Is It a Mule

The limitations of the era made people's views on certain things seem... ordinary.

They thought there couldn't be any Headless Knights in such a remote place, and that Zheng Yichen was talking nonsense. But there really was one. As for how difficult the thing was to deal with, Zheng Yichen thought it over. If you didn't bring too much Supernatural Power into the equation...

Running into a Headless Knight was basically a death sentence. It rode a horse, was immortal, and had an Enchanted Longsword that could spit green flames. Who could possibly handle that?

But by modern standards, it was basically a case of... That's it?

Could four horse legs outrun four wheels? Even a two-wheeler running on fuel might be faster.

So whether something was powerful still depended on how advanced the era was. In a time when people still traveled by carriage and horse, the Headless Knight was... pretty fierce. If that thing dared show up in Longcheng, it would definitely become the best research specimen at some institute.

The kind they'd treat as an honored guest.

Zheng Yichen wandered around outside the town twice and even checked the cemetery, but found nothing unusual. After appearing once, the Headless Knight seemed to have no intention of seeking him out again. But he wanted to find it.

He wanted new equipment!

Night.

"You could come to the banquet." Katrina, dressed in an evening gown, found Zheng Yichen and tried to invite him again. "And about what my father said earlier today..."

"I don't care about that. Once we get the evidence, he won't have anything else to say." Zheng Yichen sounded relaxed. Given the limitations of the era, there was nothing strange about the way the man saw things.

Of course, he was still annoyed.

"Good idea. We just need to find the Headless Knight and convince everyone." Katrina answered at once. Her father didn't believe in the Headless Knight, and she had no way to persuade him. Should she tell him Zheng Yichen had a device that recorded what happened?

Katrina hadn't told her father about that device. There was a reason she'd been able to get her hands on something like it so quickly; other people were a different matter.

"That's my problem. What I'm going to do next is pretty dangerous, so don't get any ideas."

Hearing Zheng Yichen say that, the girl looked disappointed. She'd wanted to go with him.

"Go back and enjoy your banquet. That place has nothing to do with me."

From the way Katrina's father had acted, going there would just be asking for trouble. Zheng Yichen didn't want to go out of his way to put himself in that kind of situation. Even if Katrina's father said nothing, there might be other people looking to cause trouble.

After all, the girl in front of him was practically the Town Flower around here. In her evening gown, she was even more captivating.

"I've been to that kind of banquet plenty of times. This town is tiny." Katrina sat down, with no intention of going back. "Could you tell me some Demon Hunter stories?"

"Strictly speaking, I've been in the hunting business for less than two months." Zheng Yichen told her honestly. Katrina blinked, then nodded as if she understood. So he was a really new Demon Hunter? No wonder he wasn't like the Demon Hunters they'd imagined.

"But I do have a few stories to tell." Seeing that the girl beside him wasn't planning to leave, Zheng Yichen wasn't the quiet type, either. He casually told her about some of his past experiences. The world was different, but there was nothing wrong with talking about his battles against Abnormal Creatures.

As long as he left out the background.

His best achievement was naturally taking down that Unicorn Mule.

"Is that a unicorn's horn?" Katrina stared in surprise at the horn Zheng Yichen took out. It was nearly half a meter long, and to her, it was rarer than even the Headless Knight.

A unicorn! That was an even more Legendary Existence. At least beings like the Headless Knight had been seen by witnesses, while creatures like unicorns existed only in records.

The girl could hardly believe that Zheng Yichen had hunted one.

"It's not a unicorn. It's just a mule." Zheng Yichen corrected her mistaken assumption. "Something having a horn doesn't necessarily make it a unicorn. It could be something else. That thing ate meat and was vicious, and it killed people. It was very cunning, too. I even got hurt by it."

"...You really should have become a knight instead of a Demon Hunter." Katrina sounded a little regretful. Honestly, after hearing Zheng Yichen's story, she didn't think it was wrong for him to say he'd hunted a unicorn.

The Sharp Horn in his hand could serve as proof, too. No ordinary creature had a horn like that, yet Zheng Yichen had flat-out denied that it was a unicorn. Humility and honesty—weren't those essential knightly virtues?

"That wouldn't be very free." A knight was out of the question, especially an Old Era knight. He wouldn't mind being a New Era knight, though. Riding a motorcycle wasn't all that difficult, and he had a Driver's License.

"After that, I ran into some more troublesome things. Some Evil Spirits." Zheng Yichen recalled his past encounters with Evil Spirits. Fighting the Unicorn Mule had been dangerous, but those Evil Spirits hadn't been easy to handle, either. They could fly around and pass through obstacles, and there were quite a few of them.

In a sense, they were even more dangerous than the Unicorn Mule. If he hadn't had a weapon that could hurt Evil Spirits, he might not have made it out of the Southern Forest.

"Evil Spirits... Those Wandering Dead are terrifying." Katrina nodded. Things like zombies and ghouls were manageable; destroy their bodies, and the problem was solved. But Evil Spirits had no bodies. They could attack people, while people had no way to fight back. Some could even possess people and undermine the trust between them.

"You know a lot about those things?"

"...I learned about them from the books in my family's collection." Katrina answered in a fluster.

"Oh~ Want to watch a movie?"

The girl nodded, a little embarrassed. "Yeah."

The movies playing on Zheng Yichen's phone fascinated her. After seeing them, stage plays and performances like that had lost much of their appeal. Stage plays were classics, but movies showed the story more completely.

The scenes and the interactions between people were so direct, so lifelike, as if they were really happening.

She loved watching those movies. Unfortunately, time was limited, and she'd only seen a little before.

"Do you also think all witches are evil?" Katrina asked Zheng Yichen, curious, after they finished watching a fantasy movie.

The movie was about the love and hatred between a witch who had lived for a very long time and a man. The witch fell in love with a mortal, but the mortal didn't love her. Consumed by hatred, the witch cast a spell on him, turning him into an immortal being. He could only watch the people around him gradually grow old and die, powerless to do anything about it...