Fallen Demon Hunter VS Superpowered Individual 4 (Third Update)

According to the information I had looked up in Luoshan, some bizarre phenomena could indeed allow the person involved to travel back and forth between the past and future. However, they were all supernatural phenomena absolutely impossible to replicate through human means, as well as rare experiences that could only be encountered by chance.

Just how firmly did Luoshan hold to the claim that such things were "impossible to replicate" and "could only be encountered by chance"? A look at their publicly available archive made it clear. Ritual knowledge related to traversing spacetime was actually displayed there openly for anyone to consult. In summary, its content amounted to: "I successfully traveled to the past and future through the following steps, but for some reason I could never succeed afterward. Anyway, I'll write it down here first. Believe it or not."

Although Luoshan's attitude toward it was not as contemptuous as that of a proper scientist toward "a grassroots science enthusiast who suddenly attained enlightenment overnight and invented a perpetual-motion machine," they truly did not take it seriously at all.

If Monster Maker had not been lying, he had most likely traveled to the past or future through a method that could not be replicated. Considering the innovative nature of monster technology, the future was more likely. Of course, he might merely have obtained technology that would not appear until far in the future through a method of "predicting the future." However, judging from his tone, that did not seem to be the case. And if I wanted to make the Seed of the Heart mine forever, starting with the "future" seemed like a viable direction.

I did not know how to "predict the future," and I was even less confident that I could "travel to the future." But with no other clues, I could not simply sit around. I had no choice but to first put the ritual knowledge I had found in the public archive into practice. Repeatedly describing all the difficulties in my mind was utterly meaningless. Everything had to begin with practice.

So I went and killed someone first.

The prey this time was naturally another civilian with special abilities. People with special abilities—or "magical power," as it were—could often substitute for many ritual materials. Killing them on the spot and using their blood as material for the ritual array was enough to make many ritual arrays display power beyond expectations.

As a Luoshan agent, if I rashly used connections to collect a large amount of ritual material, someone with ulterior motives might become suspicious. Killing people was the most convenient option. At the same time, because of the nature of my work, I was rather good at finding people with magical power among civilians. Before long, I discovered a tenant in a residential complex relatively close to Xianshui University.

On the surface, he was merely an ordinary employee of a company, renting a room on the Fifteenth Floor of one of the residential buildings. In reality, he was a superpowered individual lying low. The moment I saw him, I smelled the high-quality fragrance of a soul emanating from him.

Relying on my official identity as a Luoshan agent and my experience over the years, I quickly gained his trust to a certain extent. After making inquiries, I learned that his ability was "Penetration." It turned his body into an illusion, allowing him to pass through any object.

In other words, while his ability was active, no object could harm him. Even if a nuclear bomb landed on him, or even if a meteorite struck him, he would be invincible as long as he kept his ability active. It was an extremely valuable supernatural ability focused on defense.

The reason he had not exposed himself was probably that he still held the nation and society in awe, and that he was not interested in an exciting life. However, it was easy to see the arrogance toward all living beings in his eyes. He had long since stopped considering himself an ordinary person. Even while living among the masses, he probably saw himself as a wolf lurking among sheep, taking smug pleasure in the thought.

Unfortunately, most "superpowered individuals" with only one exceptionally long plank could be dealt with through a sneak attack. Being invincible while the ability was active—put another way, as long as he did not have time to activate it, he was merely an ordinary man.

I sent out my substitute and killed him effortlessly in his rented room with a little trickery. Until the moment of his death, he had not managed to activate his supposedly "invincible" superpower.

As for the ritual array laid out with his blood, one or two of the array symbols used to identify the target time and space could not be written because I could not determine precisely how many years in the future Monster Maker's technology originated. As a substitute, I added my own blood as a monster to the array. In theory, it could serve as an alternative search condition.

And, as expected, theory was theory. I still failed.

Not only that, but the magical fluctuations released when the ritual failed attracted the attention of the Luoshan Wuchang patrolling the area at the time.

The Wuchang responsible for patrolling that place was Zhu Shi. She was nothing like that superpowered individual and was not easy to deal with. I did not want to make a huge commotion, so I had no choice but to order my substitute to retreat for the time being.

Then eight months passed, bringing us to today.

After hunting again and again, the strength of my Seed of the Heart had already reached a bottleneck.

Monster Maker told me that if I wanted to break through to the next stage, I either had to overcome my inner demon and let my soul naturally ascend, or devour a sufficient quantity of souls and forcibly elevate my own soul.

I chose the latter path.

Many other things had happened during those eight months as well.

First of all, Monster Maker had added another monster in Xianshui City.

I had secretly made contact with this monster. He never concealed the traces of his crimes and harbored an inexplicable hatred of the powerful and influential. In truth, he was fairly wealthy himself, yet he resented people richer and more powerful than him. Over the past two or three months, he had successively killed five local influential figures.

I detested him. He would even carelessly leave biological evidence at his crime scenes. I deliberately had my substitute leave a few hairs with follicles in the room on the Fifteenth Floor so I could distance myself from it. What was this man's reason for doing so? Fortunately, the Luoshan forces in Xianshui City lacked modern criminal-investigation experience, so they had temporarily conflated him with me. But perhaps sooner or later, he would expose himself and implicate my existence.

Dealing with him in secret was not so simple either. All of us monsters possessed the ability to summon mirror-image doubles through the power of shadow. Although these mirror-image doubles were far weaker than our true bodies, he also possessed an innate supernatural ability called "Transposition," whose effect was to disregard spatial distance and instantly exchange places with a distant double.

This ability had a particularly shameless function: it could activate passively. If he encountered a fatal attack he could not react to, the ability would activate on its own through some mysterious judgment mechanism, protecting his life. It was the most shameless of all cheats.

That might have been one of the reasons he acted so recklessly. As for me, there was nothing I could do about him. Zhu Shi was handling his related incidents now. I only hoped he would die by Zhu Shi's sword soon.

Then, the day before yesterday, I encountered a mysterious superpowered individual.

It happened during the day. At the time, I was resting at the Luoshan office opposite the Public Security Department, when an unprecedented commotion broke out across the street. I rushed over and learned that someone had infiltrated the Public Security Department to steal firearms and ammunition. It was a major incident for them. Moreover, I smelled the scent of a soul there.

It was like how a carnivore could smell wounded, bleeding prey in the air. If there was prey with an injured soul nearby, I could find them much more easily. That was the scent I smelled then. I ordered my substitute to move in that direction and discovered the source behind a fried-chicken shop.

It was a girl of about thirteen or fourteen, with a pale and exhausted face. She held a real gun in her hand, making it clear that she was the criminal who had infiltrated the Public Security Department to steal firearms and ammunition.

Judging from the scent of her soul, she should originally have been a rather formidable superpowered individual. When she was in perfect condition, someone of my level—or my substitute's—probably would not even have been worth her notice. But her current condition was terrible. She was actually weaker than even my substitute.

If I devoured her soul, my Seed of the Heart would definitely break through to the next stage, with plenty left over!

I immediately ordered my substitute to launch a sneak attack on her, but the result left me bitterly disappointed.

She actually possessed the power of spatial transfer. Although she initially fell into a disadvantageous position and suffered severe injuries, she immediately transferred herself to a distant place beyond even my soul-sniffing range.

Not long afterward, another unexpected change occurred. My superior gave me someone's information and demanded that I find that person by any means necessary. The target was precisely the girl who had escaped from me earlier.

I was not the only one who wanted to find the girl's whereabouts. Neither was my superior. My superior's superior and the various other factions within Luoshan also began taking action. They all knew that the girl possessed the power of spatial transfer, so they even planned to expand the search nationwide. No matter what, they intended to bring her under their control.

A storm beyond imagination swept my mind into turbulent waves.

Who exactly was that girl?

Since the incident had become so serious, I no longer dared to target the girl. I could only focus on another matter.

This was also something I could not ignore: Zhu Shi's elder brother, Zhu Changan, had rented the room on the Fifteenth Floor from eight months ago—the home of the superpowered individual with Penetration—and discovered the ritual array I had left behind. That ritual array had actually activated on its own without my noticing.

I did not know whether its activation had succeeded. I heard that a mysterious cave had appeared at the center of the ritual array, and I could only interpret it as the effect of the ritual array. After Zhu Shi told me about it and asked me to investigate, I set out without hesitation.

And this time, I came up empty again. I did not see the cave in the room on the Fifteenth Floor. Instead, I saw Zhuang Cheng.

Zhuang Cheng was a somewhat famous figure among the local Luoshan forces. In this increasingly chaotic world, it was simply bizarre that someone like him, who tracked down bizarre phenomena, could repeatedly return empty-handed. I would occasionally gather with several familiar Luoshan agents and turn him into a topic of casual conversation. Even my superiors and several local Wuchang remembered him.

After learning about him, I had not been without suspicions. I wondered whether he had truly encountered bizarre incidents but deliberately hidden what he had seen, pretending to know nothing about our world. What motive could he have for deliberately concealing his experiences? It was only natural that I became suspicious: he had gained some benefit from past bizarre incidents, perhaps even bizarre powers.

Or perhaps it was precisely because he had gained bizarre powers that he had been able to escape from those bizarre incidents. Since he could not recount his experiences without exposing his powers, he had chosen to say nothing.

And people with special abilities like that were my prey.

But perhaps it was merely coincidence. In the past, whenever I wanted to set out to investigate and hunt Zhuang Cheng, I would abandon my original plan for one reason or another, and the matter would ultimately come to nothing.