That night, before the smoke and dust at Yuanmeng Middle School had completely settled, accounts of the battle that had unfolded there were already arriving in writing on the desks of various faction leaders through covert channels.
"A demon? A demon with an honorific name?"
"Slain before it could even fully descend into the world?"
"I want all the information on this incident! At all costs!"
The demon had plummeted like a falling star, and news from the site struck like a boulder hurled into a tranquil lake, churning up colossal waves throughout the hidden world.
The name "Senior Zhou" flashed across countless computer screens. From behind the world's veil, that vast and mysterious domain turned its gaze upon the fledgling youth.
Beneath Tinghai's surface.
This was a hall buried deep underground. It had no windows on any of its four walls; only a row of large exhaust fans slowly turned on the ceiling, casting flickering patches of light and shadow.
Yet this subterranean hall was neither dark nor cramped. The spacious chamber was carpeted in vivid crimson, while gilded chandeliers cast a soft, warm glow. White-gloved waiters and masked maidens carried trays of drinks through the crowd, where even an incidental tip was enough to live lavishly in Tinghai for half a month.
Yet this was neither a gala nor an auction house. In truth, it was merely a black market tavern concealed beneath Tinghai.
—The sort commonly found in adventure stories, reeking of acrid sweat and cheap alcohol, where ragged adventurers clinked mugs of cheap ale with kobolds, traded intelligence from the borders of the forest, and took on mercenary contracts to raid goblin dens.
Except here, it was neither cheap nor foul-smelling. Masked Extraordinaries in tailored suits of every cut gathered to trade secrets and expand their networks.
Extraordinaries convened in such places, accessible only to those deemed qualified. Many such gatherings existed throughout Tinghai's hidden corners—some in suburban undergrounds, others deep within municipal storm drains. They were spontaneous factions of wild Extraordinaries banding together, loose mutual-aid organizations sharing intelligence, not unlike chambers of commerce.
As such gatherings matured, they tended to coalesce into full-fledged secret societies—primary targets for government crackdowns, yet perpetually sprouting anew despite every ban.
Bottles of '90 Romanée-Conti and '82 Château Lafite—so rare and widely counterfeited on the outside—were hardly uncommon here. Dom Pérignon P3 and Louis Roederer Cristal Rosé flowed in abundance.
Luxury set the keynote. Wealth was flaunted in every corner, as though everyone were terrified that others might fail to notice they were now wealthy Extraordinaries who had left their humble pasts behind.
Yet not everyone wore a suit behind a mask. At the corner of a long rectangular table, an old man with the face of a frog gently fanned himself with a cattail leaf fan. He tore hungrily into a roast duck before him, grease glistening around his lips.
Amidst the sea of champagne and red wine, he reached only for the bottle of cheap erguotou in front of him. The fiery liquor burned down his throat as he bobbed his head. Smacking his lips and poking out his tongue, he let out a satisfied bellow:
"Ahhh—authentic!"
People usually kept their distance from eccentrics like him. It was a silent form of ostracization, but also a matter of self-preservation.
Men like him were often exceptionally dangerous—and terrifyingly strong.
—Yet tonight, an uninvited guest barged into this haven.
*Creak!*
A figure in a black cloak pushed open the heavy doors, carved with intricate golden motifs. The sudden entrance instantly drew every eye in the hall.
The room fell dead silent, save for a few individuals who remained buried in their food, absorbed in their own worlds with muffled chomping sounds.
Inquiring gazes converged on the scroll in the cloaked figure's hand.
"A bounty poster?"
"Which faction sent him?"
Murmurs rippled through the crowd like sudden waves across a pond.
Since this was a "black market tavern," how could it lack a bounty board?
To the authorities, such taverns were breeding grounds for volatile, unruly elements; to certain clandestine factions, they offered the most useful, inexpensive hired muscle.
"Who's he putting a bounty on? My hands have been itching lately—"
"You're just short on cash. Who doesn't know about you? I heard your boy racked up another pile of gambling debts for you."
"...In that case, Old Xu, want me to gift you a son?"
"Fuck off."
Ignoring the stares and murmurs, the cloaked figure strode straight to the end of the red carpet. With a flick of his wrist, the scroll shot forward and pinned into the wall with a crisp *thunk*.
Three meters off the ground and buried an inch into solid stone. The wrist strength alone sent a shiver through the onlookers.
High above, several older scrolls hung on the wall, long coated in thick dust from the passage of years.
*Swish—*
The newly arrived scroll unfurled slowly against the wall, revealing its contents to the gathering of masked Extraordinaries, who craned their necks to see.
[Senior Zhou]
[True name: Unknown. Origins: Unknown. Strength: Unknown. Suspected to grow stronger against stronger foes. Suspected to be from out of town. Suspected to be young, yet possesses immense supernatural abilities.]
[Any verified intelligence regarding this name may be redeemed with this scroll for a reward.]
[Federation currency, cinders, secret techniques, potions—all accepted!]
Reading the text clearly, the Extraordinaries began breathing heavily.
The hall fell eerily quiet. Even the frog-faced old man stopped eating and raised his head to look a few times.
So many promises for so few requirements was practically unheard of in this tavern—a testament to how desperate the faction behind the bounty was.
Yet it was also the first time they had ever seen intelligence so thoroughly vague.
"Senior Zhou!"
The cloaked figure turned and addressed the crowd in a deep voice. "At present, we have only this vague handle. We want to know more about him."
"Senior Zhou? What kind of ridiculous name is that?"
The frog-faced elder let out a contemptuous snort. Known as "Fire-Swallowing Toad," he fluttered his cattail fan twice and let out a drunken hiccup. "If he's Senior Zhou, then I'm Junior Frog!"
Snickers erupted from the crowd. It was hard to tell whether they were mocking the cloaked messenger, Fire-Swallowing Toad, or this mysterious "Senior Zhou."
The cloaked figure remained unmoved, as if entirely deaf to the ridicule.
*Creak!*
Just then, the main doors opened once more.
Everyone, including the cloaked messenger, turned to look.
It was another figure draped in a cloak, walking in slowly with a scroll in hand.
Exclamations of surprise stirred the crowd. It was rare to see the tavern so lively in a single night.
"Another bounty?"
"What's going on today?"
*Thunk!*
A rush of wind cut through the air.
The scroll pinned firmly into the wall. The stonework pulsed with a faint glow, shifting the scroll and the stone it was embedded in upward, positioning it just above the previous one.
With a rustle, the scroll unfurled—
[Senior Zhou]
[True name: Unknown. Origins—]
Senior Zhou again!
The room erupted in an uproar.
"Who on earth is this Senior Zhou?"
"What kind of sacred being is he? What has he done to deserve—"
"My seventh grand-uncle's third niece told me just a while ago to be extremely careful recently. Something huge went down in Tinghai, but she refused to divulge any details, no matter how hard I pressed."
"Could it be related to this?"
Speculation ran wild as everyone let their imaginations run away over this mysterious figure who had drawn two bounties in a row.
Then—
*Creak!*
*Creak!*
*Creak!*
Within ten short minutes, the heavy doors, usually kept tightly sealed, opened three more times.
*Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!*
Three new cloaked figures pinned three more bounty scrolls into the wall!
Five in total!
They fluttered slightly in the draft, hanging high like five banners.
"F-Five bounties!"
The tavern seemed on the verge of exploding.
Every Extraordinary was dumbfounded.
Five nearly identical bounties appearing simultaneously in a single night—this was a spectacle many had never witnessed since joining the circle!
Moreover, guided by the ritual embedded in the wall, the five bounties sorted themselves automatically, each hanging higher than the last.
In this tavern, that meant the offered compensation scaled upward with each tier!
Yet their terms were identical: merely verify intelligence on the target. None of them demanded that the Extraordinaries capture or return him, almost as if the clients took it for granted that they couldn't.
A single person could not be split among five buyers, but intelligence could be sold to five different parties!
That meant anyone who dug up a bit of useful information could claim rewards from all five bounties at once!
"Interesting..."
Even Fire-Swallowing Toad slowly put down his roasted duck leg.
Behind masked faces, undisguised greed flared in pair after pair of eyes.
An invisible tension expanded, warping the flow of air. The Extraordinaries even turned their gazes on one another, eyes turning feral as they regarded their companions as potential rivals.
The many faces of the tavern were laid bare in all their ugliness.
As patrons of this black market gathering, not a single one of them was a decent soul; their amassed fortunes were anything but clean.
Compared to the ill-fitting, out-of-place suits and dresses they wore, these vicious snarls of naked greed were their true faces.
Rather than an Extraordinary gathering, this place was better described as a feast of demons!
And now, drawn by the five bounty scrolls pinned high on the wall, the gaze of these demons locked onto this "Senior Zhou," a man known only by an alias.
As the local tyrants of Tinghai's underworld, as long as this "Senior Zhou" remained within Tinghai's borders, they would turn the city inside out until they dug him up!
"What if we bring him back alive?"
"And what if we accidentally beat him to death? What happens then?"
Someone shouted, voicing the question on everyone's mind.
Yet some of the cloaked figures acted as if they hadn't heard, ignoring the speaker entirely.
Others merely shook their heads, as though deeming the question unworthy of an answer.
This open display of contempt instantly ignited the tempers of the Extraordinaries in the room.
"If you look down on us that much, don't post your bounties here!"
"No one was born superior! Who here isn't an Extraordinary?"
The Extraordinaries closed in step by step, their expressions turning hostile.
"Seems to me like you take us for wild Extraordinaries who live like stray dogs, barely scraping by,"
a man in a tailcoat with a half-mask hissed, glaring wickedly at the cloaked figures.
As his lips curled, he bared a row of bloodstained, jagged fangs.
Even among wild Extraordinaries, there were ranks and tiers!
They were lawless, ruthless criminals; ordinary organizational names carried no weight with them.
This tavern was among the larger gathering hubs across all of Tinghai.
United, even the authorities had to treat them with a degree of caution. How could they be lumped together with mere wild Extraordinaries?
God only knew that to maintain this tavern, each of them shelled out more than half their wealth every month in membership dues. The ostentatious gilded luxury before them was a painful expense, a veneer they had forcefully bought and paid for!
—Yet they believed it was worth every coin!
Because only here did they feel like something more than sewer rats.
Only in this place were they free from official surveillance and regulation, free from the exploitation of corporate syndicates.
In fact, united, they possessed a power that even the authorities had to respect, and the corporate syndicates had to rely upon!
This was not a sense of collective honor; it was their validation for existing, a validation that at times felt more precious than life itself.
To look down upon them, to look down upon the sanctuary they took pride in and maintained together—that was crossing their absolute line!
*Tap, tap—*
The Extraordinaries surrounded them, grinning with malice.
Shadows lengthened like dancing fiends, enveloping the cloaked figures.
"...We do not look down on you."
One of the cloaked figures slowly shook his head.
He tilted his face upward, exposing a pair of eyes beneath the cowl—eyes gleaming with an unnatural, eerie scarlet.
For some inexplicable reason, every Extraordinary who caught sight of that scarlet felt their heart thump wildly. An unnamed dread seized them, as if they were peasants committing treason against a sovereign.
The cloaked man stood there, his gaze cast downward, yet he carried the aura of a reigning monarch.
Then, he spoke softly. Only a single word passed his lips, but each syllable hammered into their chests like a chilling icicle:
"—Demon."
As if they had heard an impossibly grandiose word, or feared their ears had deceived them—
The entire hall plunged into dead silence.
In this feast where fiends had danced only moments before, every agitated Extraordinary froze, their bodies pinned in place as if bound by a curse.
"Tonight, a demon bearing an honorific name attempted to descend—and was slain by the passing 'Senior Zhou.'"
"Right now, the authorities are doing everything in their power to uncover this 'Senior Zhou's' identity. No one knows anything about him."
The cloaked figure spoke coldly, scanning the Extraordinaries whose snarls had vanished.
Every one of them lowered their heads, not daring to meet his gaze, standing rigid as they struggled to process the revelation.
The scarlet in the man's eyes faded back to normal, and his gaze retreated into the shadow beneath his hood.
"—Do you understand now?"
Silence. A heavy, prolonged silence.
The man's words carried a strange weight, draining the hall of its air and every trace of sound. The Extraordinaries couldn't even digest the information.
Before the feats accomplished by "Senior Zhou," all their pride seemed utterly insignificant.
Farce-like. Laughable.
*Tap, tap, tap—*
Not until the cloaked figures had departed and the heavy, gilded doors swung shut—like a manhole cover slamming down over a drain—did the crowd snap out of their stupor.
A roar of noise erupted.
"Good god—"
The tavern boiled over.
Fire-Swallowing Toad stared at the closed doors in the distance, suddenly losing all appetite.
He wiped the grease from his mouth with the back of his hand, then scratched his balding head. "Frogs in a well..."
He sighed.
No one knew whom he was referring to.
"At the end of the day, no matter how big the nest, a rat scurrying in the dark will always be just a rat."
The drunken old toad shook his head, his bleary eyes unfocused, his heavily wrinkled face flushing redder. "Even if it grows wings, it's nothing more than a bat."
Faced with the deep terrors lurking at the heart of the world, the pride and backing these tavern Extraordinaries clung to amounted to nothing.
False Extraordinaries gathered in lavish halls, smugly believing they had broken into Tinghai's upper crust, spending their days trading hollow compliments and reminiscing over past glory.
While the true Extraordinary—entered the Reflected Ruin Realm alone in the dead of night, and while everyone else drank and revelled in blissful ignorance—
Quietly saved the city.
—Without even leaving his name behind!
Storm clouds gathered over the metropolis. The display within this tavern was merely a reflection of one small corner of the supernatural world tonight.
Five bounty notices were only the tip of an iceberg in a massive storm poised to sweep across the city.
—After all, the descent of a demon had an impact on Tinghai greater than a magnitude ten earthquake!
And its near-instantaneous demise shattered the worldviews of countless Extraordinaries. Some were hearing for the very first time that the concept of a "demon" could take physical form.
If a mythological demon descending into reality was already inconceivable, then what kind of entity had slain it?!
The ripple effects of Bai Zhou's actions, and the shockwaves that the mysterious persona of "Senior Zhou" would send through Tinghai's supernatural world—
Had only just begun!
Chapter 149