Chapter 1 The Demon Hunters Seem to Have Disappeared

It seemed the Demon Hunters had really disappeared.

Hao Ren went to the places where Liu Sheng and Zhao Xi worked, but found nothing. Although he didn't see them in person, he was almost certain that the collective withdrawal of the Demon Hunters was not a false alarm. He led Gun back home, muttering to himself all the way: just half a month ago, there were no signs of abnormality on the Demon Hunter side. A short time before that, he had even gone to America with Hasse and the others to explore the secret realm. It hadn't been that long, so what exactly had happened within the Demon Hunter organization?

A powerful race that had completely ended the age of myths, a group of superhumans with no natural enemies on Earth – why would they silently disappear collectively in just a few days? Did something big happen that required them all to be transferred away?

"Tsk, we were too busy with the Ark Fleet stuff recently and completely missed the Demon Hunter clues," Hao Ren clicked his tongue, muttering to the data terminal in his mind. "Now that they've all run off, it'll be hard to track them down."

"They can't have disappeared into thin air. Since it was a large-scale withdrawal, they should have left some clues," the data terminal said in Hao Ren's mind. "This unit suggests releasing some energy-detection probes. The places where the Demon Hunters were active must have left behind energy fields of Leta Runes, which can probably be used to determine their transfer route."

"Yeah, that's the only way for now. Anyway, I don't want to bother Crow with this little thing on Earth... who knows how she'll mess things up."

While Hao Ren was discussing these things with the data terminal in his mind, he walked along the old alleys of the southern suburbs, his hands in his pockets and Gun following behind. He had driven out, but he had put the car away on the way back. He felt he could concentrate better when he walked and thought about things – although this thinking habit wasn't worth promoting, who told him he was a superhuman now? Gun followed Hao Ren, looking a bit listless. The cat girl seemed a little discouraged: although Hao Ren had bought her two skewers of grilled fish in the city, she was now regretting coming out, and she began to miss her warm sofa cushion...

The southern suburbs were remote and sparsely populated, and the temperature here was much lower than in the city. The snow on the city roads had mostly melted, but the old streets and alleys of the southern suburbs were still covered with snow that reached above the ankles, crunching underfoot. Hao Ren walked forward through the snow, glanced back at Gun, made sure the cat girl was obediently following behind, neither running around nor walking on all fours, and then lowered his head to continue thinking. Not far from them, at the intersection, several stray cats were fighting fiercely next to a trash can, seemingly fighting over the right to a little bit of leftover scraps.

Gun's attention was involuntarily drawn to the commotion of the stray cats. She looked at them blankly, the shadows of the trash can and the stray cats reflected in her eyes, slowly overlapping with some vague and distant memories. She seemed to see herself, years ago, when she was still a small black and white stray cat, relying on such trash cans to survive, desperately fighting with those strong and hungry stray cats and dogs in winter for a little bit of scraps to fill her stomach, squatting on the slightly warm geothermal well covers every snowy winter night to keep warm, day after day.

Although she didn't have such complex thoughts as "life is hard" back then, cold and hunger still enveloped her cat life, which was almost her only memory of the season "winter" in the past.

Until later, a strange big cat suddenly appeared in front of her, handing her a skewer of strangely flavored small dried fish, and her cold winter ended.

While Hao Ren was thinking about major events concerning world peace, the most important things in Gun's mind were not being hungry and not being cold. She watched the stray cats at the intersection for a long time, then suddenly turned her head and rubbed Hao Ren's arm hard with her head, purring incessantly in her throat: "Purr... grumble..."

Hao Ren was startled by the cat girl's sudden neurotic behavior, and his train of thought was immediately interrupted: "Hey, hey, what are you doing, what are you doing..."

"Gun" rubbed hard for a long time, almost knocking the soft hat off her head, then looked up: "Big cat, you're so moe and cute!"

This was the only "compliment" she knew, although she didn't know where she learned it, she had firmly remembered it.

"You're a lunatic," Hao Ren pushed Gun's head away hard – although he didn't mind being rubbed by the cat girl like this at home, it would be very problematic on the street, and more importantly, this silly girl had been walking against the wind all the way, and now she had a runny nose. She smeared his arm with snot and saliva during her rubbing. Who could stand that? "What's with this all of a sudden?"

"Gun" jumped up and down around Hao Ren for a long time, and began to think about whether she should lie on the ground and let him scratch her belly, because she remembered that he hadn't scratched her belly for a long time, which made her feel a little frustrated. However, before she could act, Hao Ren saw what she was trying to do, and quickly grabbed the cat girl by the collar: "If you dare to lie on the ground right here, I'll cut off your dried fish for a week!"

Thanks to this suddenly neurotic cat demon, Hao Ren's train of thought, which was only halfway there, was completely interrupted. He had no choice but to pat "Gun" on the head, and dragged the silly cat towards home: "Let's go back and tell Vivian about Liu Sheng and Zhao Xi's situation, and see what she thinks."

As he spoke, the corner of his eye caught sight of the trash can on the corner of the street, so he casually rubbed "Gun" on the head: "Don't go rummaging through the trash can..."

As soon as he finished speaking, he saw a flash of white light suddenly in the distant sky, and then a living person appeared out of thin air in mid-air. This figure was surrounded by a piece of broken runes, those runes flashed a few times in the air and then dissipated, while the owner of the figure fell straight down, and with a "plop" sound, fell directly into the huge metal trash can.

The stray cats around the trash can scattered in a hubbub.

"Holy crap, a living person fell from the sky!" Hao Ren was immediately taken aback. If this had happened two years ago, he would definitely have taken out his phone to take pictures and post them on Weibo, but now, after being baptized by various supernatural phenomena, his first reaction was, of course, to run over and see how the person was doing.

Hao Ren rushed to the trash can in three steps, and poked his head to look inside. Because the weather was cold, the things in the trash can were not easy to rot, so there was no unbearable smell coming out. After he poked his head in and looked, he could only see a girl in black clothes with long silver-white hair lying inside. Although her face was covered, her figure looked particularly familiar.

And that outfit... it was obviously a Demon Hunter!

Hao Ren quickly bent down and reached out, poking half of his body into the trash can to pull out the silver-haired girl. When Gun saw this situation, she felt that her cat-life outlook had been greatly impacted. She jumped up and down beside him, shouting: "You just said not to rummage through the trash can!"

It seemed that Hao Ren would have a hard time righteously educating this stupid cat in the future...

Hao Ren ignored the stupid cat's mischief beside him, and he spent a lot of effort to pull out the girl who fell from the sky, and the result was dumbfounded: "Bai Huo?!"

This female Demon Hunter who fell from the sky was none other than Bai Huo. No wonder her figure looked so familiar. However, her current situation was really shocking: the Demon Hunter girl's face was bloodless, her body was ice-cold, she was covered in wounds, and a strange, pale white "blood" filled her combat uniform, looking like she wanted to bleed herself dry. Hao Ren put his finger under her nose, and finally breathed a sigh of relief after feeling a slight breath: "Fortunately... she's still alive, and it's lucky she fell into here and it's softer."

"Big cat, big cat, let me see!" Gun jumped around and arched forward, and after finally seeing Bai Huo's face clearly, she exclaimed in surprise, "Ah! I know her! Was she also thrown away? Did her mother have too many babies at once?"

"She's not a kitten," Hao Ren carefully hugged Bai Huo horizontally, glanced sideways at the stupid cat, then confirmed that no one around had witnessed this supernatural scene, and called the terminal in his mind, "Teleport us back directly."

At this moment, Lily and Nangong Wuyue were fighting for the TV on the sofa, while Vivian was busy cleaning the house. A space gate suddenly opened in the living room, and Hao Ren rushed out of it in a hurry. Lily was startled, and then immediately shouted, "Landlord, you're back? Have you had lunch? There's some noodles left... Eh, this is Bai Huo?! What happened to her?"

"Gun" was even more enthusiastic than Hao Ren: "She was picked up from the trash can just like me! She was also thrown away!"

Lily: "?"