Chapter Three: The Star People Descend from the Sky

“Ku-ku… puh-puh… ka-ka-ka-ka-puh-ah!”

The date was February 13th, the time four thirty-five, the place the entrance of Building 7, Apartment 183, in the Thorn District.

If one wished to be even more precise, the time could be narrowed down to the very second or microsecond, the location could be measured to the exact meter and centimeter from the door—Gongsun Ce himself preferred to count by “which brick”—but such details were ultimately trivial. Any child who wrote like this would have been scolded by their elementary school teacher with words like, “Don’t pad your essays with useless details; what matters is what happens.”

The teacher was absolutely right.

The young man silently agreed. Spending paragraphs describing a withered branch, for instance, meant one feared the story to come, unable to grasp what would unfold next, and so tried desperately to delay the moment of reckoning, like a student forced to give a speech without having prepared, rambling on in hopes of filling the allotted time.

But then, why, with such thoughts, was the young man counting bricks in his mind?

The answer was, in truth, to procrastinate—to delay having to think, so that even though his feet stood motionless, his mind could take flight and escape reality’s absurdity through the most nonsensical means.

“Ka-ka-ka-ka-puh-ku-ka-ka!”

The bizarre creature at the apartment entrance shrieked again, spewing a mouthful of blood.

Where the blood splattered, the ground turned ghostly white. The young man tried to touch that brick with his ability, with less force than a middle school girl poking her own cheek to look cute.

With a crash, the brick shattered into fragments.

“Ka-puh-ka-ku-ku…” The strange lifeform cried out once more.

Gongsun Ce adjusted his glasses, stepping back two paces, wary that it—or he, or she—might spit more of that terrifying blood.

He rather liked these clothes; it would be a hassle if they got stained.

Calm down, calm down. Even to avoid getting splashed with some bizarre liquid, he needed to keep his composure and decide what to do next.

What came to mind was his elementary school teacher’s advice. That kind, if slightly neurotic, middle-aged woman probably wouldn’t know how to handle a situation like this either. He figured he needed higher-level guidance—perhaps from his junior high teacher. What had that young woman, newly wed at the time, always said?

Ah yes: “If you can’t master advanced narrative techniques, just write your essay in chronological order. The teacher will appreciate your sincerity.”

She’d never graded him particularly high; sometimes she’d even use his work as a negative example. Still, the young man felt grateful to her now.

Right, chronological order. Five minutes ago, he’d parted ways with Qin Qianbai, watching her walk toward Baiyu Station not far from here. Three minutes ago, he’d received a text from someone and decided, at least for today, to pretend nothing had happened. One minute ago, he arrived at the apartment entrance—

And then, a grotesque creature had plummeted from the sky, landing right in front of him, shrieking “Ku-ku… puh-puh… ka-ka-ka-ka-puh-ah!” as it vomited blood.

He described it as a “creature” because Gongsun Ce couldn’t be certain whether the unlucky being who’d fallen from such a height was even human.

A green cockscomb for hair could perhaps be chalked up to unique taste; a leather jacket studded with thick nails might be a trophy from wild motorcycle races. But hands ending in only three sharp claws, blood-red eyes, a protruding mouth lined with fangs dripping saliva and blood—it was hard to call anything about this “human.”

“Hm…”

The young man noticed two pitch-black arrows embedded in the wild cockscomb’s ankles.

The arrows were short, iron-colored with a wood-like sheen, deeply piercing through both ankles and nailing the biker to the cement at the apartment entrance. He guessed this was at least partly why the creature had fallen.

Even in a city like the Celestial Capital, let alone anywhere else, such monsters and weapons were not meant to appear.

If all the espers here made an effort to hide their oddities beneath a placid surface, this scene was like the denizens of the underworld striding brazenly onto the public stage.

Grotesque, bizarre, utterly out of place.

A rupture from the everyday.

Any normal person—or really, anyone with any sense—should have fled and called for an ambulance or the police.

Yet, moved by basic humanitarian instinct, Gongsun Ce decided to ask if the poor thing needed help.

He approached the creature, stopping at the distance where Miss Annin—the city’s favorite self-defense alarm among young women, also known as the Social Death Engine—would begin to shriek hysterically.

“Hello, Ka-puh-ka-ku-ite. I don’t know if you ended up like this from a power gone berserk or if you escaped some secret lab, but I’ll ask anyway: do you need me to call an ambulance or a private doctor?”

The creature, for now dubbed the Ka-puh-ka-ku-ite, struggled to turn its head. “Ku… ka-ka-ka-ku…”

“Sorry, I don’t speak Ka-ka-ka-ku. Please use Imperial, or the common tongues from the Federation or the Kingdom.”

“Ku-ku-ka…!”

Whether it felt offended or was simply writhing in pain, the wild cockscomb’s nose—the only part of its face still somewhat human—twitched.

It propped itself up with its claws, wavering as it collapsed to the ground, saliva and blood dripping from its mouth, corroding the bricks around it.

It spat out a thick, muddled, unpleasant phrase: “Esper… you… are?”

Gongsun Ce caught it—it was the common language used most in the Kingdom and Federation.

Was this hunter actually a foreigner?

“Of course I am. Don’t forget, this is the Celestial Capital. Every student here is an esper.”

The hunter’s nostrils flared, sniffing the air as if trying to catch his scent. Its eyes bulged wider, its mouth curling up in a grin.

“Good… good…”

“So, you don’t need help? Kindly step aside, I’m leaving.”

“No… no… come here…”

The words themselves were normal, but the tone was unsettling.

Would someone in need speak like this?

“I need you… come on… now…”

Would a human, weak and pleading for help, ever speak in such a greedy, venomous, impatient, violence-laden tone?

The young man narrowed his eyes.

The green-crested creature raised a clawed hand. “Give me your heart!”

As the malicious declaration rang out, the inhuman form lunged, thrusting its hand forward.

All the earlier weakness seemed to have been feigned; its movements now were blindingly swift, betraying no hint of injury.

Even with both feet nailed to the ground, less than two meters was plenty for an attack. The hunter drove its claw for the young man’s chest and sprayed a mouthful of venomous blood at his head. It didn’t need his brain or limbs—just his heart. With that, it could escape its predicament!

“I refuse.”

The hunter’s eyes widened in shock.

Its right claw, just extended, was halted mid-air by an invisible force. The razor-sharp tips shattered against the barrier, the sensation as if it had just struck a wall of iron. The venomous blood fanned out in the air, droplets falling, revealing the young man’s face behind the unseen shield.

“Ka-ka…!”

Gongsun Ce clenched his fist.

At that instant, the green-cockscomb’s abdomen caved in deeply.

Though the young man had not moved, the dull thud of a blunt strike on flesh was clear even from several meters away.

“I’m not so kind as to offer my heart to a total stranger,” he said, watching as the green-cockscomb shrieked and soared skyward, reaching a height of three or four stories. “Wherever you’re from, alien, I’ll have to report this to the school.”

With a wave of his hand, the Ka-ka-ka-ite was slammed into the ground at high speed, leaving a crater at the apartment entrance.

The force of the blow tore both short arrows from its ankles—their middles smeared with some sticky, flesh-colored substance that the youth did not care to examine.

The grotesque creature’s eyes rolled back, limbs twitching. It must have lost all ability to fight.

Gongsun Ce scrolled through his phone contacts, debating which department to inform. If the uninformed teachers dispatched ordinary, well-meaning security officers to handle an “altercation between students,” it could end badly…

From the moment the creature attacked, he’d realized—it was a beast that cared nothing for human life.

That was a gaze that regarded “murder” as commonplace, reeking of blood, leaving no reason not to retaliate.

Then, a ragged gasp sounded beside him.

The green-cockscomb moved its mouth, still muttering, “That strength… not… an Esper…”

Gongsun Ce paused, hands still.

“I don’t know what you’ve misunderstood. You don’t really think espers are just kids who can bend spoons, do you? If that were true, no one in this city would have such headaches daily.”

But his words didn’t reach the creature, which went on muttering to itself. “Different from my Impermanence Art… not… Void… It’s a Desolation Aspect… Desolation…”

The young man frowned, slipping his phone back in his pocket.

“What are you saying?”

“Ka-ka-ka… I think… I understand… Desolation Aspect… Desolation Aspect…!”

Sudden, urgent alarm flared in the youth’s heart. The creature, which should have lost all fighting ability, was now writhing, its voice growing louder.

Stepping back, Gongsun Ce erected a barrier before him and saw the bizarre being open its mouth to the widest extent—

“Ohohohoh, oh-oh-oh-oh! Surpass all barriers, devour luscious blood!”

It howled frantically, an unmistakable, almost joyous excitement in its tone. Then—a crimson lightning bolt shot from its mouth!

“Desolation Aspect: Spirit-Piercing! Sky-Serpent!!”

From that gaping maw burst a blood-red snake.

The snake had no eyes, no markings, its mouth lined with carnivore’s fangs, its tongue eerily human. It rammed the invisible barrier—and passed through as if through air!

“!”

Realizing his defense was useless, Gongsun Ce instantly shifted his tactics.

He levitated shards of shattered brick, hurling them as weapons.

Empowered by his ability, the stone fragments flew as fast as bullets—hitting the snake should have been no problem.

Or so he thought, until, in the next instant, he was astonished.

The bizarre snake made no attempt to dodge, charging straight ahead, letting the shards strike its head and body.

He saw, with his own eyes, the fragments reach the red serpent—

But, impossibly, there were no wounds, no impediment, not even the slightest compression of its skin—the stones passed right through the snake’s body!

“Ka-ka-ka… puh-ku-ku-ka!”

Amid the hunter’s wild laughter, the red serpent sped onward—now only inches from Gongsun Ce’s face…