Chapter 73: Hello, Watchdog (Second Update)
At the moment the voice rang out, Illusory Reality activated, and Li Li’s figure swiftly left its original spot, pulling back a great distance.
“Boom!”
The ground collapsed, and houses crumbled with a roar, a scene that had once unfolded in Jiao Huang City now replaying itself.
It was Dan! Li Li instantly recalled this person’s name, along with the deep, unforgettable impression he had left on her.
In the darkness, a “girl” with short, white, wavy hair, heterochromatic gold and blue pupils, wearing a black puff-sleeve dress, emerged from the shadows, clutching a life-sized rabbit plushie.
But his voice was unmistakably the clear, youthful tone of a boy.
“Do not approach this place.” He stood on the still-intact land of District 13, beyond the cracked earth.
Those mismatched pupils watched Li Li as she retreated, and unlike his calm, cold tone, his attacks did not stop after a single strike but grew stronger.
He was expanding the range of his ability!
It wasn’t a warning but a statement of intent, his reason for attacking.
From the moment he struck, he had no intention of merely repelling her—he meant to pursue and kill the intruder in his territory!
As her body moved backward through the air, Li Li maintained her usual air of ease on the surface, but in that instant, her mind couldn’t help but think: he really was like a mad dog whose territory had been invaded.
Or perhaps a dog guarding its food?
Despite the delicate, doll-like face showing no change in emotion, Li Li saw in those heterochromatic eyes a soul roaring with provoked fury.
He was destroying everything—streets, houses, roads—nothing mattered to him.
His eyes were fixed solely on Li Li, as if he wanted to tear into her flesh.
Li Li remembered this person, and the memory was vivid.
Dan, a formidable high-rank ability user she had encountered in Jiao Huang, someone she had clashed with once before.
He was a high-rank concept-type ability user who appeared later in Jiao Huang, known, as Qing Yu Chen had mentioned, for plundering and killing other concept-type ability users, monopolizing this ability type as a powerful hunter.
Though he looked like a delicate, doll-like soft girl, his actions were utterly ruthless.
And Li Li remembered his powerful ability, the overwhelming pressure she had been completely unable to withstand at the time.
But she also recalled that Dan had only unleashed his large-scale killing move after she had provoked his anger.
This time, Li Li had merely stepped one foot into District 13, and he had immediately altered atmospheric pressure.
Though the range wasn’t as vast as it had been in Jiao Huang, his behavior was consistent with how he acted when enraged.
Despite being at a disadvantage, Li Li’s mind became sharper.
Dan’s ability, Error Correction, and Li Li’s ability, Illusory Reality, were both subjective abilities, but Dan’s ability had a greater range and could accomplish more.
He could freely alter pressure, treating physical laws as nothing.
Just how many things could he deem “errors” and then correct?
Could a person’s life also be considered an “error” to him?
Her heart pounded in her chest, the memory of that day when she had been suppressed and gravely injured lingering in her mind.
A high-rank ability user of the same type, a powerful concept-type hunter—she hadn’t expected to encounter him again in Ranmu City.
Would Li Li back down?
Facing this person was irrational, Li Li knew.
But this was Ranmu City, known as the City of Order during the day, where abilities couldn’t be used freely.
And at this moment, there were nine minutes left until five o’clock in the morning.
“Such enthusiasm,” she said. “Good doggy.”
Dan was the most ferocious mad dog she had ever seen, without a doubt.
Li Li’s crimson pupils curved, as if narrowing slightly.
But she quite enjoyed playing at taming dogs.
Immense pressure surged toward her, the ground sinking downward, pebbles flying.
Like the scene that had appeared in Jiao Huang, it was as if the heavens were collapsing and the earth was splitting, destroying the entire city.
The sound, like an earthquake, carried far in the already chaotic night, and dust shrouded half the street.
Ahead of the rapidly advancing cracks in the ground, Li Li, the main target of the destruction, curled her lips.
A sharp wind rushed in all directions, and she raised her hand, her wrist flipping in the air to snap her fingers.
“Snap.”
A wide-ranging illusion unfurled, instantly sweeping across the entire street.
Her figure vanished into the night, and at the same time, a phantom appeared in the air—a black-haired youth stepping on the pebbles stirred up by the pressure, as if the surrounding chaos was separated from her, leaving her leisurely and at ease.
“This isn’t your domain. You can’t stop my steps.”
Li Li was misleading Dan.
When they had met in Jiao Huang, she had used her own face, but now she was using “Heige’s” face.
There was a possibility that Dan didn’t know what her ability was, and another possibility that he did.
So she used the word “domain” to test whether he knew she was the concept-type from Jiao Huang.
At the same time, she wanted to confirm something else—whether the flaw in Dan’s ability was as she had deduced.
“Like now.”
In an instant, her figure vanished, moving at a speed nearly impossible to track with the naked eye, leaping through the dust.
The phantom’s coat hem fluttered with the night breeze, arriving before Dan.
Dan looked up, his heterochromatic pupils meeting her crimson ones.
“Only you are trapped in the domain,” the phantom said in a teasing tone, as if trying to stoke the white-haired boy’s anger further. “Need a leash?”
The more anger clouded his judgment, the less he could control his actions, and the more flaws he would reveal.
“Trapped watchdog?” she said.
The sharp wind lifted both their clothes, and the phantom’s smile deepened.
In an instant, Dan clutched the rabbit plushie in his arms tightly, stepping back, his back slightly hunched as if to protect it.
It was a subconscious reaction.
Then Dan realized and opened his mouth to say, “This space cannot be used by domain-type ability users.”
He deemed it an error that “domain-type ability users could possess their own domain and move freely in this space,” and then corrected that error.
That was Dan’s ability.
A concept-type ability, “Error Correction.”
The moment the ability activated, the correction of atmospheric pressure didn’t vanish; instead, it layered an additional buff targeting domain-type ability users.
It was an ability so powerful it could almost be considered invincible, and he was indeed strong enough—strong enough to monopolize the lives of concept-type ability users.
He didn’t recognize her, Li Li thought.
In the night, a black crow circled in the distance, its crimson pupils peering through the illusion to observe the battle far away.
That was Li Li’s true body, which had long left the main battlefield.
But before Dan, the mere illusionary phantom stood brazenly within the range of an S-rank ability, smiling lightly in front of the high-rank ability user and asking in a low, husky voice, “What are you afraid of?”
Though it was only a fleeting reaction, it was enough for Li Li to discern Dan’s weakness.
This was an opportunity.
In Dan’s slightly widened heterochromatic eyes, the phantom vanished before him.
In an instant, she appeared at his side, her slender fingertips brushing over the rabbit’s dangling long ear, as if seizing his heart.
The phantom turned her face, the smile on her lips both provocative and as if she had already taken full control.
Li Li had figured it out.
Both the weakness of his ability and Dan’s soft spot at this moment.
The phantom’s position shifted without the slightest hindrance, because Dan’s earlier ability use was ineffective against her, a concept-type!
Dan’s ability could only target a single, specific object.
If the object was incorrect, his ability wouldn’t take effect!
It wasn’t a vague, subjective target but an objective, precise one that allowed no margin for error!
That was the limitation of Dan’s ability.
“Afraid of losing this?” Li Li said softly, the phantom’s fingertip lightly tapping the rabbit plushie’s long ear.
A concept-type whose limits were discovered was a far different threat from one whose limits remained hidden.
The ability activated, and the rabbit plushie in Dan’s arms vanished from sight, no longer visible to the naked eye.
At the same time, the phantom appeared in front of him, a rabbit plushie floating in the air at her side.
Dan stared blankly at his empty arms, then looked up.
He seemed to realize what had happened.
The ability Illusory Reality activated successfully, and the rabbit plushie in Dan’s hands appeared in the phantom’s.
Dan’s doll-like face began to change, as if infused with life, becoming anxious, restless, and fearful.
“Give it back…” The white-haired boy reached forward, as if desperate to reclaim his rabbit plushie.
“Give it back!”
Seven minutes remained until five o’clock.
Those heterochromatic pupils reflected the rabbit plushie ahead, trembling as if in fear.
Dan took a step forward, his voice drowning out the cracking earth.
“Those who steal her don’t deserve to live!” he said, his trembling voice rising to a shout.
“Correct the error—make him, make the one holding her now, disappear from this world!”
In the night, the phantom smiled at Dan amid the specks of light, then vanished the next moment, as if offering no resistance under the effect of an S-rank ability.
Dan could directly kill a specified target, a life he deemed an “error.”
The rabbit plushie, without support, fell from the air.
Dan stumbled forward, his round-toed leather shoes scraping against the debris, leaving visible marks.
He reached out, wanting to embrace the rabbit plushie that was so precious to him.
Just as his fingertips were about to touch the soft fabric, just as a look of joy was about to break across his face—
The plushie’s fall stopped.
A hand wearing fingerless gloves grabbed the rabbit’s ear, legs crossed as if sitting in midair.
Then, facing Dan’s shattered expression, she flashed a wicked smile.
The target of Error Correction was wrong; what was corrected was only the phantom, not Li Li, the master of Illusory Reality.
“Good boy, you have to pick up your toy properly,” she said, casually raising her hand.
“Don’t…” Dan murmured.
The rabbit plushie was thrown far away, and in Dan’s widened heterochromatic eyes, it grew more distant, heading toward a direction away from District 13, disappearing into the darkness.
In an instant, Dan hunched his back, running through the debris he had created, reaching out toward where the plushie had fallen.
As if his everything, his entire world, had been stolen.
The black-haired youth who had done this lowered her eyes slightly.
“Good boy,” she said.
In the darkness of the night, beneath that smiling face, her crimson pupils were filled with cold indifference.
Note: Dan is described with a delicate, doll-like appearance resembling a "girl," featuring short, white, wavy hair, heterochromatic gold and blue pupils, and wearing a black puffed-sleeve dress while holding a life-sized rabbit plushie. However, his voice is explicitly described as a clear, youthful male tone. So Dan can be male or female (do not confuse with gender changes).