From the end of the world

Chapter 66 Lu Chan's Tour 1
I carefully observed the Luoshan patrolman named Lu Chan in front of me.

He has a handsome appearance, no less handsome than Chang'an. He walks with a vigorous posture and stands straight and upright. Although he is the former Wuchang who rescued Agent Kong from a strange incident 20 years ago, he is not as mature as I thought. Judging from his face, he is only a few years older than me at most. It is not impossible for him to disguise himself and sneak into Xianshui University as a student.

After all, the other party is a demon hunter, so it is not strange that he has a soul of 40 or 50 years old under the appearance of 20 years old. In reality, there are so-called "beautiful demons" who use makeup and health care techniques to make themselves look young. Compared with various supernatural powers, this level of specialness can only be said to be a method of maintaining youth.

"Hello, I'm Zhuang Cheng." I shook hands with the other party.

Lu Youxun's eyes moved between Zhu Shi and me. He smiled and asked, "You two seem to have a very good relationship. Are you dating?"

I said seriously, "She is my guide."

"So that's how it is, they are teacher and student." Lu Youxun seemed to take it seriously.

"No, I'm not!" Zhu Shi blushed and quickly clarified, "I'm not yet at the level where I can teach!"

"The wise are the teachers," I said.

"Okay, I'll stop joking here. Zhuang Cheng, I hope you don't misunderstand me because of what Zhu Shi said before. I don't mean to trip you up." Lu Youxun took his hand back and explained to me, "Kong Da became a fallen demon hunter and was eventually conquered by you... This can only be called karma. Although I am extremely sorry for his fall, I will never vent my anger on you."

"Who knows what you're thinking?" Zhu Shi looked at him coldly. "If you really have no problem with Zhuang Cheng, why do you want to interfere with him becoming Luo Shan Wu Chang?"

"Isn't this your problem?" Lu Youxun turned the tables.

Zhu Shi was startled: "Ah, me?"

"You obviously left a lot of vague information in your report on Zhuang Cheng. As Luoshan Patrol, I cannot turn a blind eye to it." Lu Patrol pointed it out first, and then said to me, "You can rest assured that no matter what the result of this assessment is, I will agree to your becoming the new Outer Dao Wuchang. After all, the 'traces' left by your power are still on display at that abandoned construction site. But I have the responsibility to monitor civilian demon hunters, and I must understand your true level."

After a pause, he added: "Besides, I personally have some interest in you."

"What interests?" I asked.

"No matter how powerful their attack range is, it is difficult for an ordinary flame user to defeat a Fallen Demon Hunter who has no weaknesses alone." He said meaningfully, "At least in other cities, such a case has never occurred before."

"You said 'other cities'..." I had other associations, "Are there also corrupted demon hunters like Agent Kong in other places?"

He nodded first, and then uttered words like thunder.

"Luo Shan now calls this type of fallen demon hunter a 'weirdo'," he said.

For a moment I wondered if I was hallucinating: "Weirdo?"

Monster is another name for Karma Demon, and Karma Demon is a survivor who appeared in the doomsday era and became a monster due to madness.

Isn't this a special product that only appears in the apocalypse? Or is it that the weirdo he mentioned and the weirdo I thought of were just coincidental duplications of names, and they are actually different objects?
No, I shouldn't just regard it as a coincidence. Just like in the misty dream, I suspected that No. 2 was a friend of Ma Zao before she revealed her identity. Now I should also connect this clue with Ma Zao. If for nothing else, it's because I am still in the vortex centered on Ma Zao.

Looking back at the battle with Agent Kong, he did transform into a monster. Although he did not "forget his name and past" like the demon described by Maha, I think it is worth assuming that there is a connection between it and the "sign of the end of the world."

On this basis, Ma Zao's act of taking Agent Kong's charcoal finger becomes intriguing.

From her perspective, it might not be an ordinary charred finger, but "the remains of a demon that somehow appeared in this era." Combined with the clue that I told her about my recent battle with "a human who turned into a monster," she might think she should search for evidence of the imminent end of the world in Saltwater City.

No wonder she's still active in this city. To be honest, I couldn't find her these past two days, and I even worried that she had returned to the apocalypse. After all, she had accidentally come to the modern world due to a space transfer before. Who can guarantee that she wouldn't have the same accident again when she was transferred away from me last time? Now I can finally put down one of the stones in my heart.

"Let's not talk on the side of the road. Let's find a place to sit down," Lu Youxun suggested.
-
We headed to a nearby teahouse.

On the way, I sensed the "firefly" I sent to the Zhu family mansion. I don't know if I should say "as expected", the "firefly" has lost contact now. Zhu Shi said that the Zhu family mansion has a barrier specifically for warning and defending against foreign enemies, and my "firefly" is ultimately just a spark that is not worth mentioning. Maybe it was intercepted and destroyed by the barrier like a mosquito hitting an electric grid.

I was just worried about whether my "firefly" would bring bad luck to Chang'an, so this was a good idea, as it just stopped my thoughts. At the same time, Lu Youxun briefly introduced to me the progress of Luoshan's investigation into the fallen demon hunter.

Regardless of what he really thought of me, at least on the surface, he spoke quite politely and his attitude was conscientious, making it difficult for people to feel bad about him.

First of all, regarding the matter of the fallen demon hunters (later uniformly referred to as "weirdos"), Agent Kong had concealed a lot from Zhu Shi.

The biggest secret is that the weirdo crimes are not just happening in Xianshui City, but have happened all over the country. Although they are not so frequent that everyone knows about them, there are dozens or even hundreds of them, and the earliest can be traced back to eighteen months ago. As long as you are willing to connect them, you can definitely make the connection.

Agent Kong's previous mission was to provide relevant information to Zhu Shi, but he deliberately suppressed this part of the information, probably to prevent Zhu Shi from realizing that "there are more weirdos." This kind of concealment is definitely not a long-term solution. Perhaps he had already planned to give up his identity as an agent and leave Xianshui City.

It was not until Lu Youxun took over this task that the complete information finally came into Zhu Shi's hands.

By the way, it was Lu Youxun who collected the clues from the photos using his divination ability. This kind of investigation skill seems to be his specialty.

It’s just that Zhu Shi doesn’t seem to have a good impression of Lu Youxun, and it seems that it’s not just because Lu Youxun interfered in my becoming the heretic Wuchang.

Lu Youxun walked in the front, and I took out my phone at the back and secretly sent a text message to Zhu Shi, just like passing a note to the teacher in class:
"Do you hate Lu Chan?"

Zhu Shi took out his phone and looked at it, then glanced at Lu Youxun, and then began typing. After typing for a long time, he replied:

"Lu Chan is on the side of the organization that says 'demon hunters should become gods on earth and turn all mortals into slaves.' I don't get along with him."

After seeing this reply, I couldn’t help but look at Lu Youxun’s back again.

It's unbelievable!
Yes, Agent Kong said that the group he belonged to was a group of "radical thinkers", and Lu Youxun was Agent Kong's superior, so how could he be a person with moderate and peaceful thoughts?
However, now I need Lu Youxun's help.

The photo of Ma Zao was also obtained by his divination ability. I have realized in the past two days that I cannot find Ma Zao with my own ability. Although with his help, even if I can find Ma Zao in the end, Ma Zao will most likely be exposed to his sight, but now is not the time to take care of those things.

We sat down in a private room in the teahouse. Lu Youxun took out photos from his pocket and arranged them in a row like playing cards. They were the same photos that Zhu Shi had shown me before.

"There are two demon hunters in Xianshui City who are in charge of the monster incident. One is Zhu Shi who is in charge of the battle, and the other is me who is in charge of the investigation." Lu Youxun said, "Now we have to add one more person, that is you, Zhuang Cheng. So next, please analyze the case with us."

"Okay." I nodded.

"In the past five days, two more local dignitaries in Xianshui City have been killed by the weirdo. Or to be precise, it's actually four people..." Lu Youxun took out two of the photos, corresponding to two murder scenes.

One of them was outdoors. The victim should have been a wealthy old man, but his body was torn to pieces beyond human form, as if he had been attacked by a wild beast. He fell in the grass outdoors in a messy state.
Another scene was indoors, the victim was a muscular middle-aged man, his body was also torn apart, and the perpetrator's hysteria could be felt. There were two bodies nearby, one of which belonged to a middle-aged woman and the other to a boy, who seemed to be a mother and son.

Unlike the old man and the middle-aged man, the mother and son were killed in one blow. The cause of death seemed to be a heavy blow to the head, and the skull was obviously deformed. It is estimated that they were the family members of the middle-aged man and were killed by the murderer.

There were many messy bloody footprints at the indoor scene, which did not look like human footprints, but rather like those of large wild animals. I compared the appearance of Agent Kong after his transformation in my mind - yes, these were definitely the footprints of a monster.

Lu Youxun briefly introduced the situation he had investigated. Just like the information revealed in the photo, on a day that seemed ordinary to the victim, a strange man suddenly broke in, brutally killed the victim, and then left. The formation process of the two scenes was so simple.

Then, he took out the third photo - a photo of Ma Zao walking on the street late at night.

"Zhuang Cheng, do you know who she is?"

"A little bit," I said.

"I think Zhu Shi told you." He said, "So, what do you think of this amnesiac girl?"

(End of this chapter)