Chapter 57: Shall We Look Again?

"Jiang Si" turned around and raised her hand, absorbing all the remains of "Filch" into her palm and condensing them into a ping-pong-ball-sized singularity.

"Is that all? Though physically it does feel a bit weaker than the chaebols." Zheng Fan seemed somewhat disappointed by the meager yield.

Suddenly, however, he sensed something else. With a flip of his palm, a crystalline, solidified drop of blood appeared.

"A drop of blood? Not a red immortal pill, but a drop of blood? Is this a special specialty of the serial killer?"

Zheng Fan examined it, unable to make out its purpose, so he put it away and shoved his hands into his pockets, preparing to leave the scene.

Sirens wailed from a distance, accompanied by the loud roar of engines. Several motorcycles arrived first.

Zheng Fan saw a gray-haired man in uniform practically standing on a motorcycle as it sped along; truly, exceptional skill breeds courage.

"You are... the Red Thread Serial Killer." Bai Si looked at "Jiang Si" with a hint of confusion, then turned to survey the scene. "The Machete Serial Killer and the hallucination attached to him—did you kill them?"

"From the Management Bureau?" "Jiang Si" did not answer.

The man standing before him, holding a white ruler, possessed multiple fantasy factors! However, most of them were dormant and inactive.

Aside from the fantasy factors, there were even tangible hallucinations.

And that white ruler was clearly some kind of powerful fantasy artifact.

With such a combination, he was undoubtedly an elite within the Management Bureau. Judging by the others he brought with him—although their average strength was still a notch higher than those detective agency personnel, with fantasy factors present in each of them—none of them were as exaggerated as this leader.

He was arguably the strongest individual Zheng Fan had seen in Metropolis so far.

Brawl-tier? Certainly beyond that. Cluster-tier? Or perhaps even higher, reaching gang-tier?

Zheng Fan felt his hands itch, wondering if he should give it a try.

Suddenly, several smoke bombs emitting billows of red dense smoke were thrown from an unknown location, obscuring everyone's vision.

"What's going on?"

"Who is it?! Cough, cough!"

"Jiang Si" swiped away the encroaching thick fog and caught a fleeting glimpse of a figure vanishing in the smoke.

Was someone helping him? Or perhaps, to be precise, helping Jiang Si?

It seemed today was not a good day for this.

Controlling Jiang Si's body, she turned and vanished into the streets with a few blinks. Leaping atop a building, she looked back and saw Bai Si charging out of the smoke, happening to raise his head and make distant eye contact with her.

With a smiling wave—a farewell greeting—"Jiang Si" departed without further hesitation.

When the smoke finally dissipated, the personnel from the Management Bureau were utterly baffled.

The members of the Shenlai Detective Agency arrived fashionably late, looking at the scene in utter confusion. "What happened? Where is the Machete Serial Killer?"

"The serial killer has been executed... though not by us. The Red Thread Serial Killer appeared and killed the Machete Serial Killer, including the hallucination on him. The Red Thread Serial Killer's performance differs from previous records; her leap in power is too vast, and it is surmised that she is also cloaked in hallucinations... Let's write the after-action report that way." Bai Si closed his eyes, sighed, and turned back to speak to the members of the Shenlai Detective Agency and his own subordinates.

"The Red Thread Serial Killer?" Xila from the Shenlai Detective Agency blurted out. "Jiang Si, why has she appeared again?"

Teacher He, standing nearby, remarked, "After all, she is temporarily stranded in Metropolis. As long as she hasn't run too far away, it's quite normal for her to appear here. Xixi Keke, while a large district, is ultimately just a region within Metropolis."

Xila felt somewhat unwilling.

Yet, upon second thought, Jiang Si's increase in strength—and even her single-handedly eliminating the Machete Serial Killer, who had just given their whole group a headache—left her feelings extremely conflicted.

"There's no need to belittle yourself; after all, that is a serial killer. Your agency's merits are close to reaching the next stage, at which point your fantasy factor will deepen, and there will still be room for your strength to grow," Teacher He consoled.

Of course, there was something left unsaid. That was the fact that the height achievable solely through fantasy factors was limited.

Pure humans in Metropolis, even by absorbing red blood factors, could at best reach the brawl tier.

Adding fantasy factors could elevate them to the cluster tier.

Going any further required either relying on fantasy objects or truly coming into contact with those pitch-black entities.

...

"This feels weird." Standing on the rooftop to catch the breeze—even as the weather grew warmer, the wind blowing at high altitudes late at night was not insignificant and carried a chill—Jiang Si curled up in her thin clothing.

"Hmm? What's weird about it?" Zheng Fan sat on the edge of the building, his legs swinging back and forth like a child's.

"How come the person I wanted to kill was killed by you?" Jiang Si squinted, rather helpless.

"I used your body to kill him, so of course you killed him. Besides, with your clumsy kung fu, you wouldn't necessarily have taken him down in a one-on-one fight anyway, and if he stacked another hallucination on top of that, you'd be even less equipped to handle it. So it was entirely reasonable for you to stack a hallucination here too. Numbered monsters can only be defeated by numbered monsters, that's a fact."

Zheng Fan spoke with complete logic and evidence, though by the end, he started sounding obscure and nonsensical again.

Jiang Si rubbed her head. "It still feels wrong. There's not a shred of passion in my heart."

"Being so pretentious?"

"If you're not pretentious, how can you be a serial killer? Before killing his targets, even when face-to-face with them, Filch was still obsessed with sending them text messages."

"Leaving aside how he knew his targets' phone numbers or email addresses upon first meeting them, what if the target didn't have a phone or any other way to receive messages?"

Jiang Si pulled a crumpled letter from somewhere: "Deliver a physical letter."

"Deliver it face-to-face?"

"Face-to-face. That's how it was with me back then. On Cameron Street, he suddenly walked up to me, smiling, and handed me a letter. I took it looking completely clueless, and he even urged me to open it and read it right away. When I opened it, it turned out to be a murder warning. The moment I raised my head, he slashed at me with a knife." As she spoke, Jiang Si tore the letter in her hand into shreds and tossed them into the air, letting the pieces drift away with the wind.

Zheng Fan imagined the scene, and it truly was bizarre to the extreme.

The peculiar train of thought of a serial killer.

"I originally planned to beat him down and then return this letter to him. Ah, what a pity." Jiang Si looked deeply regretful, presumably because some sort of serial killer ritualism in her mind had gone unfulfilled.

"I kindly helped you out and you're still sighing like this." Zheng Fan gave her a sidelong glance.

"Clearly, it's just you yourself, Mr. Demon, who held a grudge against the hallucination on Filch. Did he offend you and Miss Witch?"

"Did I get exposed?"

"Mr. Demon doesn't hide his thoughts at all. You're like a child, far too easy to read, even though you must be much older than me."

"Acting all mature yourself—other than your figure and your underwear, nothing about you has anything to do with maturity."

"Still more mature than you!"

As they spoke, the two of them started bickering.

After arguing for a while, Jiang Si came over to sit next to Zheng Fan as well: "It's all fog, can't see a thing. What on earth is there to look at?"

Zheng Fan stared fixedly at the night view, unable to help laughing at those words: "There's nothing to look at, but thinking that there are so many fun things down here makes me very happy."

"Mr. Demon's happiness probably does no good for this world at all."

"Does a serial killer have the face to say that?"

"Hahaha~."

"What about you? Wandering around everywhere, have you gained anything?" Zheng Fan suddenly asked.

Jiang Si was stunned for a moment: "I was just wandering around..."

"When you chose to accept me back then, you had this deeply sorrowful look on your face as you told me about your friend." Zheng Fan conjured a few bullet holes onto his chest, covering himself in blood and looking weak and helpless as he imitated Jiang Si's demeanor from back then.

"That's not funny at all," Jiang Si said speechlessly.

Then she sighed helplessly, raising her head to look at the full moon in the sky: "Back then, my friend's family got involved with a business alliance in Metropolis, which led to everything that followed. The situation in Metropolis was somewhat different back then compared to now, but that business alliance has already dissolved due to an accident in Metropolis many years ago."

"The Mellon Group was part of that past business alliance?"

Jiang Si nodded gently. "And it was the Mellon Group that was originally responsible for contacting her family, so they're a breakthrough lead. But taking on these big corporations alone is far too reckless. Earlier, I was tricked by a rival faction of the Mellon Group into demolishing one of their factories, taking the fall for them, but I didn't manage to dig up any useful intelligence in the end."

"Is this what they call the high-end corporate warfare among major conglomerates?"

"Probably."

"Then who do you think the person who deliberately covered our escape tonight might be?" Hearing this, Zheng Fan asked again.

Jiang Si recalled the moment: "Well, the possibilities are quite numerous, hard to say. Don't look at me like this, my connections are actually quite extensive, hehe." As she spoke, she even looked proud of herself.

"Alright, that's about it for tonight. If Miss Witch has some leisure time in the future, I'll ask around for you a bit."

"Then thank you very much, Mr. Demon," Jiang Si said in a playful tone, though the heavy expression she wore earlier when mentioning the Mellon Group was by no means fake.

Zheng Fan casually acknowledged it.

Remembering something else, Jiang Si turned her body toward Zheng Fan and pulled down the zipper of her sports jacket: "Want to take another look~?"

"Go change your underwear."

"Tsk, unappreciative."