Chapter 483: Why Isn't She Here?

Ji Bai didn't rush to speak further.

He placed the cleaned black umbrella at his side, rested both hands on the platform edge, his ten fingers loosely gripping the rough concrete edge. The warm light from the light strip poured down from the dome, tracing a vague outline on the side of his face.

Below, the old man tossed a third batch of glowing fungi into the pot, and his humming went even more off‑key.

"My dad is a reporter."

Ji Bai's voice was flat, as if he were talking about someone else's affairs.

"Those old‑school, fearless investigative reporters. My mother was his colleague, a copy editor, responsible for polishing his drafts. The two of them lived by a single stubborn principle—truth is more important than life."

Su Xiaoya said nothing.

"About two years ago, in the North Suburbs of Jiang Hai City, there was a development project called 'Crane Song Bay'. On the surface it was a high‑end eco‑residential area, but beneath the ground lay an old mine tunnel sealed off thirty years ago. There was something at the end of the tunnel."

Ji Bai tilted his head.

"C‑level Weird Domain."

"Back then the Investigation Bureau's response was still slow, and the local authorities had no capacity to handle such matters at all. Did the Sheng Yuan Group behind Crane Song Bay know? They did. Not only did they know, they also spent a fortune hiring people from the Black Market to reinforce the seal. Did the seal work? It worked—provided you don't blow it up with explosives."

His speaking speed didn't change, but Su Xiaoya noticed his left ring finger unconsciously bending, then loosening, then bending again.

"The Sheng Yuan Group, to meet the deadline, used blasting to excavate the foundation. The seal layer was shattered. The Weird Domain leaked, and within three days nineteen workers vanished from the site. Officially it was called a landslide accident; they paid compensation, sealed it up, and no news was released."

Su Xiaoya's Adam's apple bobbed.

"My dad obtained the full chain of evidence: geological survey reports, seal construction contracts, the true death records of the missing workers, internal approval emails from Sheng Yuan Group. All were backed up on an encrypted hard drive."

Ji Bai paused for two seconds.

"Then my parents died."

He said that so lightly that it blended into the buzzing of the ventilation duct blades, almost inaudible.

Su Xiaoya's Nail sank into her palm.

"Car accident. 3 a. m., on the way home from the newspaper office. A big truck was going the wrong way. The driver died on the spot, blood alcohol level four times the legal limit. Traffic police ruled it drunk‑driving homicide."

He lifted his hand and brushed his thumb across his nose bridge.

"The case was closed. The compensation was deposited into my guardian account. The funeral home staff were very polite, asking if I wanted a complimentary cosmetic‑surgery package."

On the cross‑section of Su Xiaoya's crippled arm, a surge of resentment sealed under gauze rose suddenly, as if voicing something she could not put into words.

"I don't believe it," Ji Bai said. "Kids under eighteen don't understand many things, but there's one thing I get—my dad handed me the hard drive that day before he left. He said, 'Xiao Bai, Dad's going to send out a very important article tonight; keep this with you, don't give it to anyone who asks.' He said it with a smile, just like when he used to escort me to school."

"But he gave me the hard drive."

"He never took work home. Never. That was the first time. And the last time."

The bubbling sound from the pot on the stove suddenly grew louder; the old man muttered something and turned the flame down.

Ji Bai waited for that sound to pass, then continued.

"I ran off with the hard drive. When I fled the house I was wearing slippers, with three hundred yuan cash and half a chocolate bar in my pocket. It poured rain that night."

His gaze drifted into the void, not focused on this Air‑raid Shelter.

"Sheng Yuan Group leveraged connections to trace the hard drive's whereabouts. They didn't call the police. They hired people."

"Three."

"The Uncanny. Those professional hunters without Federation‑issued licenses who take side jobs in the gray zone. One handles psychic sealing, another handles perception tracking, the third…"

He pinched his finger joints, and the knuckles emitted a faint crack.

"One specializes in killing."

A chill spread from Su Xiaoya's whole body outward. Not hostility, but empathy.

"I ran in the western part of the city for a full four hours," Ji Bai's tone was overly flat, as if reciting a math problem solved countless times. "The rain was so heavy I could barely open my eyes. I used every trick I had—crawling through the Sewer, scaling walls, jumping off buildings, slipping through a demolition shantytown. But the tracker was too skilled; every scent on me, every footprint I left, he could lock onto."

"Four hours. The three hundred yuan was ruined by rain in the second hour. The chocolate bar was finished in the third hour. The slippers were lost when I scaled the first wall."

He looked down at his feet. Barefoot, his soles pressed against the icy platform edge, bearing a few shallow old scars.

"In the end I ran into an abandoned chemical plant in the south of the city."

Su Xiaoya's breathing became shallow.

"Dead end," Ji Bai said. "I didn't realize it was a cul‑de‑sac; when I went in I found the back blocked solidly by collapsed reaction vessels."

"When they caught up, I had already laid out all my cards. Two knees were smashed by psychic‑chain blasts, my tibia fractured, bone shards protruding. I lay on the ground, rain mixing with blood flowing down, my mouth filled with the taste of iron rust."

He said those words without any emotional shift, but Su Xiaoya noticed his right hand had already clenched the handle of the black umbrella.

"The leader, carrying a spiritual blade, walked over. He crouched, gave me a glance, patted my head, and said—'Kid, Uncle didn't want this; it's because your parents were clueless.'"

Ji Bai smiled briefly.

The smile was short, shallow, never reaching his eyes.

"When he stood up and raised the blade over his head, do you know what I was thinking?"

Su Xiaoya shook her head.

"I was thinking that the jar of pickled sour beans my mother had made was still in the fridge, nobody had eaten it and it was about to spoil."

By the chess table below, the suited uncle slapped a piece down, shouting "Check!" The translucent man protested, trying to take back his move.

"Then."

Ji Bai's voice suddenly lowered by half a tone.

"The deep interior of the factory lit up."

Su Xiaoya's pupils contracted sharply.

"It wasn't a lamp. It was a scarlet light, seeping out from behind the collapsed pipes at the very back, a cold red that chilled the marrow. All three the Uncanny turned at once; the tracker's face changed, and the first word that slipped from his mouth was 'run'."

"He didn't get away."

Ji Bai's mouth twitched upward, the curve carrying a post‑event, icy, exhilarating recollection.

"She emerged from the darkness. A red dress, tattered, its edges stained with dried old blood. Her long hair dragged on the floor, soaked with the factory's iron rust and sludge. Both of her eyes were bleeding. Not tears, but blood. Drops fell one by one, hitting the ground with an audible sound."

"Fierce Ghost," Su Xiaoya's voice tightened.

"Fierce Ghost." Ji Bai nodded, "Qualified as A Ji."

"The three perverse manipulators, combined barely a B Ji combat configuration, couldn't last even thirty seconds in front of her."

His description was cold to a cruel degree.

"The first, a tracking type, died. He turned to run, and his spine was pulled out from behind, the whole thing. The second, a telekinetic‑barrier type, opened a shield to block; the shield was no different from paper, and both man and shield were slammed into the concrete floor, leaving only half a body exposed, his leg still twitching."

"The last one. The one carrying the spiritual blade. The one who slapped my head and called me a kid."

Ji Bai was silent for two seconds.

"She twisted his limbs off one by one. First the hands. Then the feet."

Su Xiaoya showed no fear. She herself was also a Fierce Ghost. She knew all too well what that uncontrollable, hatred‑tearing, devouring impulse felt like.

"He called for a long time," Ji Bai said, "the sound of rain couldn't drown it out."

"And then it fell silent."

Deep within the Underground Pipe Network, the sound of water droplets fell, one after another, filling the brief void.

"I was lying in bloodwater then. Both legs were useless, my consciousness already hazy. I thought, it's my turn now."

"She walked toward me. With each step, the standing water on the ground formed a thin layer of ice. I could feel the temperature dropping."

"She crouched down."

Ji Bai's voice suddenly changed.

It became lighter. It became softer. Like something from that memory, six years later still able to pierce all defenses and hardness, striking the old wound that never healed.

"Her hand was very cold. Colder than yours. When her fingertips touched my knee, I shivered all over. But she didn't press. The touch was light, as if afraid of hurting me."

"She crouched there and stared at me for a long time. The blood in her eyes kept flowing, dripping onto my school uniform."

"Then she did something."

Su Xiaoya held her breath.

"She split off a strand of her own resentment and poured it into my shattered knee. That force was icy, but once it entered the bone fissures… the bone began to knit. The broken cartilage was pieced back together bit by bit. Tendons re‑joined. Flesh slowly sealed."

"I watched my wound heal right before my eyes."

"She pulled a dying human child back from the Ghost Gate."

Ji Bai lifted his head, gazing at the concentric warm‑yellow light strips hanging from the dome.

"You ask me why I do this."

"It's not just repayment."

His fingers tightened, the bamboo handle of the black umbrella creaking with a faint squeak.

"She made me see clearly. Sometimes a beast in human skin is ten thousand times more disgusting than a Fierce Ghost. Those three perverse manipulators, human elites, could kill an eleven‑year‑old child without blinking. Yet a Fierce Ghost that every textbook says 'kill on sight' knelt in a chemical plant littered with shredded flesh to set my bones straight."

He turned his face and looked at Su Xiaoya.

In the warm light, the boy's eyes shone brightly, so bright they didn't seem like a lone wolf harboring Weirdness in the Underground Pipe Network.

"She taught me one thing."

"How to keep one's eyes open in the Abyss."

Su Xiaoya cradled an enamel cup; the pale‑blue liquid inside was already ice‑cold. She lowered her head, gazing at her blurred reflection in the cup, her lips pressed into a thin line.

A long time passed.

She lifted her head, her gaze shifting from Ji Bai to sweep over the warm, absurd little world below — the uncle playing chess had won that game, proudly crossing his legs; the faceless girl had fallen asleep at some point, the book against her chest rising and falling; the old man poured a bowl of soup and was carrying it toward the bookshelf.

Su Xiaoya's eyes lingered a moment on each face, finally returning to Ji Bai's.

"What about the red‑clothed sister who saved you?"

Her voice was hoarse, tinged with cautious probing.

"Why isn't she here?"

Ji Bai's hand wiping the umbrella stopped.

His whole body froze.

It wasn't the stiffness of being asked a sore point; it was deeper, more thorough, a something that had been pressed into his marrow and was inadvertently unearthed.

The warm‑yellow light strip fell on his face, draining all warmth.