**Chapter 14: Killing Urban Legends and Dropping “Gold Coins”?**
Hearing the gunfire downstairs, Lu Yibei did not rush to leave but instead approached the corpse whose head he had severed. He held it by both hands and stabbed it several times in the chest to ensure it would not resurrect before finally heading downstairs.
When he arrived downstairs, he saw from a distance the muscular men of the Special Action Team wielding automatic rifles, providing suppressive fire against a black-robed figure in the distance.
These imposing men looked like they had stepped out of action movies like “The Expendables” or “First bl**d,” and their style was clearly different from that of the enemy.
With an aura that seemed to say, “If you don’t come back with us to serve time, then let’s feed the whole village!” they appeared exceptionally reliable.
Lu Yibei even thought that if this were not close to the city center, making it inconvenient to use large-scale destructive weapons, they might have even brought mortars or tanks.
Even the Ancestor would be severely injured under such gunfire; let alone that black-robed urban legend whose spirit energy fluctuation was far inferior to his.
Although the Special Action Team’s numbers were less than one-thousandth of the army that had besieged Qing Ji back then.
Their weapons were more refined than the ragtag army under the warlords of the last century, with bullets specially designed for urban legends and spiritual ability users.
So, witnessing such a scene, Lu Yibei felt he no longer needed to help and began to cheer from the sidelines.
“Strength like that of mountains, aura that covers the world, the times are unfavorable, the steeds do not gallop…”
“Exploring tiger dens and entering dragon palaces, gazing skyward to breathe, forming a white rainbow…”
“Come on, comrades! Although the Soviet Union is vast, there’s no way back; Moscow is right behind us…”
Du Sixian, who approached, felt increasingly uneasy as she listened, finally unable to contain herself and interrupted, “Agent Lu, are you really cheering them on or cursing them?”
Frowning, Lu Yibei looked at Du Sixian in confusion and said, “How could that be? Aren’t these lines classic mobilization speeches?”
“But…” Du Sixian examined Lu Yibei with an odd look, saying, “Those who were mobilized by these speeches are all dead.”
Lu Yibei pondered for two seconds, resting his chin on his hand, and nodded, “Thinking carefully, it seems to be the case? But…”
Pausing, he resumed with a serious tone, “I can’t think of other lines at once; can’t I wish my brothers a happy new year in advance?”
Du Sixian, “……” Could you just not say that?
“Tap-tap——tap-tap-tap——!”
After a series of gunshots, the black-robed urban legend was soon forced into a dead end.
While it had a certain ability to hide its spirit energy fluctuations and blind others, it seemed incapable of affecting multiple targets simultaneously.
In such moments, the familiarity and teamwork among the Special Action Team members were on full display.
Whenever a member was affected by the spiritual ability and lost their sight, they would instantly stop, while the other members would quickly fill in their gaps and protect them in a circle.
The entire process flowed seamlessly, showing no signs of awkwardness, like a precisely engineered machine where the gears interlocked perfectly.
A machine designed to hunt urban legends.
Before long, the initially stubborn creature had been turned into a sieve, lying on the ground like a piece of tattered cloth.
Seeing this, Qi Dong raised a fist, signaling his team to stop, and the gunfire instantly ceased. Then he turned to Lu Yibei, revealing a smile.
That expression seemed to say to Lu Yibei, “Agent Lu, please, it’s your turn now.”
Upon hearing this, the previously cheerful Lu Yibei’s expression turned grave.
According to the regulations of the Siye Society, if a spiritual ability user or urban legend’s spirit energy fluctuation exceeded a certain level, it would require a main agent to confirm if the urban legend or spiritual ability user was dead.
Individuals with stronger spirit energy fluctuations often possessed unpredictable and peculiar abilities; it was possible for harmful substances to leak out after d*ath or for them to suddenly reanimate.
Although the Special Action Team members, grouped and equipped with strong gear, faced no problem dealing with some urban legends and spiritual ability users, most of them were merely ordinary people with high physical attributes, without any rank as spiritual ability users, and thus had a high mortality rate if harmed by spiritual abilities.
Now, with no main agents present at the scene, only proxy agents remained, so the task of confirming the d*ath naturally fell to Lu Yibei.
Triple pay with additional bonuses were not so easy to earn!
Muttering to himself, Lu Yibei walked over to Qi Dong and stated seriously, “Brother, I can check the body, but… I can’t guarantee a complete corpse. That should be fine, right?”
“No, no problem.” Qi Dong was momentarily confused by Lu Yibei’s meaning and responded blankly.
The Siye Society did not specify that a complete corpse had to be left behind.
But hadn’t he already dead? Qi Dong wondered.
In the next moment, he caught a glimpse of a red fireball the size of a basin appearing in Lu Yibei’s hand, hurtling towards the corpse on the ground.
“Boom——!” As the fireball exploded on the corpse, the flames had yet to dissipate when two streaks of light, one blue and one red, followed closely behind.
Du Sixian and the brothers of the Special Action Team couldn’t help but twitch their mouths as they watched Lu Yibei, resembling someone showcasing their skills, repeatedly cast seven or eight spell formulas until the corpse lying on the ground was unrecognizable, fully turned into a burnt ruin, before he finally approached and squatted down.
After a careful inspection, Lu Yibei turned his head and seriously told the people behind him, “I’ve confirmed it; it’s completely dead!”
The members of the Special Action Team looked at Lu Yibei’s expressionless face, then looked at the almost charred corpse on the ground, momentarily speechless.
“…”
This Agent Lu appeared delicate, yet he was so ruthless.
Qi Dong, “…”
What you meant by not being able to guarantee a complete corpse was that you actually didn’t plan to leave a complete corpse, right?
With this done, confirming whether it was dead really wasn’t necessary.
Du Sixian, “…”
Some of the spell formulas he used seemed oddly similar to the ones I learned from a dream, didn’t they?
Could he have also entered that dream?
Should I find an opportunity to ask him?
————
Just as everyone fell silent, Lu Yibei squatted in front of the charred corpse, holding a steel rod he had picked up from the ground, poking around like a mischievous child disturbing an ant hill, and after a while, he found the core of the urban legend, frowning unconsciously.
It was an oval-shaped object of a dark bluish-black color, with an organization resembling insect exoskeleton; the steel rod poked it, producing a sound akin to crystal glass.
Combining this with the special ability displayed by the black-robed urban legend earlier, Lu Yibei pondered for a moment and instantly confirmed that its spirit patterns were related to night demons.
This night demon was not the same as the other night demons.
Typically, night demons refer to the descendants of Lilith, Adam’s wife, according to legend, but the urban legend before him was a local product.
In fact, it was common for two urban legends with the same or similar names to arise due to translation issues.
As time went on, with more confusion, it was possible for two urban legends’ powers to merge.
According to Lu Yibei’s memories as the Great Serpent God, night demons were generally spirits that ancient people linked to natural disasters such as sandstorms or earthquakes that caused daylight to dim.
The *Book of Han* states: “Night demons arise when clouds and wind occur simultaneously, hence resembling the common wind.”
The *Book of Sui – Five Elements* states: “Strong wind causes daytime darkness, and the earth and sky turn dark. Closely associated with night demons.”
However, as modern technology advanced and natural disasters were explained, coupled with the dilution of powers by the same-name descendants of Lilith, currently, few people believed in their existence, resulting in a significant decrease in their numbers and strength.
Based on the fragments of memories from the Great Serpent God, the night demons it encountered could do much more than just cause a person or two to lose their sight; if they tried harder, they could even cause half of Huacheng to transition from day to night in an instant.
That could be deemed as possessing catastrophe-grade combat power, not the weakling before him, which was easily dealt with.
The emergence of such a rare urban legend in Huacheng was already noteworthy, but what concerned Lu Yibei even more was that he had not found a similar urban legend in Jiang Li’s catalog of urban legends.
Was it awakened by someone or born anew, or did it come from elsewhere?
Lu Yibei thought as he continued to poke at the charred corpse on the ground; then, with a rustling sound, two pure white round objects suddenly rolled off the corpse and fell at his feet.
“What is this…”
Looking at the two familiar-looking round objects, Lu Yibei paused for a moment, picked them up, and opened them in his palm for a careful examination before frowning again.
“Isn’t this…”
The two tokens in his hand resembled the “1” tokens he had found on Qin Dalin, except the color had changed to white.
Jiang Li had told him that such tokens were very dangerous!
What the heck was going on?
After so many spell formulas had bombarded it, these tokens survived intact; what material were they made of?
Could it be that some high-dimensional mysterious figure added the feature of “dropping coins” upon killing urban legends in this world without my knowledge? Lu Yibei wondered.
He had always felt that the idea of monsters dropping currency in RPG games was a bit unrealistic.
Be it gold, silver, or any other metallic coins, how could they remain intact under the relentless bombardment of game characters’ skills? It was absolutely absurd!
Having grumbled a few times, he weighed the tokens in his hand and quietly stowed them away in his pocket.
He would just toss them in Jiang Li’s office later; since she knew the origin of these tokens, he would wait until she returned to deal with them. Lu Yibei thought.
————
A few minutes later.
Lu Yibei, Du Sixian, and members of the Special Action Team arrived at the half-finished building, where the floor piled with dolls was being surveyed.
The scene strewn with doll limbs still exuded a chilling aura even under the flashlight.
Surprisingly, the one Lu Yibei had decapitated was not an urban legend, but a spiritual ability user with tree spirit patterns.
Tree spirit patterns are a common C-class spirit pattern; while they do not have the intelligence-reducing side effects like lost spirit patterns, they significantly affect appearance.
From his tall, skinny frame and skin rough like tree bark, it was easy to judge that these traits would not disappear until he compensated for his spirit pattern defects and advanced his spirit patterns.
However…
It seemed there was no spiritual ability user with such spirit patterns in the catalog of urban legends.
This meant this spiritual ability user also came from elsewhere?
The ability of the night demon caused blindness, while the tree spirit pattern user quietly attacked in the darkness using physical reproduction capabilities, showing clear division of labor and seemingly coordinated.
Fortunately, while being ambushed in the dark earlier, no wounds were inflicted; it seemed that this thing’s hands had toxins.
Lu Yibei muttered to himself, continuing to search the corpse of the tree spirit ability user. Soon, he found an unknown urban legend core, as well as that strange token.
One token was yellow with a “5” while two were white with “1”; three in total.
There really was something? And more than that urban legend had… Lu Yibei played with the tokens in his hand, muttering, when suddenly, he heard Du Sixian’s voice calling from afar.
“Come quick and take a look! I found the urban legend that killed Heliang!”
“But…”
But what? Lu Yibei frowned and followed the direction of Du Sixian’s voice, only to see an unexpected scene.
The urban legend boy was dead, with a gaping hole gouged open in his chest, and the wound’s edges were tinged green, with some places even sprouting young buds—the typical signs of poisoning caused by tree spirit toxins.
It seemed he had been killed in concert by the earlier urban legend and a spiritual ability user.
According to the relevant records in the *Book of Siye*, the target affected by toxins, if not provided timely treatment, would soon transform into a twisted tree; the urban legend boy’s corpse was already progressing in that direction.
In fact, when Lu Yibei saw the content related to trees, he had asked Jiang Li why such a good ability wasn’t used for environmental conservation. With the number of prisoners sentenced to d*ath every year, bringing all of them to the Gobi Desert and letting each one feed a bit of tree spirit toxin would also benefit humanity.
Jiang Li’s response was, “Do you think no one has tried? Two years ago, someone in the Siye Society initiated this project.”
“However, in the end, it was called off due to high costs and the fact that the trees born from toxins often turned into urban legends, plus the inhumane nature of the project.”
…
What truly surprised Lu Yibei was that less than a meter away from the urban legend boy’s corpse lay a desiccated adult male corpse, which, from his clothing, seemed to be a homeless person.
This corpse lay quietly among the numerous dolls; without the careful searches of people like the Special Action Team and Du Sixian, it would have been nearly impossible to discover.
Moreover, would anyone really come to this kind of ghostly place? Lu Yibei thought.
A dozen minutes later.
After receiving notification from Qi Dong, soon, another Special Action Team responsible for handling the aftermath from the Siye Society arrived.
After carefully searching the floor piled high with dolls, besides the adult male, they found a total of seven human corpses under those dolls, all of which were minors, the oldest around thirteen or fourteen, and the youngest only about five years old.
Watching as each of those corpses was placed into body bags and carried away, Du Sixian, standing next to Lu Yibei, frowned and said, “Do you think these people, like Heliang and Yang Yi, were all players in some game of hide and seek?”
Lu Yibei envisioned the process of that urban legend boy collecting dolls to play hide-and-seek and then directly capturing living people in the end, finally locking onto his intended victims through the urban legend game, nodding, “It should be.”
“Oh!” Du Sixian responded thoughtfully, casting a discreet glance at Lu Yibei’s profile, before her eyes turned deviously and she asked, “By the way, have you been having any strange dreams lately?”
“……”
Trying to set me up?
After a moment of silence, Lu Yibei glanced at Du Sixian and said blandly, “Yes, I dreamed of you. I keep dreaming.”
I did not lie about that… Lu Yibei thought.
At this, Du Sixian’s face turned slightly red, and biting her lip, she ran away.
————
Lu Yibei returned to his temporary office past four o’clock in the morning, but the night shift work still needed to continue until daybreak, before the next main agent came to hand over the work.
Taking advantage of this time, he pulled out the catalog of urban legend events that Jiang Li had left for him and began to read through it carefully.
Before long, he confirmed he hadn’t made a mistake; Huacheng indeed did not have the existence of night demons or tree spirit ability users. Following that, upon seeing a summary of an urban legend event, he realized he had overlooked something.
【Urban Legend Event Number 3101
Urban Legend Alias: The Child Who Was Not Found, Spirit Energy Fluctuation Level: Unknown
First Incident Date: Around this year’s New Year’s Eve
Case Summary: A left-behind child on Fuchun Road mysteriously disappeared while playing with classmates; three days later, an urban legend event occurred, and all those attacked received an invitation to a game of hide-and-seek.
……】
This urban legend event Jiang Li had once asked Lu Yibei to investigate; he had some impressions of it.
As he flipped to this section, he suddenly noticed that the photograph of the missing left-behind child bore a striking resemblance to the urban legend boy who had appeared tonight.
“Disappeared around New Year’s Eve, yet those corpses were basically all dead before last New Year’s Eve—the oldest almost two years ago. How could that…”
Lu Yibei mumbled to himself, and before he finished speaking, his pupils trembled slightly, and his voice came to an abrupt halt.
He suddenly recalled that among those corpses, only the homeless man had died after New Year’s Eve.
Following that, a bold conjecture began to form in his mind, sketching out a vivid picture.
He saw, on a cold evening, an energetic boy playing hide-and-seek with his friends in the old street of Fuchun Road.
In that round, he was “It,” and all his friends were hiding very well. He searched for a long time without finding them, until he unknowingly arrived near that half-finished building.
At that moment, he spotted the homeless man standing inside the half-finished building.
The homeless man, holding enticing snacks or some intriguing toys, or whatever else piqued the boy’s interest, smiled kindly at him.
Then, the homeless man waved at the boy, and he ran into the dark corridor of the half-finished building, never to come out again.
……
As Lu Yibei thought of this, it seemed to validate his conjecture, and warmth rushed to his eyes before falling silent…
After sitting blankly for a moment, Lu Yibei shrugged and spoke to himself, “Well, since they’re all dead, who’s to say what happened? It’s all just wild guesses anyway.”
