At the hospital, Leo grew agitated the moment he heard Mulan had encountered that terrifying criminal. The others in the ward were startled as well.
"You ran into that bastard?"
Mulan nodded solemnly.
"He's terrifyingly good in a fight. No wonder you were so badly hurt. He's clearly mentally unstable, too-an extremely dangerous man. His attack on me was obviously planned. He was after you. He might have been hiding outside the hospital all along!"
The officers nearby felt a chill run through them. The thought that the terrifying man might have been watching them inside the hospital all this time raised goosebumps on their skin. They nervously looked around and toward the ward's doorway.
Leo froze for a moment, then immediately caught on.
"What about you? Were you hurt?"
In fact, the moment he heard Mulan had encountered that vicious criminal, Old Buck had anxiously begun checking him from head to toe. One of the officers had even been ready to fetch a doctor.
Mulan shook his head, a trace of lingering fear on his face.
"Fighting him was extremely dangerous, but I wasn't hurt. The Valentin Police Department should commit every resource it can to arresting or killing him. This is your best chance. I'm certain he's wounded, and that will seriously hamper both his mobility and his ability to hide!"
As he spoke, Mulan took the weapon wrapped in a handkerchief out of his pocket. When he unwrapped it, a slightly warped Boning Knife was revealed. The bullet scores and notches in its blade seemed to testify to how harrowing that brief clash had been.
The way Leo looked at Mulan changed, and the other officers wore much the same expression. Only Old Buck remained worried even as he breathed a sigh of relief.
"We'll catch him!"
The stove at home still needed to be put out, but this time Mulan did not return alone. Leo insisted on assigning an officer to accompany him home. After all, going alone was too dangerous; having someone along to protect him would be better.
In practice, though, it was hard to say who was protecting whom. The officer remained intensely tense throughout the walk, his right hand resting on the grip of his gun in its holster. Even when a gust blew his hat away, he showed no inclination to retrieve it.
When they reached Mulan's home, the officer followed him closely into the kitchen. The stove was still burning, making this part of the house especially warm.
The officer rubbed his right hand, which had gone stiff from resting on his gun grip for so long. As Mulan shut off the stove, he instinctively looked at the table, then at the cane he had brought with him. He did not believe his memory had gone awry, leaving only one explanation: some supernatural power closely connected to him had caused the cane to appear suddenly in his hand.
Mulan also thought of the Ring of Light again. Was this his special advantage, or some sort of supernatural ability born of this world with its supernatural mysteries?
"Mulan, do you think those shots of yours might have killed him?"
Mulan turned from his thoughts to look at the officer. To his bemusement, the man seemed to be growing nervous again, perhaps imagining something wild. His gaze kept straying to the dark space above the stairs, as well as sweeping toward the windows and other spots.
Still, vigilance was better than carelessness.
"He's not dead. I saw him escape with my own eyes. Someone moving that fast couldn't have been mortally wounded."
As he spoke, Mulan took three bullets from a side pocket of his trench coat. He put one on the table, in the exact spot where he had left his cane before, another on a cabinet, and the third in the pocket of an everyday outfit hanging in the entryway.
"What are you doing? Oh, I get it. You must be preparing for a fight indoors, so that in an emergency you can reload with that one crucial bullet at any moment!"
"You're exactly right, Officer Peter!"
Mulan smiled at the officer and affirmed his rather imaginative guess. He raised his cane, hooked his hat off the coat rack, and put it on.
"All right, let's go."
"Back to the hospital?"
"No, to the police station. Officer Peter, I suddenly think you were right. That madman wanted to kill Leo's younger brother just because he'd suffered a few scratches during Leo's attempt to arrest him. After fighting me, he must be seething with hatred. He could be hiding anywhere, waiting to ambush me. The sooner Valentine's officers act, the better."
The battlefield had brought Mulan immense danger, but also immense excitement. Life had become much more peaceful after he left the service, yet insomnia and hallucinations had continued to plague him. That dangerous clash just now, on the other hand, had brought back a feeling he had not experienced in a long time.
Did Mulan have mental problems? Absolutely not-at least, that was what he believed. Perhaps he simply liked a challenge deep down.
The original missing persons case had attracted attention because one of a viscount's children had also disappeared. The family and other nobles had put considerable pressure on the police department. After that basement had been investigated, nearly all the missing children were presumed dead.
This put even greater pressure on Valentine's inspector and detectives. Leo and the others had failed to arrest the suspect, and several officers had been injured. With such a commotion and so many witnesses, there was no hiding the facts of the case. The story might well earn a prominent spot in the Valentine Daily the next morning.
As they wrestled with the problem, Mulan and Officer Peter suddenly arrived with fresh information. After briefly confirming it, they acted without further hesitation. They agreed to Mulan's request to send more officers to protect the hospital, while the inspector directly ordered another detective to take several officers with lanterns and return to the scene with Mulan at once.
The inspector did not expect to catch the criminal that night, but he at least wanted more solid information. Most importantly, it needed to be something he could use to handle reporters, or proactively give the newspaper some good news to follow the bad.
They first located the place where Mulan had fought the attacker at close quarters. Then the officers split into pairs and spread out nearby, carrying kerosene lamps against the wind as they searched carefully.
"Over here! Come here, quick!"
Two officers called to the others from an alley.
Mulan and the officers converged on the spot. Under the light of the kerosene lamps, they could make out bloodstains on the ground and wall.
"He really is wounded!"
The detective crouched to examine the wall and ground carefully, then looked at the few drops of blood trailing away.
"It looks like he fled here after fighting you and hid. Hmm, he stayed quite a while. He probably only dared leave once he was sure you'd gone."
All the officers around them instinctively looked at Mulan. The detective's words made one thing abundantly clear: that twisted, terrifying man was afraid of Mr. Jonester.
Mr. Jonester had a gun, of course, but so had the dozen or so officers earlier. They had even cornered the man in the basement. And how had that turned out?
Mulan crouched as well. Acting on a kind of instinctive impression, he imitated the detective and reached out to touch the bloodstains lightly.
For a fleeting moment, all sorts of chaotic sensations flashed through his mind. He could even smell strange odors. His mind trembled faintly as another sense, one beyond ordinary understanding, opened up.
The detective had already stood and waved a hand as he gave his order.
"Let's follow the blood!"
Their confidence greatly bolstered, the officers followed the blood trail. Naturally, they soon ran out of fresh bloodstains to follow. After all, the criminal could hardly have let himself keep bleeding unchecked.
But the police had achieved their goal. They had confirmed that the criminal was wounded, and the police could claim a share of the credit.
Mulan had achieved his goal as well. While pursuing the trail with a group of armed bodyguards, he had repeatedly tried to summon the bullets along the way and on the journey to the site of the fight. His attempts had naturally failed, but he had also made an unexpected discovery: when he touched the attacker's blood, he seemed able to sense the man's cruel, crazed emotions.