Chapter Twenty-Nine: Bloodhound

Inside the courtyard of the Magic Affairs Bureau, several powerful floodlights cast harsh beams onto the ground. The assembled officers stood in five rows, their eyes occasionally darting toward the restless shadows squirming on the pavement.

These shadows resembled a tangled knot of sea snakes, their slender, irregular heads twisting and writhing, baring multiple rows of needle-like teeth within gaping maws. Standing amidst this collection of shadows was the short-haired woman sent by the Magic Affairs Office. Although her identity remained officially undisclosed, the officers present were all seasoned veterans who knew exactly who she was.

Collaborating with a Magical Girl was not a forbidden taboo, but as times had changed, such cooperation had not occurred in many years. Magical Girls who took the initiative to provide intelligence to the Bureau were not only despised by their former comrades but were also never fully trusted by the magic police. For the individuals involved, this choice was often a dark, self-destructive act of vengeance born of desperation.

However, beyond the natural hostility between the two parties, what made the officers even more uncomfortable were the shadows themselves. The way those shadows coiled beneath Lily did not look like anything a "proper" Magical Girl should possess.

Standing a few meters away, Li Xiaohan watched Lily in her transformed state and couldn't help but wonder: Was this perhaps her true form?

Compared to the gothic dress she had worn before, she now looked almost too plain to be a Magical Girl.

This, of course, referred only to her clothing.

Lily’s transformed attire was primarily red, featuring a simple, Western-style school uniform design: a cropped suit jacket paired with a pleated skirt. Like other Magical Girls, she wore a few accessories to make the outfit look more ornate, such as badges and tassels. Even with these, her style was significantly simpler and more mature than the cute, bow-adorned aesthetics of others.

Her hair remained virtually unchanged—a neat, chin-length bob. However, a few shimmering strands of red were woven through it, and her every movement held a soft, weightless quality. She wore a red beret, which added a touch of playfulness to her calm appearance.

As for her face, Lily had been beautiful even before the transformation—the kind of elegant lady who would turn heads in a crowd—but now, she was breathtaking. Like other Magical Girls, her facial features were almost unrecognizable from her original self, so exquisite that she seemed less than human. Or, at least, that was how it appeared.

Only the eye patch over the girl’s right eye remained, and the sharp protrusion beneath it seemed to have grown longer and larger.

*The death scar... can it not be erased even after transformation? Or is she the only one like this?*

The thought flickered through Li Xiaohan’s mind before her gaze shifted back to the shadows at Lily’s feet. Their eerie form was impossible to ignore. They were her "Bloodhounds," and though they looked like the familiars of an evil witch, they were actually pure magical constructs without physical bodies.

Li Bin, the officer in charge of trace analysis, had spent five full days extracting trace magical residue from the bodies of three cockroach-mosquitoes. According to him, even though Xianxinshi appeared to be fighting in close combat the entire time, she had never actually made physical contact with the magical beasts. Since a Magical Girl’s entire being—including her clothing and body—was composed of magic, any contact would have left detectable traces. Yet, every conventional test they tried had yielded nothing.

Only at the very end did the forensics team discover a single strand of hair from Xianxinshi, on the verge of dissipating, on one of the cockroach-mosquitoes. With this remaining fragment, less than 0.1 millimeters long, the Bloodhounds could track targets matching the specific magical signature until the hounds were dispelled or she had her head bitten off.

To allow Lily to gather enough Bloodhounds, the task force had waited until today. Rumors were already circulating outside that the Magic Affairs Bureau was completely helpless against this particular Magical Girl. Li Xiaohan had wanted to remind them that past capture operations typically took over two weeks, but Long Yushu had told her not to respond to any public questioning.

"You are all familiar with the operation plan. Each team will be assigned ten hounds to search along their designated routes," Long Yushu said, leaning on her cane as she addressed the officers. "If any accidents occur, I will execute this woman immediately."

Facing the blatant threat, Lily merely smiled slightly. "Can we begin?"

Long Yushu did not look at her, nodding with a face full of disgust.

Lily lowered her hands, her shadow touching the shadows on the ground, stroking the head of a hound across the void. The nearby hounds crowded around, eager for her touch. With a flick of her finger, they obediently slid across the ground and vanished into the shadows of the officers.

Everyone felt a chill, as if a spider had crawled into their collars, but they endured the discomfort and stood at attention.

"Please act as you normally would. Do not mind the hounds; they will not cause you any harm. When you approach a suspicious location, the Bloodhounds will alert you. At that time, please follow their lead and do not stray too far," Lily said before stepping back behind Long Yushu.

"Follow the Deputy Team Leader’s commands for subsequent actions. Move out."

Following Long Yushu's order, the officers boarded their patrol cars and motorcycles, dispersing into the city shrouded by night.

On the map in the center of the command hall, the real-time positions of each officer were displayed, while the side monitors played footage from their body cameras. Tonight’s operation was not a time-consuming carpet search; the routes had been personally planned by Long Yushu, and they simply needed to execute them.

Li Xiaohan wore a single-ear headset, and there were no special reports on the communication channel yet. She leaned back in her chair, relaxing slightly. It was a relief that Director Long had left after giving the orders; with only Lily accompanying her, the mental pressure was much lower.

Before the operation, they knew there was no guarantee they would lock onto the target tonight; that would require Xianxinshi to be in her transformed state at the same time. Finding a few leads based on the faint magical residue—such as places she had been active—would count as a success.

Even though Lily was also a Magical Girl, Li Xiaohan didn't have a bad impression of her. From what she had seen over the past few days, Lily was genuinely willing to help the Bureau. This attitude seemed unrelated to the blood-red line on her neck. Honestly, Xiaohan often forgot that she bore the mark of the guillotine; Lily was always so intellectual and elegant, not appearing at all like someone being coerced.

Long Yushu, however, held great hostility toward Lily. Even though Lily answered every question and cooperated in every aspect of the operation, Long Yushu looked at her as if she were a mental patient. Xiaohan wanted to ask her superior about the reason, but she lacked the courage.

The other logistics staff were seated a row away. Taking advantage of the moment, Xiaohan couldn't help but turn and ask, "Miss Lily, have you and Director Long known each other for a long time?"

Lily’s left eye curved into a smile, not giving her a chance to hesitate. "Are you wondering why she hates me so much?"

"Ah... yes."

"The Director hates all Magical Girls. It isn't just me," Lily said candidly. "She believes that all Magical Girls will go insane sooner or later, especially the 'Stranded' who retain their magic for life. Hasn't she said it before? The longer we live, the more we deserve to die."

Li Xiaohan was not used to such bluntness. "Then... are you, in fact..."

"Perhaps she is right." Lily took off her beret and played with it, smiling as usual. "Deputy Team Leader, if one day you suddenly could no longer use magic, would you feel lost?"

Xiaohan was stunned, then thought seriously. "Maybe a little. Magic is quite interesting. But it wouldn't be the end of the world. After all, people don't live by magic alone."

"How fortunate. You must be someone who loves life. But you know, for many Magical Girls, magic is almost everything to them."

Xiaohan nodded slowly. She had certainly encountered many such cases. Girls who matured too early in brutal battles and drifted away from friends and family living in peaceful routines; those who refused to face the 24-year age limit and released magic frantically until they lost control as the end approached; those who, after safely retiring, remained obsessed with their past selves and could not reintegrate into society...

"But the Stranded do not lose their magic," she said, looking at Lily with confusion. "You shouldn't collapse because of that. Why does the Director seem to think you are even more dangerous?"

"That question is not appropriate for your level of clearance. In the eyes of the Magic Affairs Bureau, all Magical Girls are dangerous. If you must ask why we are 'more' dangerous..." Lily gave an apologetic smile, "...that is beyond your authority."

Hearing this, Li Xiaohan had to give up. The last time she asked about the process of becoming "Stranded," she had been blocked in the same way and received a stern warning from Long Yushu. The Director’s attitude made it seem as if that information was toxic, and that merely knowing it would corrode the resolve of a magic police officer.

Xiaohan couldn't help but recall what Lily had said before. She referred to them as "people on the shore," a term clearly contrasted with the identity of the "Stranded." And the so-called "sea" seemed to be exactly what Long Yushu and the high-ranking officials of the Bureau feared most.

As for being "stranded"... for a moment, Li Xiaohan felt as if she had suddenly grasped the meaning. A transformed Magical Girl was composed almost entirely of magic and was generally considered a different life form from humans. If a Magical Girl could freely switch between two forms, could it be that the Stranded had encountered a problem with this process?

But Lily’s transformation didn't look much different from other Magical Girls, except for that gesture across her right eye...

She was still wondering if this was another forbidden topic when a voice came through her headset.

"Command, Team 2 has discovered an anomaly!"

Li Xiaohan immediately located them on the map and switched to their corresponding camera feed. "Copy, report your situation."

"The Bloodhounds have left our shadows and are in pursuit. But they are moving too fast."

In the shaky footage, the officer rode his motorcycle off the road and into a wasteland. The hounds clung to the uneven ground, gliding silently under the moonlight without resistance, disappearing from the range of the headlights shortly after catching up.

Lily leaned toward the microphone on the table. "Please continue to follow. I will keep them on a leash."

She reached out and made a grasping motion at the air in front of her. Several shadows appeared in her palm. As she tightened her right hand, the Bloodhounds slowed down, circling the motorcycle excitedly. Led by them, the officers arrived at a depression and saw the shadow-hounds digging frantically into the earth, their fur bristling like spikes.

"Go down and take a look," Lily said.

The hounds received the order and seeped into the ground like water. After a while, they oozed back out and opened their mouths in a howling posture. An officer brought a magic detector to confirm, finding that a magical reaction truly existed.

Li Xiaohan and Lily exchanged a glance. She pressed her headset. "Dig up that spot."

"Understood." One officer looked back. "We didn't bring tools, but there’s a factory nearby. We might be able to borrow a shovel."

Xiaohan thought for a moment and approved.

A short while later, they brought shovels and hoes and began to dig. After digging about 30 centimeters, someone struck something.

"It’s the remains of a Ball-Beast," the officer said, shining his flashlight on the gore. "It hasn't decomposed yet. It must have died just a few days ago."

"Keep digging. Collect as much as you can," Xiaohan ordered. She then sent two nearby teams to join them and dispatched forensics personnel from the Bureau.

"Could Xianxinshi have killed it?" she asked Lily.

"The hounds do not make mistakes."

Xiaohan was puzzled. "But why would she leave the remains behind?"

Magical Girls could recover magic directly from the carcasses of magical beasts; the Bureau’s standard-issue weapons were modeled after this characteristic. The reason why the activities of Magical Girls clearing out magical beasts had been hard to detect in the past was precisely because they would thoroughly clean up the carcasses after the battle. If the cockroach-mosquitoes in the square were left because of a time crunch, leaving remains in the middle of a wasteland didn't make much sense.

"That is exactly Xianxinshi’s quirk," Lily said, the corners of her mouth lifting. "She is a beast even hungrier than the Bloodhounds."

"It seems that after tasting blood last time, she, who has been in hiding for over a decade, just couldn't help herself anymore."