What if I don't want to ascend to immortality?

Chapter 47 Serial Disappearances
Han Jie gazed at the scenery outside the car window the whole way.

With three people in the cramped space of the carriage, he lost interest in talking.

Some of Huang Yin's cigarette smoke drifted to the back row. He smelled it but didn't find it particularly refreshing, nor did he see anything attractive about having such a small white stick in his mouth.

He reaffirmed that the "common sense" in that lump of consciousness needed to be carefully sifted.

The agile assisted driving technology is a special technology for cultivators. Unlike the automatic driving used by ordinary people, its built-in spirit pattern device records and imitates the operating habits of the spirit master.

Looking out the window at the roadside trees rushing past, Han Jie wondered if Huang Yin's second job was a race car driver.

Aren't spirit practitioners prohibited from participating in these kinds of competitive events...?

After smoking two cigarettes, Huang Yin closed the car windows and started playing music.

They are all theme songs for fantasy and martial arts dramas, either passionate or grand, with lyrics full of longing for chivalry. Her musical taste and her outward temperament are completely incompatible.

Just like Meng Qingtong, she has a chivalrous spirit and values ​​loyalty. When she wears ancient costume, she looks like a female knight-errant, but she just happens to like sweet and soft love songs.

For some reason, he remembered a theory that Meng Qingtong had once mentioned: life is about wanting to make up for what you lack.

He unconsciously looked at Meng Qingtong, thinking that he seemed to have gained a lot during this time.

So, perhaps not finding any clues about the Demon Emperor this time... isn't such a bad thing.

At least, the Demon Summoning Staff is still there, so all the reasons remain.

Around 9 p.m., the car finally turned onto the street where they lived.

But at that moment, Huang Yin and Meng Qingtong simultaneously switched their phones to the special application platform for spirit masters to accept commissions.

Immediately afterwards, Huang Yin turned off the assist, parked the car on the side of the road, and quickly browsed the latest intelligence release.

As a dutiful partner, Meng Qingtong immediately forwarded the complete relevant information to Han Jie.

Han Jie glanced at it, his brows immediately furrowing.

It was an emergency notice limited to a specific area. All spiritualists with the qualifications to handle level two or above commissions who had been active within the second ring road of Dongding City in the last twelve hours were the target of the notice.

The brief summary in the first paragraph is already shocking enough—a series of disappearances occurred today at several spiritual academies in Dongding City, with five victims currently missing.

Below are detailed information on the five missing persons, and a notice requesting assistance in their investigation.

Unsurprisingly, Tao Yang was ranked first.

After confronting him directly, the boy stayed in the corridor for a while, then used the excuse of being in a bad mood to go visit a friend who rented an apartment off-campus.

His trail led him to the apartment building where his friend lived.

According to the friend's statement and the surveillance footage at the door, Tao Yang did not come to his house.

With the cooperation of the police, the Ling'an Bureau retrieved the video footage from the access control systems of all residents in the building and finally determined that Tao Yang had disappeared in the stairwell between the second and third floors of his friend's unit.

The spiritualists who rushed to the scene conducted a detailed survey with the help of professional instruments and found no trace of spiritual magic. They initially speculated that it was related to evil spirits.

Based on past experience, demons that dare to directly target cultivators are usually very difficult to deal with. The Second Academy immediately dispatched several skilled teachers to assist the Spirit Security Bureau in its investigation.

They had just finished assembling their group when another student reported a new missing person.

The second and third missing persons were two girls who went shopping together. One was Kwon Sun-hee from the Second Hospital, and the other was Choi Heung-ji from the Third Hospital. They were classmates when they started their introductory classes, so they had a good relationship.

They had arranged to get their nails done at 4 p.m. with another mutual friend. After arriving, the two put down their things and went to the restroom together, and their friend went with them to touch up her makeup.

After the two men went into their respective toilet stalls, they never came out again.

When the mall security guards forcibly opened the toilet stall door that had been locked from the inside, they discovered that the two women had disappeared. On the floor of one of the stalls, there was a newly bought set of real-life photos of an idol boy group lying on the ground.

The fourth missing person is Xue Guo, a dropout from the Second Affiliated Hospital. The report was made by a deliveryman who couldn't reach her by phone or answer the door. Because he often delivered things to her house and was quite familiar with her, the deliveryman felt something was wrong and worried that something had happened to this girl living alone, so he contacted the landlord.

When the landlord opened the door, he found that there was still half a bowl of instant noodles left on the table, the computer was still on, but the person was nowhere to be seen. Out of concern for his own responsibility, he notified the nearby Ling An Bureau station.

The fifth missing person is named Kuwata Makoto, a freshman admitted to the hospital in June. According to his sister, Kuwata Makoto locked himself in his bedroom with a stern face after lunch and hasn't come out since.

His sister went to call him for dinner but received no response. When she went inside, she found he was gone. On his desk lay a love letter that was only half-finished.

The reason these four missing persons were included in the Tao Yang incident was because their situations were extremely similar: they all disappeared abruptly, leaving no trace of any spiritual magic used.

This means that the demon that made the move was not only powerful enough to render the five quasi-spiritual masters powerless, but also possessed special spatial abilities to teleport them silently and instantly.

Unfortunately, the Forensic Science Division of the Department of Spiritual Security spent several hours at various crime scenes comparing their findings with the Complete Book of Demons, but failed to draw any valuable conclusions.

The victim is likely still alive and in dire need of rescue. With every second counting, the Bureau of Spiritual Security, under pressure from the three spiritual academies, had to resort to an unusual tactic—issuing an urgent reward to all spiritual practitioners with Level 2 or higher qualifications within the Second Ring Road, seeking clues.

Without any hesitation, Meng Qingtong entered the spirit pattern on the landing page and said with a smile, "Aunt Huang, let's go directly to the nearest site."

Huang Yin did not drive.

She said softly, "What you should do now is go home, do your usual exercise, get some rest, and go to class obediently tomorrow. Teacher Han, do you agree?"

“After get off work, I’m not Teacher Han,” Han Jie said calmly. “I’m Qing Tong’s partner; she took on the case.”

Huang Yin said with slight dissatisfaction, "You shouldn't have let her get involved in such dangerous cases so early."

"As long as I'm here, there will be no dangerous commissions."

Meng Qingtong couldn't understand why, out of the three people she considered close relatives, the other two had a good impression of Han Jie, while Huang Yin always showed a subtle but undisguised rejection.

Is it because they are too close that the parents feel they want their daughter to be married off?
Putting aside whether she is really going to be married, even if she is, if she is married to a man like this, even her own parents wouldn't be able to have any complaints, right?
As her mind began to wander, she suddenly realized that she was a little nervous.

Fear often stems from the unknown.

The fact that the forensic team was unable to identify the type of killer at the scene, or even to make a more than 50% probability of it, suggests that what appeared was likely a demon not recorded in the complete encyclopedia.

In just one afternoon, the other party made moves in four locations that were not close to each other, easily erasing the traces of the five young cultivators. It was really hard to understand.

Moreover, what Meng Qingtong disliked most was the lack of thorough preparation and planning in battle, fighting in complete darkness.

As a cultivator specializing in spirit talismans and auxiliary spirit arrays, she abhorred uncertainty. Fortunately, Han Jie was there.

Even though she repeatedly reminded herself not to develop an unnecessary or even counterproductive dependence on her partner, Meng Qingtong still felt a sense of relief and comfort when she heard him speak.

Therefore, she can still be brave.

There were two incident sites that weren't too far apart. After Huang Yin drove to one of them, she and Meng Qingtong split up and each chose a different location.

Huang Yin went to a more challenging shopping mall, while Meng Qingtong went with Han Jie to the location where Tao Yang disappeared.

The incident occurred in a residential building, and the lives of normal residents cannot be disrupted indefinitely. After the scene was photographed using spiritual magic, the police cordon has been removed.

If this were a case involving ordinary people, the scene would have no reference value whatsoever, as it would have been completely destroyed.

However, in the realm of cultivators, in just seven or eight hours, if there were any secret techniques involved, the remaining clues could still be considered fresh.

With the complete text rendered useless, Meng Qingtong could only do some minor auxiliary work. After all, no matter how experienced she was in this area, she couldn't surpass the professional spiritualists in the investigation department, so she didn't have high hopes.

She was waiting to see if her reliable senior colleagues could discover anything.

Han Jie did indeed make some discoveries.

From the moment he stepped into this stairwell, a strange feeling arose in his heart. It was as if he had noticed a subtle difference between the time here and the time in his previous life.

There was no clock here, and he was certain that the source of his unease was not time.

space?

He raised his hand to touch the dilapidated, mottled wall, and walked up the steps one by one.

A scene from before, where he had felt a similar strange sensation, and the demon he had defeated back then, surfaced in his memory. He frowned, thinking to himself, if it really is that creature, its growth in strength is far more exaggerated than that of the two-headed flying leopard.

If it is that guy, then the other evil spirit that is likely sprouting behind him is the real trouble. For him, who only retains his original strength in the Heart Sword Form, that big trouble will probably be particularly troublesome.

It's not that it's impossible to eliminate, but rather that it's not easy to control the scope of the impact.

Unexpectedly, her partner was already considering where to set up the battlefield. Meng Qingtong scrutinized his expression and misunderstood the meaning of his predicament. She whispered, "If we really can't find any clues, then forget it. We can't force ourselves to do things beyond our capabilities. Don't you always nag me that I can only pretend to be capable of doing more than I can handle?"

“It’s not that we can’t find them.” Han Jie looked up at the top platform of the stairs, his wrist slightly lowered, and he summoned two Heart Swords, Mist and Desolation.

He raised his arm and pointed, and the thin thread on the Desolate Sword connected to the hilt of the Misty Sword. Immediately, a light mist descended, like a thin veil enveloping the entire stairwell.

The fog was quite different from when they had previously eliminated the swarms; it was higher and clearer, without obstructing vision at all.

Soon, the thin thread connecting the two heart swords trembled and emitted a faint glow.

The wisp of light extended from the tips of the two swords, suddenly accelerated, and darted through the mist, transforming in the blink of an eye into a dense net of light.

Against a backdrop of fog and light, some traces emerge clearly.

“It’s a rift.” Han Jie switched to his divine sense and stopped speaking. “A demon with spatial abilities. Tao Yang must have been taken from here to the alternate dimension created by the demon.”

Meng Qingtong couldn't see it. To her, those marks were just strange patterns, like crumpled and unfolded pieces of transparent paper. One had to look closely to detect their existence through the subtle distortions of the flowing mist and the small refractions of light on both sides of the marks.

“The space will heal itself. If you come back tomorrow, I'm afraid you'll only see a thin line that's about to disappear.” Han Jie sheathed his Heart Sword, walked onto the corner platform, and slowly moved his finger along the lines he had seen earlier.

Meng Qingtong was very curious. She stayed on the steps and looked up, asking, "What are you doing? Are you trying to reopen that crack?"

“No, if it were the thing I’m guessing about, it wouldn’t be here anymore. It also doesn’t target spirit masters first, as your official theory suggests. I guess it’s just a coincidence that it sprouted in a spirit master.” Han Jie dismissed several directions, his fingers tracing patterns in the air faster and faster. “I’m using something like spirit projection to find the approximate direction in which that thing opened the crack. At least, I can find out which direction Tao Yang went when he disappeared.”

"What kind of demon are you guessing? Is it mentioned in the complete encyclopedia?"

“No. I’ve encountered most of the demons in the encyclopedia, but many of the ones I’ve encountered aren’t included in it.” Han Jie smiled slightly and said, “If you want to create your complete encyclopedia of demons, you probably won’t be able to do without me as your partner.”

"Yes, yes, Senior Han is the best! I like Senior Han the most!" she replied in a half-joking tone, then asked with a hint of doubt, "Wait a minute, given the explosive population growth of the world in the last hundred years or so, the current permanent population of just one district in Dongding City is more than double that of the entire ancient region combined. The frequency of demonic appearances should be far greater than in your time. Even if the encyclopedia was compiled a little earlier, it shouldn't have missed so many things. This book isn't like the encyclopedia, which I did alone; all nine regions of the world contributed at the time."

"It's not just those that weren't included. There are many powerful demons included here that I've fought countless times in my previous life. If what you're guessing is true, they all originate from the human heart. In such a densely populated place, they should appear every moment. But looking at the descriptions in the complete book, they are clearly so rare that the records are unclear."

"Uh... perhaps it's thanks to the Demon-Suppressing Cauldron?"

Han Jie glanced in the direction of the Eastern Cauldron. "I had the same guess. But now, the Demon-Suppressing Cauldron is still there, yet this guy has appeared. The appearance of this guy usually means that the Dream Tree... is sprouting."

"Dream Tree?" Meng Qingtong was taken aback at first, then quickly found the corresponding entry in the encyclopedia. One glance at it sent a chill down her spine.

The Dream Tree is located on page seven, second entry in the complete encyclopedia. The reference information under that entry is a mere two sentences long.

"We must sever the root cause before everyone falls into a delusion from which they are unwilling to awaken. Otherwise, everything will be beyond repair."

Han Jie continued to trace the faint traces left by the spatial rift, saying in his divine sense, "I've been wondering what arrangements the Demon Emperor made after lurking for so long. Now it seems that the Myriad Demon Guide he left behind might just be a key to unlock a trap."

"The key?" Meng Qingtong quickly pulled her attention away from the dream tree.

“As long as the Myriad Demon Summoning Device is placed near my exit point, I will definitely be able to find it. Once I find it, whether I want to dig it out or just take a look, I will have to completely open a passage.” Han Jie’s expression was solemn, clearly convinced that this speculation was true. “Once I open the passage, the Myriad Demon Summoning Device can release a signal, allowing these demonic seeds, which have been suppressed by the Demon Emperor for over 1,800 years, to begin to sprout. The environment it created using the changes of the times, which is most favorable to demons, will gradually take effect.”

Meng Qingtong thought for a moment and said, "Then...would it be better to destroy the Ten Thousand Demon Spell?"

"Destroying it would only allow the Demon Summoning Blade to be reborn from the Demon Emperor's hands. It's better to keep it with you; you can use it when needed." Han Jie glanced at the direction of the Eastern Cauldron again, but suppressed the impulse in his heart for the time being.

Some things, even if they need to be done, shouldn't be done now.

Let's save lives first.

He lowered his hand and gave his conclusion: "Tao Yang is not the first missing person."

"There are even earlier ones?"

Han Jie nodded. "There are two directions of the rift. The older one is slightly weaker than the newer one. That should be the way that thing came from. Let's go in that direction and find the place where that thing actually broke out of its shell."

Meng Qingtong pulled up a map, comparing it to the direction he was pointing, and asked, "What exactly is that thing? What did you guys call it back then?"

“The Lost Village,” Han Jie slowly gave the answer. “Back then, the demon hunters called it the Lost Village, a village of illusions that trapped those who had lost their way.”

(End of this chapter)