Magical Girls? There's No Going Back!

"You'll find out whether it's true soon enough." Li Xuan looked at the frenzied fans around him who knew nothing of the truth and couldn't help smiling mysteriously.

The wildly popular magical girl influencer was actually a fake cross-dressing guy? She definitely needed a proper lesson.

Li Xuan placed a Hunting Mark on Bing Rui, then left with Tan Xiang. Flower River City was, after all, Church territory. He couldn't act as recklessly here as he had in Clear Lotus City. Besides, Bing Rui was also a Grade B magical girl. Taking her down wouldn't be easy. It was safer to gather intelligence first, then wait for an opportunity to strike.

"Brother Xuan, what are you thinking about?" Tan Xiang blinked her big eyes and asked curiously when she saw Li Xuan lost in thought.

"I was thinking, do all you girls like using reduplicated words so much?" Li Xuan turned and asked.

"Because they sound cute. Anything feels cute when you say it twice—like eat-eat, sleep-sleep, Ying Lili, Lingdi Ningning..." Tan Xiang counted examples on her fingers.

"So that's how it is. No wonder Alulu and Lilika sound so cute too. The daughter's name follows an ABB pattern, while the mother's follows a BBA pattern... Speaking of BBA, that purple old... sis's cosplay earlier looked pretty nice. Should I go chat her up?" Li Xuan looked over the endless sea of beautiful girls, his thoughts gradually drifting off track.

Fortunately, he wasn't deranged enough to lay hands on ordinary people. After getting his fill of looking at beautiful girls, he bought a magical girl cosplay outfit on the spot and returned to the hotel for Tan Xiang to put it on.

Tan Xiang, a magical girl cosplaying as a magical girl, still looked frail and sickly. Under normal circumstances, Li Xuan would surely have felt tenderness toward her, but at a time like this, that expression as though she could barely endure it only made him want to bully her more...

Li Xuan didn't get up to shower until late at night. Lilika happened to call then. "My arrangements for returning to work at the Church are done, and I've gathered a little intelligence too. I'm in my room right now. Do you want to come over and hear it?"

Li Xuan glanced at Tan Xiang, who had been exhausted into lying motionless on the bed. "You should've said so earlier. If you'd helped share the burden, Tan Xiang wouldn't have collapsed from exhaustion."

"Tan Xiang? The girl you brought with you is Tan Xiang? Her situation even came up during the church's internal meeting today." Lilika spoke in surprise.

"What did they say? Forget it, I'll just come over." Li Xuan was eager to learn the Church's attitude toward the matter, so he hung up and went to Lilika's room wearing nothing but a bath towel.

The Thoughtful, Intimate Service of a Mature Magical Woman

Lilika couldn't help feeling displeased when Li Xuan entered her room draped in a bath towel, but her gaze was involuntarily drawn to the prominent bulge beneath it.

What lay hidden within was something Lilika both loved and hated. It had reached depths no one before had ever attained, bringing her strange sensations she had never experienced. Even now, whenever she recalled that encounter, Lilika couldn't help wanting a second round.

Yet at the same time, she hated that stupid thing that had stolen her chastity. If it hadn't been for it, her love for her husband would never have wavered, nor would the heart that had lain dormant like dead ashes for over a decade have sparked back to life.

"What? You missed it already? I'll introduce you two later. First, tell me about Tan Xiang." Li Xuan noticed Lilika's gaze, teased her, then sat down and pulled her into his arms.

"If we're talking, then talk. What are you doing?" Lilika hurriedly tried to break free from his embrace, but her body was far too petite, and her strength was as weak as a little girl's. She simply couldn't push away Li Xuan's sturdy arms.

"You do your talking, and I'll do my hugging. Neither of us is getting in the other's way." Li Xuan grinned shamelessly.

"...Fine. Once there's a first time, there'll be a second. I don't expect you to behave yourself anyway." Lilika sighed in a resigned tone, adjusted her mindset, and continued, "At today's internal meeting, they discussed the disappearance of the Tan Xiang and Yun Ye duo. The Church is short-handed right now, so it decided to seek assistance from the higher Church. I heard the bishop has already approved it, but they haven't decided whom to send yet."

"Disappearance?" Li Xuan froze for a moment. He had originally thought the Church would at least know about Tan Xiang's Demonfall. After all, the Oracle Machine had given Yun Ye intelligence about the Demonfall of the three girls in Clear Lotus City. Why was there no news about the stronger Tan Xiang instead?

"That's right, disappearance. It seems the Church still doesn't know Tan Xiang fell into your hands. Actually, I'm quite curious—how did you make her obey your every word?" Lilika asked.

"That's a trade secret. No comment." Li Xuan smiled. Lilika hadn't undergone Demonfall yet, so naturally he couldn't tell her about Fallen Blood. Aside from her daughter, her loyalties still lay with the Church. She was entirely capable of becoming a double agent.

"Fine, fine. I only asked casually. Back to what I was saying: there's currently only one Grade A stationed in the entire Flower River City Church. After Tan Xiang and Yun Ye disappeared, the number of Grade Bs dropped to single digits. There are many monsters in Flower River City, and these few people must also protect the surrounding cities and counties. They're stretched incredibly thin. That's why they immediately agreed when I proposed returning to duty." Lilika continued.

Li Xuan nodded. The Flower River City Church's situation appeared more difficult than he had imagined. He could proceed with his plan to hunt magical girls without worry.

"Among the seven Grade Bs, is there anyone named Bing Rui?" Li Xuan asked.

"Bing Rui? I've never heard that name. This is the complete roster from Grade C to Grade A, though I don't have overly detailed intelligence yet." Lilika sent Li Xuan a list on her phone as she spoke.

Li Xuan studied it carefully. The information was comprehensive. Besides basic details such as each magical girl's name, rank, and magical system, there were also notes describing their looks and figures. Some even had photos attached. Lilika clearly understood what he wanted and was doing everything she could to please him for her daughter's sake.

However, Bing Rui's name wasn't on the list. Perhaps she wasn't with the Church at all, but rather an independent operator like Xu Rou and the others.

"Your service is truly thoughtful. As expected of a mature magical woman—you understand men better than little girls do," Li Xuan praised.

"It's probably more than thoughtful. It's intimate too," Lilika mocked herself.

"I won't let you work for nothing. As a reward, I'll improve Alulu's living environment." Li Xuan showed her a photo on his phone of Alulu "receiving" her luggage. "Also, you don't need to worry about her homework. I found a top student from Qinghe High School to tutor her."

"Then I'm relieved." Lilika stared blankly at her daughter's picture. Though she said she was relieved, there wasn't the slightest trace of relief on her face.

Seeing how distraught she looked, Li Xuan decided to give her some hope, lest she overthink things and seek another way out. He encouragingly patted her rounded shoulder. "If you do well, I can let you see her in a while. And when the time is right in the future, letting her return isn't impossible either."

"Really?" A spark of hope appeared in Lilika's eyes. She gently loosened Li Xuan's bath towel and buried her head inside.

Li Xuan immediately felt himself enveloped in warmth. Though he knew Lilika had clearly misunderstood what "do well" meant, since it had already happened, he was happy enough to let it be.

After enjoying the devoted service of a mature magical woman, Li Xuan retied his bath towel and rose to take his leave, intending to return to Tan Xiang's room to sleep. However, the moment he opened the door and entered the corridor, he suddenly felt a chill all around him. Gusts of cold wind swept back and forth through the hallway.

Li Xuan found it a little strange. There shouldn't have been such cool winds in this season, but he didn't think much of it. He opened Tan Xiang's room door, walked in, and reached for the light switch.

Yet that spot was bare. There was no switch at all.

Li Xuan was confused. He turned on his phone's flashlight and shone it around, only to discover that he was still standing in the corridor.

Had Lilika's mouth felt so good that he was hallucinating?

Li Xuan checked the room number again, then opened the door with his keycard and shone his flashlight inside.

This time, he was sure. There was no room there at all—only an empty corridor.

The wind in the hallway seemed even colder now. Within that chill, Li Xuan seemed to hear crisp tapping sounds, like someone repeatedly drumming their fingers against something.

"Is this place haunted? Wait, are there even ghosts in this world?" Li Xuan tried returning to knock on Lilika's door, but received no response whatsoever. He tried heading toward the stairs at the end of the corridor, but the hallway beneath his feet only grew longer the farther he walked, as though it extended infinitely.

Facing this bizarre scene, Li Xuan took several deep breaths and forced himself to calm down and think.

Repeated scenery, infinite space—such things couldn't exist in reality. In other words, he was most likely inside an illusion or dream. The question was, who had created it?

Lilika was the most suspicious, but Li Xuan didn't think she would gamble with her daughter's life. Other magical girls? But he hadn't displayed any power since coming to Flower River City. He shouldn't have been exposed. Tan Xiang had also remained with him the entire time, and there had been no sign she could have called for help.

Still, that question could wait until later. The most urgent matter was escaping this bizarre illusion.

"Mind Interference, Forced Awakening." Having seen through the essence of the problem, Li Xuan immediately used Mind Interference on himself. It was his only skill capable of affecting the spiritual realm. As long as he forced himself to stay awake with this move, the illusion would naturally be broken.

Sure enough, the instant the skill activated, Li Xuan felt the earth shake and the mountains tremble. The corridor's windows and doors cracked apart, and great quantities of smoke sprayed from the fissures. The entire scene rapidly twisted and collapsed amid the hazy fumes.

Then, gravity suddenly vanished from the entire space. Li Xuan floated up to the ceiling, his entire body becoming light and buoyant as though he were rising to the surface of water. He felt his consciousness growing clearer and clearer, as if he were about to wake up.

"Please don't go. I have something to tell you."

At that moment, a soft whisper with an echo rang beside Li Xuan's ear.

Alice in the Dream

Li Xuan froze. He hesitated. The person who had created the illusion hadn't harmed him, but he couldn't conclude from that alone that she had no ill intentions. For all he knew, his real body might be hanging by a thread beneath a guillotine at this very moment.

But that voice gave Li Xuan a strange feeling, as though he had some kind of connection with its owner in the unseen depths of fate. Besides, the voice was soft as gauze and gentle as rain. Its owner might even be a beautiful girl. Wouldn't it be a pity to let her go just like that?

After hesitating for a moment, Li Xuan still canceled Mind Interference, and the shattered corridor gradually restored itself. The instant the smoke dispersed, he saw a petite girl standing before him.

A large black bow hair clip adorned the girl's bright, dazzling blond hair. She wore a long black dress draped in a sheer veil, matte black gloves that covered her forearms, and alluring black pantyhose on her legs.

Although she was dressed entirely in black, the thickness, patterns, and materials of every piece differed. The lack of complicated color variation instead emphasized the layered texture of the outfit itself.

Li Xuan looked downward and saw that she wore no shoes. Her small feet, hidden inside black stockings, stood directly on the hard floor.

The black clothing made the girl's skin appear even fairer—so pale that it seemed somewhat unnatural, more like paper or porcelain than human skin.

Li Xuan looked at the girl's face and found that she wore a black lace blindfold with strange patterns. Yet from the shape of her face alone, he could tell she had the sweet and refreshing sort of look.

"You had something to tell me?" Only after taking in the girl's appearance did Li Xuan speak.

"Cousin, please help me!" After a brief silence, the girl suddenly spoke in a tearful voice.

"Hm? Cousin?" Li Xuan was stunned. Ever since transmigrating to this world, he had always been an orphan, alone for years. Where had this cousin suddenly come from?

"Help me! They've been chasing me. I have nowhere left to run!" The mysterious girl suddenly threw herself at him, wrapping her black-gloved arms around Li Xuan's waist and crying pitifully.

"Don't panic, little sister. First tell me, who's chasing you?" Li Xuan gently stroked the girl's smooth blond hair to comfort her.

"You can see them," the girl said softly.

"I can see them?" Li Xuan completely failed to understand her meaning and could only look at her in confusion.

"Oh no, I'm sleepy again. I'm going to fall asleep..." The girl's voice suddenly dropped, and her body went limp as if she were about to collapse to the floor.

"Hey, hey, at least explain yourself first! I hate people who speak in riddles more than anything!" Li Xuan quickly slid his hands beneath the girl's armpits, lifted her high into the air, and shook her vigorously.

"Alice..." the girl murmured as though talking in her sleep.

"Alice? Is that some kind of code?"

"My name... Mianyin Alice. I'm somewhere you can see. Please help me... I've been driven into a corner..." the girl said in fragments.

"So how exactly am I supposed to help you?" Li Xuan asked, growing frustrated.

"Brother is a good person. Help Mianyin... get somewhere safe... Help me... So sleepy, I'm... falling asleep, zZ..." The girl's voice grew softer and softer until she completely fell asleep in Li Xuan's hands.

Once the girl fell asleep, Li Xuan immediately felt dizzy, and the scene before him blurred. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself sound asleep with his head on Lilika's lap.

"Is an old woman's lap pillow really that comfortable? I thought you wanted to sleep until morning." When Lilika saw Li Xuan wake up, she unceremoniously moved his head onto the pillow beside her.

"I had a strange dream..." Li Xuan looked at the wall clock. It was already three in the morning. It seemed he had slept for several hours, yet it had felt like only a few minutes had passed.

"Don't tell me it was a wet dream?" Lilika teased.

"It wasn't a wet dream, I'm sure of it. If it had been, you'd already be lying down by now." Li Xuan patted his face and stared wide-eyed at the wall, trying to engrave every sentence from the dream into his memory.

"Brother Xuan, it's Sunday now. In a few hours, I still have to go to the Church to observe the Sabbath. Could you stop tormenting me?" Lilika looked at the time and asked in a negotiating tone.

"I won't torment you anymore. There's something more important to do." Li Xuan retied his bath towel, got up, and returned to Tan Xiang's room.

This time, the corridor hadn't changed. Tan Xiang was still sleeping soundly beneath the covers.

The moon wasn't very bright tonight, leaving the entire room dim and gloomy. Only a sliver of light seeped through a gap in the curtains. Li Xuan pulled over a chair and sat on the balcony, gazing at the scenery outside as he sorted through what had happened in his dream.

Mianyin Alice—that was the name the girl had given him. Naturally, searching that name online yielded no information. The only thing he could be certain of was that this hadn't been an ordinary dream, because Li Xuan discovered a faint mark had suddenly appeared on his arm. Its shape was exactly the same as the strange design on the girl's blindfold.

Mianyin had said in the dream that she was somewhere Li Xuan could see. But the only living person he could currently see was Tan Xiang. It couldn't possibly be Tan Xiang's split personality appearing in a dream to ask Li Xuan to save her, could it? That was absurd.

Could she have meant somewhere he had seen during the day? If so, the scope was far too broad. Tan Xiang had taken him to several attractions over the course of half a day, and since it was summer vacation as well as Saturday, every place had been packed with people. Finding one person he had seen among all those people was practically impossible.

No, thinking carefully, Mianyin had said somewhere he "could see," which wasn't the same as somewhere he had already seen. By ordinary logic, as long as a place existed in reality, he could see it. So why emphasize that he could see it? Could there be a place only he could see, while others could not?

At that moment, Li Xuan suddenly remembered something. At the convention, he had marked a magical girl named Bing Rui, and Hunting Radar allowed him to remotely see the surroundings around her. Wasn't that unique surveillance perspective precisely a place others couldn't see?

With that thought, Li Xuan immediately activated Hunting Radar and selected the pink mark representing Bing Rui.

An image of a hotel room immediately appeared before his eyes.

In the image, Bing Rui lay completely naked on the bed, sleeping soundly. Sleeping at this hour wasn't unusual, and sleeping naked wasn't some shocking habit either. It also confirmed Li Xuan's earlier judgment: this person really was a fake cross-dressing guy without a dick.

But unlike a normal situation, four rectangular yellow papers covered in strange strokes were attached to Bing Rui's forehead, chest, navel, and perineum. They looked like the talismans used by Taoist priests in movies.

Beside Bing Rui's bed sat another girl in an oversized white T-shirt. She held a laptop and typed away furiously, muttering as she typed. But her voice was so quiet that no matter how hard Li Xuan tried to amplify it, he couldn't hear what she was saying.

What exactly were these two girls doing in that room? Some bizarre religious ritual? Or a method of magical girl cultivation?

Just as Li Xuan was utterly baffled, Bing Rui, who lay on the bed, suddenly sprang upright. Her hand shot out at astonishing speed, clawing fiercely at the air in front of her. The girl in white beside her jumped in fright, but she quickly put down the laptop and rushed forward to check.

"Did you catch her? Did you?" the girl in white asked anxiously.

"She got away again! The little thing's really clever. She's always hiding in places you'd never expect, and the window when I can move freely is far too short. Every time, I can only act right before waking up. There's never enough time." Bing Rui complained for a while, then irritably tossed away something in her hand.

Wait, she hadn't been holding anything just now. That grab had only been at the air in front of her, so how could she suddenly have something to throw away? Li Xuan hurriedly enlarged the image. When he saw what Bing Rui had thrown away, every pore on his body seemed to tighten.

The thing Bing Rui had tossed aside was Mianyin's bow hair clip!

What a Huge Revelation

Seeing that, Li Xuan immediately understood what Mianyin had meant.

"The place you can see" was, as expected, the perspective seen through Hunting Radar. And the "they" in "they've been chasing me" naturally referred to the two magical girls he was currently watching.

Clearly, the two magical girls in the image were trying to capture Mianyin through some method. That was why Mianyin had sought his help in the dream.

Although Mianyin's identity remained unclear, magical girls were clearly his enemies. The answer to which side he should help was obvious.

"Don't be discouraged. At least we caught her hair accessory this time. Maybe next time, we'll catch her body. How are you feeling now? Do you still have the energy for another try?" the girl in white asked.

"Miss Tang Xi, let's stop here tonight. I'm very tired. There's still a performance coming up, so I need to get to sleep early." Bing Rui peeled off the four talismans on her body, wiped the sticky spots with wet wipes, then put her underwear back on.

"Yes, yes, get some rest early. As the saying goes, 'If you don't sleep at midnight, you'll be useless during the day.' Enjoy yourself during the day and relax properly. Only then can you enter dreams more efficiently at night." The white-clad girl called Tang Xi tucked Bing Rui in, then lowered the air conditioner a few degrees.

"The Church hasn't noticed, has it? If they find out we slipped in and acted without reporting it, will it affect the relationship between the monastery and the Church?" Bing Rui asked worriedly.

"You don't need to concern yourself with that. Though our Guardian Monastery has always kept out of worldly disputes, no one has ever dared doubt our strength. Even if they learn that the two of us are capturing Alice, they'll still politely cooperate on the surface. It's only that if this matter leaks, you and I will inevitably get a thorough scolding from Master." Tang Xi smiled.

"Then we should still be careful. I haven't transformed even once these past few days, because I was afraid the Church would notice." At the thought of being scolded, Bing Rui's petite body immediately shuddered.

"You don't need to worry so much. The Church may be large, but in the end, it's nothing more than a scattered rabble. How could it compare to our unity? The Flower River City branch of our monastery is merely impressive in appearance. Most of its magical girls are stationed in subordinate cities and counties suppressing monsters, so they have no spare hands to deal with us at all." Tang Xi said confidently.

"Then I'm relieved. Tomorrow, let's keep up the good work!" Bing Rui relaxed considerably after hearing that. She picked up the talismans she had torn off earlier and stuck them onto her forehead. Before long, she fell asleep.

There was far too much information in this conversation. Li Xuan could only determine that the two magical girls seemed to belong to an organization called the Guardian Monastery, and were secretly capturing Mianyin Alice behind the Church's back. If he didn't do something soon, Alice might be caught by them.