Ultraman Legend of the Light Chaser

“The guardians of the earth cannot be so weak,” Qingfeng delivered his last words: “Tangdao Sanctuary, you can come find me if you want a drink.”

"Yushima, the Holy Temple?" Takayama murmured.

"Lie down and load?" Kitada Yasushi laughed at him. "The werewolf has escaped again. We have to keep investigating. There's no peace and quiet tonight."

……

Gio base.

Lizard's base.

"Are you researchers so enthusiastic about unfamiliar equipment?" The man in black rubbed his forehead, looking at Kinoshita Kei who had followed them all the way. Kinoshita seemed fascinated by the unknown equipment, constantly asking them questions and even asking if he could be given access so he could take a closer look at the equipment.

"Unfamiliar materials, unimaginable construction, outstanding performance!" Kinoshita Keigo clenched his fist excitedly: "My new wife!"

The man in black was momentarily stunned: "Are all researchers like this?"

"Oh right, didn't you capture a suspicious person? Where are they being held? Can they be studied?" Kinoshita Kei adopted the expression of a mad scientist based on his extensive experience watching countless films, his features contorted with curiosity, practically screaming "I'm a research fanatic" to make his behavior seem less abnormal.

"It's not settled yet, so we're keeping him in the observation room for now, but research... you're not here to look at the stars, are you trying to steal the job from the biological research institute?"

"Sigh, scientists' curiosity knows no bounds!" Kinoshita Kei said with a grin, then became serious again: "Alright, I know it's difficult for you. Keep it a secret. If you need our help, just send us a coordination letter. I'll come whenever I have time."

The man in black came up, patted him on the shoulder, and gave him a thumbs up: "Good brother."

Kinoshita Kei gave a healthy smile, said goodbye, and walked away, his playful expression gradually cooling with each step.

"Locked in the observation room?" He clenched his fist.

Chapter 84 "The Immortal Seed" and Next Time is Certain

“Based on the newly established monitoring platform, we contacted the global GUARD bases for assistance in control and investigation, and after filtering out some high-similar but not her data, we were able to trace back as far as seventeen years ago.”

At the Geo base, Lizard members presented the preliminary findings of their overnight investigation to Commander Rainuma.

"Seventeen years ago?" Lai Numa thought his team was so capable that they even dug up the other person's past as an infant: "Not bad, you found her family information?"

“No, it should be…” The subordinate’s expression was somewhat strange: “We found her hospitalization record from seventeen years ago, when she was still an adult.”

"What?!" Lai Numa suddenly stood up and grabbed the documents his subordinate was holding from behind the table.

He quickly flipped through the papers. The report wasn't long, arranged chronologically from the earliest confirmed traces to the present. The initial record was in the United States, at a hospital in California. While the patient's age on the record might be inaccurate, it was entirely certain that the patient was an infant—had she appeared in the United States seventeen years ago in the same manner as she is now?

"Who exactly is she..." The earliest record is an old photo of a patient who had recovered from a serious illness and was discharged from the hospital. His family took a commemorative photo of him, and in the background of the photo is a figure walking by in a hurry.

Her face is recognizable; the combination of a thin sweater, loose braids, and glasses is unchanging, as if it's been fixed on her.

Even with his extensive experience and knowledge of countless cases, Lai Numa had never encountered such a person: "How old is she exactly? An immortal being? A superhuman?"

“No,” the subordinate denied his guess again: “The biological research department has taken hair and blood samples. Her body is undoubtedly that of an ordinary human.”

“Ah, an ordinary human,” Rainuma nodded, “You haven’t aged in seventeen years?”

The subordinate said, "Sir, we need to continue to observe her. The biological research department is very interested in her situation. They will conduct a complete and systematic monitoring of her daily physical data in order to figure out why time favors her."

“It sounds like we’re about to discover the elixir of immortality,” Lai Numa joked, putting down the documents. “What about the citizens’ sleepwalking incidents? We’ve arrested the suspects, but are the unknown effects still lingering?”

The subordinate opened the folder and pulled out another urgent document: "Four more cases of sleepwalking were discovered today. The preliminary conclusion is that the situation is not over yet, or the real source of the abnormal behavior of citizens is still there. The latter is more likely because yesterday we used the power of the astronomical research group and found some traces of space distortion in the sky above Tokyo. We do not believe that a person whose physical condition is normal can remotely perform space distortion operations."

"Don't jump to conclusions too quickly," Rainuma said, taking the urgent document and finding a specific description of the spatial distortion: "...extremely large range?"

"Yes, this is the conclusion from Kinoshita Kei, a member of the astronomical research team. He believes that the distortion involves a very wide range, and the specific boundaries can only be confirmed by analysis with more precise equipment at the base. The results are expected to be available the day after tomorrow."

"The day after tomorrow? Every day that happens, we'll have more citizens exhibiting abnormal behavior, which we call 'sleepwalking.' Do you know what we call the citizens? 'Zombie virus'! In a few more days, they'll be hoarding gas masks and hazmat suits!"

The subordinate stammered, "There's nothing we can do about the limited hardware. Besides, the citizens are already panic-buying medicine and food."

"Is our public opinion department just sitting around doing nothing?!"

“Each case appears suddenly, and before we can even contain it, their relatives have already sought help and spread the word. Sir, manpower is limited. All we can do is provide the most detailed intelligence to lay a solid foundation for the operations department.”

Lai Nuo glanced at him and said, "I don't need you to teach me. I'm just anxious."

……

Renlong slowly put down his folding fan, sighed, and looked around at two pedestrians lying on the ground.

He helped them up one by one and sat them down against the wall. Across the street, another pedestrian, dressed normally but moving somewhat stiffly, walked by.

“Another ‘patient’.” Ren Long stood up and walked up to the man, who naturally couldn’t see him. He muttered “lottery prize redemption” and dazedly moved himself toward the already closed lottery shop.

Renlong tapped his head with his folding fan, and a burst of spiritual light shone forth, seeping into his body through the contact of the tap.

“Your forehead is dark, you’re having a bad day,” Renlong said, “You’re unlikely to win the lottery.”

The man seemed to wake from a dream, and after a brief moment of clarity, he immediately collapsed and lost consciousness. Renlong caught him and dragged him to the corner of the wall by the sidewalk.

The three sleepwalking patients sat in a row. A gentle breeze blew a few specks of dust around them. Suddenly, Renlong remembered something: "It's cold at night. You won't actually catch a cold, will you?"

Then he frowned again, tapping his palm with his folding fan: "...Why should I care so much about the person who dug a hole in my roof?"

The people of this city are truly annoying. They disturb his peaceful dreams, ruin his feng shui, and always make troublesome wishes that leave him in a dilemma, unable to accept or refuse. He can only cheat by throwing in an ominous fortune stick, which has led to the widespread reputation of the "authenticity" of fortune sticks drawn at Tangdao Temple. Those who don't know the situation might think that he, the guardian of the earth veins, is narrow-minded.

Hmm... We can't be narrow-minded.

The folding fan stopped moving up and down, and Renlong flicked his fingers, sending three beams of light flying towards the three people.

"You're all blessed with good fortune today," Renlong muttered quickly, then coughed lightly, "Alright, these are the last three, any more and it's over..."

"Hahaha, I passed the bar exam!" A few blocks away, an excited young man was running down the street.

No normal person would run like that in the middle of the night, especially since the bar exam is next month.

Renlong's exceptional hearing allowed him to immediately detect the person's cheerful voice. He swallowed the rest of his sentence and looked helplessly at the source of the sound.

"You've drawn a fortune stick before, asking about the bar exam," Renlong remembered clearly all the people who had made wishes to him: "Since you've already drawn a fortune stick, this is the only one. No more..."

As Renlong walked around the streets and alleys to the person running, he noticed that there was another person following behind him who had also taken off his coat and was twirling it in his hand.

"...This was just a side effect."

After giving himself another mental pep talk, Renlong headed towards the next street where a sleepwalking patient was seen.

"I'm asking for a lucky fortune."

"That's lucky."

"Well... since we're already here..."

The white figure wandered through the streets and alleys, standing right in front of people, yet no one could see him. He would tap a person with his fan, then move them to a place where they wouldn't be run over by a car. Before they knew it, the night had passed, and the sky began to lighten with the first light of dawn.

Renlong suddenly realized: "These people who dug holes in my roof..."

He turned angrily and walked towards the Dacheng Hall of Tangdao Sacred Spring: "Today is the last day!"

Chapter 85 Induced Interrogation

"That nocturnal creature was codenamed the Gas Wolf. The higher-ups issued an order to eliminate it. You tracked it until dawn yesterday. What did you find?"

In the XIG command room, the morning sun was shining brightly, and the light added a touch of beauty to the cool-toned cabin.

Kitada Yasushi answered first: "It disappeared after dawn, and we also found more..."

These "sleepwalking" citizens weren't just found in Taitung Ward; the same phenomenon was also observed in Azuri and Nerima districts.

“Lizard will investigate this matter,” he said, mentioning “sleepwalking.” Suddenly, Akio Ishimuro remembered, “How is Atsuko? Is she resting at home? Has she recovered?”

Georgie and Atsuko Sasaki have always been close friends, and she also knows Atsuko's older sister, Ritsuko: "Her sister said that she just stays at home every day and looks... not very energetic. She did mention 'amusement park' and 'playing together,' and her sister plans to take her out when she has time."

“You’ve worked hard these past few days, Ayaka,” Akio Ishimuro said, looking at the short-haired girl, Ayaka Ukai, who nodded to him. He continued, “Now, back to Gas Wolf, I dream.”

“Yes,” Gao Shan Gamu replied, “That creature must have a special constitution that causes it to gasify when exposed to sunlight. The following is just my guess—perhaps this constitution was modified by humans to adapt to certain harsh environments in the universe, or it evolved on its own, and then they came to Earth in that capsule spaceship.”

"Is there any basis for your speculation?" Akio Ishimuro appeared expressionless.

“No, it’s just my gut feeling,” Takayama Gamu lowered his head, then raised it again: “But I roughly know where it’s hidden!”

……

"Do you know where those guys who use radio waves to warp space are hiding?"

Ryoya Nakai stayed up half the night watching Kei Kinoshita, and the next day, with dark circles under his eyes, he was still pacing around, seemingly trying to confirm something.

"To be precise, the thing that's causing the citizens to 'sleepwalk' is hiding in the distorted space, using radio waves to interfere with their thinking," Kinoshita Kei said, glancing at the screen while taking notes on a piece of paper. "Lizard is investigating the person who uses radio waves and the person who causes the space distortion separately, but I think they're the same person. See, doesn't this explanation make much more sense?"

Last night, he went back and asked Pito if he had sensed any high-energy beings lurking in Tokyo. Pito only said that he knew them all. Kinoshita Kei speculated that the spatial distortion he detected with his instruments was probably where it was hiding—just like Mezad, its true form wasn't on Earth, so Pito naturally couldn't detect it.

“They didn’t just arrest a suspicious person; they suspect that she used radio waves to hide a monster in space, just waiting for her to give the order so that the monster could rush into the city and wreak havoc,” Nakai Ryoya relayed what he had heard in the cafeteria to Kinoshita Kei. “Although I know things are urgent, you can’t stay up all night.”

Kinoshita Kei was silent for a moment: "It can't be her."

Ryoya Nakai finally realized what was going on: "The location where the suspicious person was spotted is quite close to your coffee shop. You don't know her, do you?"

Kinoshita Kei wanted to say that he knew them, and not only Kinoshita Kei knew them, but Uranus also knew them—the letters written by those children were of great importance to Uranus.

She painstakingly and clumsily sewed Uranus dolls and wrote five volumes of travelogues about her travels around the world. If Onodera Hitomi is the one who summons monsters to guide "destruction," then it's more like the sun rises from the north and decides to expand into a red giant on the spot, swallowing up crunchy Mercury, Venus, and Earth like biscuits.

“I don’t know her,” Kinoshita Kei said. “It’s just that her physical examination report showed she was an ordinary person, and we’ve confiscated the machine. Logically, there shouldn’t be any new ‘sleepwalking’ patients, but didn’t they report another one today…”

Upon hearing this, Nakai Ryoya agreed, saying, "That speculation is reasonable, but monsters and aliens are often not viewed through the lens of human common sense."

"You just think she's an ordinary person because her physical exam results are normal, so you treat her like an ordinary person—maybe there's a monster inside? Like the bewitching monster in legends, who looks pitiful to me normally, but at night, 'snap,' chews your head up."

Kinoshita Kei almost couldn't catch his breath when he heard him speak so seriously for the first half, but then start to go off-topic for the second half. He laughed and scolded, "You're the one whose head got chewed up by a monster."

……

Lizard's base, observation room.