Apocalyptic Era: Starting from picking up a Bishoujo
Chapter 44 - 41 Fallen Demon Hunter VS Supernatural Power User 4 (Third Update)

Chapter 44: 41 Fallen Demon Hunter VS Supernatural Power User 4 (Third Update)

According to the materials I had looked up in the Luoshan Office, some bizarre phenomena do indeed allow one to travel between the past and the future, but they are supernatural occurrences that are absolutely beyond the capability of human recreation and are also rare experiences that can be encountered but not sought after.

The extent of Luoshan’s assertion that such occurrences are "unreplicable" and "cannot be sought after" became clear when I looked at their publicly available data repository. The ritual knowledge related to time travel was brazenly laid out for all to see, and in summary, it read, "I followed the steps below and successfully traveled to the past and future, but for some reason, I am always unable to succeed afterward, so I’ll just leave it here, believe it or not."

And though Luoshan’s attitude towards this was not as dismissive as a serious scientist’s view on an "amateur science enthusiast who had an overnight epiphany and invented a perpetual motion machine," they truly didn’t take it seriously.

If the Weirdo Maker wasn’t lying, he may have also traversed to the past or future through an unreplicable method. Considering the innovative nature of Weirdo technology, it was more likely the future. Of course, he could also have just "foreseen the future" and gained access to technology that wouldn’t emerge until much later, but from his tone, that didn’t seem to be the case. And if I wanted to make the seed of the heart forever mine, starting from the "future" seemed like a direction worth considering.

I didn’t know how to "foresee the future," nor was I confident in "traveling to the future," but without any other leads, I couldn’t just sit idle. I had to start by putting into practice the ritual knowledge I found in the public data repository. Iterating over the various difficulties in my mind was pointless, it’s best to start with practice.

Then I went to commit murder.

My prey, of course, was still one of the individuals with special abilities among the common folk, and those with special abilities—or rather, "Mana," often could replace many ritual materials. Killing them on the spot and using their blood as material for the ritual array was often enough to enable many arrays to perform beyond expectations.

As a Luoshan agent, if I rashly collected many ritual materials through my connections, I could be suspected by those with intentions. Murder was the most convenient method; given the nature of my job, I was also skilled at finding Mana-bearing individuals among the public. Soon, I found a tenant in a neighborhood not far from Saltwater University.

On the surface, he was just an ordinary employee of a company, renting a room on the fifteenth floor of a residential building in the community, but in reality, he was a supernatural power user in a dormant state. The moment I saw him, I smelled the high-quality soul fragrance emanating from his body.

Using my official identity as a Luoshan agent and leveraging years of experience, I quickly gained a degree of his trust. After some investigation, I learned that his ability was "penetration," which allowed him to turn into a shadow and pass through any object.

In other words, during the period when his ability was activated, no object could harm him. I feared that even if a nuclear bomb fell on him or even if an asteroid smashed into him, as long as he was using his ability, he would be invincible. This was a superpower with extremely high value, emphasizing defensive capabilities.

He probably had not exposed himself due to a sense of awe towards the nation and society and a lack of interest in a fresh and exciting life. However, you could see the arrogance towards the masses in his eyes—he no longer considered himself an ordinary person. Even living among the crowd, he probably saw himself as a wolf lurking among the sheep, smug and self-satisfied with this notion.

Unfortunately, "supernatural power users" like him, with one particularly strong ability, could often be taken out with a surprise attack from behind. Invincible while his ability was active—this statement also implied that if he was caught off guard before activating his ability, he was just an ordinary person.

I sent out my Mirror Avatar and with a little trickery, I easily killed him in his rented room, and he never got the chance to activate his "invincible" superpower before his death.

As for the ritual array set up with his blood, one or two of the Array Talismans served as markers for the target time and space. Since I couldn’t define the source of the Weirdo technology as a specific number of years in the future, I couldn’t incorporate it. As an alternative, I added my own blood as a Weirdo to the array, theoretically serving as a replacement condition for the search.

And indeed, theory remains theory—I still failed.

Not only that, the mana fluctuations that leaked out during the failure attracted Luoshan Impermanence, who was patrolling the area at that time.

The Impermanence in charge of patrolling this location was Zhu Shi. She was not as easy to deal with as that supernatural power user, and I did not want to make a fuss, so I ordered my Mirror Avatar to retreat for the time being.

Then time came to today, eight months later.

Through repeated hunting, the strength of my heart’s seed has reached a bottleneck.

The Weirdo Maker told me that if I wanted to break through to the next stage, I either had to overcome my inner demons for a natural elevation of the soul or consume a sufficient amount of souls to forcibly elevate my own soul.

I chose the latter path.

And in these eight months, many other things happened as well.

First, the Weirdo Maker added another Weirdo to Saltwater City.

I had secretly contacted this Weirdo. He never concealed his tracks, and his hatred for the elite seemed to come from nowhere. In fact, he himself was a wealthy man, yet he resented those more affluent and powerful than himself. In the past two or three months, he had killed five local elites one after the other.

I utterly despise him, he even carelessly leaves his biological clues at crime scenes. I deliberately had my Mirror Avatar leave some hair with follicles in the fifteenth-floor room to aid in distancing myself from me, why would he do such a thing? Thankfully, the forces of Luoshan in Saltwater City lack modern criminal investigation experience and, for now, they’ve confused him with me. But perhaps sooner or later he will expose himself and implicate my existence.

Dealing with him covertly isn’t so simple. We weirdos all have the ability to summon our Mirror Avatars through Shadow Power, and although these avatars are much weaker than our actual selves, he also has an intrinsic superpower named "Shape-Shift Shadow," which allows him to ignore spatial distances and instantly switch places with his avatar far away.

This ability also has a dishonest function, which is passive activation. If he encounters a lethal attack that he cannot respond to, the ability will act on its own out of some mysterious judgment mechanism to protect his life. It’s outright shamelessness.

Maybe that’s also one of the reasons he’s so brazen, but as for me, I’m powerless against him. Zhu Shi is dealing with his related incidents now, I just hope he meets his end at Zhu Shi’s sword soon.

Then, the day before yesterday, I encountered a mysterious supernatural power user.

It happened during the day when I was resting at the Luoshan Office across from the public security department, and quite the commotion erupted on the other side. I hurried over only to find that someone had infiltrated the public security department to steal guns and ammunition—a significant event for them. Moreover, I also detected the scent of a soul there.

Just like a carnivore can sniff out wounded and bleeding prey from the air, if there is a soul-injured prey near me, I can more easily locate them. And at that moment, I picked up just such a smell. I commanded my avatar to move in that direction, and then behind a fried chicken shop, I discovered the source of the smell.

It was an approximately thirteen or fourteen-year-old girl, pale-faced and weary. Holding a real gun, it was clear she was the perpetrator who had earlier broken into the public security department to steal weapons and ammunition.

Based on my assessment of the soul’s scent, she must have been a very powerful supernatural power user. In her prime, she would not have even bothered with the likes of me or my avatar. But given her currently poor condition, she was even inferior to my avatar.

If I could consume her soul, my seed of the heart would surely break through to the next stage, with plenty to spare!

I immediately ordered my avatar to ambush her, but the outcome was very disappointing.

She possessed the power of Space Transfer, and although initially overwhelmed and seriously injured, she quickly moved to a place far beyond the reach of my soul’s sense of smell.

Soon after, an unexpected change occurred. My superior handed me someone’s information and demanded that I find them by any means necessary. This target was none other than the girl who escaped from me.

Not only I and my superior were interested in this girl’s whereabouts, but also superiors above my superior, as well as other factions of Luoshan, all started to move. They all understood she had the power of Space Transfer and were even planning to expand the search nationwide to secure her at all costs.

An unimaginable storm tossed my mind into tempestuous waves.

—Who exactly is this girl?

-

Since the incident had escalated to such a serious nature, I no longer dared to entertain the thought of going after the girl, and instead, I focused on another matter.

This was also something I couldn’t ignore: Zhu Shi’s brother, Zhu Changan—he had rented the fifteenth-floor room from eight months ago, the place of the penetrative power user, and discovered the ritual array I left behind. And that ritual array had activated on its own without my noticing.

I did not know if it had activated successfully. I heard that a mysterious cave appeared at the center of the ritual array, and I could only understand this as the work of the array. After Zhu Shi informed me and asked me to investigate, I set out without any hesitation.

Yet again, I came up empty-handed. I didn’t see the cave in the fifteenth-floor room but instead came across Zhuang Cheng.

Zhuang Cheng is somewhat a figure with a bit of renown in the local Luoshan forces. In these increasingly chaotic times, it’s bewildering how someone like him, who tracks down strange things, could keep coming back empty-handed. I and a few acquainted Luoshan agents occasionally gather to casually discuss him, even my superiors and several Impermanence in the area remember this character.

Having known about him, I didn’t rule out the possibility that maybe he really encountered strange events but deliberately concealed his experiences, pretending to be ignorant of our world. Then, what could be his motive for hiding his encounters? It naturally led me to suspect—perhaps he benefitted from past strange events, maybe even acquired some bizarre power.

Or perhaps, it was because he had acquired some extraordinary power that he managed to escape from strange events unscathed. Unable to share his experiences without revealing his power, he chose silence.

And such special ability users are precisely my prey.

But maybe it was just a coincidence. In the past, whenever I thought to probe and hunt down Zhuang Cheng, I always ended up abandoning my original plans for one reason or another, and it fizzled out.