If I’d actually said “not convenient” right here, would you really just let me go home? The thought crossed my mind, but I answered anyway: “Sure, I’m free.”

  I really wanted to head home first and check on Alice’s status, but unlike the choice to re-enter the cave earlier, talking with Zhu Shi wouldn’t sever my connection to the “fireflies.”

  On the way to this patch of woods, I’d already sent several fireflies ahead to scout the house and confirm things for me.

  “You just called that monster a ‘fallen demon hunter’?” I hadn’t missed her choice of words for the demon. “So you’re saying… it used to be human?”

  In other words, could this demon actually be Alice? No way. The Alice I knew could barely walk straight on flat ground without tripping—let alone bounce around full of energy like that thing had.

  So the suspicion that Alice might be a fallen demon hunter (serial killer) could be safely ruled out.

  “That’s right. You really didn’t know he was human before?” She nodded thoughtfully, then walked over to the fallen demon. “Actually, that’s probably for the best. When dealing with this kind of wicked fiend, you shouldn’t hold back. If you’d known he was human, it might’ve made it harder for you to act decisively…” She paused, crouching beside the body. “You’ve probably heard from other sources already—there’s been a serial killer active in Saltwater City recently. In fact, he first appeared about eight months ago… hm?”

  She suddenly hesitated, her gaze fixed on the demon.

  The creature lay completely still.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, instantly alert, sensing through the lingering embers on its body.

  Zhu Shi moved closer, circling the demon twice before leaning down to touch its chest. Then she let out a surprised sound. “He…”

  “…is dead?” I reached the same conclusion. “Did you kill him?”

  There was no breathing at all now.

  This wasn’t faking. I’d sensed when he was pretending earlier. Right now he wasn’t a living being anymore—just a hunk of lifeless, charred-on-the-outside, half-cooked meat.

  “No, I didn’t.” Zhu Shi shook her head. “I only knocked him out.”

  “I only damaged his skin and some muscle—never touched vital organs or anything immediately lethal.” I explained my side too. “Even though I blew his legs apart, I cauterized the wounds with fire right away. He didn’t lose much blood, so it can’t be exsanguination… Could it be burn shock? Did he go into shock and die?”

  If the cause was on my end, did that mean I’d killed a person?

  I tried to summon some guilt from inside myself, but I couldn’t even find a flicker of it—let alone actual remorse. The demon hadn’t looked human, and burning it hadn’t felt like burning a person. It was genuinely hard to feel like I’d taken a human life.

  “Impossible. A physical-enhancement-type hunter of his level wouldn’t die from this degree of injury in such a short time unless the brain or heart was directly compromised…” Zhu Shi shook her head again, then stepped forward. “Anyway, let the organization come collect the body first. We’ll do an autopsy and analysis later.”

  Hearing her mention an autopsy, I withdrew all the remaining embers from the corpse.

  Before doing so, just in case there was a one-in-a-million chance he’d suddenly mastered the art of perfect death-feigning at the edge of life and death, I scanned him once more with full concentration. No breathing, no heartbeat, blood not circulating normally—no trace of vitality at all.

  I was certain: he was genuinely, irreversibly dead. Not even a slim possibility remained.

  Zhu Shi’s approach was far more direct. She drew the longsword from her back again.

  A flash of steel—she severed the fallen demon hunter’s head in one clean stroke. Then she plunged the blade into his chest and twisted, thoroughly mangling the heart. A textbook “confirmatory kill”—if the first check was wrong, the second made it right by ensuring death.

  Brutal and efficient, with the cold professionalism of someone who’d done this more than once. Unlike me—a newcomer dipping my toes into supernatural combat—she was already seasoned.

  She flicked the sword through the air to shake off the blood, then sheathed it once more.

  -

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Zhu Shi took out her phone and made a call. Not long after, people in gray uniforms arrived, loaded the demon’s body into a vehicle, and drove off.

  She then led me to another quiet spot nearby. On the way, I studied her outfit closely. Straw cape, wide-brimmed hat, longsword—paired with her striking features, she looked exactly like the female lead from a classic wuxia drama.

  Did this unusual attire carry some special meaning? Or was it standard combat uniform for Luoshan operatives? Either way, it suited my tastes perfectly. I couldn’t help stealing extra glances. Not because I’m particularly into wuxia aesthetics, but because on this utterly unreal night, she had entered my fight with the demon dressed in this equally unreal manner. Far from feeling out of place, it only heightened my excitement.

  And when I recalled the ruthless, practiced way she’d delivered that final blow—her demeanor screamed “seasoned monster slayer.”

  The one small flaw: beneath the straw cape, I could faintly make out everyday casual clothes and short boots. In a real wuxia drama, that would be a glaring continuity error. But maybe the mismatch had its own charm—an accidental beauty born from the incongruity. I convinced myself of that.

  I wasn’t the only one staring. Zhu Shi kept glancing at me too—studying me just as intently.

  Though she maintained a calm facade, that initial look of utter disbelief on her face had probably been her truest reaction. Even now, she seemed unable to fully accept it; her gaze searched me as if hunting for some flaw that would prove I wasn’t the Z she remembered.

  I wasn’t as thrown as she was, but I could understand her feelings. My friend’s little sister turning out to be a demon hunter working for a supernatural organization? The kind of miraculous coincidence you only see in stories. Tonight truly felt like stepping into a dream.

  “You said earlier that I count as a demon hunter too. What did you mean by that?” I opened the conversation.

  Zhu Shi steadied herself before answering. “Exactly what it sounds like. Anyone who possesses power related to the supernatural is called a demon hunter.”

  “So can I understand it this way…” I thought aloud. “Suppose there’s a superhuman who only has abilities—no interest in hunting monsters, no intention to fight, and their power isn’t even combat-oriented… Would they still be classified as a ‘demon hunter’?”

  “Yes,” she confirmed without hesitation.

  “Isn’t that a bit strange? Why not just call them superhumans, or sorcerers, or something like ‘transcendent’ the way web novels do?” I asked, genuinely puzzled.

  “I don’t know. That’s just what everyone calls them.” She shrugged casually.

  After a moment of reflection, a few half-formed ideas stirred in my mind.

  She clearly wasn’t interested in dwelling on terminology details and cut straight to the point. “Z, when did you first become a superhuman?”

  You usually call me “Senior Zhuang,” but now you’re suddenly using my name directly… I swallowed the remark.

  In the past, when she called me that, it always felt like she was putting me on a pedestal—awkward and a little uncomfortable. I’d even suggested she just use my name. Now that she actually did, I felt uneasy in a completely different way. I really am a difficult person.

  But that was trivial. I answered normally. “I awakened four years ago.”

  “Four years… so right around when you started high school? Or maybe a little earlier, just before graduating junior high… I see. No wonder you’ve been like this all these years…”

  She trailed off, seemingly piecing something together on her own.

  After a thoughtful pause, she asked, “Judging by the injuries on the fallen demon hunter, your ability is related to fire, right?”

  “I can summon and control flames,” I answered without holding back.

  “You actually took down a fallen demon hunter of that caliber… with something as ordinary as fire manipulation?”

  She sounded genuinely stunned. Was it really that surprising?

  Sure, fire powers are one of the most straightforward, no-frills abilities in battle manga. But compared to turning into a hulking muscle monster, I felt mine at least had more style points. In a lot of the fighting stories I’d read, a big physical brute like that fallen demon hunter usually only qualified as an early-game villain. Even high-tier antagonists who relied on gigantification or monster transformation were basically telegraphing their own defeat—most of the time they didn’t even get to keep their corpse intact.

  Still, I knew I was clueless about the real supernatural world and had no idea how Luoshan evaluated hunter powers. Using half-baked story knowledge as a benchmark wasn’t reliable. Maybe other fire users were unexpectedly weak, making flame abilities seem flashy but useless in the eyes of others.

  “Can you walk me through the whole thing?” Zhu Shi pressed.

  “Sure.”

  I recounted everything from my first encounter with the fallen demon hunter up to the moment she intervened—including every technique I’d used in the fight.

  Zhu Shi pulled out her phone from inside her straw cape again, using it as a makeshift recorder to capture my narration.

  For someone like me—a superhuman—keeping combat methods secret would normally be the smartest move for self-preservation. But I wanted to make a good impression through her with Luoshan. In the future, through this official supernatural organization, I might gain access to more reliable leads on strange events and encounter even richer, more varied supernatural phenomena.

  In my mind, connecting with Luoshan ranked even higher than Alice.

  Going further—if I could join Luoshan and become part of it, Alice would no longer be essential to me.

  Luoshan was an enormous organization. As the saying goes, you can run from the monk, but you can’t run from the temple. Now that I knew they existed, I’d have plenty of ways to make contact later.

  But Alice? Forget her strong desire to leave—she’d even claimed she had spatial teleportation abilities. If that was true, once she recovered she could vanish to somewhere I’d never find. Sure, I could probably keep tracking her with my powers and eventually recover her… but right now, it felt like I had a far better option.

  Of course, there was an even better one.

  “I want it all.”

  There wasn’t actually that much to say about my clash with the fallen demon hunter—it was basically one-sided suppression from start to finish. I finished explaining the entire sequence to Zhu Shi quickly.

  From the moment I started describing my abilities, she had silently put away the phone she’d been using to record. Shock slowly spread across her face, impossible to hide.

  “You can ignite targets just by looking at them—even ones outside your direct line of sight… Flames that can’t be extinguished, burning indefinitely no matter where the target flees?” After a stunned pause, she couldn’t hold back anymore and burst out, “What part of that is ‘ordinary flame manipulation’?!”