I had to extract the clues I needed from this Monster while keeping him at a distance.

  That said, I still had no idea what form those clues would take. Maybe this Monster had crossed paths with traces of Alice’s movements sometime in the past two days. Or maybe in the future he would draw her here. Either way, I was convinced that Alice—who seemed to be investigating Monsters—would inevitably become connected to this one in some way I couldn’t yet see.

  For that to happen, he had to stay alive. Either alive long enough to spill whatever information he had about Alice, or alive long enough for her to be pulled toward him.

  Zhu Shi would definitely object. In the worst case, I might have to break with her completely—even fight her. Maybe there was a way to satisfy both sides: uphold her principles while still achieving my goal. Think fast…

  Time wasn’t waiting. The Monster was already moving farther away. I glanced back at Zhu Shi. She was staring intently in his direction, completely focused.

  Then I noticed something strange about her eyes.

  It wasn’t the emotion in them—it was the sheer piercing intensity. I remembered seeing that razor-sharp gaze before: once when she determined my powers didn’t come from any demonic bloodline, and again when she examined Kong’s fragmented remains and confirmed he really was a fallen demon hunter.

  Zhu Shi closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the sharpness was gone; they looked normal once more.

  “Z, this time let’s do what Lu Chan suggested—kill the Monster outright,” she said.

  “He’s only the second Monster after Kong. There could be a third, a fourth in Xianshui City. Shouldn’t we at least try to capture him alive and interrogate him?” I spoke to buy time while frantically searching for that perfect compromise.

  But before I could finish thinking, Zhu Shi herself offered the solution: “Capturing him alive is pointless and unnecessary. I have a way to get the information from him.”

  “What way?” I asked, surprised.

  “As long as we make sure his head remains intact when we kill him, Lu Chan can use his technique to directly extract the information from the brain tissue afterward,” she explained.

  “Didn’t Lu Chan say that method doesn’t work? The Monster’s power source destroys the information the moment it vanishes.”

  “I’m confident I can stop that destruction process,” she said with complete assurance.

  I knew she wouldn’t lie about something like this, yet I still found it hard to believe. “Really?”

  She nodded firmly. “Really.”

  This was excellent news!

  I quickly weighed the options in my head. If I stubbornly stuck to the tailing plan, I’d only lose Zhu Shi’s trust and forfeit any further support from Lu Chan. And even if I tailed him, everything after that would be up to chance—I might never actually get Alice to show up. I believed she would eventually be drawn in, but if it didn’t happen within the next three days, it would be meaningless for me.

  Those three days were my personal countdown, not the countdown until Alice and the Monster crossed paths. Right now, time was my most precious resource. If there was a way to pull information directly from his brain on the spot, killing him immediately was the better move. Even if this attempt failed to turn up anything useful, I could still continue working with Zhu Shi and Lu Chan afterward to search for Alice.

  Neither “tail him” nor “Zhu Shi’s plan” was foolproof, but if I had to pick one, the latter aligned far more with how I operated.

  “Got it,” I said, doing one final check before attacking. “Just need to leave the head intact, right?”

  “That’s right…”

  Even as she answered, Zhu Shi was already smoothly donning her straw cape and hat and drawing her sword.

  Then she froze for a split second, realizing something. “Wait—you’re planning to attack right now?”

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  “Yes.” My eyes locked onto the Monster.

  “Isn’t this supposed to be my moment to shine?!” she exclaimed in surprise.

  Too late. I had already struck.

  By the way, this time I wasn’t going to bother with the slow “ignite with a glance” technique. When I first fought anomalous enemies like the fallen demon hunter or Agent Kong, I’d wanted to savor the rare chance to face supernatural opponents. Now that I’d made initial contact with Luoshan, I no longer felt the need to hold back or treat them as special.

  In my normal form, I could actually use every skill available in fire-elemental form—the power wasn’t necessarily much weaker, just less precise and fluid. Some high-powered techniques I could fire off multiple times per second in elemental form might take several seconds—or even over ten—in normal form.

  What I used against the Monster now was the “summon flames directly inside the enemy’s body” skill. To pull it off, I had to merge my consciousness with the ambient heat around the target. In fire-elemental form, that felt as natural as breathing. In normal form, it required total concentration.

  In my perception, the Monster’s internal structure appeared crystal clear in my mind—like how people sometimes imagine the inside of their own torso after reading anatomy textbooks. Into that mental image, I simply inserted a fireball far larger than his torso.

  What happens when an unimaginable amount of heat suddenly appears inside a sealed space? The outcome was obvious.

  In the distance, the Monster exploded under my gaze.

  Like a firework bursting at its peak, countless chunks of flesh and organs mixed with searing flame sprayed outward in all directions. For a brief instant, the night-time soccer field was brilliantly lit by the dazzling flash.

  Of course, I made sure to preserve the head. Only the torso detonated. The head rode the shockwave upward into the air. My normal vision couldn’t clearly make out something so far away in the dark, but through my awareness merged with the environment, I clearly saw the stunned, bewildered expression frozen on that face. They say a human head can retain consciousness for a few moments after decapitation. Apparently the same applied to Monsters.

  A second later, the head dropped like a deflated ball and landed with a dull thud in the center of the field. Only then did I belatedly wonder if it might shatter on impact—but no, it held together. Tough skull. As durable as a real soccer ball.

  “That’s it? Just like that?” Zhu Shi asked, dumbfounded.

  “Looks like it,” I replied.

  “No, wait—igniting someone with a single glance is already excessive, but making them explode with a glance…” She trailed off, seemingly at a loss for words, then gave me an incredulous look. “You don’t have anything even more excessive up your sleeve, do you?”

  “It’s not that excessive…”

  Honestly, I didn’t think this skill was particularly complicated on its own. And if we’re talking excessive, Agent Kong’s ability to banish opponents into the shadow world when he was losing was pretty outrageous too.

  Sure, beating Kong looked easy in hindsight, but if I hadn’t happened to be able to teleport myself through flames—even with all the elementalization skills Zhu Shi kept praising—I might very well have lost right there.

  Just from those few exchanges, I already understood something important: in the anomalous world, victory didn’t depend solely on raw power. Compatibility was everything. One wrong move could mean death. Get countered, and defeat was almost guaranteed. Lu Chan had once possessed Cheng-level Wuchang strength, yet he was captured, imprisoned, and experimented on—probably for the exact same reason.

  Still, seeing Zhu Shi react with such genuine astonishment felt good. This was the first time I’d fought seriously in front of her, so of course I wanted her to be impressed. …Though now I wondered if she was deliberately exaggerating because she knew it would make me happy. If so, I didn’t mind at all.

  Back to the point—the fight wasn’t actually over.

  As the saying goes: there’s always someone stronger, something stranger. Get cocky just because you have an “absurd” skill, and sooner or later you’ll run into an even more absurd one that shuts you down.

  And right now, I was pretty sure I was looking at exactly that.

  Just when I thought the enemy was finished, the Monster—who now consisted of nothing but a head—underwent something astonishing.

  He revived.

  I’m not even sure “revived” is the right word. It was like a film reel skipping several frames: suddenly, perfectly intact, he was standing in the exact same spot. No light, no sound, no visible transition. The scattered chunks of exploded flesh that had flown everywhere simply vanished—as though the explosion had never happened.

  And I was certain this was all within his expectations. After coming back, he stood motionless for a single second—not confused about his own revival, but puzzled about the attack he had just suffered.

  Then his gaze snapped straight toward my position. With a furious roar, he charged at me.

  He’d just been blown to pieces moments ago, yet the instant he confirmed his enemy’s location, he rushed forward without the slightest hesitation. Clearly, he feared no injury. What he displayed was obviously some form of immortality—and not the straightforward “heals too fast to kill” variety, but something far more elusive and mysterious.

  I remembered the blessing power Alice once showed me—how she restored an empty soy milk pouch to its full, unopened state right in front of me. Could this Monster possess an ability to reverse the flow of time?

  Before he could take more than a few steps in his charge, he was interrupted.

  The moment he revived, Zhu Shi had already vanished from my side—like a super-speed warrior whose movement was impossible to track.

  A brilliant sword flash erupted from behind and to the side of the Monster, coldly severing his neck. Blood sprayed skyward; the head tumbled to the ground while the demonic body continued forward on momentum alone.

  But in the next instant, it all disappeared.

  As though nothing had happened, the gushing blood and falling head vanished. The body that had been about to collapse from lost balance suddenly righted itself. The head inexplicably reattached to the neck.

  Zhu Shi pursued relentlessly from behind.

  In the Monster’s hand, a massive hammer of shadow materialized. Without turning, he swung it viciously toward her.