The oddity Jin Xueli had overlooked

The last time she had seen Moran Dao had been only a day earlier. Jin Xueli had never expected them to meet again so soon-in fact, just half an hour after Anthony turned into soda.

Why?

After all, as that girl named Qiao Xiyue had said, these days, aside from your own children, the only thing you absolutely had to redeem was your phone.

Jin Xueli had no children. All she could say was that, without her phone, she really did feel as if a piece of her soul had gone missing.

"Oh, the actual owner this time?" Moran Dao said with a laugh after the call connected.

Was there really any need to remind her of her humiliations, openly or otherwise? Even without reminders, she could remember every embarrassing incident for at least ten years-and they always barged into her head in the middle of the night, chasing away every trace of sleep.

"I can pay you back now. Are you free tonight?"

Moran Dao went quiet for a second. "Where?"

Jin Xueli gave her the address of Between the Backlight and heard Moran Dao say, "Not far from me."

She wanted to ask whether Moran Dao lived nearby, but worried she might think she was prying into a Hunter's affairs. Before she could speak, Moran Dao added, "I just finished handing things over to a client. I can head straight there."

How nice. Someone else went to the Nest and came back making money. As for her, she had sunk twelve thousand into the trip instead.

Perhaps that thought hung over her like a dark cloud, occupying most of Jin Xueli's attention. Or perhaps, knowing she was back in Blackmoor City, she no longer felt the need to stay constantly alert. Whatever the reason, when she walked into Between the Backlight, she still had not realized she had made a terrible mistake.

"Don't move!"

The sharp shout made Jin Xueli jump just as she stepped through the door.

She looked up and found that every Hunter in the bar had risen, all of them staring at her with palpable hostility. Several even had their hands at their waists, clearly ready to draw their guns.

"Wh-what?"

Jin Xueli froze midstep, not daring to move. Looking around the bar, she asked blankly, "What's wrong with you? What's wrong with me?"

It was not quite accurate to say everyone had stood up. One person in the entire bar remained seated at the counter, pulling down her baseball cap to hide her quiet laughter.

"What are you trying to do?" The Shar-Pei-like bartender held up a bottle, seemingly ready to swing it at her as a weapon at any moment. "What's the meaning of bringing an active Phantasm in here?"

Jin Xueli looked at everyone, looked down at the half-can of soda in her hand, then looked back up at everyone. Understanding dawned.

"Ah, this, no-"

Panicking, she was just about to set the soda down when someone shouted "Don't move" again. Sure enough, she stopped moving and could only explain, "I'm not trying to hurt anyone with it-I did use it-oh, but that had nothing to do with you! I'm not trying to use it on you! I just forgot I was holding it. I've been carrying it the whole way."

Even if a Phantasm looked little different from an ordinary object, when placed before an experienced Hunter, it would stir a sort of sixth-sense intuition-especially an active Phantasm.

Belatedly, Jin Xueli thought that what she had done was probably much like charging into an airport with a gun.

"...She's a regular," the bartender told everyone, hesitantly lowering the bottle.

"Someone can actually forget about a Phantasm?" a middle-aged man said, sounding unconvinced.

Only then did Moran Dao finally deign to lend her support.

Slowly turning her chair around, she said, "It's true. When she runs out of money buying a Phantasm, she'll even ask a complete stranger of a Hunter standing nearby to lend her some."

"How do you know?" A woman slowly moved her hand away from her waist, though she had yet to sit down.

"I was that stranger." Moran Dao waved Jin Xueli over casually. "Come on. Pay me back."

Under the eyes of an entire bar full of Hunters, Jin Xueli scurried sheepishly over to the counter-but the matter was not over yet.

Several Hunters who were still uneasy gathered around at varying distances, looking at her and the soda can. "How do you use that Phantasm? What does it do?"

It was possible they already knew the answers and were asking to see whether she would tell the truth.

But Jin Xueli had not intended to lie anyway.

"After taking a few big gulps, once there's enough grape flavor in your mouth, blow a breath into the target's face as quickly as possible."

"And then?"

"The target turns into grape soda," Jin Xueli said honestly. Sitting on the barstool, she raised one rain-booted foot and pointed at it. "I thought there would definitely be a huge amount, so I even made a point of wearing rain boots. Here, look. But it turned out to be only a can or two of soda."

"Did you just... kill someone?" an unfamiliar Hunter asked.

"Watch what you say." Even in a place full of Hunters, Jin Xueli would not publicly admit to that. "I only said to blow a breath at the target. I never said anything about killing."

After she said that, several of the other Hunters actually relaxed a little. A few pairs of eyes shifted toward the soda can, faintly gleaming.

"Wouldn't other people see them turn into soda?" an old man asked.

Jin Xueli held up one finger. "No. After you blow on them, it takes effect at the first moment the target isn't being watched by human eyes. It happens in an instant."

Clothes, shoes, phones-nothing would remain. But she could not spell out that detail either.

"How much is left?" Someone took two steps closer. "And the expiration time?"

"Half left. As for the expiration-" Jin Xueli suddenly realized what was happening. "Are you interested in buying it?"

Everyone present was an expert. Even though the purple soda was a Phantasm appearing for the first time, assessing its value and function took only a little over ten minutes.

Considering that it would expire in less than three hours, and that the longer she delayed, the less she could get for it, Jin Xueli simply sold the remaining half-can to the first Hunter who decided to buy it. Whatever else happened, at least she had cut her losses on this trip by three or four thousand.

"I didn't drink straight from the can," she said, enthusiastically accepting the money. "Go ahead and drink it! It tastes pretty good, though it might be a little flat now."

The Hunter gave her a look, his expression difficult to interpret, then hurried out with the soda.

"I hope you aren't planning to scrape together the rest of my money here on the spot," Moran Dao said beside her.

"Of course not." Jin Xueli turned around, too embarrassed to look up at her. She dug around in her bag with her head lowered, took out an envelope, and handed it over. "Twelve thousand. Count it."

The fingers that took the envelope were slender and lean, their nails short, rounded, and translucent.

"...Do you have something against electronic transfers?" Moran Dao asked, lightly tapping the envelope.

"I haven't found anyone willing to help me launder money yet. Everything I have at home is cash." Looking at that seemingly powerful hand, Jin Xueli said, "If you know anyone suitable, recommend them to me."

For some reason, Moran Dao was always laughing-when they first met, Jin Xueli had thought she was someone who did not like to talk.

Jin Xueli had also thought Moran Dao would be the sort to put the money away without even looking, but to her surprise, she tipped all the bills onto the counter and slowly returned them to the envelope, one by one.

"What?"

Having taken off her cap, Moran Dao abruptly turned her eyes toward her. They were astonishingly blue, like a blue sky frozen in Arctic ice and snow, like a sea burning with extreme cold, so pure they seemed never to have descended into the human world.

Everything worldly, even gender, seemed as though it ought to have nothing to do with Moran Dao. Yet at that moment, she was holding a banknote.

Only after examining it carefully and putting it away did she say, "...Seven. Of course I have to check properly. How do I know you haven't slipped in counterfeit bills?"

Where would anyone even get counterfeit bills these days?

Jin Xueli simply ordered her a drink and let her concentrate on being a bill scanner. Moran Dao laughed and told the Shar-Pei-like bartender, "Right, she's the one. She experienced Vulture firsthand."

Huh? Vulture?

The bartender nodded and told Jin Xueli, whose attention had perked up, "Just a few hours ago, a family contacted me looking for news about Vulture. You can call and tell him. You can discuss what you want in return, too."

He wrote a note and handed it to Jin Xueli.

"Chai Si Monroe?" She thought for a moment. "Never heard of him. Is he a Hunter? Which family?"

The bartender stared at her for a second or two. "No, he isn't a Hunter... You don't know who Chai Si Monroe is?"

"Should I?" Jin Xueli was even more bewildered than he was.

"Never mind, you don't belong to a family." Having found an explanation for her himself, the bartender waved a hand. "No need to remember the people in those families, either. Just speak politely when the time comes and don't upset him. If Chai Si Monroe is handling this personally, it must be important. Otherwise, it's usually Hunters from the Kai Family who contact me."

"The Kai Family, huh," Moran Dao interjected, though it was impossible to tell what she felt about it. "...Thirty-one."

Important... Jin Xueli weighed that word.

Though the behavior of Vulture's residents was highly unusual, and they had become dangerous, it still did not seem important enough for a major figure in a family to personally seek information-especially since, from what the bartender had said, the man was the Kai Family's second-in-command.

What factor had made Vulture so important?

Jin Xueli checked the time on her phone. She had long since cleared those hundred-odd messages; they had disappeared along with Anthony's existence. It was now November 18, 10:23 p.m.

She had encountered Vulture's residents in the early hours of yesterday, and already today a family was asking about them.

Marveling at how well-informed the major families were, she thought there must be more behind Vulture that she did not know.

Had something happened in Hunter circles lately?

Jin Xueli pondered for a while, then tried sounding out the bartender indirectly. But everything he could tell her was something she already knew. "Recent events? Nothing particularly worth mentioning. The biggest sensation was Wei Xilai's death. Weren't you right here the day the news came out?"

...Wei Xilai?

Holding a freshly ordered cup of ordinary cola in both hands, Jin Xueli froze with her mouth half-open, unable for a moment to believe she had overlooked such a glaring oddity.

No, no. She had only just narrowly escaped the mystery of the real and fake Jin Xueli then. Still shaken and unsettled, it was perfectly normal to have missed it...

When she had awakened on the museum floor, that resident had been watching the history inside the candle.

More precisely, it had been watching the history concerning Wei Xilai inside the candle.

But after copying her, when it touched the candle, the history that appeared should have belonged to Jin Xueli. Why had Wei Xilai appeared?

And it must have been important: the resident had watched with complete absorption.

Where did her life intersect with Wei Xilai's? What connection could Wei Xilai possibly have to her?

Would she have to go back and look at the candle to find out?

"What's wrong?" Moran Dao glanced at her. "You suddenly look utterly hopeless."

"I... I might have to go back to the Nest." Just thinking about having to jump off a building again, Jin Xueli could practically hear the blood draining from her face.

Was there any way not to go back to the Nest? she thought, rubbing her temples hard.

The history that resident had been watching... seemed to have been from May.

Yes, she remembered a long section of the candle melting into Candle Tears like lake water. In the "lake" not far from the resident was precisely the scene from the night she met Anthony, when a bodyguard crashed a car into the bar's back door.

That was new history the resident had created single-handedly, and the only version of history that had actually happened.

Jin Xueli abruptly raised her head.

She grabbed her phone and quickly found Amber in her contacts. After a few rings, Amber answered on the other end. "Hello, Xueli?"

"You remember the car crashing into the bar in May, right?" Jin Xueli asked, getting straight to the point. "Did you hear anything about that convoy of bodyguards afterward?"

Amber paused and did not immediately answer. "Why are you suddenly asking about that?"

"...You found out," Jin Xueli understood.

"No-I wouldn't say that." Sounding somewhat troubled, Amber said, "Um... I wasn't deliberately keeping it from you all this time. Later, I briefly mentioned what happened that night to the family. I didn't think there was anything significant about it myself, but after a while, our family's Hunter supervisor came to see me."

Amber drew a breath and continued, "He told me to keep what happened that night confidential and not tell anyone. Though I didn't know much, and couldn't see why it needed to be kept secret... those were the family's wishes, so I could only obey."

This was the most important reason Jin Xueli did not want to join a family: why should other people get to decide her actions?

She did not even know the Kai Family's second-in-command, so naturally she knew even less about who the Morgan Family's Hunter supervisor was. She asked, "Who's your Hunter supervisor?"

"Fu Tailan," Amber said.

Her tone was so matter-of-fact that, for a moment, Jin Xueli could not tell whether Amber was used to it or genuinely did not know just how illustrious the name "Fu Tailan" was in Hunter circles.

...When had Fu Tailan joined the Morgan Family?

While Jin Xueli was still reeling, Amber seemed to misinterpret her silence. "You aren't thinking of asking Fu Tailan about this, are you? He won't tell you. Besides, our family is in complete chaos today, everyone's busy and everything's a mess. He'll be taking people into the Nest very soon..."

"What happened?" Jin Xueli instinctively followed up.

"A squad we sent into the Nest last week seems to have been wiped out somehow. Not one of them has come back yet. Their squad leader, someone named Jonah-we only know he's still alive, but he needs urgent rescue. Any later and it'll be too late... A woman who just came out of the Nest told our family. I forget her name."

Friends, today's chapter is going up early because I have to take my cat to the vet in a bit. Her fur has been falling out strangely lately, and it's worrying...

I never expected the novel to go premium before I managed to squeeze out a bonus chapter. Yes, tomorrow, the 29th. I'm far too good at dragging things out...

Could I trouble all you grannies to spread the happy news(?) about it going premium? I'm going to try hard and aim for 20 first-chapter subscriptions to start with. Our greatest virtue is not being greedy.

I'll subscribe once myself and persuade my editor to subscribe too. Add in friends and family... hmm, that leaves 17 people to win over...

Once I get home from seeing the vet(?) later, I'll write a few words about going premium. Oh, I really do have quite a lot of nonsense I want to blab about.

(End of chapter)