Half an hour later.
Having finally reached their materialization time limit, Black Rock Shooter and Merry contentedly turned back into figurines, leaving Chen Xiao rooted to the spot, the girls' fragrance and warmth still lingering on his hands.
It took him several minutes to come back to his senses.
"W-what did I just do...?"
He instinctively tried to cover his face, only to find himself taking a little sniff of the scent lingering on his palms.
"No! I'm not a pervert!"
Chen Xiao, who had yet to cross that final line, completely lost his composure.
When did I get this sexually frustrated?
Damn it, this must be because Alice deliberately teases me every day! That's why I turned out like this!
Alice: ?
"I should take a shower and cool off first..."
Yet the instant he entered the bathroom, Chen Xiao sensed something wrong. He found nothing after checking the place, but he still had the feeling someone was watching him.
"Maybe I'm just being oversensitive... I did just get attacked by a villain, after all. And awaken a superpower."
Chen Xiao clenched his fists and muttered to himself.
Then, just to be safe, he locked the bathroom door before stepping into the shower with peace of mind.
What Chen Xiao didn't know, however, was that a gap-like spatial rift had appeared in a corner of the bathroom wall, its interior packed with countless eyes.
The other end of that gap opened into Chen Xiao's bedroom, facing the enormous figurine display cabinet.
At the same time, another pair of gaps blocked Black Rock Shooter's and Merry Nightmare's eyes, leaving them utterly unable to watch the bathroom livestream through the rift.
The figurines: May good people live long and peaceful lives! (Praying)
A certain youkai sage: Hehe~
They had just made Black Rock Shooter and Merry feel good. Now it was their turn to reward themselves!
Black Rock Shooter: ... (Angry)
Merry Nightmare: Can't play fair, huh? You bunch of animals!
The scene shifted once more. While Black Rock Shooter's existence sparked an internet frenzy across the globe, and Chen Xiao was being peeped on at home...
The Superpower Crime Task Force, relegated to the role of "background scenery," had already escorted the criminal Luo Yuan to a secret base belonging to the Anomalous Incident Management Bureau under the protection of the Armed Police Brigade.
They strapped the hooded man, Luo Yuan, to a restraint frame as he continued shouting after regaining consciousness. After scanning him from head to toe with various machines, a visibly shocked researcher finally emerged from the control room.
"How is he?"
Liu Yaowen, who had been resting with his eyes closed in the adjacent lounge, approached the researcher to ask about Luo Yuan's physical condition. He still needed to get information out of him.
After all, Huang Qingque's ability could only show her fragments of scenes, not more specific details.
But the researcher shook his head at the question.
"His body has mutated completely. Not only is his DNA an absolute mess, but most of his organs have swollen and proliferated as if riddled with severe tumors. His brain tissue in particular... it doesn't even look like a human brain anymore."
After that, the researcher added a complaint.
"Something this outrageous was probably cooked up by one of the Alabachia Federation's corporate giants again. They really don't have the slightest concern for ethics."
"I see..."
There was nothing Liu Yaowen could do about that, either.
The trail had gone cold here. The "scraps of information" Huang Qingque had seen alone weren't enough to keep the investigation going.
On the way to the base with Luo Yuan, he had already sent a team to raid that abandoned warehouse on the outskirts, but there had been nothing there.
Their adversaries had clearly fled the moment the incident began streaming live.
"Black Spade K... it was you, wasn't it?"
After leaving the building, Liu Yaowen stood beneath the night sky, gazing intently upward.
Then he reached into his pocket for a cigarette.
Only at a time and place like this, with no one around, would he sneak a smoke to ease the pressure weighing on him.
"Chief."
Just then, Huang Qingque appeared beside him. From her expression, she seemed to be carrying the same burden Liu Yaowen was.
"What's wrong, Lieutenant Colonel? Out for some fresh air too?"
Liu Yaowen smiled.
He put away the cigarette he had been about to take out.
"Yes."
Huang Qingque nodded.
"I just reported the information on Black Rock Shooter and that mysterious girl to the director."
The smile on Liu Yaowen's face gradually gave way to a serious expression.
"You saw information about them?"
Liu Yaowen knew very little about Diviners' abilities. He had only heard that ordinary people had no secrets before them.
"Only some of it. I did everything I could... If it were my teacher, they probably would have been able to glimpse something of the forces behind them, too."
Huang Qingque half-closed her eyes.
She seemed to have recalled something painful.
"Then what did you see... Sorry, that's probably classified. I shouldn't ask."
Professional instinct made Liu Yaowen eager to know exactly what she had seen, but he also knew that anything requiring a private report to the director was probably classified at the highest level.
"This isn't classified, Chief... Besides, the director will send the information to you before long so everyone can prepare for future encounters. There's no need to keep it secret."
Huang Qingque gave a bemused laugh, then shook her head.
"At the time, I saw that girl named Black Rock Shooter traveling through several bizarre spaces, endlessly battling several other girls... red, green, gray, and yellow. In the end, they held their weapons against one another's throats."
Liu Yaowen: ...
Isn't that plenty clear?!
But there are actually several other beings as absurdly powerful as Black Rock Shooter?
Yikes... the higher-ups are going to have quite a headache.
"As for the other one, I only saw that mysterious girl keeping watch before an enormous doorway, holding a ring of keys... Like a gatekeeper. She felt very dangerous."
Isn't that perfectly clear too?
Perhaps what a Diviner considered "seeing clearly" was different from what an ordinary person like him meant by it.
"Maybe their appearance marks the beginning of the Great Catastrophe."
At that, Huang Qingque's voice caught slightly.
She remembered how, several years ago, her teacher had suddenly gone mad while using their precognitive ability, shouting things like "a world-ending meteor shower, burning history, frenzied myths, a mirror-image sea that slices through the world, seaborne weapons that blot out the sky..." before bleeding from every facial orifice and ending up like a dried corpse.
Even now, her teacher remained submerged in a Life Support Pod, clinging to one last breath.
As the saying went, "The Great Dao numbers fifty; heaven's workings account for forty-nine, leaving one for humanity to escape." Among a Diviner's many abilities, precognition used those forty-nine to seek out the existence of that "one."
Yet even if a Diviner's visions of the future showed only possibilities rather than events destined to happen, so many disasters together were enough to make up for the uncertainty of their odds!
"The Great Catastrophe?"
Hearing that term again, Liu Yaowen froze for a moment.
Several years earlier, governments around the world had abruptly changed their policies and publicly acknowledged the existence of supernatural powers. Supposedly, it had something to do with this so-called "Great Catastrophe."
But what sort of catastrophe was it, exactly, and when would it happen?
No one knew.
A small fry like him knew only the term, not what it actually meant.
"...Thank you, Chief. I feel much better now."
With that, Huang Qingque saluted Liu Yaowen.
So she was just treating me as someone to vent to.
Liu Yaowen smiled, showing that he understood. Otherwise, he wouldn't occasionally sneak off somewhere for a smoke himself.
As for the Great Catastrophe to come...
If the sky fell, the tall ones would hold it up. An ordinary man like him would simply do his part as a piece of the load-bearing wall.
Before you continue