Bibi Dong, the Great Detective

(Some changes have been made to the earlier chapters. Their impact on the plot is neither major nor minor, and they mainly concern characterization.)

Spirit Hall sent word ordering Holy Maiden Bibi Dong to return to Spirit City immediately.

Bibi Dong did not know what had happened, but she guessed it most likely had something to do with that God of Wisdom, Buer.

"Kokomi? Little Kokomi? I'm coming in!"

Despite her packed schedule, Bibi Dong still squeezed in an urgent visit to Ji Feng's home.

She knocked softly on the door. Nothing. Then she switched to pounding on it with a bang, bang, but there was still no response from inside.

Either they were playing dead, or they were out.

They might even have fled.

At that possibility, Bibi Dong's delicate brows drew together slightly.

Spirit Hall needed to hunt down fallen Soul Masters, and as its Holy Maiden, she had experience in such hunts. What mattered most was not combat ability, but tracking and gathering intelligence.

She hesitated for a moment, then took a peculiar Soul Tool from inside her robe, pressed it against the door, and infused it with Soul Power. The next instant, the lock turned from the inside.

It was no high-grade Soul Tool, merely a low-grade one that could give Soul Power physical form within a certain range, but it was very convenient for picking locks.

She pushed the door open. Compared with her visit yesterday, the place was much cleaner, with clear signs of tidying.

She opened the wardrobe as well. Generally speaking, anyone fleeing would at least take a change of clothes, but there were no obvious gaps among the clothes inside.

She continued searching briskly through the entire house.

None of the everyday toiletries were missing, either.

Even some clearly valuable belongings had been left behind. If they had been fleeing, they should have taken as many high-value items as possible.

Her preliminary conclusion was that there were no signs of an overnight escape, yet Bibi Dong's brows knitted ever tighter, until a chill was running down her spine!

All the clothes, furniture, and supplies here were for just one person! And clearly, a single man lived here alone. It had been so late that night that she had actually failed to notice!

That Sangonomiya Kokomi did not live here at all! She might even have been a visitor that day!

"No, that's not right! She looked as though she'd just finished bathing that day, so she should have been fairly relaxed. But what exactly is their relationship?"

Bibi Dong took a deep breath to ease her frustration and suppress the anger in her heart. Whatever the case, there was no getting around the fact that Kokomi had fed her a pack of lies that day and played her for a fool!

That wretch! She was probably gloating to herself the whole time!

She had made a few simple inquiries on her way here and learned that an ordinary man named Ji Feng lived in this house. At the time, she had merely assumed Ji Feng owned the property and his younger sister Kokomi lived with him. Now it seemed that only one person truly lived here.

If she called on Spirit Hall's intelligence network, she could probably uncover more, but this was a personal matter, after all. Bibi Dong did not want to abuse Spirit Hall's authority over it.

"Forget it. Whatever the truth is, I won't get to see her anyway."

"...In the end, we were only passing through each other's lives. Let's just say fate brought us together, but wasn't enough to let us stay."

Bibi Dong suddenly sighed softly, unwilling to force the matter. Finally, she picked up a pen and left a note in Ji Feng's home explaining the situation. After shutting the front door securely for him, she turned and left.

"Wow, you should've seen the incredibly cute girl with long pink-and-blue hair who was here earlier. Her clothes were unusual, too. Her skirt fluttered as she walked, and she was draped in fine silk. She looked like an immortal floating through the world."

"Oh, yes, I remember her too. Her outfit looked like something a shrine maiden would wear for ceremonies."

The conversation between two men by the roadside reached Bibi Dong's ears.

She stamped one foot against the ground and appeared beside them in a gust of wind, her long pinkish-purple hair dancing in the breeze. Fixing them with a sharp gaze, Bibi Dong said coldly, "That person you're talking about. Tell me everything!"

The two men saw that the girl before them was strikingly beautiful, carried herself with extraordinary bearing, and wore Spirit Hall robes. Naturally, they did not dare take her lightly.

Now that she had a lead, Bibi Dong questioned everyone she encountered along the way.

Kokomi's beauty truly drew attention. Through her inquiries, Bibi Dong roughly pieced together what had happened.

That morning, Kokomi and an unfamiliar man had headed to the eastern part of the city together, but no one knew exactly where they had gone.

Then, sometime between late morning and noon, Kokomi had gone alone to buy snacks on the food street. Afterward, she seemed to have left the city.

Judging by her movements, she clearly had not been fleeing, but going out to enjoy herself.

Bibi Dong felt a little better. It seemed Kokomi was probably still in the area and had not deliberately fled from her.

Outside the city? I wonder if there's enough time.

Bibi Dong considered it. She still had to depart for Spirit City tomorrow, and she could not spend the entire night searching here. She had to go back and prepare for the return journey.

Delaying the Supreme Pontiff's orders over something like this was clearly inappropriate.

In her heart, Bibi Dong very much wanted to find Kokomi and get to the bottom of things.

She strongly suspected that Kokomi had been spouting utter nonsense yesterday to deceive her!

As the Holy Maiden, she had never been taken for such a ride!

At that thought, Bibi Dong clenched her teeth, circulated her Soul Power, and revealed her Soul Emperor cultivation as she sprinted toward the outskirts. Her physical abilities already surpassed those of Soul Masters at the same level, and now, running at full speed, she was like a raging gale.

Even so, Bibi Dong had little confidence.

The area outside the city was enormous. Finding one specific person in so little time was almost impossible. Her only consolation was that Kokomi's exceptional looks made her slightly easier to find.

Along the way, however, she noticed another suspicious detail.

Why did the way people here reacted to Kokomi make it seem as though she had only appeared in the past few days?

Kokomi herself had said that she and Ji Feng lived here, depending on one another.

Whether it was the household supplies or the reactions of the neighbors, everything clearly pointed to that being a lie.

She had most likely only found Ji Feng's home and begun staying there in the past few days. She might even have been an outsider, a cuckoo occupying another bird's nest.

But in that case, where had Ji Feng gone? Had he simply died, leaving her to take over his house?

If she had taken over his nest, where had Kokomi come from? Was she a fallen Soul Master? Or a homeless girl?

Bibi Dong felt frustrated. She kept feeling that she had overlooked a crucial point, that a missing thread of evidence was preventing her from piecing together the truth no matter how hard she tried.

"No! It really won't work! I can't find her."

Dusk was almost over, and Bibi Dong was so exhausted that she was panting, yet she still had not found Kokomi. The area outside the city was simply too vast.

Helplessly, she hurried back. She still had to return to the local Spirit Hall Branch before nightfall.

Just then, however, she suddenly sensed a powerful aura of life that rapidly washed away her fatigue. Puzzled, she took a few steps toward it.

She saw countless fragments of Blue Silver Grass turning into fluorescent light and drifting away on the wind, transforming into a tremendous amount of life energy. The source of that immense aura of life was none other than the direction from which those fragments were flying.

"Could this be a fortuitous encounter fallen from the heavens?"

Bibi Dong cast Kokomi and everything else out of her mind. All she could think was that there was something valuable over there, and she hurried toward it.

Before long, she saw a woman wrapped in a long dress of Blue Silver Grass sharing an intimate moment with a handsome young man. The woman sat on the ground, letting the man rest his head on her thighs.

That rich aura of life was emanating from the two of them.

Faced with such a beautiful scene, Bibi Dong merely paused for a moment. Then a flicker of almost irrepressible greed flashed through her eyes.

That woman was only a Soul Emperor, just like her. How could she possibly stir up such a tremendous phenomenon in heaven and earth?!

She was probably-a hundred-thousand-year Soul Beast in human form!

Without betraying anything, Bibi Dong walked slowly toward the pair, her steps graceful and composed, barely able to suppress the delight at the corners of her mouth.

To be safe, she intended to approach them and confirm it a second time.

Thanks to her second martial soul, the Soul Devouring Demon Spider, her spiritual power far surpassed that of ordinary Soul Masters. This woman was only a Soul Emperor and had not yet reached a Soul Beast's mature stage. With her spiritual power, Bibi Dong would certainly be able to discern the woman's true form at close range!