Chapter 5 Another Expert, Curio

The Pyre Society was the root cause behind the two sisters being left alone in the world.
Zhou Yan instantly understood the entire sequence of events and their underlying cause.
Just then, Luo Xuan looked over at him again. "Zhou Yan, you... you look very much like our older brother..."
Zhou Yan paused for a moment, then let out a long breath and smiled. "So that was it."
There was a peculiar expression on his face. "And here I was wondering why two young ladies would be willing to take in a penniless, amnesiac vagrant with such a mysterious background. Haha, no wonder little Ke kept calling me brother."
Luo Xuan gazed intently at him. "Zhou Yan, I... I apologize to you."
Zhou Yan shook his head with a smile. "It's nothing. If anything, I should be grateful that my appearance happened to hit the mark, otherwise I might still be drifting on the streets right now."
If this had happened to an ordinary person, learning that they were favored and taken in by two beautiful young maidens not because of their own personal charm, but simply because they resembled someone else—essentially acting as a substitute—it probably would have been quite difficult to accept.
However, Zhou Yan was different. After acquiring his golden finger, his mindset had, to a certain extent, become relatively detached.
He was now a Walker backed by the [Order], one of the thirteen special individuals among the nearly ten billion people on this planet.
Although the upper limit of the combination of human power and technology on this planet currently seemed quite high, as long as he continued to grow, he would sooner or later surpass everything.
The sea of stars, and even the myriad heavens and realms, were his future targets.
The reasons why Luo Xuan and Luo Ke had taken him in initially were, to Zhou Yan, far too trivial to be worth caring about.
Seeing Zhou Yan's smiling face, Luo Xuan let out a sigh of relief, then spoke earnestly once more. "Zhou Yan, perhaps Ke has a slight tendency to view you as an older brother, but I don't..."
"Well, I don't view you as a younger sister either," Zhou Yan said, looking at her with a smile.
Luo Xuan happened to meet his gaze and instinctively averted her eyes.
*Zhou Yan's gaze today feels so aggressively intense,* the young girl thought to herself, a faint blush involuntarily creeping onto her cool, composed cheeks.
Neither of them spoke for a while.
Along the way, Zhou Yan occasionally turned his head to admire Luo Xuan's beauty.
Until the girl felt she could barely take it anymore, the car finally came to a halt.
"Two officers, we have arrived." The driver's voice came through the speaker inside the enclosed compartment.
In the Demon-Subduing Division's duty vehicles, the driver's seat and the rear cabin were separated, allowing communication only through the intercom.
Therefore, neither of them had to worry about their conversation being overheard by others.
"Let's... let's go!" Luo Xuan stood up quickly with an unnatural movement and was the first to step out through the back door.
Zhou Yan followed closely behind her.
Looking up, he saw a rather imposing school, with the characters "Yicheng Eighth Middle School" inscribed on the tall gatehouse.
"The crime scene is at a school, huh..." Zhou Yan murmured.
"Mhm." Once she entered work mode, Luo Xuan regained her cold and stern demeanor. "Records show that while the school security guards were on patrol, they discovered human remains in a classroom. The wounds on the remains bore the marks of being gnawed on by living creatures. Colleagues from the Public Security Division noticed abnormal signs after investigating, so they notified the Demon-Subduing Division to take over."
As she spoke, she took out her phone and sent a message.
A reply came back very quickly.
She raised her head and looked at Zhou Yan. "Let's wait at the entrance. The senior in charge of Team One has sent one of his subordinates to pick us up."
"Is it that 'Old Wu' whom Division Chief Chu mentioned?" Zhou Yan asked.
"Yes, he has the most seniority in the Demon-Subduing Division, so he was assigned to handle this incident concurrently."
Thus, the two of them waited quietly at the school gates.
The sight of them wearing long black trench coats in the dead of summer caused the security guards hiding in the guard booth to cast frequent glances their way.
Soon, a young man wearing the same uniform came running from a distance.
Upon approaching, he gave the two of them a crisp nod. "I am Lu Ming, a Tier 2 operative from Team One. Brother Wu sent me to guide you over."
Lu Ming merely glanced past Zhou Yan, but his gaze lingered on Luo Xuan with obvious amazement.
Luo Xuan gave him a faint nod, and along with Zhou Yan, followed Lu Ming into the school.
Along the way.
Lu Ming seemed rather taken with Luo Xuan, completely ignoring Zhou Yan who was walking side-by-side with her, and hurried over to Luo Xuan's other side to try and strike up a conversation.
"Miss Luo, you can't be twenty yet, right? To be serving in the Demon-Subduing Division at such a young age, you are truly a youth of exceptional talent."
Luo Xuan gave him a cold glance. "Officer Lu, you may address me as Officer or Specialist."
Lu Ming's expression stiffened, and he awkwardly said, "Right... Specialist Luo."
Only then did he remember that, despite being a young girl, Luo Xuan had joined the Demon-Subduing Division at the rank of a "Demon-Subduing Specialist." His bubbling thoughts were instantly extinguished.
Luo Xuan paid no heed to his mood and said coldly, "Officer Lu, please brief us on the anomalies in detail."
"Y-Understood!" Lu Ming stammered out a reply, then quickly began his report.
Zhou Yan listened along with Luo Xuan with a smile, and soon gained a preliminary understanding of the main points.
Including the one they were about to see, a total of five anomalous incidents had occurred during this period, with innocent citizens falling victim each time.
From a vagrant, to a lonely elderly person, to a drunk stumbling out of a bar in the middle of the night, followed by an office worker returning home along a night path.
And now, a teacher who came to the school in the evening to retrieve some items.
"Based on the bite marks on the victims' corpses, and the characteristic that all of them are missing their livers and brains, it is basically inferred that the culprit behind these tragedies is a 'Skin-Peeler'..."
Lu Ming concluded his oral briefing with his deduction regarding the culprit's identity.
At this moment, guided by Lu Ming, the two of them had also arrived at their destination.
An empty classroom on the third floor.
Several people were standing inside, mostly colleagues from the Public Security Division dressed similarly to Earth police officers, among whom a tall, middle-aged man in a black trench coat stood out particularly.
This middle-aged man was the first to notice Zhou Yan and the other two entering the classroom.
He turned around and calmly greeted Luo Xuan and Zhou Yan, "Two colleagues from Team Five, nice to meet you. I am a Specialist from Team One, Wu Wanqing."
His greeting allowed Zhou Yan to clearly see the middle-aged man's appearance.
He had a cigarette clamped in the corner of his mouth, a tall and sturdy build, and his trench coat was pushed back behind him to straightforwardly reveal the Demon-Slaying Sword that should have been covered. His face was covered in scars of varying sizes, and across his left eye ran a particularly gruesome wound that pierced through his eyebrow and the surface of his matching cheekbone. Furthermore, his corresponding left eye was no longer a normal human eye, but a heavily technological mechanical eye.
It was an appearance that left a deep impression at first glance.
Luo Xuan nodded at him and pointed to Zhou Yan beside her. "I am a newly appointed specialist, Luo Xuan. This is my assistant, Zhou Yan."
"Luo Xuan?" Ash flickered from the cigarette at the corner of Wu Wanqing's mouth. "Luo Huaiyi's daughter?"
Luo Xuan stepped forward. "Specialist Wu, you knew my father?"
"I knew him, but we weren't close." Wu Wanqing turned his head away. "During the operation to encircle and suppress the Pyre Society three years ago, I was one of the only dozen or so survivors below the True Realm. The price was this left eye, and..."
"This right leg."
He reached down and tapped his right leg, producing a metallic *clang-clang* sound.
Luo Xuan wanted to ask more, but saw Wu Wanqing wave his hand. "For the specific details, go check the case files yourself. Right now, let's talk about the anomaly right in front of us."
The girl had no choice but to swallow her words and follow Wu Wanqing forward.
Zhou Yan followed as well, seeing that the spot previously blocked by the public security officers now held a human-like remain, the scene quite bloody.
However, Zhou Yan had been through five Calamity Realms and had seen scenes far bloodier than this.
Luo Xuan's expression was similarly calm, though Zhou Yan noticed her left hand clenching slightly—somewhat out of sync with her expression, suggesting she hadn't seen much of such bloodshed.
"Officer Lu told me this is the work of a Skin-Peeler," Luo Xuan said, looking at the corpse and taking the initiative to speak with Wu Wanqing.
Wu Wanqing nodded. "The highest probability is a Skin-Peeler, because among the monsters that historically descended from that rift, this species did exist. However, we cannot entirely rule out man-eating monsters like Ghouls or Abyss Fiends."
"Then, how should we find it?" Luo Xuan asked.
"Generally speaking, we rely on experience. Every monster has its habits; by tracking the clues based on the crime scene conditions, we can lock onto the target in most cases." As he spoke, Wu Wanqing took out an object shaped like a disk, engraved with strange characters on its surface.
He squatted in front of the remains, and with his other hand took out a pair of tweezers to pluck a stiff hair distinct from human hair from the corpse. "However, this monster is excessively cunning and has committed five consecutive crimes, so I specifically applied with the Logistics Division in the pavilion to mobilize this little gadget so we can hunt that beast down in one go."
With that, he placed the stiff hair into the small slot in the center of the disk. Immediately afterward, the hair was absorbed by the groove as if melting, transforming into a red beam of light.
The light needle trembled, spun around several times, and pointed in a certain direction.
"This is?" Zhou Yan asked out of curiosity. paces
"A Grade-6 Wonder, designation '6-0503', codename 'Tracking Astrolabe'. As long as a sample belonging to the target—including body hair, bodily fluids, or biological tissue—is placed in the recognition slot, it can sense the target's location within a certain range."
Wu Wanqing took a puff of his cigarette, exhaled a plume of smoke, turned his head, and flashed a grin at Zhou Yan. "Quite convenient, right?"
"It is indeed convenient. But what on earth is a Wonder..." Zhou Yan asked curiously.
"A product of the rifts," Luo Xuan said, preempting Wu Wanqing. "Inside the rifts, apart from terrifying monsters that threaten the world, special objects will occasionally appear. They are either acquired by us during the process of exterminating rifts, or left behind when monsters carry them down upon descending into our world. Most of them are harmful items that affect human spirit or health, but there are also some with strange and peculiar effects, which are contained by various organizations in their own inventories."
*This sort of thing sounds somewhat like the equipment and items that sometimes drop when I kill monsters while walking the Calamity Realms...*
Zhou Yan nodded, thinking of those rare gadgets currently resting in his inventory slot.
Meanwhile, Wu Wanqing had already stood up.
"Specialist Luo is right, but popular science can wait for later. The enemy's location has been determined..."
He let out a long puff of smoke and said coldly, "It's time to go hunt down that beast."
***
There is still another chapter left, please allow me to continue typing!