### Chapter 20: Going Door to Door to Spread Warmth
At midnight, the bright moon hangs high in the sky.
In the suburbs of Huacheng, in front of a flower garden close to wild mountains and fields.
A police officer, holding paper and pen, looked tiredly at a middle-aged man dressed plainly before him.
“Name?”
“Wang Defa,” the middle-aged man replied, his gaze a little unfocused, as if he had not fully recovered from a state of fright.
“How old are you?”
“Forty-eight.”
“Occupation?”
“Berserker.”
“Huh? Wait a minute!” The police officer paused, his gaze drifting to the rusty shovel in the middle-aged man’s hand, which was equipped with a tetanus-effect attack, suddenly becoming alert. “What did you just say?”
Noticing the officer’s odd stare, the middle-aged man quickly corrected himself, “Oh, sorry, I was in the middle of a game earlier, and I wasn’t fully thinking straight.”
“My name is Wang Defa, I’m forty-eight this year, and my occupation is flower planting.”
Did he just rhyme there? But a flower farmer carrying a shovel makes sense… The officer frowned and thought to himself, enduringly continuing with the questioning, “You mentioned in the emergency call that someone was illegally blasting mountains nearby? Tell me, what’s going on?”
“Alright, here’s the thing: tonight, I originally planned to team up with my buddies to do a raid, but one main tank waited for so long and never showed up…”
“Get to the point!”
“Oh, the point is, even though this is a 40-man raid, without a main tank, we can’t proceed! We could only wait around, and then…”
“What about the blasting? What’s the deal with that?” The officer interrupted with a grim face. Being called at midnight for an emergency report, risking encountering urban legends, and now dealing with such an internet-addicted middle-aged man…
Police officers are human too, and have emotions!
“Oh, right, about the blasting!” The middle-aged man slapped his thigh. “I waited from about five in the afternoon until after ten at night, finally finished the raid, and the BOSS dropped a load of gold, including an artifact that I dreamt of, something I’d sacrifice ten years of life for…”
Goodness, not only an internet-addicted middle-aged man, but also a longevity warrior?
As the officer was about to interrupt the man to steer the conversation back on track, he heard him continue, “At that moment, I heard a loud bang outside the window!”
“I felt like the entire house was shaking, dust from the walls was falling like snow, the light bulbs kept flickering, and most importantly, the internet was cut off!”
At this point, the middle-aged man’s emotions became agitated, “I hadn’t even had time to loot my gear! Those items have a drop rate lower than mobile game banners! How can I bear that? I called the police right then, grabbed my stuff, and came out.”
“The situation was like this: when I got outside, I heard a loud rumbling from the back mountain, and there were flashes of fire, so I thought to go take a look.”
“That place in the back mountain, I heard when I was a kid that it had ancient graves, and there were ghost stories about it a few years back. I thought, what if someone was illegally blasting to dig up graves there? What a wicked thing to do! As a righteous man, how could I not do something? Then…”
The officer was taking notes when he noticed the middle-aged man suddenly stopped midway through his sentence and looked up inquiringly, “And then what?”
“Gulp—!” The middle-aged man seemed to recall something terrifying, swallowed hard, and said with trembling pupils, “Officer, what I’m about to say next is a bit bizarre, please don’t be scared!”
“I won’t, I’m a professional. No matter how strange it is, I won’t be scared,” the officer said seriously. “Continue!”
“Then I went to the back mountain and saw…” The middle-aged man paused a moment, then continued, “In that gully, there was a girl…”
“A girl? What was she doing? Digging graves?” The officer interjected.
“She was holding a fireball, like that fire mage casting fire spells in games, throwing it right at the mountain! I remember that there was a small hill in that area, but when I went, I couldn’t find it anymore; she must have blasted it flat.”
“Officer, dear heavens, please help me out! My artifact was just destroyed like that, my heart is bleeding!”
“…”
The officer remained silent, sizing up the middle-aged man who had dark circles under his eyes and a visibly unstable mental state, beginning to doubt whether he was excessively addicted to gaming and couldn’t distinguish between game and reality.
Having been a police officer for several years, he had seen plenty of people like this; the most memorable case he had handled involved a teenager who had become mentally unstable due to a certain MOBA game. Early one morning, he came out of an internet cafe, grabbed a steel pipe, and jumped out to attack a morning exerciser, shouting “Demacia!”
Doubts aside, the officer remained dedicated and continued questioning, “Can you tell me in detail where you saw that girl and what she looked like?”
“No problem, no problem!” The middle-aged man gestured as he spoke, “That girl was about this tall…”
The officer took a glance at the height the middle-aged man was indicating and silently noted “height between 150-160 cm” in his notebook.
“She looked like she was around the age of just finishing middle school and entering high school, quite pretty, but didn’t seem like a good person, red hair on one side and white on the other…”
“About fifteen years old, with white hair streaked with red,” the officer noted.
“Right! She was wearing a large red and white coat!” the middle-aged man added.
After completing his notes, the officer pressed on, “Can you take me to where you saw her?”
“We can go, but…” The middle-aged man’s expression showed hesitation, and after a few seconds of contemplation, he said, “But we can’t get too close, just look from a distance. That girl is too scary!”
“Alright, you lead the way?” the officer said with a nod.
A few minutes later.
On a hill about two kilometers from the flower garden, the officer followed the direction pointed by the middle-aged man, frowning.
Peering forward, he saw that under the night sky, the bare and desolate mountain was silent, as if it were in deep slumber, peaceful over the years.
Where was the evidence of an explosion?
“No, just a moment ago it was in that direction…” The middle-aged man saw the officer’s expression grow grim and froze for a moment, “Officer, let me explain!”
“Sigh—!” The officer exhaled helplessly, patted the middle-aged man’s shoulder, “Alright, sir, let’s end it here for today. If you find anything later, feel free to contact me.”
Saying that, the officer turned back towards the flower garden and drove away.
Watching the officer’s retreating figure, the middle-aged man stood there for a while, scratching his head and muttering to himself, “What’s going on? I clearly…”
“Could it be that I really played too many games?” He murmured to himself and soon headed down the mountain.
After the middle-aged man left, the surrounding mountains and forests fell silent again except for the sounds of birds and insects. After a while, a rustling sound suddenly came from above the treetops, and a slightly small figure swiftly darted down from the canopy, landing steadily on the ground.
It was a girl who appeared to be about fourteen or fifteen years old, with a somewhat petite stature and a youthful face.
Her pure white long hair, along with a few fiery red strands in front, was simply tied back in a ponytail. The oversized tactical jacket wrapped her body snugly but did not conceal her long legs.
The girl was Luxianbei.
After she woke up and looked in the mirror, she realized, just as she had guessed, that swallowing the complete potion triggered her transformation into an urban legend, which indeed caused some problems.
When she transformed into an urban legend, it seemed that there was a trend to revert back to her previous youthful form, but perhaps due to an insufficient dosage of the potion, it stopped midway.
For a moment, she felt stuck between being cute and seductive, representing an age that still had lingering innocence, trying to look alluring but lacking enough of a story, which was a bit awkward.
“Whoosh—!”
Luxianbei glanced in the direction the police officer and middle-aged man had left, exhaling a sigh of relief.
“d*mn it, Jiang Li’s urban legend directory isn’t completely accurate! Didn’t it say that it’s been a long time since anyone lived nearby that was causing disturbances?”
“As a result, not only are there disturbances, but there are also people living nearby, nearly causing a big problem!”
If she hadn’t learned a few tricks from her ancestor to disguise herself, she would have been caught.
Although Qing Ji didn’t seriously teach her about consciousness intervention spells, she didn’t study them seriously either; she just glanced over a few times and noted some superficial points, but managing to blind ordinary people’s eyes, she could achieve.
Muttering to herself, she turned to the area where she had unleashed her power…
Eh? Where exactly was it again?
Looking at the area that had been completely flattened and was still occasionally sparking with embers, she suddenly couldn’t remember exactly where she had detonated things.
Forget it, it doesn’t matter; it’s not this mountain, it could be that mountain, or even both…
Besides, when unleashing power, she should use a slightly higher-level spell, right? How was I to know that a few blasts of crimson golden fire would lead to this?
If she had known, she would have used the Four Beasts Bright Sky Cannon; that technique only kills urban legends and doesn’t demolish mountains.
Muttering to herself, she shook her head helplessly and fished out a piece of A4 paper filled with text from her jacket pocket, carefully studying it under the light of her phone.
As she read, she took out a pen from her pocket and crossed out “Suburbs, Wangfa Flower Garden Back Mountain,” then bit the pen and continued reading.
[White Bull Town, Hongqi Reservoir. Note: Good place, plenty of water!]
[Flower Language Sunshine Resort Hotel (crossed out). Note: Dark behavior under the light, too arrogant, I almost want to report myself.]
[Zhe Mu Long Black Bear Nature Reserve (crossed out). Note: Set fire to volcanoes, be sentenced to life, leave a path for black bears, do some humane work.]
[Huacheng Ceramics Factory. Note: No one around, can be considered.]
[Sunshine District, Moonlang Street Half-Finished Building Group. Note: Too many urban legends, high risk.]
…
After a long while, Luxianbei finally selected a more secure location and swiftly left the “crime scene.”
————
In the dead of night, just before dawn, when the darkness is the deepest.
At the Huacheng Ceramics Factory, in the pitch-black warehouse, a harsh voice rang out.
“What? So many urban legends, spreading out in three routes, targeting twelve locations, and you only succeeded in five? Your efficiency is even lower than when you were acting in pairs before? I want a reasonable explanation!”
Looking at the furious woman sitting on the idol, the urban legends below fell silent.
After a long pause, one of the urban legends bravely stepped forward and said, “We can’t be blamed; several places clearly marked as having urban legends, when we went there, turned out to be empty. Some places were even reduced to ruins, just like…
“Just like what?” Mu Se pressed.
“Like they had just been attacked by someone.”
“Oh?” Mu Se narrowed her eyes, pondering for two seconds, and muttered to herself, “Could it be that those from the Siye Society?”
“No, it wasn’t them; it was an urban legend, I can assure you of that!” A weak voice came from the darkness, “I was attacked by that guy, which is how I ended up injured.”
“Did you see what that urban legend looked like?”
“No!” The reply from the darkness came swiftly, “I didn’t even get to see the person clearly before being knocked unconscious by a fireball, and that person threw two spells before running away, so how could I see them?!”
“…”
“Waste!” After a long silence, she finally let out two words coolly and then spoke in a deep voice, “However, from what you’ve said, I can probably guess which urban legend did it.”
She knew very well that within Huacheng, there were at least a dozen urban legends strong enough to compete with her. The smoothness of the previous operations by the black-robed figures and the urban legends they had captured was due to those urban legends not having taken action yet.
However, after this evening’s events, among those guys, some had already grown restless.
And whether the hundred demons walk would succeed this time largely depended on whether those urban legends could be made to submit.
“Ha, interesting, the real hunt is just beginning!”
In the darkness, Mu Se let out a cold laugh, her voice carrying an inexplicable excitement.
