Chapter 360 Running Around

"You two running around... it's not just for sightseeing, is it?" Vivian looked at the Nangong siblings, her eyes full of inquiry.

Nangong Sanba exchanged a glance with his younger sister and could only nod in agreement: "Indeed, under normal circumstances, the smartest thing for people like us to do is find a place to live in seclusion, but my sister ran out... I had no choice but to follow."

"I want to find my mother's whereabouts," Nangong Wuyue said directly, "She should still be on this planet."

Vivian suddenly remembered this, "I forgot if you didn't mention it! You said your parents were no longer in the world, not to mention demon hunters, the siren race can't really die, what's going on?"

Vivian's question also made Hao Ren react. He hadn't thought much when he heard "Sirens are immortal" before, and as a result, he had been ignoring the fact that Nangong Wuyue had mentioned her mother had passed away. Now that he thought about it, he realized something was wrong!

Nangong Wuyue slowly recounted another past event: "When I was sixteen, something happened at home—a Nu Ling (Wrath Spirit) appeared where we were living in seclusion. Father told my brother and me to escape. He said he and Mother could deal with the monster, but when my brother and I returned the next day, we found that the entire house had disappeared without a trace, and our parents were gone too..."

Vivian was astonished: "A Nu Ling? Are there still Nu Ling running around these days?"

"What the heck is a Nu Ling?" Hao Ren asked curiously.

"A deformed... hard-to-describe negative monster," Vivian frowned, "It's said to be a wraith from another dimension, and some say it's a projection of worldly negative emotions in another world that was pulled into this world. They look like a mass of amorphous clouds and can change between the real and the unreal. They have no logic or reason, cannot be communicated with, and will attack anything that is alive. Nu Ling not only have no fixed form, but their combat power also varies greatly. Some can be dealt with by ordinary people using paper talismans and such, while others require teams of demon hunters to deal with. Because the difference between them is so great, some people think that Nu Ling are not even a race but a natural phenomenon. In ancient times, Nu Ling were very common. At that time, some powerful异类 (yilei, heterogenous beings) liked to build dangerous energy devices, and these devices easily attracted Nu Ling, but since the steam age, I have rarely seen those things... They seem to only be able to generate in open, sparsely populated places, and when they generate, there must be a 'bait' formed by supernatural power nearby. Now it's hard to find an environment that meets these conditions."

Hao Ren nodded, and Nangong Wuyue continued: "I still remember what I saw that day. The whole house disappeared as if out of thin air, leaving only a neat pit in its place, as if the Nu Ling had blown up the entire area. Father probably didn't survive, but Mother is a siren, she should have been resurrected somewhere, but my brother and I waited in place for three years, and Mother didn't come back... Then I ran away from home and started looking for my mother's whereabouts, and my brother has been chasing me around ever since..."

Nangong Sanba chuckled: "I'm afraid something will happen to her."

"Then you can't keep causing me trouble!" Nangong Wuyue punched Nangong Sanba in the back. "It's because you're so neurotic that I don't want to go with you!"

Everyone was immediately curious about the siblings' way of getting along. Nangong Wuyue pointed to the few rune paper scraps on the table that hadn't been cleaned up and explained angrily: "See this? Once he finds my whereabouts, he'll put these things everywhere, and then either there's a fire or an explosion near where I live, anyway, there's constant trouble. Once I was renting a house outside, and the small church next door was struck by lightning forty times in one night because he buried a lightning talisman card near the church's lightning rod grounding wire!"

"I'm just protecting you," Nangong Sanba muttered in defense, "Dad used to tell us all the time when he was still around that the outside world is very dangerous. I at least know how to fight, but you haven't even learned how to fight. What if you're targeted by bad guys?"

As he spoke, Nangong Sanba smiled and explained to Hao Ren and the others: "There's another benefit to burying these talisman cards, and that is that if patrolling demon hunters pass by, they will actively ignore this area, because these talisman cards indicate that there is already a demon hunter in the area responsible for guarding it. The talisman cards I use all have meanings, and the meaning they express is 'Someone is responsible for this area, there is sufficient combat power, no support is needed.'"

"Who said I can't fight!" Nangong Wuyue put her hands on her hips aggressively. "Do you believe you can't even beat me? I just can't bear to fight people, and you don't know how many abilities sirens have."

"Isn't this the same? You can't bring yourself to do it, so I'll do it for you. You just need to run around in peace, and I'll be responsible for guarding."

"Can your method of guarding be more normal? And at least come out and meet me and say something before you go crazy! You're always stalking me like a stalker, secretly setting traps behind me. I'm afraid I'll turn around and fall into a pit you dug."

"My identity is special, more conspicuous than you..." Nangong Sanba dodged his sister's thunderous rage while explaining, "I need to collect special materials everywhere to make medicine talisman cards, and it's easy to run into other demon hunters because of this. It's easy to fool them if it's just me, but if you happen to be nearby, it's easy for something to happen. It's safer for us to act separately."

Listening to the siblings' argument, Hao Ren finally straightened out the whole story. In fact, everything was very simple:

More than a hundred years ago, a siren and a demon hunter had a legendary romance. Because they had no place in either the异类 (yilei, heterogenous beings) or demon hunter communities, they lived in seclusion and soon gave birth to the Nangong siblings. Later, this family suddenly suffered an unexpected disaster. The two children survived, but the Nangong siblings' parents disappeared after the battle. Nangong Wuyue firmly believed that her mother, as a siren, must have been resurrected somewhere, so after waiting in vain at home, she ran out to look for her relatives, and Nangong Sanba probably didn't agree with this at first, but he couldn't resist his sister's temper, so he could only acquiesce, and then he followed.

Nangong Sanba's identity as a demon hunter meant that he would occasionally run into other demon hunters, or at least occasionally be noticed by other demon hunters, so in order to prevent danger to his sister, and because he was worried about the latter, he had to use his own method to protect Nangong Wuyue—now it seems that the method he took cannot be said to be stupid, only... a little neurotic.

"Alright, you two can argue another time if you have the chance," Vivian saw that the Nangong siblings had no intention of stopping for a while, so she had to speak up, "I'll just ask, you haven't found your mother's whereabouts after all these years?"

"I've searched all over the world, even including the North and South Poles," Nangong Wuyue sighed, "I've gone to any place with water. Now, apart from the deep sea, there's no place left. To be honest, I've kind of given up."

Hao Ren thought for a while and suddenly understood: "So, you're staying with me because you want a chance to ask us for help?"

"There's a bit of that reason, and another reason is that running around everywhere and having to avoid the sight of demon hunters is really exhausting, both physically and mentally. I want to find a place to settle down and rest," Nangong Wuyue nodded embarrassedly, "Actually, I've always wanted to tell you this, but... alas, my family background is really a bit awkward. Sister Vivian seems to have a deep grudge against demon hunters."

"How can I not have a deep grudge," Vivian snorted, "Back then, I risked my life to save up some money and finally built a small house upstream of the Rhine, but after living there for only two months, it was burned down by them in one fell swoop. From that day on, I decided that I would never stand with demon hunters in this lifetime!"

Nangong Sanba's expression froze.

"Of course, your brother is an exception," Vivian glanced at Nangong Sanba, "I don't even consider him a demon hunter."

Nangong Sanba muttered in a low voice: "Actually, I am... of course, it's better not to be now."

"Why haven't you gone to the deep sea to take a look?" Hao Ren asked Nangong Wuyue, "You've searched all over the world, why haven't you been to the deep sea? I think if your mother is still alive, the greatest possibility is that she went back home."

"This is also the most regrettable thing—in fact, I can't go to the deep sea on Earth," Nangong Wuyue frowned in confusion, "Actually, I've tried several times, diving towards the legendary siren cities at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, but I'm always inexplicably sent to other places. I lose my sense of direction while swimming. At first, I thought my sense of direction really had a problem, but a few days ago, after going to an alien planet with you, I realized that the problem shouldn't be with me, but with the ocean of this planet itself. Some places... seem to be forbidden."

There is some kind of restriction in the deep sea?!