Ke Mingqing and His Magical Girl Little Sister

"What was Xia Zili's superhuman designation again?" Ke Mingqing recalled. "Magical Girl... Yuhua?"

He took his phone from the pocket of his school uniform jacket, opened the browser, and entered the keyword "Magical Girl Yuhua" into the search bar.

Based on the search results, the website automatically corrected his query, changing it to "Magical Girl Ember."

The page flashed white, and after refreshing, one related video after another filled the screen.

"Is this really necessary?"

Ke Mingqing raised an eyebrow slightly, his lips moving unconsciously.

Either the Magical Girl Company had been lax in controlling public discourse, or it had tried and failed, with public opinion already completely out of control. Every video thumbnail and title on the screen was steeped in malice.

The top-ranked video had ninety million views, and its title read:

—[A Murderous Magical Girl? On the Impact of Becoming a Magical Girl on Minors—Now That We Have Superheroes, Why Do Magical Girls Need to Exist?]

The thumbnail showed a girl in a black Gothic dress hovering before a bloodstained skyscraper. Her head was bowed, her expression stern, while her jet-black straight hair and skirt fluttered in the wind.

"Murder?"

Ke Mingqing muttered, unable to stop himself from letting out a low "Whoa."

According to the memories implanted in his mind, he truly found it hard to imagine Xia Zili killing someone. No matter how much puberty hormones affected someone, they couldn't turn a child into a murderer, could they?

Curious, he tapped into the video page and first checked when it had been uploaded.

It had happened a week ago. As he recalled, Xia Zili had not come home that day. She had said she was staying over at a classmate's house, and no one in the family had been able to reach her.

Ke Mingqing still did not play the video. Instead, he scrolled down.

The comments section had already fallen completely. Some comments dripped with mockery, while others issued harsh condemnations. The public sentiment was almost entirely one-sided—most people were using the incident to criticize the Chinese Magical Girl Company for inadequate discipline and sternly condemn Magical Girl Ember's actions as a harmful influence on minors.

The sheer scale of the verbal assault was no less than a massive online lynching.

If the person involved had a weaker psyche, seeing it might leave her too upset to eat for days. If it were worse, she might even find a building and jump.

Ke Mingqing watched expressionlessly for a while.

The superhuman panel seemed to say that magical girls who killed might fall into "witches"... Are you people really not afraid she'll become a witch and slaughter every last one of you for cursing her like this? After thinking for a moment, he opened the video.

The video had been filmed from the rooftop of a villa. The girl in the Gothic dress floated in the night sky, raising the umbrella in her hand as fingers clad in black gloves pulled the trigger.

With a deafening roar, a gray-black beam blasted from the umbrella's tip and struck a tall figure. It was a criminal with six arms, wearing an evil spirit mask and shaped like an asura.

The beam obliterated the top of the skyscraper, and the criminal's body exploded into a cloud of blood. Blood poured downward like a waterfall, nearly dyeing the entire building red.

The glass curtain wall was sliced through by the blood, shattering in an instant.

At that moment, countless shards of glass fell like a torrential downpour, each one reflecting the Gothic-dressed girl's face—a face filled with both bewilderment and indignation.

She hovered blankly in midair, the umbrella in her hand slowly drooping.

After a while, the girl in the Gothic dress finally lowered her head to look at the screaming crowd below, meeting the tidal wave of gazes sweeping toward her.

They stared up at her in a daze, their eyes filled mostly with fear and shock.

At that moment, her hanging bangs obscured her eyes, making her expression impossible to see.

Slowly, she raised her hand and lifted the umbrella above her head. The folded canopy bloomed like a black rose, and then the umbrella carried her into the night sky.

Before long, she vanished into the depths of the night.

The video ended there. Ke Mingqing looked at the skyscraper stained red with blood on the screen. "You father and daughter really do have the exact same way of doing things."

He closed his phone and opened the "Player Friends List."

A small bubble floated above Hitomi Kuroki's name. The number "1" inside indicated one unread message.

[Hitomi Kuroki: Are you okay?]

[Ke Mingqing: Still alive. But the day they find out there's something called "players" and start combing the house, I'm done for.]

[Hitomi Kuroki: Why don't you run away from home and come to my place?]

[Ke Mingqing: That would only drag you into this. This body's biological father has a very special identity. With his investigative abilities and connections, finding me would be easy. If he discovers that you and I are both players, we'll be finished together.]

[Hitomi Kuroki: Then what do we do?]

[Ke Mingqing: We'll take it one step at a time. For now, no one knows this world has things called "players," so my situation is temporarily safe. Maybe... later, I can fake my death in front of them and get away somehow, though that doesn't seem very realistic either.]

[Hitomi Kuroki: We can only go back by completing the mission, but... exterminating superhumans? There are so many strange people in this world. It doesn't sound realistic at all. Can we only wait to die?]

[Ke Mingqing: Who said I was telling you to wait to die? If the system wants us to do that, it'll definitely give us the means to do it.]

Ke Mingqing sighed, closed the chat panel, and looked up.

[A series of player functions has gradually been unlocked. Please wait... The "Skill Shop" is now available to you.]

[Players are divided into levels from "Lv.01" to "Lv.50"; the initial number of skill slots is 5, with one additional skill slot unlocked every 10 levels—reaching the maximum at level 50, for a total of 10 skill slots capable of equipping 10 skills.]

Ke Mingqing looked toward the upper-right corner of his vision, where an option labeled "Skill Shop" had appeared.

He raised a finger, about to open the Skill Shop. But at that moment, a gentle call suddenly came from downstairs, slipping into the room through the crack in the door:

"Zili, Mingqing, come downstairs for dinner."

It was his mother Xia Wenna's voice.

"Come on, let's see what other monsters this family has." Ke Mingqing took a deep breath. With the resolve that he would fight until he had no choice but to take his own life, he rose from his swivel chair, opened the door, and went downstairs.

He turned his head toward the kitchen.

His mother, Xia Wenna, was already forty-five, but she still looked very young. She had a lovely face, like a girl in her twenties, and the years had left few marks on her features.

In the original owner's memories, Xia Wenna was an airhead—guileless and terribly forgetful.

More than a mother, she was like a child who had never grown up, always looked after by her children. Ever since Ke Mingqing could remember, Xia Wenna had never worked outside the home for even a single day.

Her greatest daily responsibility was caring for the children and doing housework. Whenever she had nothing to do, she sat on the sofa watching soap operas. Xia Wenna's favorite programs were the documentaries Animal World and Superhuman Classroom.

Perhaps fools had foolish luck. Xia Wenna had lived safely and smoothly these past years, encountering no major obstacles. Of course, that was also because their father had protected her well.

No matter how Ke Mingqing looked at her, the woman in his memories and before his eyes was utterly ordinary.

But at that moment, a superhuman panel slowly appeared above Xia Wenna's back.

[Superhuman Designation: "Alien Colonizer Z12235"]

[Type: Alien Lifeform]

[Threat Rating: ???]

[Superhuman Profile: A colonial vanguard sent by the planet Fanggongta. Her mission is to settle on Earth, infiltrate human society under the identity of an ordinary person, and gather data on Earth's superhumans to ensure the future invasion proceeds smoothly.]

[Known Weaknesses: ???]

Ke Mingqing froze where he stood, a chill boring straight into his spine. Only after a long while did his brain finally process it:

Is this for real... Dread Crow Man, do you know someone's been using you as an alien sperm bank? So all these years, you've been screwing an alien and providing aliens with data for invading Earth? Other people are traitors to their country, but you skipped that stage and evolved straight into a traitor to the planet. I suppose that's one way to go down in history.