The villainous magical girl's daily mission is to find fault.

In order to find the Hero Association's terminal, which the albatross was hiding somewhere in Chengdu, and obtain the possibly strictly encrypted information contained therein, Su Tianqing and the Hero Association went to great lengths.

Not only did they bring Bai Lili and Qiu Gui, two teams with outstanding overall strength, to Rongcheng, they also sent out invitations to the surrounding magical girl community, trying to get as many people as possible to assist in the investigation.

If we get more people involved, we might be able to figure out the albatross's thought process when choosing the treasure location, and thus deduce its location! At least that's the initial plan.

...But can this idea really work?

"Don't worry, it'll be fine." Qiu Baiyang gave a thumbs up and said to the golden-haired fox girl beside him.

"Don't let Albatross's quick thinking and chaotic ideas fool you; she's actually quite easy to guess overall."

"Even you can only guess?" Su Tianqing felt even more uncertain.

Qiu Baiyang was specially called over by the Hero Association to lend a hand, but all Su Tianqing could hear from her were words like "guess" and "speculate." For the first time, Su Tianqing began to doubt whether the treasure hunt could be completed.

In reality, every magical girl participating in the competition learned about the albatross when they joined, and they all knew that the publicly announced "search for the One Piece" was just a pretext, but that didn't affect the course of the competition.

After obtaining the terminal's signal characteristics from the association's logistics department, we imagined where the albatross might have hidden it, and then searched carefully in those places in hopes of finding the terminal, which was expensive in every sense of the word.

To encourage ordinary people to participate, the Hero Association even set up treasure hunt check-in points in various locations under the name of Shingetsuko.

Chengdu residents can collect stamps by scanning QR codes on-site to exchange for special postcards. There are several different designs available, and collecting a complete set will also give you a chance to win tickets to the Qiu Gui Squad's concert.

Huh? You mean why can't magical girls win concert tickets? They can fly, you know. Do they really need tickets to go to a concert?

In reality, the vast majority of magical girls will honestly buy tickets. Only a very few like to sneak backstage, but magical girls with that ability are rare... You agree, right, Cheshire Rabbit?

"In any case, let's spread out and start exploring different parts of Chengdu."

"Okay—"

Bai Lili made the arrangements, and everyone raised their hands and cheered.

Cocklebur went to the amusement park in Rongcheng to investigate, Bladderwort went to Qiuxi Road to explore, and Clover searched around the campuses of various schools in Rongcheng.

The logic is actually quite easy to understand: amusement parks have many elevated and immovable rides, and central business districts have many permanent buildings. As for the school campus chosen by Clover...

Why would a four-leaf clover go to a liberal arts college?

Looking at the locations of the various magical girls indicated on the magic map, Su Tianqing, sitting on the villain's rooftop, showed a puzzled expression.

Suspicious.

"According to her, she thinks the albatross might have hidden the treasure in the school's computer classroom, a place that hardly anyone goes in all year round," Bai Lili tried to explain her teammate's logic in the Divine Stone communicator.

Hearing this, Su Tianqing realized that her previous guesses were indeed a bit narrow-minded; she really couldn't understand albatrosses using normal human thinking.

Compared to Bai Lili's team's wildly imaginative guesses, Qiu Gui's side seemed relatively more reliable:

The search was conducted among the natural attractions in Chengdu, with a focus on areas that tourists rarely approach and where staff rarely maintain them.

For example, you could search from the top of a snow-capped mountain, at the foot of a Buddha statue in a temple, or simply along a mountain road.

These were places that even the Hero Association hadn't expected. Qi Yun and Liu Xing, two frequent field agents, even exclaimed, "They can hide in places like this?" after seeing the magical girls' investigation locations.

The magical girls' treasure hunt is in full swing.

From initial confidence to confusion in the afternoon, followed by visible fatigue after dinner.

After meeting in a private room in the Hero Association's cafeteria, the magical girls shared their exploration locations from that day.

"I searched every music and computer classroom in every school, but there was absolutely no sign of the treasure," Clover sighed helplessly.

"The same goes for the mountaintop. I originally thought that the albatross would definitely bury the terminal in a place where it's unlikely anyone would dig deep for decades, but when we got there, we found that the detector didn't make a sound at all." Holly was also helpless.

"The midpoint of the mountain road too." "And under the Buddha statue's buttocks." "The central foundation of Qiuxi Road..."

After a flurry of chatter, the magical girls' discussion even began to shift towards the question of whether Albatross really left a message in the terminal.

Even Su Tianqing was starting to lose confidence. She wanted to dig out the secret manual to see if she could get any hints, but the task page still only had the task title "Investigate the information left by the albatross," which was essentially meaningless.

I have a vague feeling that the secret book might know something, but like me, it's a fun-loving person at heart. It's not giving me any information right now, clearly wanting to see a group of magical girls scratching their heads and racking their brains.

Thus, the first day of the treasure hunt ended in failure.

The magical girls returned to their respective bases to rest. Some who needed to return to their local cities were sent back one by one by Kokoro using teleportation magic. She even thoughtfully gave them a teleportation ticket printed with Kokoro's image. As long as you inject magic power, you can instantly return to the roof of the Rongcheng Hero Association. It's very useful.

After seeing off the girls who came to help, Su Tianqing patted the catgirl's thigh next to her and addressed the two seniors in front of her, facing Bai Lili and Qiu Gui:

"In that case, we have no choice but to use the ultimate solution!"

Why not take pictures of yourself? Because cats' legs feel better to touch when you take pictures.

"The ultimate solution? Tell me about it." Bai Lili was very curious.

"We'll try to send the hyacinth back into the new millennium, so she can subtly hint to the albatross. Maybe that way, the albatross will change its mind and put the terminal in an easier-to-find location..."

"No, please don't! She might hide the terminal even deeper if she has the slightest thought," Bai Lili quickly advised.

Since we can't find it in one go, we can use the process of elimination. As long as we eliminate all the wrong answers, the remaining answers, no matter how strange they are, can only be the correct answers.

Hyacinth, standing nearby, also felt a bit intimidated, and her impression of the albatross, this senior figure, gradually began to veer off course, just like everyone else's.

Even when she's not active as the magical girl Hyacinth, Minami is a huge magical girl enthusiast. She collects a lot of related merchandise and knows everything about the members of the Red Snow Squad except Albatross.

Even so, he still couldn't guess where Albatross had put the terminal. Even though he had done a thorough search with Senior Bai Lili today, they still hadn't found any valuable clues.

"Everyone, go home and rest first. We'll think of another way tomorrow," Xin Yuehu said, disbanding the final discussion group.

……

In Rongcheng Huatianli Residential Area (reconstructed version), Nan Xiaofeng pushes open the front door of her home.

"I'm exhausted! I'm going to take a shower first, Xiaofeng, you can shower later."

The room was pitch black. The white ferret casually turned on the living room light and, dragging its tired ferret body, floated towards the bathroom.

Hua Ling has been staying in her unfinished house for the past few days. I've been helping her move furniture and tidy up her room after school. She also has a lot of books to organize, so she's not staying at her own home like before.

Dad is still working overtime, and Jia Yu is also living in Tian Qing's new house. They've probably finished dinner and are studying at school by now. Tian Qing's grades have always been pretty good.

A strange sense of loneliness crept into Nan Xiaofeng's heart.

The girl took off her shoes, changed into slippers, walked to the sofa at home, sat down, and turned on the TV.

The ending theme of the new anime started playing on the TV. Accompanied by the melodious music, the girl sighed and lay down on the sofa. Feeling something uncomfortable in her pocket, she quickly reached in and took out the detector issued by the Hero Association.

[Steel] Frank specially commissioned it to detect the most subtle psionic signals.

In theory, it can penetrate tens of meters deep into the ground or concrete buildings. As long as you have enough patience to explore along the S-shaped path of Chengdu, you will eventually find the end.

Why can't I find it? Where did she hide the terminal?

"..."

Looking at the start button on the detector, Nan Xiaofeng reached out and pressed it again.

I doubt there will be any commotion, after all—

"...beep beep."

"!!!!??????"

A soft signal beep drowned out the theme song from the new magical girl anime on TV.

Nan Xiaofeng instantly sat up, staring intently at the detector, thinking there was something wrong with his ears.

It wasn't until it beeped again that Nan Xiaofeng was certain it was working... It had detected the Hero Association's terminal signal!

Where is it? Is it inside the Huatianli residential area? Or somewhere in the neighboring residential area?

"Bai Ling! Bai Ling, come here quickly!"

Nan Xiaofeng shouted into the Magic Communication, holding up the detector and searching the room from all directions.

But no matter where it was, whether at the door or window or deep inside the house, the detector did not react at all, and the already faint sound became even fainter.

"Strange... It was fine just now, how come it suddenly stopped responding?" Nan Xiaofeng muttered to himself.

For some reason, a strange thought drew her gaze to the sofa in the living room.

This sofa was custom-made by my dad many years ago. It's very comfortable. During the reconstruction of Chengdu, my dad insisted on keeping it, which is why we didn't replace it with a new sofa.

Nan Xiaofeng walked to the sofa, and the detector's beeping gradually became louder and more frequent.

The girl reached out with trembling hands and pointed the detector at her own sofa.

"drop----"

A long, drawn-out buzzing sound.

Nan Xiaofeng's breathing gradually became more rapid, and she almost lost control of her excited and confused feelings.

The terminal left behind by the albatross in the year 2000... Why, why is it in my own sofa...?