[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-off-the-clock-then-a-magical-girl":3,"chapter-off-the-clock-then-a-magical-girl-off-the-clock-then-a-magical-girl-chapter-16":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","Off the Clock, Then a Magical Girl",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},2349936,4594,"Chapter 16: Investigation of Urban Legends","off-the-clock-then-a-magical-girl-chapter-16",16,"\u003Cp>At noon, three days later, in Lin Yun’s office.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Having finished his morning work with no other tasks, Lin Yun enjoyed a rare, peaceful lunch break, sitting at his desk and scanning the information on his computer screen during the limited time he had.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Five days had passed since the night Lin Xiaolu encountered danger. During this time, aside from his work and teaching a few rookie magical girls, he had begun spending these last two days searching the internet for various news, focusing primarily on reports within Fangting City related to Remnant Beasts and magical girls.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was not that he wanted to use such an inefficient method, but the investigation feedback from the Extraordinary Policy Bureau was not going well. In fact, even the Fangting City Extraordinary Policy Bureau itself seemed to have no idea why magical girls and Remnant Beasts had vanished over the last two years.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>According to the archive files provided by Hong Siyu, there had been 132 cases of magic-related crimes and attacks in Fangting City over the past two years. Of these, 129 were committed by magic users, 125 of which had been solved by the Extraordinary Policy Bureau with suspects arrested; 3 were Remnant Beast attacks, all of which had occurred in the half-month since Lin Xiaolu became a magical girl.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In other words, for the two years prior, the number of Remnant Beast appearances was zero.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was not the \"rare appearance\" Lin Yun had originally assumed, but a complete lack of any sighting records whatsoever.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Correspondingly, the files of the Fangting City Extraordinary Policy Bureau showed that no employee had ever had contact with the Sower \"Nini,\" and they had no idea if this Sower had ever even come to Fangting City.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Whether this \"Nini\" had intentionally stayed away or had met with some misfortune on the way, no one knew.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Even more troublesome was that without a Sower, the Extraordinary Policy Bureau had lost its only channel of communication with the Magical Kingdom.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Magical Kingdom had always held a condescending attitude toward the material world. While the Extraordinary Policy Bureau nominally possessed the right to contact magical girls and assist in their work, in reality, it had no authority to restrain or manage them.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Except for those large central metropolises, the governments of ordinary small and medium-sized cities simply lacked the leverage to communicate or negotiate with the Magical Kingdom.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This ultimately resulted in the Extraordinary Policy Bureau serving merely as a logistics agency that provided post-battle cleanup services and protected the privacy of magical girls' data.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>What they could actually do was primarily manage the various behaviors of ordinary magic practitioners—magic users—in the city, recruit suitable magic users, and arrest criminal magic users. As for magical girls, they had no right to interfere.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Whether a magical girl performed meritorious deeds or committed violations, the power to reward, punish, and manage them rested solely with the Kingdom.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Under such unequal and high-pressure rules, the Fangting City Extraordinary Policy Bureau could only attempt to contact the bureaus of other cities, trying to reach the Kingdom through their Sowers to ask when their own city’s new Sower would arrive.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The first three times, the answer was \"arriving soon\"; after the third time, the Kingdom side provided no further response.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Thus, both sides fell into a strange stalemate; the Kingdom ignored questions about a new Sower, and the Fangting City Extraordinary Policy Bureau dared not ask again.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Fortunately, for reasons unknown, Remnant Beasts had also disappeared during these two years, so the vast city had simply muddled through in anxiety and hesitation.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>—Until Moko came to this city.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It sounded as if this pointed all new suspicions toward Moko.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But in Lin Yun’s own judgment, that possibility was very low.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This was not blind faith, but because he knew a deeper secret: in the Magical Kingdom, fairies were absolutely loyal to the Royal Court.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Of course, necessary suspicion could not be abandoned, so he often continued to pressure Moko in the guise of Cui Que these past few days, trying to extract information from it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The conclusion was that there was no harvest; Moko could say nothing.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Helpless, Lin Yun kept his final doubts and left a tracking spell on it to monitor its general movements, deciding not to waste any more effort on such matters.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In fact, he was more inclined to believe that it was Moko’s arrival that had broken some kind of balance in Fangting City.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was just that this hidden balance was completely submerged beneath the surface, and to see the full picture, more investigation was needed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Extraordinary Policy Bureau could provide limited help, and the requests for aid that Hong Siyu had entrusted other cities to relay to the Magical Kingdom remained unanswered. For now, only he could deal with all of this.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He had to plan for the worst-case scenario: the Magical Kingdom would not send reinforcements.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This was also the reason he agreed to recruit Xia Liang.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As for why he made such a judgment, that was a reason unrelated to the current events.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It ultimately evolved into this: he was alone, facing the computer, flipping through news, and diligently searching for any clues. For many news items where the Extraordinary Policy Bureau could not determine if they were magic-related, his rich experience could provide a judgment.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The good news was that he really did have some leads.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At first, he tried searching for clues from the last two years, but the harvest was meager, only revealing an increase in missing persons; he had no choice but to expand the range to five years, ten years, and even to news reports with photos so old that Anya could be seen, but aside from putting himself in a bad mood, he still found nothing.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At the end of this dead end, Lin Yun chose a method he had originally not wanted to use: the urban legend search method.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This method was not his own invention, but came from another magical girl companion he had in Fangting City when he was young—Su Shengzi.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Su Shengzi was keen on collecting urban legends and ghost stories, and after some research, she synthesized them, proposing a theory based on a large amount of practical experience that sounded extremely absurd but had some logic to it: over seventy percent of urban legends rumored to be \"seen with one's own eyes\" had Remnant Beasts as their source.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The reason it was called absurd was that there was no rigorous statistics behind it; it was just something Su Shengzi thought of one afternoon while sitting at home drinking afternoon tea.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>To say it had some logic was because this theory secretly aligned with the logic of Remnant Beast evolution: after evolving to the \"Pupa\" stage, in order to store sufficient magic and nutrients to initiate the next stage of evolution, Remnant Beasts needed to \"build a nest.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After building a nest, a Pupa-stage Remnant Beast would use a certain area as a base, distorting the time and space of the entire region to form its own nest, which was also its \"pupa.\" After that, it would hunt with its nest as the center.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>By the Pupa stage, Remnant Beasts were no longer brainless like in the Egg stage, acting only on instinct; they possessed intelligence akin to wild beasts. They began to act more stealthily, hiding from the tracking of magical girls and the Extraordinary Policy Bureau to fulfill their feeding needs.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The power of a Pupa-stage Remnant Beast and the abundant food in its nest would also attract many lower-level Remnant Beasts to parasitize within, though these low-level beasts and the Pupa-stage were often not in a vassal relationship; if they were seen by the Pupa-stage beast, they would simply be swallowed as a snack.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The diet of Remnant Beasts was all-encompassing, which naturally included other Remnant Beasts.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Precisely because of this, the behavioral logic of Pupa-stage Remnant Beasts very easily led to urban legends in the districts where they resided.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If it were a city with magical girls normally stationed, relying on normal information exchange with the outside world and long-term carpet-patrolling by a large number of magical girls, it would be almost impossible for a Pupa-stage Remnant Beast to hide in the city.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Their pupa was an outer shell to protect themselves, but also a cage that locked them in; once the nest was discovered, there was basically nowhere to run, and they could only wait for a large group of magical girls to come and surround them, or fight a life-and-death battle against an elite magical girl called in.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>However, Fangting City was different.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Lin Yun now suspected that there was very likely a Pupa-stage Remnant Beast hiding in Fangting City, and it was related to the current series of strange phenomena.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The long-term vacancy of magical girls was enough to provide time for the birth of a Pupa-stage Remnant Beast, the vastness of Fangting City provided space to hide, and the fact that \"Remnant Beast attack incidents had disappeared\" could itself be explained by the existence of a Pupa-stage Remnant Beast; this suspicion was not without merit.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He told this conjecture to Hong Siyu, and she also attached importance to it, promising to assist in the search. It was just that since it concerned Remnant Beasts, he did not want to just foolishly wait for news.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Now, the news could not provide information, so he really had to start from urban legends.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Using keywords like \"Fangting City,\" \"urban legend,\" and \"ghost story,\" he extracted information from major forums and media, and had already found quite a few plausible strange rumors.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>For example, \"the singing in the sewer,\" \"the mirror-reversed abandoned construction site,\" \"the flickering streetlights,\" and so on; many half-true, half-false supernatural anecdotes made Lin Yun feel chills even at high noon.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But these messages lacked empirical evidence; to really find clues, he would likely have to verify them one by one to know which were credible.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Thinking of this, he was about to move the mouse to switch pages when he suddenly felt a vibration from his pocket.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was a phone, and it was \"Cui Que’s phone.\" He judged this by the position in his pocket.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It looked like he had to use the magical girl form again, he thought.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Three days ago, he and Lin Xiaolu found Xia Liang in the appliance street, successfully made her a magical girl, briefly confirmed Xia Liang’s status, exchanged contact information, and disbanded on the spot.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Since then, every other night, Lin Yun would have the two gather at the old place to teach them knowledge related to magical girls.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This included how to exercise and improve magic power, common sense that a magical girl should know, but most importantly, combat awareness when fighting Remnant Beasts.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>What were the instinctive behaviors of common Remnant Beasts, where their flaws usually appeared, what moves to be careful of, and so on.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Much of this was wisdom left by predecessors, and there was also a lot of experience summarized by Cui Que herself; in terms of rationality, there should be no problem. But according to her thoughts, after a few days of theoretical teaching, they might still need to wait for an opportunity for combat and practice.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Taking out the phone and glancing at the screen, he found it was indeed a call from Lin Xiaolu. Lin Yun thought for a moment, then sighed slightly, transformed into Cui Que, and only then answered the call:\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Hello? What is it?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Ah, Senior Cui Que?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Unlike the last time when Moko snatched the phone, this time Cui Que heard the voice that was indeed Lin Xiaolu’s: \"Sorry to bother you, but Moko just discovered a Remnant Beast!\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As expected.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Cui Que did not feel surprised; this was about what she expected. Several days had passed since the last Remnant Beast attack, and she figured it was time for the next one to appear.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>So she did not say much, learned the location and current situation of the Remnant Beast from Lin Xiaolu, and prepared to set off.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>However, just as she was about to hang up the phone, she heard a voice outside the door that made her breath hitch.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>—\"Department Head, are you in?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Someone had come.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She could distinguish who this voice belonged to; without a doubt, it was her subordinate from the same department.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>What to do? Was there time to undo the transformation? It didn't seem like it!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A series of thoughts flashed through Cui Que’s mind, and as fast as thought, while she was considering this, she saw the office door handle being pressed down.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A young man holding documents pushed the door open, then raised his head to look into the room—\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He only saw an empty room.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Huh? When did the Department Head go out?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He felt a bit strange, because if he remembered correctly, he had seen his department head walk into the office earlier.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Sticking his head out and looking left and right again, he confirmed that the office was truly empty, then scratched his head and turned to leave with a strange look on his face.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>What he did not expect was that right behind that empty desk, in the space under the table, a petite girl was curled up with a displeased expression, staring at her phone screen, her thumb pressing the spot where she had just hung up the call.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Not until the footsteps at the office door disappeared into the distance did she let out a long sigh of relief: it was fortunate her reaction was fast enough; not only did she hang up the phone in time, but she also took the opportunity to hide under the table.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Otherwise, whether it was the conversation being heard by Lin Xiaolu or someone entering the office and seeing Cui Que sitting in the office, both were quite troublesome situations.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It seemed she would have to lock the door before answering the phone next time.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Thinking this, she looked through the gap under the table, confirmed that there was no one at the office door, then undid the transformation and crawled out from under the table in a somewhat disheveled state.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Casually tidying her clothes, he put on an indifferent look and walked out of the office; once out of others' sight, he immediately quickened his pace and rushed toward the location where the Remnant Beast had appeared.\u003C\u002Fp>",2418,"2026-06-21T02:45:47.620Z",1,"Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite","9911b40c298a22763124acb8626996c28cc8bf7d69a82f851af5db2787cac6c5","off-the-clock-then-a-magical-girl-chapter-17","off-the-clock-then-a-magical-girl-chapter-15",364,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Foff-the-clock-then-a-magical-girl-cover.jpg"]