was when you had just started high school, wasn't it? Or perhaps a little earlier, when you were about to graduate from middle school... I see. No wonder you've been like this all these years..."
Gradually, she seemed to have figured something out on her own.
After mulling it over for a while, she asked again, "Judging from the injuries you inflicted on the Fallen Demon Hunter, your superpower should be related to fire?"
"My superpower allows me to summon and manipulate fire." I gave her the answer without hesitation.
"You actually defeated that Fallen Demon Hunter with such an ordinary ability?"
She seemed very surprised, but was there really a need to be that surprised?
Fire abilities were indeed among the most plain and unremarkable powers in superpower battle manga. But compared with transforming into a hulking, muscle-bound monster, I felt fire at least had the advantage in terms of style. In the many battle stories I had read before, a large-bodied character specializing in physical attacks like the Fallen Demon Hunter would probably only qualify as an early-stage villain. And even if a major villain with some dignity used a giant-monster transformation ability, it was practically an announcement that he was about to be defeated. More often than not, he wouldn't even be left with an intact corpse.
That said, I also knew perfectly well that I knew nothing about the supernatural world, much less Luoshan's standards for evaluating Demon Hunter abilities. Using half-baked knowledge from stories as a reference wouldn't work. Perhaps all the other Flame ability users were unexpectedly weak, to the point that fire abilities seemed impressive but useless to outsiders.
"Can you tell me everything that happened?" Zhu Shi pressed.
"Sure."
I told Zhu Shi everything from the moment I encountered the Fallen Demon Hunter until she intervened at the end, including every skill I had used during the battle.
Zhu Shi, meanwhile, took her phone from inside her straw rain cape once again and used it as a temporary voice recorder to record my account.
Actually, for a superpowered person like me, if I only wanted to protect myself, it would probably be best to conceal how I fought. But I hoped to leave a good impression on Luoshan through Zhu Shi. In the future, through Luoshan—the official supernatural organization—I might be able to obtain more reliable leads on supernatural incidents and encounter a wider variety of strange events.
In my heart, making contact with Luoshan was even more important than Maza.
To put it further, if I could join Luoshan and become one of its members, Maza would no longer be necessary to me.
Luoshan was an enormous organization. As the saying went, a monk could run, but the temple couldn't. Now that I knew Luoshan existed, I would have plenty of ways to contact it in the future.
But what about Maza? Leaving aside her already firm desire to leave, she had even claimed to possess the power of spatial teleportation. Assuming her words were true, she could teleport somewhere unknown to me as soon as she recovered. It wasn't as if I had no way to continue tracking her with my superpower and bring her back, but it seemed I now had a better option.
Of course, I actually had one even better option.
That was: I want both.
There really wasn't much to say about my clash with the Fallen Demon Hunter. I had suppressed him overwhelmingly from start to finish. Before long, I had clearly explained the entire process to Zhu Shi.
Starting from the part where I described my abilities, Zhu Shi silently put away the phone she had been using as a temporary voice recorder. Shock that she could no longer conceal gradually appeared on her face.
"You can ignite a target with your gaze, and even burn targets outside your field of vision... Flames that can't be extinguished, which keep burning no matter where the opponent flees?" After staring blankly for a moment, she couldn't help shouting, "What kind of 'ordinary Flame Manipulation' is that?!"
Before you continue