Urban Legend Investigation

Three days later, at noon, in Lin Yun's office.

Having finished the morning's work and with no other assignments, Lin Yun had the rare luxury of a quiet lunch break. He sat at his desk, using the limited time to scan the information on his computer screen.

Five days had passed since the night Lin Xiaolu had been in danger. Aside from working and teaching a few novice Magical Girls during that time, he had begun searching online over the past two days for various news reports, focusing on anything in Fangting City related to Aberrant Beasts or Magical Girls.

It was not that he wanted to use such an inefficient method. Rather, the Anomaly Countermeasures Bureau's investigation had not been progressing smoothly. In fact, even the Fangting City Anomaly Countermeasures Bureau itself seemed completely unaware of why Magical Girls and Aberrant Beasts had vanished over the past two years.

According to the archive files provided by Hong Siyu, Fangting City had seen a total of 132 Magic Side crimes and attack incidents of varying scale over the past two years. Of those, 129 had been committed by Mages, 125 of which had been solved by the Anomaly Countermeasures Bureau, with suspects arrested; three had been Aberrant Beast attacks, all occurring in the half-month since Lin Xiaolu became a Magical Girl.

In other words, the number of Aberrant Beast appearances in the previous two years had been zero.

They had not merely been rare, as Lin Yun had initially assumed. There had been absolutely no sighting records whatsoever.

Correspondingly, the Fangting City Anomaly Countermeasures Bureau's files showed that none of its employees had ever come into contact with the Seeder "Nini." They had no idea whether this Seeder had ever even come to Fangting City.

No one knew whether "Nini" had deliberately never come, or whether something unfortunate had happened to her on the way.

Even more troublesome was the fact that without a Seeder, the Anomaly Countermeasures Bureau had even lost its means of contacting the Magic Kingdom.

The Magic Kingdom had always looked down on the Material Realm from on high. The Anomaly Countermeasures Bureau nominally had the right to contact Magical Girls and assist them in their work, but in reality, it had no authority to restrain or manage them.

Other than major Central Cities, ordinary small and medium-sized city governments simply lacked the leverage to communicate and negotiate with the Magic Kingdom.

As a result, when dealing with Magical Girls, the Anomaly Countermeasures Bureau was merely a logistical service organization that provided post-battle cleanup and appropriately safeguarded the privacy of their information.

What they could actually do was mainly regulate the behavior of ordinary magic practitioners in the city—Mages—recruit suitable Mages, and arrest Mage criminals. As for Magical Girls, they had no right to interfere at all.

Whether a Magical Girl earned merits or broke rules, the authority to reward, punish, and manage her belonged solely to the Kingdom.

Under such unequal and oppressive Rules, the Fangting City Anomaly Countermeasures Bureau could only try contacting the bureaus in other cities, hoping to reach the Kingdom through those cities' Seeders and ask when their own city's new Seeder would take office.

The first three times, the answer they received was "arriving soon." After the third time, the Kingdom stopped giving any response at all.

Thus, the two sides fell into a strange stalemate. The Kingdom ignored Fangting City's questions about its new Seeder, while the Fangting City Anomaly Countermeasures Bureau did not dare ask further.

Fortunately, for some unknown reason, Aberrant Beasts had vanished during those two years, so the enormous city had muddled through in unease and hesitation.

—Until Moko came to this city.

It sounded as if this pointed all the new doubts toward Moko.

But by Lin Yun's own judgment, that possibility was unlikely.

This was not blind faith. It was because he knew a deeper secret: in the Magic Kingdom, Fairies were absolutely loyal to the Royal Court.

Of course, he could not neglect the necessary suspicion. Over the past few days, he had often continued pressuring Moko in Larkspur's identity, trying to trick some information out of it.

The conclusion was that he had gained nothing. Moko could not say anything.

Left with no choice, Lin Yun retained his final suspicions and left a tracking Spell Formula on it to monitor its general movements, then stopped wasting effort on the matter.

In truth, he was more inclined to believe that Moko's arrival had broken some kind of balance within Fangting City.

It was simply that this hidden balance lay entirely beneath the surface. To see the full picture, he needed more investigation.

The Anomaly Countermeasures Bureau could provide limited help, and Hong Siyu's request for aid from the Magic Kingdom, relayed through other cities, had yet to receive a response. For now, only he could deal with all of this.

He had to plan for the worst possibility: the Magic Kingdom would not send anyone to help.

That was also why he had agreed to take Xia Liang in.

As for why he had come to such a conclusion, that was unrelated to the current incident.

In the end, this was what it became: he sat alone before his computer, browsing news reports and searching hard for every clue. His extensive experience allowed him to judge many reports that even the Anomaly Countermeasures Bureau could not determine were related to the Magic Side.

The good news was that he had truly found some leads.

At first, he had tried searching for clues from the past two years, but gained little beyond discovering that the number of missing persons had increased. Forced to expand the range to five years, ten years, and even news photographs old enough to show Anya's figure, he still found nothing except a worsening mood.

After running into that wall, Lin Yun chose a method he had not originally wanted to use: the urban legend search method.

This method was not his own invention. It came from another Magical Girl companion he had known in Fangting City when he was young—Su Shengzi.

Su Shengzi had been passionate about collecting urban legends and ghost stories. After studying them and integrating her findings, she had drawn on extensive real combat experience to propose a theory that sounded utterly ridiculous yet made a certain amount of sense: the origins of more than seventy percent of urban legends said to have been "witnessed firsthand" were Aberrant Beasts.

The reason this theory was ridiculous was that there were no rigorous statistics behind it. It had merely been something Su Shengzi had thought up one afternoon while drinking tea at home and suddenly smacking her forehead.

The reason it made some sense was that it coincided with the logic of Aberrant Beast evolution: after Aberrant Beasts evolved to the "Pupa" stage, they needed to "build a Nest" in order to store enough magic power and nutrients to begin their next stage of evolution.

After building a Nest, a Pupa-stage Aberrant Beast would establish a certain area as its base, warping the time and space of the entire region to form its own Nest—also its own "Pupa." From then on, it would hunt with its Nest as the center.

Upon reaching the Pupa stage, Aberrant Beasts no longer acted mindlessly on instinct as they had during the Egg Rank. Instead, they possessed intelligence akin to that of wild animals. They began operating more covertly, evading the tracking of Magical Girls and the Anomaly Countermeasures Bureau while fulfilling their feeding needs.

The strength of Pupa-stage Aberrant Beasts and the abundant food in their Nests also attracted many lower-ranked Aberrant Beasts to parasitize them. However, these lower-ranked Aberrant Beasts were usually not subordinates of the Pupa-stage ones. If spotted by a Pupa-stage Aberrant Beast, they would only be swallowed in a single bite as snacks.

Aberrant Beasts had an all-encompassing diet, which naturally included other Aberrant Beasts.

For that very reason, the behavioral patterns of Pupa-stage Aberrant Beasts could very easily give rise to urban legends in the districts where they lived.

In a city normally guarded by Magical Girls, with regular exchanges of information with the outside world and long-term carpet patrols by large numbers of Magical Girls, it was almost impossible for a Pupa-stage Aberrant Beast to hide within the city.

Their Pupas were shells that protected them, but also cages that trapped them. Once a Nest was discovered, there was basically nowhere to run. They could only wait for a large group of Magical Girls to come and gang up on them, or fight to the death against elite Magical Girls who had been called in.

But Fangting City was different.

Lin Yun now suspected that a Pupa-stage Aberrant Beast was very likely hiding within Fangting City and connected to this series of strange phenomena.

The long-term absence of Magical Girls had provided enough time for a Pupa-stage Aberrant Beast to emerge. Fangting City's immense size had also provided space to hide, and the fact that "Aberrant Beast attacks had vanished" could itself be explained by the presence of a Pupa-stage Aberrant Beast. This suspicion was not without basis.

He told Hong Siyu about this conjecture. Hong Siyu also took it seriously and promised to assist with the search. But since Aberrant Beasts were involved, he did not want to simply wait foolishly for news.

Now that the news could not provide information, it seemed he truly had to start with urban legends.

Using keywords such as "Fangting City," "urban legends," and "ghost stories," he gathered information from major forums and media outlets. He had already found quite a few strange rumors that seemed plausible yet dubious.

For example, "Sewer Song," "The Mirror-Reversed Abandoned Construction Site," and "The Flickering Streetlights." The many half-true, half-false supernatural stories made Lin Yun feel chills even at midday.

But these reports lacked concrete proof. To truly find clues, he would likely have to verify them one by one in person before he could know which was more credible.

Just as he was about to move the mouse and switch pages, he suddenly felt a vibration from his pocket.

It was a phone, and specifically "Larkspur's phone." He could tell from its position in his pocket.

Looks like I have to use my Magical Girl form again, he thought.

Three days earlier, he and Lin Xiaolu had found Xia Liang on Electronics Street. After successfully making her a Magical Girl, they had briefly checked Xia Liang's condition, exchanged contact information, and gone their separate ways.

After that, every other evening, Lin Yun had gathered the two girls at their old meeting place to teach them knowledge related to being Magical Girls.

This included how to train and increase their magic power, as well as the common knowledge a Magical Girl should possess. Most importantly, however, it covered combat awareness when fighting Aberrant Beasts.

What instinctive behaviors did common Aberrant Beasts have? Where did their weaknesses usually appear? What moves needed to be watched out for? And so on.

Much of this was wisdom left behind by their predecessors, while quite a bit was experience Larkspur had summarized herself. There should be no problem with its reliability. But in her view, after several days of theoretical lessons, they might need to wait for a chance to fight and put it into practice.

Taking out the phone and glancing at the screen, he found that it was indeed a call from Lin Xiaolu. Lin Yun thought for a moment, then sighed softly, transformed into Larkspur, and only then answered the call.

"Hello? What is it?"

"Ah, Senior Larkspur?"

Unlike the last time, when Moko had snatched the phone, the voice Larkspur heard this time truly belonged to Lin Xiaolu. "Sorry to bother you, but Moko just found an Aberrant Beast!"

As expected.

Larkspur was not surprised. This was roughly what she had anticipated. Several days had passed since the last Aberrant Beast attack, so it was about time for the next one to appear.

So she did not say much. After roughly learning from Lin Xiaolu where the Aberrant Beast had appeared and what the situation was, she prepared to set off.

But just as she was about to hang up, she heard a voice outside the door that made her breath catch.

—"Director, are you in there?"

Someone had come.

She could tell whose voice it was. Without question, it belonged to a subordinate from her own department.

What should she do? Was there still time to cancel the transformation? It seemed there was not!

A string of thoughts flashed through Larkspur's mind. Yet while she was thinking, she saw the office doorknob already being turned.

A young man pushed open the door while counting the documents in his hands, then raised his head and looked inside—

Only to see an utterly empty room.

"Huh? Did the director leave already?"

He felt a little strange, because if he remembered correctly, he had seen his department director enter the office earlier.

Sticking his head in and looking to both sides, he confirmed that the office truly was empty before scratching his head and leaving with a puzzled expression.

What he did not realize was that behind the empty desk, in the space beneath it, a petite girl was curled up there with an unhappy expression, staring at her phone screen with her thumb pressed where she had just hung up the call.

Only after the footsteps outside the office had faded into the distance did she let out a long breath. Fortunately, she had reacted quickly enough—not only hanging up in time, but also slipping beneath the desk.

Otherwise, whether it was Lin Xiaolu hearing the conversation afterward or the person entering the office seeing Larkspur sitting inside, it would have been quite troublesome.

Next time, I need to lock the door before answering the phone.

Thinking that, she peered through the gap beneath the desk. Only after confirming that no one remained outside the office did she cancel her transformation and crawl out from beneath the desk somewhat awkwardly.

After casually straightening his clothes, he walked out of the office as if nothing had happened. Once he was out of others' sight, he immediately quickened his pace and hurried toward the location where the Aberrant Beast had reportedly appeared.