I’ve always considered my superhuman ability pretty ordinary, but I never once claimed I was weak.

  I’ve never gone all out, but based on my own estimates, if I really got serious, launching a massive fireball that could wipe out an entire street wouldn’t be out of the question. Still, does raw destructive power automatically mean top-tier strength? Not necessarily. When I was trapped underground in that cave, what got me out wasn’t overwhelming force capable of leveling the whole basement—it was analysis and deduction.

  So I’ve always had doubts about whether my power truly qualifies as “strong” in the grand scheme. Who knows what the average strength level is among demon hunters, or what criteria they use to judge power? Maybe a lot of people measure strength by how big a crater you can make in the ground. I can’t look at it that way anymore.

  “You have such an incredible ability, and you’ve never once shown it to anyone around you?” After calming down, Zhu Shi suddenly grew suspicious. “So many people badmouth you, call you crazy—didn’t you ever feel like getting revenge?”

  “With an ability like ‘killing with a glance’… no, you don’t even need to be present. As long as you have the intent, you could ignite someone kilometers away, right? Light burns or third-degree—entirely up to you. No one would ever suspect you.”

  Seeing her getting paranoid, I decided to lean into it. “Huh, I never thought of that. Thanks for the idea—I’ll give it a try next time.”

  She glared at me.

  “Kidding. Relax. I’ve never had any intention of doing something like that.” I promised.

  She stared at me for a long moment, then her shoulders finally relaxed. With a helpless sigh, she said, “You’d better mean that. I really don’t want to see you turn into a fallen demon hunter…”

  “Thanks for the concern.” I replied. “So, just to clarify—the fallen demon hunter wasn’t a traitor from your ranks. He was a villain using extraordinary powers for evil from the very beginning?”

  The term “fallen demon hunter” had made me assume at first that he’d started as one of the good guys and later turned bad, becoming a monster who hunted humans. But since someone like me could apparently “fall” into that category on the spot, the same could obviously apply to him.

  Zhu Shi nodded. “Exactly. His first appearance was eight months ago—the murder in the fifteenth-floor room. He was the killer.”

  I still had questions about the fallen demon hunter’s origins, but I prioritized the one that mattered most to me. “In your professional opinion, was he strong or weak?”

  “…Strong.” She gave a clear, decisive answer. “Luoshan roughly divides demon hunters into four ranks, from strongest to weakest: Cheng (Formation), Zhu (Stability), Huai (Decay), Kong (Emptiness). Most hunters fall into the ‘Huai’ rank. That fallen demon hunter was at the ‘Zhu’ level—and he had extremely comprehensive physical enhancement. Even among ‘Zhu’-rank hunters, he was one of the best.”

  Cheng, Zhu, Huai, Kong—Buddhist concepts describing the four stages of a world: formation, stability, decay, and emptiness after total destruction.

  Luoshan is a Daoist term, yet they use Buddhist cosmology for ranking hunters. It sounds a little mismatched. Then again, Daoism and Buddhism have influenced each other throughout history. Daoist concepts of hell were largely shaped under Buddhist influence, and “Fengdu Luoshan” itself emerged later as a result.

  Zhu Shi added, “I only started handling the fallen demon hunter case a week ago. Before me, two other Luoshan hunters assigned to the case were already killed by him.”

  “He was that dangerous?” I asked, genuinely surprised.

  “Extremely.” She analyzed it for me. “Since your ability could damage his reinforced body, that means your attack power is at minimum ‘Zhu’-level. That kind of output is rare even among demon hunters.”

  “So in your judgment…” I seized the moment to ask the question I cared about most. “Would I be able to join Luoshan?”

  To my surprise, she immediately frowned deeply. “You want to join Luoshan?”

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  “Is there a problem?” I asked, caught off guard.

  “With your personality, it’s not surprising you’d want to. But…” She hesitated. “I strongly recommend against it—especially right now. Luoshan is in a very chaotic state internally. There’s a high chance of open conflict breaking out soon. I can’t go into details, but trust me: this is not a good time to join.”

  Chaos? Internal conflict? My interest spiked instantly. Unknown turmoil and power struggles inside an official supernatural organization sounded incredibly intriguing. I could tell her warning came from genuine goodwill—she wanted to keep me out of the storm. Sorry, but whether I dive in or not depends on how much I learn about the details first.

  Still, her expression was clearly resistant, so I switched to another topic I cared about. “Does Chang’an know you’re a demon hunter with Luoshan?”

  “No. He doesn’t know I’m a hunter at all—he has no idea about any of this world.”

  Her words made me oddly happy. Not because “Chang’an doesn’t know,” but because she said “this world of ours.” Hearing a demon hunter personally place me in the same category as her felt like a form of recognition.

  She continued, “And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell him either. Not about my job, or anything related to the supernatural.”

  “Is it classified? But he’s already been exposed to the weird phenomena in that fifteenth-floor room.” I pointed out. “At the end of the day, why does Luoshan hide information about the supernatural from ordinary society?”

  “I don’t know how to explain it properly. You’ll probably come to the same conclusion eventually.” She sighed. “As for the fifteenth-floor room—that was an accident we had to accept. We can’t just let it spiral out of control. Tomorrow morning I’ll go handle the ritual circle and the cave.”

  “The ritual circle—you mean the magic array?” I asked, pretending I hadn’t overheard her phone call with Agent Kong.

  “Yes.” She nodded. “Though the appearance of the cave isn’t necessarily connected to the circle. The cave itself is still an unknown phenomenon. You have no experience dealing with real supernatural incidents—I strongly suggest you stay away from it…”

  She paused, suddenly noticing something off. “Wait… earlier you said you encountered the fallen demon hunter where, exactly?”

  Instead of answering that directly, I proactively shared what I knew about the cave.

  “The cave is actually connected to the ritual circle. I already figured out the pattern behind its appearances and disappearances—the answer is the missing symbols in the array. The letters on the rug perfectly filled in the gaps. That’s why covering and uncovering the rug switches the cave between existing and vanishing.”

  “Huh?” She blinked, then asked reflexively, “But the rug and the floor aren’t on the same plane, right?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Even from below the cave, separated by the floor slab, as long as you recreate the symbols in the corresponding spot, you can reopen it.” I explained patiently. “There are still some unsolved parts, though—like why the entrance vanishes on its own after someone enters from outside. I haven’t figured out the reason yet. If you go in, be careful about that…”

  “Wait, wait, hold on…” She finally snapped out of it, staring at me in disbelief. “Can you first explain… how you know you can reopen the cave from below, and why the entrance disappears after someone enters…?”

  “Because I went in.”

  “You went in?!” Her voice shot up in shock. She quickly caught herself and calmed down. “Weren’t you afraid you’d be trapped forever?”

  “That wasn’t important.”

  “It’s pretty damn important…” she muttered.

  I continued anyway. “Anyway, since you’re going to handle the cave, I’ll give you everything I know first…”

  Then I laid out all the information I had.

  Truthfully, I hoped she’d delay dealing with the cave so I could keep investigating its remaining mysteries. But first, I didn’t know whether the cave’s existence might affect Chang’an as the initial contact; second, opposing her outright and blocking Luoshan would be counterproductive. Building goodwill with her—and through her, with the organization behind her—was far more valuable. I know the difference between a single full meal and eating well every day.

  As she listened to my account of what happened underground, her expression grew stranger and stranger.

  When I finished, she let out a long sigh. After a while, once she’d finally processed everything, her face went blank with exhaustion.

  “I always thought you were just really into weird stories. People outside called you insane, and I brushed it off as them not understanding you the way I did—they were all deeply mistaken…”

  “Whether they misunderstood me or not, we’ve only met in person a handful of times, right?” I asked, puzzled.

  She looked at me like it was obvious. “Don’t we chat online all the time?”

  That’s just online.

  Sure, she often messaged me about Chang’an—we talked a lot. But online is online. Without ever seeing each other’s faces, how can you really know someone’s true feelings? I couldn’t exactly unload all my failed weird-story investigations on my friend’s little sister—that was the real center of my life.

  Was she the type who gets easily catfished online?

  It seemed she’d unilaterally decided we were close friends all this time. Only now was I realizing it, and I couldn’t help feeling a little guilty.

  “But now I have to admit—I was the one who misunderstood.” She sounded deeply defeated. “When I heard you awakened your ability years ago, I even thought… maybe the reason you kept chasing weird stories all this time was because you yourself were living proof that the supernatural existed. Looks like I got that wrong too.”

  “No, that’s actually pretty accurate.” I said. “Without my ability, I don’t know if I could have kept going this long.”

  “Being certain the supernatural exists and having an obsession with it are two different things.” She shook her head. “Now I’m convinced—no matter whether you had powers or not, you would have kept walking this path anyway.”