Danger, a Near Miss

Mo Fan's heart was burning. *God, I wish I had a movement skill right now.* Mingwen Girls' School couldn't be reached fast enough.

He grabbed the first taxi he could find — a slow, plodding thing — and rode it all the way to his aunt Mo Qing's place.

He came sprinting around the corner toward Mo Qing's house and nearly slammed straight into a girl in a wheelchair.

"Mo Fan!" Ye Xinxia lit up with a bright smile, startled and delighted all at once.

"Xinxia — you're alright." The moment he saw her smile, the knot in Mo Fan's chest dissolved. "You scared me half to death."

"What's going on?"

"Why is your phone disconnected?"

Xinxia ducked her head, a little sheepish. "The bill was overdue. I didn't want to spend the money."

"..."

Right. She was just trying to save a few yuan.

Regardless — she was safe. That was all that mattered. The tension drained from Mo Fan's shoulders.

"How did the Field Expedition go?" Xinxia held out a small, rolled handkerchief.

Girls who still carried handkerchiefs were a rare breed these days. It wasn't that Xinxia was trying to be charming about it — handkerchiefs were simply more economical.

Mo Fan wiped the sweat from his face and, entirely incidentally, found himself catching the scent still clinging to the cloth. *Mm. Still that same delicate fragrance.* The one he'd quietly kept for himself before had long since lost its smell... Ahem. He had just accidentally revealed rather more about himself than intended.

"I heard there were girls going missing at your school," Mo Fan said.

Xinxia nodded, expression grave. "It's terrifying. Auntie Mo Qing hasn't let me go to school for the past couple of weeks."

"Tell me what happened."

"It was a girl from the class next to mine — Lin Yun'er. The day she disappeared, I was in the library too. She waved goodbye and told me she was heading back to the dorms." Xinxia kept her voice low. "After that, no one ever saw her again. The security cameras at every school gate showed no sign of her leaving."

Mo Fan could see the color had drained from her face just recalling it. He reached over and gave her shoulder a quiet squeeze.

"So you were the last person to see her?"

"Yes. The police have questioned me quite a few times already, but I don't know much more than that. Although..." Xinxia trailed off, staring at her lap.

"What is it?"

"After I left the library, I caught a strange smell — a rotten, sour odor that seemed to drift from somewhere near the school cafeteria. But the library is far from the cafeteria." She paused. "A sudden chill swept through me, strange and wrong, like... like something was watching me. I was frightened. I left as quickly as I could."

Mo Fan's brow furrowed. *She was practically right beside it.*

"Mo Fan, if I hadn't left so early..." Xinxia's voice fell, weighted with something she'd been carrying for days.

"It's a good thing you did. You might have been the one who disappeared."

But Xinxia shook her head. In a voice barely audible even to herself, she said: "I think that thing was targeting me first. When I ran, it shifted to Lin Yun'er — she was alone. I should have found her first. I should have told her to leave with me. I—"

Mo Fan didn't have an immediate answer for that.

*What does she come up with in that head of hers.*

If she hadn't left when she did, there might have been two missing girls instead of one. If something truly dark was lurking in that school, what could two young women have possibly done against it?

"You can't blame yourself for this," Mo Fan said, his voice gentle. "Even if you'd gone to warn Lin Yun'er, she would've thought you were overreacting. You've always had sharper senses than other people, but you have limited mobility — keeping yourself safe was already the right call. That's already remarkable."

"Mo Fan, do you think Lin Yun'er might already be..."

"Probably — I mean, no. Definitely not." He straightened up and thumped his chest. "You know what? I'm a member of the City Demon-Hunting Squad now. We'll handle this. There's no way I'm leaving my Xinxia stuck in a school that dangerous."

He meant every word.

Even if he hadn't joined the City Demon-Hunting Squad, he would have come here the moment he heard about Mingwen Girls' School. Xinxia had already lost so much growing up. He refused to let her — a girl spending her youth in a wheelchair — suffer any further harm.

She was so purely beautiful. So genuinely kind. He thought of when they were children: he'd come home battered from scraps with kids from other neighborhoods, too afraid to face his father's scolding, and would hide at Xinxia's house instead. She would always clean and dress his bruises with careful, patient hands, and even blush her way through lying for him.

From that time on, Mo Fan had made a quiet vow: he would take care of her. He wouldn't let anything hurt her.

"For now, stay home. Once we've cleaned out whatever's been causing this..." He gave the top of her head an affectionate pat.

"Okay." She nodded obediently.

Knowing Mo Fan was a Lightning Element Mage gave Xinxia genuine comfort. And she could sense it — with every encounter, her Mo Fan was growing stronger. From an ordinary boy, to a Mage, to a member of the City Demon-Hunting Squad. Each time she saw him, something had changed. Which meant that during all the time she couldn't see him, he must have been working incredibly, relentlessly hard.

"Mo Fan — were you out in the sun the whole time during the Field Expedition?"

"No, why?"

"I almost didn't recognize you. You're so tan."

"..."

Mo Fan left his aunt's house and set off toward Mingwen Girls' School.

*Damn it all.* In a city like this, on a school campus — something this vile was preying on the country's young women in a place meant to nurture them. A teacher might look the other way. This uncle absolutely could not.

*Fear not, beauties of Mingwen Girls' School — your dark horse prince has arrived to rescue you!*

**BANG!**

He delivered a magnificent kick to the school gate. Mo Fan braced himself for a thousand short-skirted young women turning to him with adoring eyes.

What greeted him instead was a completely deserted campus. A few stray cats, startled from a flower bed, poked their heads up and fixed him with looks of pure, undisguised contempt — as if to say: *Where did this idiot come from? You nearly gave us a heart attack!*

Oh. Right. It was still summer vacation. The girls hadn't come back yet.

"Hm? You beat me here."

A woman's voice came from just behind him.

Mo Fan turned. It was none other than the supremely self-assured Caitang.

Setting aside her impressively full bust and long, slender legs — both admittedly pleasant to look at — the woman radiated pure battle-axe energy from every other inch of her being.