**Chapter Twenty-One: The Explosive Maniac Lu Yibei**
Once again, it was a night where the moon shone brightly, and from the outskirts of the desolate land, the sounds of explosions echoed intermittently.
Today in Huacheng, it was still a day of peace and stability.
As Lu Yibei took advantage of the night, darting to various locations in Huacheng where urban legends emerged, like a terrorist, throwing down two spell formulas before fleeing, a visitor arrived at a certain transportation company’s warehouse in Huacheng.
A man, dressed rather flamboyantly with a wicked smile on his lips.
He was Bai Kai.
Within Huacheng, apart from the female spiritual ability users within the Siye Society, there were over a hundred, of which ninety-two were adults. Among these ninety-two adults, more than half had intricate connections with Bai Kai.
The collaboration of so many spiritual ability users formed a formidable network of power. Starting his investigation into the black-robed figures who were trying to organize the Hundred Demons Walk with their strength, Bai Kai found significant clues in less than a week.
One young lady, who seemingly ran a beauty and wellness salon, had once entertained a spiritual ability user suspected of being an outsider.
Following this lead, Bai Kai quickly arrived at the entrance of the warehouse.
……
“You say you’re a male escort?”
“I’m not just a male escort; I’m also the head of the Huacheng Folk Culture Research Management Bureau and a principal operative of the Siye Society…”
In the security room of the gatehouse, Bai Kai introduced himself sincerely, placing a finely crafted black and gold business card from the underground world on the table.
[Underground Public Relations Department, Royal Quality, Noble Experience, 180 Fresh Young Models for You to Choose From…
Contact Person: Mr. Bai Kuan, Huacheng, Phone: 180XXXX7777]
“……”
After reading the business card, the security guard looked up, with a confused expression on his face, trying to figure out what this stranger who suddenly appeared wanted.
Late at night, was he really this wasted?
“What’s the reason for your visit?”
The security guard said sternly, “You come to this place in the middle of the night; there must be a reason, right? Who are you looking for? I can call them out.”
Although at this time, there were hardly any people in the warehouse, all male, so the possibility of calling for male escorts was low, but it was better to clarify things before asking someone to leave, that way it would be better for everyone.
What if some guy couldn’t stand the loneliness and wanted to try some exotic late-night snacks?
“It would be great if you could help call them out,” Bai Kai said with a friendly smile, “I’m looking for a woman known as ‘Embroidered Shoe’ and her accomplices.”
“They violated the regulations for solitary spiritual ability users and illegally entered Huacheng, and I, as a principal operative of the Huacheng Siye Society, am here to formally authorize their arrest.”
The security guard, who had yet to grasp Bai Kai’s intentions, was bewildered even more by this cloud of talk. Lost in thought, he suddenly saw Bai Kai pull out a shiny long sword from somewhere and slam it on the table.
The guard frowned.
What the hell? Why is he pulling a kn*fe?
He looked at the obviously sharpened and very sharp long sword on the table, and his expression became unnatural.
This flamboyant escort seemed to be here to stir up trouble?
If this isn’t handled well, it might get difficult!
Thinking this, the guard’s expression darkened as he rolled up his sleeves to reveal a wolf head tattoo on his arm. “Let me tell you, don’t mess around! I’ve mixed it up in the world…”
Before he finished his sentence, he noticed small red dots falling on himself through the window, like the infrared sights seen in movies, but not just one, rather a dense cluster.
Under the targeting of the infrared sights, he dazedly looked up and saw shadowy figures moving vaguely in the field outside the warehouse, as well as the slight glimmer reflecting off the long guns and short cannons under the moonlight.
“May I ask which faction you belong to, brother? A renowned faction in Huacheng…” Bai Kai’s lips curled into a wicked, confident smile, “I’m afraid I’ve directly or indirectly participated in several extermination operations.”
“Don’t k*ll me! I don’t know anything! I’m just a temp!” The security guard exclaimed in terror, raising his hands above his head, his voice trembling.
“Don’t worry, I’m not a bad person. If you truly have nothing to do with the person I’m looking for, I won’t harm you, but right now…”
Bai Kai said, pulling out a tube of lubricant from his jacket pocket.
The guard, “???”
Seeing the guard’s terrified, confused, and somewhat shy expression, Bai Kai froze for a moment and glanced down, putting the lubricant away.
“Sorry, wrong item; this one should be right.”
As he spoke, he pulled out a palm-sized silver spray bottle engraved with the d*ath-Owl Badge design and sprayed it lightly.
“Shhh—!”
With a soft sound, a faintly silver glimmering spray hit the guard’s face, and he immediately felt a haze wash over him, followed by dizziness.
“You… what are you doing…” His eyes widened as he pointed at Bai Kai, trying to say something but found his tongue numb and completely unresponsive.
Bai Kai looked at the spray in his hand and then at the guard, smiling as he explained, “You’re asking about this? As you can see, it’s the amnesia water used in those bathroom ads to poison naïve girls!”
“However, mine is slightly stronger. Don’t worry; you’ll forget everything when you wake up.”
The escort… isn’t quite normal… Amnesia water that makes you forget everything upon waking…
All the elements came together in the guard’s mind, and it seemed he began to understand something. His heart sank, his features twitched, and he rolled his eyes back, collapsing onto the ground.
Looking at the fallen guard, Bai Kai silently tossed out a roll of solidified spell formula rope, skillfully practiced his rope techniques on him, and then left him in a corner of the security room.
While he had just used the three-in-a-row diversion, no one knew whether what he said was true. Once he finished dealing with those hidden in the warehouse, he would investigate slowly.
“Swish— swish— swish—!”
As Bai Kai signaled the special action team members lying in ambush outside, they immediately sprang into action, climbing over the wall and sneaking into the warehouse courtyard, finding suitable positions to hide.
At that moment, Bai Kai, holding the long sword with one hand, strolled slowly to the front door of the warehouse. Just then, the d*ath-Owl Badge on his chest vibrated lightly, and he heard the voices of the special action team forming a siege outside the warehouse.
“Old Bai, we’re ready; when do we start?”
“Wait for my signal.”
After Bai Kai finished speaking, his gaze became serious. With a swift kick, he “bam!” kicked open the heavy iron door in front of him, shouting into the dark warehouse.
“Underground Public Relations Department delivery! Who’s coming out to receive it?”
In the darkness, a pair of eyes watched from the front of the warehouse, a man draped in a white suit, standing with his sword and surrounded by a swirling silver light, his spirit energy fluctuations almost coalescing into a mist.
He gritted his teeth harshly.
That person and his accomplices, remaining impassive, moved back into the darkness, preparing to escape when they suddenly heard the sound of glass shattering from above.
Windows around the warehouse were simultaneously smashed in, and burly black shadows descended steadily along the trajectories of the falling glass shards.
“Crack crack—!”
Accompanied by the soft sound of guns being loaded, under the bright moonlight, the gleaming g*n barrels almost simultaneously aimed at the people hiding in the corners.
“Big sister, we can’t escape! Why don’t we just fight it out with them?”
“Right! At this point, we can only fight to the d*ath; don’t think about being lenient if we surrender. Do you think we can deceive the Siye Society?”
“Yeah, we’re guilty enough to d*e dozens of times, and if we get caught alive, it’ll be impossible to plead for mercy!”
“…” After a brief silence, an unusually hoarse female voice responded from the darkness, “Alright, let’s fight!”
As soon as the words fell, five spiritual ability users and several urban legends transformed into swift black shadows, pouncing towards the members of the special action team surrounding them.
“Break the clock’s hands, open the flowers in the book, shatter the dead sky, desolation, deathly silence, devour, seal formula ninety-one, the silent country!”
In the instant the illegal spiritual ability users and urban legends moved, Bai Kai rapidly completed the incantation for the spell formula. Dark purple light beams erupted around him, crashing down in an instant.
The light beams erected like towering walls, enclosing all the illegal spiritual ability users and urban legends within, with only a gap the size of a well above.
Starting off with a forbidden spell formula, those trapped within were instantly suppressed to a very low level of spirit energy flow, sluggish as if filled with lead.
As for offense, Bai Kai didn’t need to handle that himself; after all, he needed to leave some alive.
He had a heavy hand, and once the sword was drawn, it never returned without bloodshed.
The muscle-bound members of the special action team, along with their alchemically modified weapons, were different.
Anyway, if one round of bullets wasn’t enough, just add another round, and if that’s still not enough, throw in some alchemical grenades; the firepower was fairly controllable.
Ensuring they incapacitated but not killed!
In the moment they detected the gap above their heads, nearly all the spiritual ability users and urban legends trying to escape were frantically trying to fly upwards.
However, as the first person poked their head out of the gap, they heard Bai Kai, maintaining the operation of the spell formula, call out, “Brothers, get to work! Besides those few spiritual ability users, there’s no need to leave any urban legends alive!”
As soon as the words fell, amidst a flurry of gunfire, the first figure that had leaped out was turned into a sieve by bullets inscribed with the spell formula.
“It’s a trap!”
“It’s deceiving, don’t go out!”
“d*mn it, those mad dogs from the Siye Society!”
Seeing their companion’s body drop back like a pile of mush, the figures trapped within the spell formula hesitated for a moment, cursing and flailing about.
Just then, dark, fist-sized objects suddenly flew in through the gap above their heads, crashing against the surrounding walls erected by the beams. At that instant, the gap above them closed up, plunging them into silence and darkness.
“It’s alchemical grenades!”
Someone yelled in the dark, and immediately following, the alchemical grenade landing at his feet began to break apart inch by inch, detonating with a roar, blinding light gushing forth from the darkness, shaking everyone beneath it.
The explosive force carrying spirit energy surged through the sealing barrier of the spell formula, and amid the cracks forming on the ground and concrete debris falling from the ceiling, under the spell’s effect, apart from a slightly intense tremor, the enormous boom and flames, not to mention the thick smoke, didn’t seep through at all.
A long while passed.
Sensing that the spiritual energy fluctuations within the sealed spell formula had all weakened, Bai Kai finally lifted the spell formula.
With a soft “ding!” the purple beams fragmented into tiny crystal shards and then turned into dust, scattering into nothingness, revealing several charred and barely breathing figures in view.
Seeing this, Bai Kai frowned slightly and pulled out a rope containing a solidified spell formula from under his clothes. Under the watchful eyes of the muscle-bound special action team members, he demonstrated the breathtaking rope techniques and bound them one by one, then turned to face Qi Dong who had approached from behind.
“Bro Brother Qi, tell the brothers, we can call it a day.” Bai Kai said, “Send the urban legends to An Qing, and take the spiritual ability users back for questioning!”
————
At one-thirty in the morning, in Huacheng’s Bai Niu Town, at the Hongqi Reservoir.
Overgrown with weeds and long abandoned, a stylish new electric bike was parked under a tree, locked with three locks.
By the water’s edge, a girl dressed in an oversized windbreaker gripped a bamboo pole over ten meters long, energetically stirring up bodies of water monkeys that floated like a hot spring, cautiously pushing them toward the shore.
While collecting the bodies, she chattered away to herself.
“I hit the jackpot this time! Not bad at all, blowing up fish in the pond is really something!”
Lu Yibei counted carefully; after taking the potion at Hongqi Reservoir to unleash her power, she had blown up at least twenty water monkey urban legends lurking beneath the surface, along with one aberrant urban legend with a minor water demon ability that wasn’t listed in the urban legend directory.
Although all were low-tier urban legends ranging from D+ to C, the core body itself wouldn’t sell for much, but the sheer quantity made a difference!
Lu Yibei figured that after sending this batch to Fat Second Grandpa, the costs for her potion making would recover about half.
She could already imagine Fat Second Grandpa’s terrified expression when he doubted her trafficking water disasters and then suspected her of trafficking urban legend cores again.
Thus, she was somewhat starting to enjoy the wild freedom of power and unrestrained spell casting without limits or cooldowns while under the influence of the potion.
Even the pain of feeling like her whole skeleton was being taken apart during the drug-taking process was significantly lessened by the big harvest.
Under normal circumstances, after casting the first spell to blow up two or three urban legends, the rest would have fled by now; there wouldn’t be such thrill!
Unfortunately, the potion’s flaw limits it to a maximum of nine doses, and after five, she had shrunk in height, so she could only surmise that this state wouldn’t last long.
Using potions has its restrictions; one must cherish them while using!
Squatting on the long-abandoned embankment, Lu Yibei held her Ling Tai Purification, repeatedly dissecting urban legend corpses, extracting their cores, and storing them in her guitar bag when her phone suddenly rang; it was a call from Bai Kai.
“Xiao Bei, what are you up to right now? If you have nothing going on, hurry over to Mudan Street,” Bai Kai urged.
Having caught seven or eight spiritual ability users that night,
“At this time of night, what’s the point of going to Mudan Street? I’m not on duty today,” Lu Yibei muttered.
“……”
Hearing the gentle voice of a girl on the other end, Bai Kai paused for a few seconds, then cleared his throat.
“Ahem, Bei Er, it seems like you’re not in a convenient position over there, so let’s do it tomorrow morning—no, no, wait until you’re feeling better…”
Lu Yibei angrily interrupted, “What the heck is ‘Bei Er’? What kind of weird nickname is that? Speak properly! Stop using your line from the club to tease me.”
“Uh, okay, anyway, if you can, come over. We’ve caught a bunch of people, and I can’t interrogate them all by myself, so let’s leave it at that!”
Upon hearing Bai Kai say that, Lu Yibei was about to hang up when she heard him add, “By the way, Xiao Bei, if you’re going out at night, be sure to protect yourself!” Then he hung up before she could get angry.
“……”
After a few seconds of silence, Lu Yibei swung her sword down, “Puff!” with a sharp sound, she stabbed through the corpse before her.
————
It turned out that the black-robed outsiders with mysterious origins had varying levels of skill; at least the one captured by Bai Kai was of low quality, with fragile bones.
The two of them, a lonely man and woman, found themselves in an interrogation room together.
Before Bai Kai could use Siye Society’s usual tactics—threats and inducements—his spell formulas and alchemical potions were not fully deployed, when the Embroidered Shoe quickly confessed.
In this aspect, the members of the Solar Eclipse Society showed much more professionalism. It was said that once during an interrogation, a member withstood various ‘truth-revealing’ potions and spell formulas, ultimately brainwashing the Siye Society operatives in return.
The Embroidered Shoe confessed a mountain of information, similar to bamboo tubes pouring out beans, although much of what she said was skillfully worded to clear her name, at least some useful information emerged.
Summarily, there were four key points.
She and her accomplices were hired to take a mysterious train that passed through the Huacheng barrier.
Once in Huacheng, they indeed participated in organizing the Hundred Demons Walk.
Now that cohort of black-robed figures had nominated Mu Se as the leader for the Hundred Demons Walk.
And among the places where those guys gathered, there were three locations; she only knew that one of them was in the warehouse of the Huacheng pottery factory.
After Bai Kai had interacted with the Embroidered Shoe for a long while, he finally let the special action team members escort her to Yun Kang Psychiatric Hospital when the comparison results from the Siye Society’s database came back.
According to the database comparison, she was indeed a frequently hired solitary spiritual ability user, directly linked to several malicious incidents and involved in numerous trafficking activities relating to spirit energy items, carrying at least dozens of lives on her conscience.
She could be considered to be despised and guilty of severe crimes.
However, in the case of the Hundred Demons Walk incident, she was merely a marginal figure.
But it seemed reasonable to think this way; core members of those bold enough to organize the Hundred Demons Walk were not that easily captured, and the investigative path ahead remained long.
……
After submitting the records from the Embroidered Shoe, Bai Kai sat on a bench in the small garden of the Huacheng Folk Culture Research Management Bureau, puffing a cigarette while gazing absently at the sky.
At that moment, An Qing, covered in bl**d from dealing with the urban legends, walked up and sat down beside him.
“Give me one too. It’s really been a chaotic time; I’m about to go crazy from the pressure.”
Bai Kai rummaged for a cigarette and offered it to An Qing, teasing, “Do zombies get neurotic too?”
An Qing received the cigarette, rolled her eyes, and ignored him.
Seeing her reaction, Bai Kai continued to ask, “Speaking of which, you just mentioned a chaotic time? Did something come up regarding the Hundred Demons Walk on your side? Care to share?”
“I’d love to share, but unfortunately, my situation isn’t related to the Hundred Demons Walk,” An Qing said while lighting the cigarette. “Yesterday, I received news: there’s a madman in Huacheng.”
“A madman?” Bai Kai frowned.
“Yeah, a madman launching explosive attacks everywhere.” An Qing took a puff from her cigarette and nodded, “He’s already attacked five sites where urban legends appeared, using a few spell formulas and then running away; the methods are incredibly brutal.”
“And there’s no connection between the attack locations, as if it were chosen randomly without consideration.”
“Do you know how my people refer to that guy? The Explosive Maniac!”
“Isn’t it a good thing to have environmentalists cleaning up the city?” Bai Kai dismissed.
“If that were the case, it would surely be good, but…” An Qing said, narrowing her eyes, “What we fear is that type of illogical, random behavior from a madman could lead to attacks not just on urban legends.”
“……”
That seems somewhat reasonable…
Seriously, what’s happening to Huacheng lately?
It’s getting chaotic, nearly matching the level of madness when that bad woman was still alive, Bai Kai thought.
