While I was chanting a curse, the system said I was Xiao Yan?

His pace was a bit faster than usual, but he remained steady and calm, without the slightest sign of panic. After a few steps, he paused and turned his head to look in the direction of the main entrance of the teaching building.

His right hand emerged from his pocket, palm up, and black mist surged from his palm, condensing into form in the air.

A slender, cheetah-like spirit emerged from the black mist, its four paws landing silently on the ground. Its body was slightly lowered, and its vertical pupils gleamed with a scarlet light.

Xia Youjie didn't say anything, but just tilted his head slightly towards the east side of the teaching building.

The cheetah spirit sniffed the air, then darted away silently, so fast that it left only a blurry afterimage in the air, disappearing around the corner of the teaching building in the blink of an eye.

Xia Youjie followed behind, his pace neither too fast nor too slow.

……

To the east of the teaching building, outside the wall, is a narrow alley, with high walls on both sides, and the sky above is cut into a line by buildings.

The alley was dark, the sunlight couldn't penetrate, and the air was filled with a damp, musty smell.

Deep in the alley, a person stood.

The man looked like an ordinary elderly man wearing glasses.

His hands hung at his sides, holding a short knife with black liquid slowly evaporating from the blade, emitting a pungent odor.

At my feet, two sparrow-sized cursed spirits were slowly dissipating.

The man glanced down at the dissipating cursed spirit, and a slight smile curved his lips.

"Thirty million for just killing a girl who isn't a sorcerer. It's been a long time since I've had such a good mission."

His voice was hoarse, like sandpaper rubbing against sheet metal.

"Are you a member of the Panxing Cult?"

The old man who heard the sound looked up and headed towards the end of the alley.

There stood a boy with his hair in a bun.

Xia Youjie stood at the alley entrance, sunlight streaming in from behind him, casting a long shadow in front of him.

His expression was calm. His gaze lingered on the short knife in the man's hand, which was still dripping with black liquid, for less than half a second before moving to the man's face.

The old man tilted his head, a slight smile curving his lips beneath his glasses: "No."

"So you're a remnant of the Q organization?"

"No, you look like someone from a vocational college."

The old man twirled the short knife in his hand, the tip pointing to the ground, his posture casual, but Xia Youjie could tell that the knife could stab at any angle at any time.

I'd say I'm a freelancer.

The old man chuckled: "As you get older, you have to prepare for retirement, so I have to drag my ailing body out to earn money!"

Xia Youjie nodded, as if he had heard a reasonable answer.

"And what about your companion?"

He asked, his tone still gentle, "You're probably not the only one, are you?"

The old man's smile remained unchanged: "I have no companions, I'm always alone..."

In that instant, the cheetah spirit silently pounced down from the wall above the alley, its claws aimed straight for the man's head!

The old man slightly shifted his body, like a piece of paper fluttering in the wind, deftly dodging the cheetah spirit's pounce. His short knife drew an arc in the air, the blade slicing into the cheetah spirit's neck and exiting from the other side.

Black liquid gushed out, and the cheetah spirit's body froze in mid-air for a moment before crashing heavily to the ground, twitching twice, and then remaining still.

The man flicked the black liquid off his short knife, looked up at Xia Youjie, and his smile deepened.

"Your cursed spirit is fast, but not powerful enough."

Xia Youjie's expression remained unchanged. He stared at the dissipating cheetah spirit on the ground, remained silent for a moment, and then raised his right hand.

Black mist surged from his palm, not in one stream, but in several streams, condensing in the air into several cursed spirits of different shapes. Some were huge, some were agile, some hovered in the air, and some crouched on the ground.

They blocked all of that person's escape routes from all directions.

"How about this?" Xia Youjie's voice remained gentle.

The old man's smile finally faded a bit. He was a discerning person and instantly recognized what Xia Youjie's technique was.

"Without a medium, and the incantation power is different from that of a sorcerer, could it be a spirit manipulation technique?"

"Correct answer."

Xia Youjie smiled slightly: "It seems you're not just old for nothing."

……

The main entrance of the teaching building.

Haibara Yu leaned against the flower bed, arms crossed, his gaze sweeping around. Nanami Kento stood beside him, his back straight and his expression calm.

Haibara Yu glanced at the stairwell of the school building and muttered, "Things should be alright with Gojo-senpai, right?"

"No need to worry." Nanami Kento's voice wasn't loud, but it was very firm.

Haibara Yu smiled and was about to say something when he suddenly felt an inexplicable chill rise up his spine.

It wasn't a curse, nor was it murderous intent; it was a more primal, instinctive alarm.

His pupils suddenly contracted.

Almost simultaneously, his right hand gripped the hilt of the knife at his waist.

"Nanami!"

"I can feel it."

Nanami Kento interrupted him, his voice still steady, but his tone was a few decibels faster than usual.

Their gazes simultaneously fell on a corner of the school wall.

There stood a person with a paper bag on his head. Two holes were cut in the paper bag, revealing two cloudy, emotionless eyes.

His muscles made his white short-sleeved shirt bulge out; you could tell at a glance that he was a top-notch fitness enthusiast!

"He must be the enemy that Senior Xia You was talking about."

Haibara Yu's hand was already gripping the short sword tightly, his curse power began to gather, his body leaned slightly forward, his center of gravity lowered, ready to pounce at any moment.

"That should be it."

Nanami Kento stood still, but his hand was already gripping the hilt of the sword at his waist.

"Who are you?" Haibara asked, his voice devoid of fear, only displaying a cautiousness in the face of the unknown.

The paper bag man's cloudy eyes swept over the two faces, then he tilted his head slightly as if sizing something up, before saying in a muffled voice, "You two don't seem to be Stardust Bodies, so I wasn't looking for you!"

Then the person moved.

They didn't rush towards them, but towards the direction of the teaching building.

Haibara Yu's eyes widened: "So, they really came for Tennari Riko!"

"Stop him!"

No sooner had Nanami Kento finished speaking than he rushed out.

His reaction was much faster than Haibara Yu's; he rushed out immediately, his short golden hair flying backward in the wind, and the hem of his school uniform fluttering in the air.

Haibara followed closely behind, his short sword already drawn from his waist, the runes on the blade gleaming faintly blue in the sunlight.

Both of them were moving very fast, but the other person's actions took them by surprise and left them far behind.

In the blink of an eye, the person had already rushed to the wall of the teaching building. With a light touch of the toes on the wall, the person leaped up and flipped over the wall as if weightless.

Nanami Kento and Haibara Yu didn't stop. They rushed to the wall, touched the surface with their toes, leaped up, grabbed the top of the wall with their left hands, and pushed off with their right arms to flip over.

The paper bag man wasn't very fast, so the two of them quickly caught up with him.

The two people sandwiched the paper bag figure between them.

"You can't escape now."

Haibara Yu's voice carried a youthful, fearless energy: "It's not too late to surrender now."

The paper bag man scratched his head through the paper bag: "You two are so annoying!"

"Can't you just let me kill the Starmaw and then take the bounty to eat eel rice?"