True Colors Revealed!

"What took you so long?" Lingling stood with her hands planted on her hips, cheeks puffed in irritation.

Looking the kid over, Mo Fan half-wondered whether Old Bao had sent him here to babysit rather than hunt Demon-Beasts.

"It's not even dark yet," Mo Fan said. "So — find anything?"

"See for yourself." Lingling passed him a remarkably compact little laptop.

Mo Fan blinked. The screen was divided into several feeds. The central panel showed a lavishly decorated living room, surrounded by windows for the bedroom, kitchen, study, and bathroom.

A timestamp in the top-right corner ticked away second by second. Live surveillance footage, no question about it.

Mo Fan stared, dumbfounded. *You're a twelve-year-old hacker. You planted cameras all over a stranger's home.*

"Let's go up to the roof. If something happens, we can move straight away." Lingling said it with absolute matter-of-factness.

Honestly, Mo Fan was still vaguely uncertain about what they were actually supposed to do tonight. He couldn't exactly stand watch at the front door and charge in every time he heard a funny noise — that would only tip their hand. And with no idea yet which of the two spouses was the dangerous one, discreetly keeping a four-year-old safe was going to require some real finesse.

But the little detective had already solved that problem for him. She'd planted cameras throughout the entire apartment, giving them flawless coverage of every room. If nothing happened all night, they'd still walk away with 150,000 yuan apiece just for watching a livestream.

"Hey — that's not safe. Don't sit on the railing." Mo Fan glanced away for one second and found Lingling perched right on the very lip of the roof.

Her small figure sat balanced on the edge, pale little legs swinging freely dozens of meters above the ground. It nearly made Mo Fan's stomach lurch.

*Kid, you have absolutely no sense of self-preservation. This building is at least twenty stories. A normal girl would get dizzy just peering over the edge.*

Lingling paid him no mind. She was chewing on something, the mini laptop balanced on her knees, one eye on the city sinking into the evening light and the other tracking the surveillance feeds.

Mo Fan sighed and settled beside her. Up this high, the wind cut sharply against his cheeks.

Looking down, Masterpiece Private Garden spread out in full view — a circular children's playground at the center, a small plaza to the west, a swimming pool to the south, and a quiet little grove of trees occupying a generous stretch of the grounds.

This was the post-dinner hour. Residents of all ages wandered the gardens; children chased each other through the playground; now and then, bright laughter drifted down from the upper floors.

Peaceful. Serene. The kind of gated community that made you feel at ease with the world. Who would ever think to connect a place like this with anything as terrifying as a Demon-Beast?

"I'm going to take a bath." The woman's voice filtered through the laptop speakers.

Mo Fan's eyes lit up. "Lingling, you've been glued to that screen for a while now. Let me take over for a bit—"

"Do you think I'm three years old? Pervert." Lingling snorted and tapped a few keys, blacking out the bathroom feed.

Mo Fan laughed awkwardly.

"Where are her husband and the kid?" he asked.

"The kid's in the living room watching Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf. The husband's in the study. He's looking pretty restless."

They continued to watch. The family appeared completely ordinary — nothing like the horror story either spouse had described.

"Hasn't she finished her bath yet?" Mo Fan asked, after a stretch of silence.

Nearly half an hour had passed. The sound of running water still hadn't stopped.

"Women just take lon—" Lingling stopped. Her small brow furrowed sharply. "Hmm."

"What?" Mo Fan asked.

"Do you remember what she told us this morning? She said she got up early to wash her husband's clothes, found bloodstains on them, and rushed straight to us in a panic." Lingling's voice was careful and measured.

"Right. So what?"

"She was wearing makeup. When she was crying in front of us, it was running down her face. But if she'd made that discovery first thing in the morning in such a rush, when would she have had time to do her face? And she certainly wouldn't be drawing out a leisurely half-hour bath like she hadn't a care in the world." Even as she spoke, Lingling pulled up the bathroom feed.

The bathroom was thick with steam. Mo Fan leaned in, squinting through the haze. He could make out a figure — a pale, smooth shape—

Just as he was thinking *this might not be so bad,* ice swept through him from head to toe.

That wasn't a woman bathing.

It was a woman's skin, hung up in the shower. Empty.

No blood. No body inside it. At a glance it looked almost like a deflated doll, and the damp, tangled hair hanging from it was the part that was truly awful.

"This… it's like a snake shedding its skin," Mo Fan breathed, his voice hoarse with shock.

"Hmph. So it really is that kind of creature." Lingling's gaze sharpened, as if she'd already suspected it all along.

"What the hell *is* that thing?!" Mo Fan demanded.

"Not a ghost — it's alive. I'll explain later. That woman has gone out to kill someone; count on it." Lingling said.

"Live and learn," Mo Fan muttered. "Truly, nothing in this world can surprise you forever." Then: "But isn't she afraid her husband will notice? She's only got the length of a bath to work with."

"Which is exactly why she's probably hunting somewhere inside this complex." Lingling said.

"Can you find her?"

"Not easily. But from what I know, this kind of creature feeds on the blood of young women — and if the target is a Mage, it gets all the more interested. I'll stay here and watch the child. You go find that woman before she shows anyone else her real face." Lingling said urgently.

"Got it." Mo Fan could tell time was short. He didn't stop to think.

He planted both hands on the rooftop ledge and vaulted off the edge.

Lingling watched with a flicker of surprise as Mo Fan plummeted straight down along the outer face of the building, level after level flashing past—

And then, as Mo Fan dropped into the shadowed lower half of the tower, he simply disappeared into the darkness. Against the deepening night, it looked like something out of a ghost story.

"Shadow Element." Lingling murmured the words softly, then said nothing more.

The roof-jump Shadow Fade was a technique Tang Yue had taught Mo Fan — reading the shifting contrast between light and shadow along a building's exterior to execute a freefall Shadow Fade. He'd naturally started practicing on shorter buildings first. The reason was obvious: fumble a stunt like this and you'd be a perfect, very much non-breathing illustration of the old saying: *the showiest moves are the deadliest ones.*