Chapter 18: The Investigators

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He was back—returned to this strange and peculiar "Border City."

Not long ago, this place had seemed to him a vast, eerie, and unsettlingly bizarre city. Yet now, upon seeing the familiar street lamps and buildings, the faint morning light on the streets and sky, an unexpected feeling of nostalgia welled up deep within him—so profound that even he found it hard to believe.

The ordeal trapped in that valley of darkness had made his return to the Border City feel like coming home.

But in the next moment, the dizziness brought on by his fading life cut through his reverie. He sluggishly lowered his head and saw bright red blood slowly spreading beneath his body.

His body had been pierced—a horrific wound that could kill him quickly. Although this form possessed remarkable regenerative abilities and vitality, he knew he was dying again—by now, he was all too familiar with that word "again."

The culprit behind this dreadful injury lay nearby. The scaly "tail" severed from the monster fell from the gate alongside him. Strangely, it still seemed to possess some residual life, even a semblance of thought, as it writhed slowly in the pool of blood, attempting to crawl away from the spot.

He even felt as if the thing feared him—it was retreating from him.

Frowning, he painfully rose from the ground, glanced toward the house not far off, then picked up the scaly severed tail writhing beside him and struggled forward.

As he walked, he muttered, "Wasn't it said the protagonist escapes from despair and everything turns out fine? So why do I still have injuries after the map reset… what kind of crappy plot device is this? Damn, this hurts like hell…"

The continuous blood loss gradually clouded his mind. His weakening body made each step stagger and falter; he was struggling immensely, as if he might collapse at any moment. In those final steps, he moved forward almost on instinct, not even knowing why he was so determined to reach home—perhaps just to greet Eileen, or maybe to avoid being discovered as a corpse by early risers.

Everything around him slowly dimmed; the morning light took on a dark red hue. In his mind, the golden-red eyes of Huli appeared—in the end, those eyes glowed with a hungry bloodlust yet retained a faint trace of humanity, struggling to persist in the crimson depths.

That fox… he still didn’t know her fate. She had said she wouldn’t die—whether that was true, he could not say.

These thoughts flashed through his mind as he finally staggered to the door. It was unlocked. He tugged at the handle and pushed the door open, then stepped inside.

He saw the dining room opposite the entrance, the oil painting still resting against the wall. Eileen lifted her gaze from the painting, staring in surprise at the doorway, her eyes widening slowly.

He forced a faint, fleeting smile. "Eileen, I’m back."

He knew his wounds were grave. Were it not for this body's incredible regenerative power and strength, he would have surely died outside.

Just as this thought crossed his mind, his vision wavered; he leaned against the doorframe and slid down, familiar darkness pressing in from all sides—along with Eileen’s terrified scream.

Now, he was dead inside his own home.

...

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Amid the faint sound of brakes, two electric bikes came to a stop deep within Wutong Road. Two figures dismounted and looked around the old, quiet neighborhood.

One was a middle-aged man, exuding a steady, reliable aura. He wore a coffee-colored long coat, was tall and robust, with slightly tanned skin and short black hair. An irregular scar near his neck added a formidable edge to his presence. Yet his weary expression and dark circles clashed with his strong physique and fierce scar—his face marked by three months of relentless overtime without rest.

The other was a young man in his early twenties, also with short black hair but considerably slimmer. His features were ordinary to the point of invisibility in a crowd. Wearing a black-and-blue jacket and pants, his tense expression revealed the nervousness of someone recently assigned to fieldwork by his superiors.

The two had arrived in this quiet old district, observing the unremarkable buildings. Occasionally, residents passed by at a distance but few spared them a glance.

“This place looks pretty normal…” the young man muttered. “Team Leader Song, are you sure this is the spot?”

“There was a border alert just now. The coordinates are definitely here,” the middle-aged man called Song nodded. “Though the signal vanished almost instantly, it’s confirmed as a foreign domain reaction.”

“We rushed here as fast as we could,” the young man glanced at his electric bike hesitantly. “Maybe we should’ve driven…”

“All the bureau’s vehicles are out on missions. Only Xu Jiali’s beat-up old car is left. You want to drive that? Even full throttle it’s probably slower than your bike,” Song replied.

The young man chuckled awkwardly and quickly changed the subject. “By the way, that agent… code-named 'Little Red Riding Hood,' from the Fairy Tale Organization—she didn’t find anything here either, right?”

“Right. Nothing at all. Which actually makes this place even more suspicious,” Song said slowly. “‘Little Red Riding Hood’ has done a lot for the Special Service Bureau. I know her capabilities well. Her wolves can sniff out even the faintest anomalies in the environment. But she searched here all night and found nothing.”

The young man blinked, momentarily confused.

“Nothing found? Didn’t get that?” Song repeated. “It’s too ‘clean,’ too ‘normal.’ In the Border Zone, there’s no place that clean! Her wolves detected anomalies everywhere else in this city, even the weakest traces. But here… from an occult perspective, this entire street is as ‘clean’ as a vacuum!”

Hearing this, the young man finally grasped the situation—the training he received at school matched this reality.

“Either this place is truly that clean—a ‘pure zone’ running parallel to the outside world within the Border Zone, which isn’t impossible considering the nature of this place,” Song waved a hand tiredly, “or there’s a ‘big player’ hidden here, something that’s constantly altering the environment. Little Red Riding Hood’s wolves encountered a boundary vacuum.”

The young man’s already tense face tightened visibly.

“I won’t approve your transfer to logistics,” Song glanced at him. “And no switching to other teams either.”

“I never said I wanted to run!” the young man hastily waved his hands. “I was prepared to serve faithfully and diligently when I joined…”

Suddenly, a phone rang, breaking their conversation. The ringtone was a melodic tune from a wildly popular new anime.

The young man froze, looking at his leader oddly. “...You watch that too?”

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Team Leader Song visibly twitched, reluctantly pulling out his phone while muttering, “Must be my daughter sneaking it on; she’s been watching it lately…”

The young man’s expression subtly shifted, but he held back from saying, “Isn’t it a bit inappropriate for a middle-schooler to watch a bunch of girls in a band?”

Song answered the call and listened briefly. “Yes, Li Lin, we’re at the scene. Same situation as with Little Red Riding Hood’s investigation—the place is suspiciously clean. Arrange for a fixed monitoring station here; I’ll decide on personnel when I return. Also contact the Fairy Tale Organization to see if they can send someone else. This might be a long-term assignment…”

After hanging up, Song sighed deeply and turned to Li Lin, the young man, who was still watching him.

“I swear it’s my daughter who changed that ringtone—I never watch anime,” he said.

Li Lin quickly coughed. “Uh, sure, I believe you.”

They shared a brief awkward silence before tacitly deciding to drop the subject.

Just then, Li Lin suddenly noticed something.

Frowning slightly, he hurried toward a nearby corner of a wall.

“Team Leader Song, come take a look at this!” he called out after examining it briefly.

Song approached and looked in the direction Li Lin pointed.

There, in the corner, was a dark red stain resembling dried blood. It was small enough to be easily overlooked from afar and was visibly shrinking at a remarkable speed.

It wasn’t seeping into the cement—it was vanishing into thin air.

“Blood?” Song frowned immediately, then quickly retrieved a plastic tube and portable scraper from his coat pocket. “No, not blood. Take a sample!”

“Got it,” Li Lin said, accepting the tools, preparing to scrape the residue from the wall. But just as the scraper touched the surface, the last small patch of red hissed abruptly before vanishing completely.

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