Chapter 68: Jack
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After awakening his Esper ability, Ji Minghuan had also thought about this question more than once:
—Since I’m a Restricted-level Esper, could my parents also not be ordinary people?
After all, looking at Gu Qiye’s family, it was clear: the genetic lineage of Espers was incredibly strong, often affecting the entire family; by contrast, the cases of those whose ancestors didn’t carry any Esper genes but still spontaneously awakened abilities were extremely rare.
But when it came to the word “parents,” Ji Minghuan just couldn’t bring himself to care. So even though there was still a lot of room to explore in this question, he had never really thought deeply about it...
Not even once.
“I’ll tell you about your parents next time we meet,” the Instructor said.
“I don’t care. I just want to know—are they still alive?” Ji Minghuan said.
“They’re alive.”
“That’s enough.” “Good night.”
One second the detention room was brightly lit, the next, the lights shut off level by level from top to bottom.
Footsteps stopped at the door. The Instructor’s silhouette stood motionless in the doorway’s light. He slightly turned his head and glanced through the crack at Ji Minghuan sitting in the chair.
The door closed. Then a system prompt lit up in the darkness.
[Worldview development progress for “Exorcist” branch has changed: 55% → 60%]
“If the worldview progress bar hits 100%, what kind of reward will it give... Demons, huh. I didn’t think creatures like that really existed. You learn something new every day.”
Ji Minghuan looked up at the prompt box, quietly thinking in the dark.
“They’re alive, but never came for me... So what’s the difference from being dead?”
Expressionless, he tried to summon his parents’ faces in his mind, but after so many years without seeing them, he could barely recall what they looked like—only vague outlines and a few hazy scenes remained.
The Instructor suddenly bringing up his parents had caught him off guard.
But in Ji Minghuan’s view, his only family now was Kong Youling.
She was his only family. If one day the Instructor tried to use his parents to threaten him, he would give them up without hesitation. Their lives or deaths had nothing to do with him.
“Time to sleep... I still have to meet with the Brigade members tomorrow.” He lay back down.
Gradually, his eyelids closed, and consciousness slipped into sleep.
Because he had to control three bodies at once, he had to make sure he got enough rest to stay mentally sharp.
Otherwise... if he ever entered the mental world while exhausted, and looked up only to see those two corpses hanging in the library suddenly come back to life—that would really be the end.
The night passed silently. Due to sheer mental fatigue, Ji Minghuan slept deeply.
Who knew how much time had passed when an annoying phone ringtone pierced the darkness and woke him.
Still groggy from sleep, Ji Minghuan couldn’t even tell which of his bodies had heard the ringtone—or maybe this was just a dream? Ever since activating “Full Split Mode,” he’d started dreaming again.
On instinct, Ji Minghuan sat up from the stark white bed.
Pitch black all around. He quickly realized he’d made a dumb mistake: there’s no way there’d be a phone in the detention room. Smacking his forehead with a “smack,” he flopped back down.
Then he closed his eyes and switched to “Gu Wenyu’s” body, fishing a phone out from under the pillow.
Only Su Zimai’s wall of messages filled the screen—nothing else.
Finally, Body #2—Xia Pingzhou—opened his eyes in a hotel room, staring motionlessly at the ceiling.
Lying flat on the bed, with the shrill ringtone blaring in his ear and his hoodie pocket vibrating nonstop. He quickly pulled out the phone from his hoodie, glanced at the screen, and confirmed it was this body receiving the call.
Relieved, he pressed the answer button. The annoying ringtone stopped.
Ji Minghuan tilted his head, phone to ear, and muttered a single word: “Who?”
Soon, a cool and slightly childlike girl’s voice came through the receiver.
It was clearly Origami Ayase’s voice. She said, “Come out. Abandoned building on the west side of the port district. I was going to introduce you to No. 4 and No. 9, but No. 10 and No. 2 showed up first. They said they wanted to meet you.”
And just like that, she hung up.
Didn’t sound like there was any room to refuse. Ji Minghuan scratched his messy hair and glanced out the window at the dim, gray morning sky.
“Might as well be dead...”
Muttering, he got up, washed up in the bathroom, and not long after, put on his human-face mask and left the hotel.
He caught a morning train. Leaning against the window, he stared blankly at Tokyo bathed in the first rays of sunlight. The distant rice fields shimmered dimly, and wind from the horizon made the rice stalks sway gently.
The clatter of the train filled the silence as time passed quietly. Before long, he arrived at the meeting place.
After getting off the train, a short walk brought him to a deserted area filled with abandoned buildings. He entered one of them, where ruined factory equipment littered the floor.
Five figures sat among the rubble. Ji Minghuan recognized three of them from before.
Team Member No. 11—Arlens, a blond-haired, blue-eyed Brit, an Esper whose power seemed to involve summoning a slot machine. He was the one who blew up that underground bar last time.
Team Member No. 3—Origami Ayase, a girl in a brick-red kimono. An Esper who could manipulate paper, stoic and delicate like a Japanese doll.
Team Member No. 7—Robert, the man with a robot box head. An Esper whose power was opening “doors” in walls that led to other places.
Aside from those three, there were two unfamiliar figures.
One was wrapped head to toe in a beige cloak, with only his head showing.
A man with messy hair and a scruffy beard. A scar slashed across his left eye, which was clouded with a white film, his gaze vacant, focus unknown.
The other wore a Japanese high school uniform in light gray, with a ribbon tie.
A long-haired girl with jet-black eyes like a polar night. She was playing with a short knife with a dark red hilt.
When Ji Minghuan saw that blade, Xia Pingzhou’s research notes flashed through his mind. The shape of the knife matched the memory of the “Tianqu” used by Jack the Ripper, overlapping with the real thing before his eyes—no doubt, this was the knife.
Jack the Ripper... is a girl? At that thought, Ji Minghuan raised an eyebrow.
[Main Quest 2 Complete: Locate the evil Exorcist who killed “your family” — “Jack the Ripper.”]
[Reward: 1 Skill Point, 1 Attribute Point, 1 Split Point.]
[Main Quest 2 updated to Phase Two: Lie low within the White Crow Brigade, and wait for a chance to kill Team Member No. 2 — “Jack the Ripper.” (Reward: 3 Attribute Points, 3 Skill Points, 3 Split Points)]
Ji Minghuan glanced at the quest log, eyes drifting toward the school-uniform girl.
Arlens, still in his British-style suit, cheerfully jumped down from the rubble and greeted him, placing a hand on his shoulder.
Raising the other hand, he pointed at the long-haired girl and smiled, “That beautiful black-haired maiden is ‘Jack the Ripper,’ ranked No. 2 in the team. She’s an Exorcist, and that little knife is her Tianqu.”
He shrugged and added, “Jack the Ripper is a name others gave her. ‘Jack’ was her gaming handle. Put together, you get ‘Jack the Ripper.’ She’s kind of famous. A lot of outsiders have heard of her. How about you?”
How about me? My main quest is to kill her—of course I’ve heard of her.
Ji Minghuan joked inwardly, though his face gave nothing away. “Heard of her.”
Arlens nodded, then pointed to the man in the cloak and said, “That shady guy over there? We call him ‘White Greedy Wolf.’ He’s No. 10 in the team.”
“What’s his ability?”
Arlens shook his head, teasing, “He’s not an Esper, not an Anecdote Envoy, and not an Exorcist either.”
Ji Minghuan raised an eyebrow, guessing, “A Muggle can join the White Crow Brigade?”
“Nope... He’s not an ordinary person,” Arlens said in a low, eerie voice. “He’s a demon.”
Ji Minghuan blinked in surprise, muttering, “...A demon?”
“Yep,” Arlens whispered. “He joined the Brigade to look for his child. Rumor is, this guy took human form and had a kid with a human woman... then the kid ate the mom. That pissed him off, so he abandoned the kid and left.”
At this point, he couldn’t help but chuckle.
“But soon he regretted it. Searched everywhere but couldn’t find the kid. Finally came to us, said he wanted to travel the world with us to find clues about his child.”
The flood of information washed over Ji Minghuan’s brain, leaving it momentarily blank.
Then he slowly turned his head, belatedly looking at the scarred man with the white film in his eye.
“White Greedy Wolf... your flesh-eating, lost child wouldn’t happen to be named ‘Filio,’ would it...” he thought, “What a coincidence. Tomorrow, I’ll be seeing your darling little boy at the lab.”