Chapter 146: The Truth

"I should have told you: if you do not change your intentions, I will not allow you to join the operations of the Heterogeneous Strategy Bureau."

In the Director's office of the Heterogeneous Strategy Bureau, Lin Yun said with some helplessness, "Yes, I have no authority to command a Magical Girl. If you insist on following, I cannot stop you, so I can only tell you this: I hope you will remain calm. If possible, stay on the sidelines."

"You say you're just going to 'look'? What behaviors does your so-called 'looking' cover? I mean... well, if you can truly do that, I have no objection."

"An enemy the Heterogeneous Strategy Bureau cannot handle? Of course that's possible; in fact, I would be grateful for your help, but please be sure to remain calm."

"... Alright, then we'll proceed as you said. Um, goodbye."

Click.

After hanging up the phone, Lin Yun sat helplessly behind his desk for a while, then sighed.

Through his exchange with Emerald, he had roughly understood and sorted out the problem with Bai Jingxuan. But understanding the problem did not mean knowing the solution. On the contrary, as Bai Jingxuan's image gradually became clear in his mind, he became even more unsure of how to handle this child's situation.

It was not only because of the other party's personality and experiences, but also because of her special magical nature—a Deviant with a Beast-Remnant foundation.

Personality, experiences, magic. These factors combined, accumulated upon Bai Jingxuan, meant that this child was almost a time bomb from head to toe: although everything appeared normal for now, she could be detonated by external forces at any moment, destroying the fragile balance in an instant.

He was not some education expert—Lin Yun was very clear on this. Five months ago, he was still a negligent father who could not even get along with his own daughter. Asking him to figure out how to guide such a child in a short time was still too difficult.

—Or just let her go for revenge.

After agonizing to the end, Lin Yun even produced such a thought:

After all, he and she were merely senior and junior Magical Girls; did he really need to worry to that extent?

Looking at it from the worst angle, even if this child really started her revenge, so what? Retaliation in kind is human nature; even Lin Yun himself was like that. Did he really have the qualification to educate this child?

Looking at it from the best angle, perhaps Bai Jingxuan was just a childish girl who didn't know better, shouting scary words every day? If she really had her enemy placed before her to kill, she might not even dare to make a move.

The thoughts in his mind gradually scattered. Just as Lin Yun was about to convince himself with this twisted logic, a knocking sound suddenly came from outside the door.

—Knock, knock.

"Director, this is Liu Dachun from the Logistics Department."

Immediately, a somewhat muffled voice came from outside the door.

The Logistics Department? At this time?

His chaotic thoughts were interrupted, and Lin Yun's consciousness returned to reality. He was first somewhat puzzled in his heart, but did not think deeply about it, then spoke: "Come in."

At the same time, he subconsciously reached into his pocket and grasped his Heart Gem.

This had become a habit since he assumed the position of Director.

It was not only because he did not yet fully trust the people of the Heterogeneous Strategy Bureau, but also because of his troublesome side effect—if the Heart Gem suddenly went out of control and caused a transformation, he needed to ensure he could detect the situation before that happened.

The situation was the same now. Out of these considerations, he fumbled for the Heart Gem in his pocket, and due to his alertness, extended his perception to the door of the Director's office: there were magic threads he had laid in advance, which could sense magic outside the door, thereby inferring the situation in the corridor.

However, the instant he connected the threads to his perception, he sensed something abnormal, and his gaze immediately tightened.

There were two sources of magic outside the door.

This meant that not only was there the "Liu Dachun" who had spoken earlier, but also another person hiding in the corridor.

In his perception, one stream of magic first approached the hinged door, opened the Director's office door, then deliberately adjusted his body angle to block the scene behind the door, and slowly walked into the Director's office.

Visually, this manifested as a tall man walking in from outside the door.

However, Lin Yun's thread perception was perfectly clear: until this tall man had completely entered the Director's office, the other stream of magic lurking outside the door had not moved at all.

Something was wrong.

Lin Yun made a judgment instantly.

There was no other reason; it was simply because he had not the slightest impression of this man who called himself "Liu Dachun."

On the day he joined, he had already reviewed the employee roster of the Heterogeneous Strategy Bureau, and since then had been striving to match everyone's names with their photos. To speed up this work, he sometimes even used Senior Cuique's form to assist his memory. Although he had not yet completely finished this task, he could confirm one thing: there was absolutely no employee in the Heterogeneous Strategy Bureau who looked like this.

But he did not expose this matter; instead, he continued to pretend ignorance and asked calmly, "What is it? Is there something you need?"

"It's like this, Director. When we counted the equipment this morning, we found that the remaining quantity did not seem to match the entry and exit records; four pieces of Magical Armament were missing."

"Liu Dachun" stared fixedly at Lin Yun, his voice devoid of inflection, reciting as if reading from a book: "We do not know if the records are wrong or if they were truly lost, so we wanted to come to you to confirm."

"Magical Armament?"

Lin Yun frowned: "I should have instructed you to keep them under strict guard. How could such a situation still arise?"

"We are very sorry, Director."

The tall man handed over a hard drive with a blank expression: "So I brought the entry and exit records. I hope you can confirm the names on them and see if there are any oversights."

Lin Yun took the hard drive from his hand, lowered his head, and connected the hard drive to his computer: "Have you already verified it?"

The tall man put one hand behind his back: "We have verified it."

Lin Yun continued to look at his computer's main unit: "Did you find any problems?"

"No." The tall man took a lump of purple-black flesh from his pocket.

"How exactly do you people work? You can't even handle such a small matter."

Lin Yun, acting as if he were very angry, bent down to open the computer while saying, "Where is your Minister Li? Hurry and call him over."

"Alright, I will call him right away." The man pressed the purple-black flesh against his chest.

"Alright, then let me ask you one last question."

"Please go ahead," the man said woodenly.

"Was it Zhuang Yang or Tao Fang who let you in?"

Lin Yun raised his hand, looking at him with a calm expression:

"Or is there an unknown mole within this Heterogeneous Strategy Bureau?"

This sentence caused the tall man's pupils to suddenly contract.

Almost at the same instant, he opened his mouth, tightly gripping the purple-black flesh in his hand, wanting to say something. But before he could utter a single syllable, blue threads suddenly wrapped around his wrists, directly pulling his hand holding the flesh aside.

The man immediately raised his other hand, which was already holding a medium for a technique; purple-black magic instantly lit up at his fingertips. But similarly, he had no chance to activate the technique before being completely bound in place by the blue threads.

Lin Yun, expressionless, flicked the threads beside him; the azure threads instantly lifted the immobilized man into the air, and then, without saying a word, he rushed out the door.

In his perception, at the very moment the man was controlled, the magic outside the door had already been moving toward the safety corridor.

Seeing Lin Yun's actions, the man hanging in midair knew at once that their every move had been seen—he no longer hesitated and shouted loudly: "Run!"

Unfortunately, both he and the master of the magic outside the door realized it too late.

The moment Lin Yun stepped into the corridor, he pulled the Heart Flower from his pocket and activated it violently. A small blue figure rose into the air from the magical glow, darting forward in a few leaps to catch up with the shadow at the corridor's end, then replicated the method, binding it with blue threads.

The man who had been hiding outside the door didn't even know why he'd been captured—he felt he was almost free, yet inexplicably bound and suspended in midair. He tried to find the perpetrator, but could only see Lin Yun standing not far away, staring at him, with a few lingering strands of blue light beside him.

When he recognized Lin Yun's face, he said nothing more, only closed his eyes with a numb expression.

Lin Yun, having shed his transformation, briefly studied the man's appearance and immediately recognized him: this was "Zhuang Yang," whom he had mentioned to the tall man just moments ago.

"Zhuang Yang" and "Tao Fang" were two dark agents of Black Ash Dawn that Lin Yun had secretly marked but had not yet directly exposed.

He had kept them alive because since the Reconstruction of the Special Strategy Bureau, neither had done anything materially harmful to the Bureau, and their ranks were too low to achieve anything significant. Moreover, the remaining forces of Black Ash Dawn were deeply hidden; normal investigations could hardly trace them. So Lin Yun had decided to keep them as leads, hoping to follow the trail and uncover the enemy's connections.

He had never expected that this dark agent named Zhuang Yang had such boldness—he dared to secretly bring an assassin into the Bureau during work hours, and worse, one who was a Beast-Transformed.

Looking at the numb man before him, Lin Yun was about to question him, but suddenly a flash of insight struck him—he remembered something else.

Zhuang Yang is here—what is Tao Fang doing?

At this thought, he immediately pulled out his phone from his pocket, dialed the Intelligence Department, and called a relatively trusted employee, speaking urgently:

"Find out where Tao Fang is right now, and pull up surveillance records of her communications over the past two days—I need to know who she's been in private contact with."

After giving these instructions, he held the phone and paced in place, waiting silently for the response.

The order from the Director himself naturally received top priority from the Intelligence Department. Minutes later, Tao Fang's complete activity trajectory over the past few days was fully uncovered, and the Department Head himself read it aloud to Lin Yun.

Lin Yun listened carefully, meticulously noting every location mentioned, mentally arranging and comparing them. Then, at one moment, the voice on the other end uttered a name that made his heart leap.

The instant he heard that name, his thoughts cleared completely—he instantly understood the current situation:

"—Wait, you just said… Lakeview Spring?"

…

…

"Give up. You're no match for us."

Pressing his hand against the head of the Special Strategy Bureau employee before him, Bee Soldier Seven withdrew his fingers from the man's neck, flicking away the blood: "Our time is precious. Surrender now, and I'll give each of you a swift death."

Before him lay the shattered remnants of the Special Operations Unit's Third Squad.

Their captain, Li Yingwei, had been pierced through the chest by an unknown weapon and now lay face-down, alive or dead unknown; Tian Sheng, another key fighter, was clutched in the claw of a massive Remnant Beast, head hanging, silent; only Deputy Captain Mu Bensheng, along with a few surviving members, stood back-to-back, gritting their teeth as they glared at the enemies surrounding them.

—The disparity in combat strength was simply too great.

This unit of Black Ash Dawn, emerging from nowhere, contained one Pupa-class Beast-Transformed and four Crawler-class Beast-Transformed—each one alone capable of handling the entire Third Squad, let alone all of them together.

The moment the squad entered Lakeview Spring, they walked straight into an ambush. In just ten minutes, they suffered devastating casualties. Had there not been a magic girl traveling with them, they would have been wiped out entirely.

Ironically, just moments before, they had been struggling over how to make the magic girl leave and stop following them.

Bai Jingxuan had communicated with Lin Yun by phone, securing permission to accompany the Third Squad through stubborn insistence and relatively softened demands. Unbeknownst to them, that permission had become the squad's lifeline.

It was precisely because of her that the squad had held out this long against the Beast-Transformed.

Bai Jingxuan's magic gear, "Tianyin," continuously revitalized and healed the squad members' magic, allowing three members equipped with magical weapons to jointly resist attacks from Crawler-class Remnant Beasts. Added to that, Bai Jingxuan herself held off three Beast-Transformed alone, barely slowing the collapse of their position.

But once the man known as "Bee Soldier Seven" moved, the squad's resistance became a joke.

The power of a Pupa-class Remnant Beast was nothing short of disaster for any small city. Even a magic girl would need to be a Leaf-class elite—or rely on overwhelming numbers—to stand a chance in direct combat.

Even if Bee Soldier Seven used no Beast Organs, relying only on ordinary magic and spells, it was far beyond what the Third Squad could endure.

Defeat became inevitable.

After effortlessly killing every Special Strategy Bureau employee within reach, Bee Soldier Seven's grim expression did not change; even his offer of surrender was spoken casually. He turned his gaze to Bai Jingxuan.

The girl in the green dress knelt half on the ground, clutching her chest, gasping painfully.

She had stepped forward to save the Bureau employees, but had been easily felled by Bee Soldier Seven—now she could barely even rise.

"I never intended to kill you, magic girl. To be precise, our reason for appearing here is you."

Bee Soldier Seven said: "Be cooperative. Surrender, and we might even consider sparing you."

"Cough… cough… why?" Bai Jingxuan gasped heavily, her face twisted in pain and confusion. "Why are you looking for me?"

"Sorry, I may not have time to explain."

Bee Soldier Seven spoke the words of apology, yet his expression held no remorse: "But you can assume you're important to us—or rather, important to our leader."

"Magic girls… and Beast-Transformed are enemies."

Bai Jingxuan pushed herself to her feet; the music from her music box began to continuously heal her own body: "I don't care what you think of me. I'm going to kill you."

"'Kill you'… hmm."

Bee Soldier Seven's expressionless eyes flickered slightly: "No wonder you're the leader's chosen Beast Child—impressive resolve. Not at all like those hypocritical magic girls."

"But it's not enough."

He shook his head slightly, raised his hand, and a beam of magic shot straight toward Mu Bensheng not far away.

Mu Bensheng, still fighting other Beast-Transformed, had no time to dodge—he saw the purple-black spell hurtling toward him and closed his eyes in despair.

Sizz—

The beam did not strike him.

Because before it reached Mu Bensheng, Bai Jingxuan intercepted it with her own body.

Her once-pale arm, now ravaged by the purple-black magic, was a bloody, mangled mess—terrifying to behold—yet Bai Jingxuan showed no sign of pain, her gaze locked unblinkingly on Bee Soldier Seven.

"You keep telling me, 'I'll kill you.'"

Bee Soldier Seven frowned in confusion: "But your actions contradict your words entirely."

"You say you want to kill, yet you haven't killed a single person; instead, you've nearly killed yourself protecting these worthless pigs—why?"

He pointed to Tian Sheng, clutched in another Remnant Beast's claw, and Li Yingwei, lying on the ground: "You've even poured most of your gear's power into saving those two men—still trying to bring them back to life?"

"Because… I'm a magic girl."

Bai Jingxuan reached out and touched the music box beside her; the melodious tune continued to ripple through the air: "A magic girl must save others."

"Holding such a naive attitude will only make you unable to kill anyone."

Soldier Bee Seven shook his head indifferently, raised his hand, and condensed sharp nail-tip magic: "After the wings, too much dead weight has been sheltered; you cannot spread your wings and soar."

Boom!

Green and purple-black magic crisscrossed in the air; Soldier Bee Seven's figure briefly overlapped with Bai Jingxuan's. After a fierce clash of magic, Bai Jingxuan was once again sent flying Of great weight.

Soldier Bee Seven kicked her heart, smashing her Of great weight against the nearby protective wall.

"I will say it once more: surrender and do not waste any more time."

He flicked his toe, stepped forward, grabbed Bai Jingxuan's hair, and dragged the girl down from the wall: "Revoke your magic, or do you want me to break your limbs before taking you away? Can your kind of healing power restore limbs?"

"I... will kill you..."

The girl stared with wide eyes, gritted her teeth, and strained to reach out and grab Soldier Bee Seven, but she could not reach the face before her no matter how hard she tried.

"Truly contradictory."

Soldier Bee Seven looked at her coldly: "Just like split personality: one moment human, the next moment beast; one moment possessing reason, the next moment nothing but instinct."

"Tell me, magical girl, what is it you hate?"

His question received no response. Bai Jingxuan simply kept reaching out to him, trying to grab his neck.

Tilting his head back slightly, Soldier Bee Seven looked at her and said: "Is your hatred because of those two researchers?"

"What... researchers..."

Bai Jingxuan growled through heavy breaths: "My father, my mother, were both killed by the Feral Beasts, by you..."

"Father? Mother? What are those?"

However, her words were cut off by Soldier Bee Seven: "You do not have such things."

"I do!" Seemingly further enraged by Soldier Bee Seven's words, Bai Jingxuan struggled violently. "I do! They were clearly killed by you!"

"No, you do not."

Soldier Bee Seven gazed at her indifferently, a hint of pity in his eyes: "Because you are merely a beast-child born from an experiment, created by us from an abandoned infant."

"You are lying!"

Bai Jingxuan shouted in anger: "I forbid you from speaking about my father and mother like that! I will kill you!"

"Do not make me repeat myself, magical girl. No, beast-child. You have no parents."

Soldier Bee Seven pressed his other hand onto her head, stared into her eyes, and in the girl's shocked gaze, spoke word by word:

— "The 'parents' you believe in are merely traitors of Black Ember Dawn. They were simply a pair of researchers who took you out of the organization."

(End of this chapter)