Claude, the demon crow, suddenly swooped in through the ventilation window, a manila envelope clutched in his beak, his feathers still glistening with wet rain. Stamped upon the sealing wax was the crest of the Exorcist Public Security, gleaming with a dark red luster under the dim light.
It was an investigation request sent by the Exorcist Public Security. Inside the envelope were a report on black-market funds, several photos of the Shanghai port area's cargo containers, and half a piece of demon-ash crystal recovered from the deal site. Layla placed the crystal into the analysis tray, and a complex spectrum was quickly projected onto the wall, like an expanded, vein-covered dark purple map.
Layla’s expression changed. "I cross-referenced this with the notes my father left behind," she murmured, her fingertips tracing several overlapping lines on the spectrum, her voice kept extremely low. "The backbone of this black-market procurement network matches that mysterious organization from back then perfectly."
"Looks like we need to pay China a visit." Corvus put on his long black trench coat, his eyes icy—like a piece of iron freshly pulled from an icehouse.
...
The rain in Shanghai was denser and fiercer than in London, as if the sky was ready to smash through the entire city at any moment.
Neon shadows mirrored in the puddles of the Shikumen alleys, crushed into a trembling blood-red by the wheels of rickshaws. The contact arranged by the Exorcist Public Security appeared at the dock for a mere three minutes. After handing them a missing person register and the key to a black-market warehouse, he vanished into the continuous veil of rain as though he had never existed.
"Six weeks, four hundred and twenty-seven people." The contact had lowered his hat rim at the time, rain dripping down the brim onto the register, smudging several ink characters. "Women and children occasionally show up at trafficking strongholds, but adult men seem to be swallowed by this city out of thin air. The higher-ups suspect someone is trading human lives for demon-ash crystals."
Corvus glanced toward the corner. The Crystal Eye caught a faint trace of demonic energy on the verge of dissipating, stretching all the way from the warehouse's back door into the Old Town, like a strand of ember about to fade out.
The trail was intermittent, finally coming to a stop at an inn named "Yun Lai," its signboard so weathered and flaked that the characters were barely recognizable.
The landlady’s surname was Shen. When she saw the missing person register, the teapot in her hands slammed heavily to the ground, shattered porcelain shards splashing right beside Corvus's boots.
"Qianqian is on it too..." she said in a trembling voice, her hands tightly wringing her apron. "That child helps out in the shop. A few days ago, she mentioned that someone was following her. Three days ago, she went out to deliver tea and never came back."
She pulled out a stained silk scarf, her knuckles turning white from clutching it so tightly. Stuck to the fabric was crystal dust identical to that found in the warehouse, along with an abnormally faint metallic smell of blood.
Corvus asked, "Was she injured?"
"No. That child is terrified of blood. Usually, if a chicken needs to be slaughtered, she hides upstairs."
Layla glanced at Corvus without speaking, though her brow furrowed slightly—there was a sense of incongruity hidden in those words. Both of them caught it, yet neither pointed it out.
As Claude tracked the scent on the scarf among the roof tiles, the two inquired along the street among vendors. A cobbler remembered the last two digits of a black van's license plate, while a child laborer at the pier revealed that the van headed toward an abandoned textile mill every Wednesday.
In the gloomy alley, Corvus raised his right hand to cover his right eye. The ghostly blue light of the "Crystal Eye" instantly connected with the high-flying demon crow. Under Claude's bird's-eye view combined with the Crystal Eye's tracking of dynamic demonic energy, the lingering, cruel demonic aura of the gang had nowhere to hide, writhing in the night like black snakes.
"Found it. In that abandoned textile mill to the east."
Corvus and Layla swiftly breached the building. Before the gang enforcers on guard could even draw their guns, Corvus brought them down in an instant with his thunderous single-armed hand-to-hand combat and steel sword. Muffled groans echoed one after another, quickly falling into silence.
In a hidden room on the top floor, they found Long Qianqian.
The young girl was tied to a chair, her qipao covered in dust, a streak of dried blood hanging from the corner of her lips. When the door opened, she cowered into a small ball at first, only bursting into tears after confirming the intruders weren't the gang members—her sobbing intermittent and trembling with the relief of surviving a ordeal.
"It's alright, we're here to save you." Corvus drew his sword and cut the ropes.
"My younger sister is still in their hands..." She grabbed Corvus's trench coat, her nails nearly embedding themselves into the fabric. "I heard them say they were sending people to a base near the port. I know the entrance, I can take you there!"
Corvus severed the ropes; the Crystal Eye scanned her injuries without picking up any noticeable fluctuations of demonic energy.
Layla, however, noticed a small detail: three corpses of gang enforcers lay in the corner of the hidden room, their blood already beginning to rot with a pungent odor. Yet Long Qianqian hadn't cast a single glance in that direction from start to finish.
That didn't look like fear.
It looked like complete indifference due to familiarity.
Layla didn't speak up, quietly holding that detail in mind like stashing away a hidden weapon that could come in handy at any moment.
...
Guided by Long Qianqian, the trio pressed straight into the gang's secret underground base located near Shanghai's port outskirts.
The entrance was hidden beneath a cold-storage warehouse in the port area. Chill air seeped softly out from cracks in the ground, condensing into white mist in the humid atmosphere.
Long Qianqian walked between the two of them, her shoulders still trembling slightly, yet she accurately pointed out directions before lightless fork roads, her footsteps so light they were virtually silent.
"Did they blindfold you when they brought you in?" Layla asked tentatively.
"The cloth was very thin..." Long Qianqian replied in a low voice. "Besides, I've always had a good sense of direction."
That night, a fierce and brutal battle erupted inside the base. Layla provided fire support from the rear using alchemy items, while Corvus transformed into the Grim Reaper of the dark night, wielding his heavy steel sword with his dark-gold prosthetic hand, crushing the resisting gang members one by one.
However, when Corvus kicked open the innermost iron door and rescued all the imprisoned residents, his brow furrowed tightly.
Long Qianqian moved through the crowd of rescued people, comforting crying children and even accurately calling out one girl's name in a tone as natural as if she had known her for a long time.
"Your sister?" Corvus asked.
Long Qianqian paused. "No. I heard others call her that while I was locked up."
When the last cell door opened, her supposed sister was still nowhere to be found.
Layla brought out account books from the office and cross-checked them rapidly, her fingertips gliding over lines of scribbled numbers, her frown deepening.
"Something's wrong." She spread the pages on the ground. "Only seventy-eight people were rescued here, but over three hundred adult men were brought into the base over the past two months. There are no resale records, nor any corpses."
At that moment, Long Qianqian—who had been cowering and trembling in the rear all along—walked lightly and slowly up behind Corvus.
She licked her lips, just about to speak, when a cold, heavy dark-gold prosthetic hand clamped onto her throat without warning, pinning her hard against the icy concrete wall.
The steel sword sliced a cold arc through the air, its tip stopping precisely an inch before the center of Long Qianqian's forehead.
"Mr. Detective...? What are you doing... it hurts..." Long Qianqian's eyes turned red as tears burst forth, her body trembling like a leaf in a gale.
The "Crystal Eye" burst with a blinding ghostly blue light inside the dark underground base, locking dead onto the girl before him. His voice was icily devoid of any warmth, like a piece of iron freshly pulled from an icehouse:
"Starting from the 'Yun Lai' Inn, your act was laid on too thick, High-Tier Mimic."
Long Qianqian's crying paused, her tear-filled eyes looking at him.
"First, Landlady Shen said you usually hide upstairs whenever a chicken is slaughtered because you're terrified of blood. Yet in the hidden room of the abandoned textile mill, three rotting, pungent corpses of gang enforcers were lying in the corner, and you—a supposedly ordinary young girl—didn't even glance at them once from beginning to end. That wasn't fear; it was being accustomed to it."
"Woo... what are you talking about, Mr. Detective...?"
Long Qianqian's tears fell even faster, her voice weak and trembling, bearing the despair of an innocent victim, as if she might faint from terror at any second.
Corvus stepped forward, thrusting the steel sword forward half an inch:
"Second, you said the gang blindfolded you when bringing you in, claiming the cloth was thin and that you had a good sense of direction. But this place is an underground labyrinth beneath an abandoned cold storage. Before lightless fork roads shrouded in thick chill mist, you instinctively adjusted your steps toward the correct path even before our lanterns could illuminate it."
"I don't understand... I really don't understand... I just wanted to save my sister..." she sobbed, her lowered head slowly rising.
"Third," Layla stood up at this moment, her hand gripping the alchemy bomb at her waist as she delivered a cold follow-up strike, "you navigated through the crowd and accurately called out a little girl's name, claiming you heard others call her that while locked up. But the soundproof iron door of that cell was a full five inches thick. Unless you were a gecko crawling through the ventilation pipes, you couldn't have heard a thing."
A brief, dead silence fell.
However, a strange vibration came through the dark-gold prosthetic hand gripping her throat—the frequency of the crying inside her chest was growing increasingly bizarre.
Tears were still hanging on her fair cheeks, but the curve of her lips—which had been trembling with fear—began to stretch eerily, inch by inch toward her ears.
"...Hehe..."
A sharp, raspy breath suddenly mixed into her crying, her tone abruptly turning sticky, cold, and laced with a spine-chilling delight:
"...Since when... did you figure it out?"
The voice was no longer that of a pure young girl, but sounded as if hundreds of viscous souls were squirming and overlapping in whispering murmurs inside her throat.
Before Corvus could answer, crimson scales rapidly surged out from beneath her collarbone, covering her skin like a layer of living armor.
Black dragon horns burst through her temples, fresh blood dripping down her cheeks. She extended a long, forked tongue to gently lick away the blood and tears from her face, her eyes snapping wide open—the bright yellow vertical pupils brimming with morbid madness!
"Haha... Hahahahaha!"
She threw her head back and laughed maniacally, her laughter piercingly sharp, sending waves of echoes through the enclosed underground base. Violent demonic energy exploded along with her laughter, erupting with a sudden non-human brute force that directly blasted away Corvus's dark-gold prosthetic hand!
"However! The detective game is over—!"
Riiip—!
A pair of massive bone wings burst open violently from her back, shattering the surrounding concrete rubble to pieces. A thick tail covered in barbs beat frantically against the ground, smashing deep craters into it.
At this moment, nothing human remained of "Long Qianqian"—she was entirely a High-Tier Mimic Monster draped in human skin.
"Those stinking men... are much chewier than women and children." Long Qianqian stared dead at Corvus with those bright yellow vertical pupils, corrosive saliva dripping from her mouth with a sizzling, grating noise against the floor. "Their flesh and blood have long turned into nourishment for this young lady. And as for you... since you've chased me all the way here, become my food too!"
"ROAR—!"84Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOzLeV8dfUa
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