Chapter Fourteen: Let's Have Ramen Tonight

The true form of Tyrlos was a glass sphere.
This deep red orb, about the size of a grown man’s fist, was lashed securely to the pilot’s seat by several sinewy cords. They contracted and relaxed in steady rhythm, evoking in the mind of any psychic the image of a vital organ within the human body.
Embedded in the heart-like sphere was a short arrow; where the arrowhead pierced the surface, fine cracks radiated out, and from the wound, vivid crimson blood seeped.
The young man surmised that perhaps the “shell” of this heart served as a buffer, preventing Tyrlos’s true form from being reduced to rotten flesh like most of his body.
Alice extracted the other two arrows—they had merely struck the seat—and then gripped the one lodged in the heart. “You have nowhere left to run, Tyrlos.”
...
The scarlet orb remained silent. The psychic reminded her, “I think you’ve noticed—he doesn’t have a mouth now.”
“...Of course I know that!”
You clearly hesitated just now.
“Does the experienced hunter have a solution in mind?”
“Well... um... Anyway, just bring some meat over, the minimum amount.”
“Telekinesis does have a certain tactile sensation. Compared to picking it up with my own hands, it’s no less nauseating. Remember to treat me to dinner tonight.”
“You’re a rich kid living in a single room, and you still expect me to treat you? At best, a convenience store bento—no more expensive than that!”
“I’ll have to decline.”
Whenever money was involved, she became utterly uncompromising. If that was a trait of working adults, he’d never seen any other office worker behave so.
Gongsun Ce mentally reviewed all the adults he remembered, from his own parents to the old lady in the neighboring building, from the kingdom’s female knight to Qin Qianbai’s grandfather, Old Qin—none had ever been stingy in front of the younger generation. Even relatives just starting their careers knew to treat everyone with their first paycheck. He concluded it had nothing to do with income and was purely a matter of temperament. This woman was simply too unconventional.
With a wave, the young man floated a lump of ruined flesh into the cockpit. He did his best not to consider which part of the enemy’s body this meat came from. To preserve his appetite for dinner and distract himself, he glanced at his pocket watch.
The time was 6:15.
The battle with Tyrlos had lasted over twenty minutes. The setting sun was already kissing the edge of distant dragon wings. Soon, the last rays would vanish beneath the city’s shadow, ushering in night over the City of the Firmament.
He recalled someone’s advice.
The city was unsafe after dark these days.
He hoped it was just coincidence. With that in mind, Gongsun Ce focused his attention on the lump of dead flesh.
“Speak! Where is your leader?” Alice demanded, gripping the arrow fiercely. “What is the meaning of that dragon-summoning ritual?”
The flesh morphed into a grotesque mouth and mocked them from the cockpit floor. “Didn’t you catch that idiot in the motorcycle suit? Why waste your time here? Take your tools and interrogate him—ah!”
The hunter pressed the arrow deeper, eliciting a shriek from Tyrlos like a pig being slaughtered.
“Enough with that. The green-haired man was already so mutated before reaching the Divine Threshold, he could barely speak. If we extract anything from him, that would be a miracle.”
“Mutated? I could die laughing, you fools…” The hideous mouth rolled across the floor. “You know nothing of the world’s truth!”
The psychic resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
“A classic villain’s speech.”
Alice raised two arrows threateningly. “Speak now or be skewered by both—your choice.”
“Oh, you actually give me a choice? A saint indeed… You shameless corpse! How dare you mention choice?” Tyrlos’s tone rose, rage turning to madness. “This is a damned city of the dead! Everyone knows what happens when you get caught by the lunatics here! Every path leads to death—death and nothing else!”
The glassy red sphere suddenly moved; the psychic instantly sealed the window.
Even so, he hadn’t anticipated that the sphere would not try to escape, but instead hurl itself at the arrow in Alice’s hand.
The arrow of demon-banishment pierced the core of the demonic body. The dragon cultist’s heart burst with a brittle crack, spewing blood and shattering into fragments.
The mouth grinned triumphantly. Though eyeless, he seemed to imagine the look on their faces, basking in satisfaction. “Heh—hahaha! I’ll be waiting in a star-filled hell, waiting for you and this damned city to perish together!”
With his final words, the grotesque mouth reverted to an indistinct mass of flesh and blood, and the orange-haired man fell silent at last.
Tyrlos K was dead.
...
The two stood outside the cockpit, speechless for a time.
Alice picked up the arrow, wiping the blood from it with a cloth.
A few seconds later, the psychic covered his mouth and spoke, “…I’d like something vegetarian tonight.”
Hunter Alice let out a shriek of despair.
“I was just thinking how to comfort you, and you tell me you’re thinking about dinner?!”
...
“Mr. Tyrlos was quite self-aware, declaring he’d go to hell—I can hardly wish him into heaven.”
“Ugh! Even the sewer rats have a better chance at heaven. He’s killed more people than you’ve ever met.”
“Then all I can say is: good riddance.”
The dragon cultist’s hands were soaked in blood; his behavior in battle alone proved he’d taken countless lives.
Even so, the young man felt an indescribable suffocation—if he’d reacted in time, perhaps he could have saved this self-destructive man.
But what meaning is there in saving a villain’s life?
On the other hand, decisively stripping him of his means to commit evil—is that not the wiser choice?
He couldn’t reach a conclusion.
Judging a person’s good or evil, deciding whether their death is justified, is simple from a third-party perspective. But acting without hesitation, convinced of the righteousness of one’s actions—that’s another matter entirely.
Would others do differently? He knew some would resolutely choose to save a life. The dilemma he hesitated over in a split second, the spiral of contradiction in his heart, might not even cross the minds of others.
Such endless cycles yield no answers—just pointless, reasonless contemplation.
This is why he hesitated, why he was slow to react. Even recognizing it, it’s difficult to change. This is a deeply rooted flaw of character.
What is right, what is wrong? What is true, what is false? He placed his hand over his chest, confirming his feelings.
At least, the suffocation upon witnessing a human death was real.
But now he began to doubt whether that feeling had any meaning at all.
...
Gongsun Ce pinched his fingers, forcibly pulling himself from the spiral of thought, turning to face reality.
He’d thought so much, yet barely two seconds had passed in the real world. The psychic led the way toward the dock’s exit; he saw several gray cars parked along the street. The staff of the City of the Firmament would have a tough night ahead.
Gongsun Ce asked the hunter behind him, “Where to next?”
Alice sounded especially dejected.
“No idea, all leads are gone. Now the only hope is to extract something from the green-crested one, but the odds of a severely mutated malignant magus remembering anything important... Probably about the same as the Sword of National Protection dropping from the heavens to recognize me as its master.”
“That sounds like the premise for a popular light novel.”
“What’s a light novel?”
Oh no.
The shock of her question was ten times more intense than the pain of pinching his fingers earlier, snapping Gongsun Ce out of his daze.
This hunter had barely encountered subculture!
It made sense, though—how would a kingdom’s female hunter ever read the literary forms popular among teenagers?
Gongsun Ce had miscalculated. It sounded like an awkward joke, but it perfectly described their current situation. He needed to redirect the conversation before she misunderstood due to her preconceived notions.
Alice tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Now that you mention it, I think a colleague mentioned it before. I recall she described the audience for such books as ‘two—’”
“Light hobbyists in the non-directional element interpretation of the two-dimensional plane. Are you referring to the new concept proposed last month by the university’s Computer Science Institute?”
“Two-dimensional... what? Huh?”
Alice was clearly baffled by his nonsense technical term; the distraction tactic had worked!
The psychic pressed his advantage, launching the next topic. “So, do you have any plans now?”
The blue-haired woman looked miserable. “I plan to check the areas I suspected earlier one by one and hope for luck. For now, after the exhausting battle, let’s eat and rest... I know what you want to ask. Looking for White won’t help; I’ll explain things to you later...”
Gongsun Ce considered, taking out his phone and giving it a shake.
“Since you’re short on leads, let’s try my sources.”
Alice’s eyes widened. “You have sources? Don’t tell me you’re an agent from the Ritual Hall—”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I just want to find someone well-informed.”
“That’s even more suspicious!”
“In my opinion, he’s trustworthy. Relax—he’s neither an official staffer nor a magus like you, just a soon-to-graduate college student.”
That was no lie.
No official background, not part of any secret organization—just a fellow student with a wealth of information. By any measure, an independent informer.
Alice hesitated, uncertainty written on her face. “But I have confidentiality requirements on my end…”
...
“What’s a woman dragging a regular student into this talking about?”
“Shut up! You insisted on coming, remember? Okay, so we won’t share any information about the magus, just look for accomplices. Is that acceptable?”
With only this scrap of information, no basic context, asking an informer to identify an unknown number of infiltrators among five million people would normally be grounds for refusal.
Luckily, the man they were asking was exceptionally patient.
“Sure, sure. Give me a moment…”
He opened his phone, scanning through a mountain of junk messages.
The latest, at the top of the screen, had arrived at 4:32. Its preview revealed a short sentence:
[I’m Yan Qi. Gongsun kid, it’s about time you died once. I’m sending the thing…]
He had seen this message from “Unknown Number” three minutes before encountering the Starborn, and immediately decided to pretend he’d never seen it.
He really didn’t want to deal with someone who wrote like that.
At least, not today.
Unfortunately, things never unfold as planned. Less than two hours later, with his own issues unresolved, the young man had thrown himself headlong into another incident.
He switched to another interface, composing a new message on the social app. “…Wait a bit. I estimate we’ll get a reply by the time we’re done with dinner.”
“What kind of retired secret agent friend do you know?”
“If I really knew a retired secret agent… hmm.”
“Don’t stop, keep going! You don’t actually know one, do you? The Firmament City’s students are starting to seem like a chaotic amalgam to me!”
Isn’t that obvious?
With millions of psychics from all over the world, if there weren’t weirdos, perverts, and people with odd jobs, that would be the real surprise.
Honestly, the psychic sighed inwardly, students as peaceful and unassuming as himself were becoming rarer these days.
Alice pointed at him, “You, an anomaly among anomalies, don’t give me that ‘I’m just a normal guy, what a bother’ look.”
“I’m just a normal guy, what a bother.” Gongsun Ce adjusted his glasses. “Lingering in the docks accomplishes nothing. While we wait for intel, let’s grab dinner—you’re buying.”
The hunter’s rapid change of expression left him in awe.
“Big sis honestly can’t afford your fancy dinners in the Firmament City… Those hidden alley restaurants with daily changing menus and invitations needed just to enter—I’ve never been to one…”
If that level of acting wasn’t pure talent, what was?
How did she manage those tearful puppy eyes—so convincing.
“I don’t know what you misunderstood, but I had lunch today at a chain fast-food place, cheap combo meal.”
Miss Alice puffed out her chest confidently. “Order whatever you want, I’m buying!”
Where did the tears go?
Could she be a Royal Art Academy graduate who couldn’t find work and switched to hunting?
While inventing a tragic university backstory for his companion, the young man recalled the layout of the area. “I don’t want meat tonight. There’s a good ramen shop nearby—do you eat ramen?”
Judging by the smile on her face, it shouldn’t be a problem.
Ten minutes later, Gongsun Ce led Alice to a ramen shop two blocks away.
They entered to the owner’s boisterous greeting and took seats side by side at the wooden counter.
Gongsun Ce handed the menu to his companion and habitually scanned the shop’s environment.
The customer on his right, just finishing her noodles, looked up and met his gaze.
She was a girl in green and yellow, who had just polished off a steaming bowl. Beads of sweat trickled down her forehead.
Was the ramen good, bad, or just average? It was hard to read her opinion from her face, for people always rely on facial expressions to judge others’ attitudes—and an expressionless face gives nothing away.
The girl set down her chopsticks, pulled out her phone, and snapped a photo of the two beside her.
“I’m uploading this to the school forum,” Miss Qin Qianbai said.
“Please don’t!”