Just like Lu Yunzhi said, the Nightwatchers really were like Hunters walking through the dark. It might sound a little cringey, a little chuuni, but it was true.

Jiang Qianyu had always wondered how these Nightwatchers dealt with those monsters.

Now she knew.

The Nightwatchers weren't some organization you could join just because you wanted to. You had to be different from ordinary people, either in body, soul, or mental strength. That was the most basic requirement.

It made perfect sense. Without those basic conditions, facing those monsters would be no different from an unarmed mortal walking to their death.

Whether it was for self-protection or actually hurting monsters, you had to light up at least one corner of the golden triangle.

"Xiaoyu, I'm really, really scared the corruption will happen to me too." Lu Yunzhi gave a bitter smile. She turned her head to look out the window, her eyes slightly unfocused. "I've seen too many cases like that. A normal person suddenly turns into a monster that only knows how to repeat killing and death."

"The moment corruption begins, everything in life stops meaning anything."

"Family, friendship, love... all of it gets forgotten. All that's left is eating. Eating souls. God..."

"And then getting killed."

"It's an irreversible process. It's like an abyss. Once you step in, it'll drag you down little by little."

"Do you know what I was thinking when I killed that man?"

"I was thinking he deserved it. That he deserved to die."

"I was also thinking, wow, I'm such a heroine. So cool, so dashing. One stab, straight through his heart. I avenged that poor father and that little girl."

"And then guess what happened to me."

As she spoke, Lu Yunzhi suddenly turned to look at Jiang Qianyu's face. She pointed at her own mouth, at those soft pink lips. "I felt it. A sense of relief and pleasure I'd never felt before."

"Something went into my mouth. It slid past my teeth and tongue, then down my throat. It smelled so good. So, so good."

"I was even savoring it at the time, wondering what it was that could be this tempting."

"And only afterward did I slowly realize... I think I ate a piece of that man's soul. A very small piece."

As she said that, Lu Yunzhi's pupils were trembling. Her hands clenched the hem of her clothes so hard her knuckles nearly whitened, and her breathing turned heavy.

"So every time I saw that man's family go to the police station afterward, demanding justice, I'd remember that feeling."

"My teammates, my coworkers, my friends... they all deliberately distanced themselves from me because of this."

"I guess this is probably my punishment."

The moment she finished speaking, she suddenly felt a warm palm rest against her cheek. Lu Yunzhi's body trembled. She turned her head and realized it was Jiang Qianyu's hand.

She didn't even know when she'd lowered her head.

Jiang Qianyu was stroking her face now, gentle but firm. She lifted her head back up and made her meet her eyes.

"Are you afraid you'll grow addicted to that feeling of judgment?" Jiang Qianyu asked softly. "Or are you afraid you won't be able to live without the feeling of eating souls?"

"If you ask me, what's even scarier than that is your inner demon."

"If you look closely, you'll realize a lot of Hunters who end up corrupted do so because their minds fall out of balance. Why does that happen? Because they think too much. And when they're lost, no one is there to tell them what to do."

"Which works out perfectly, doesn't it? Starting tonight, we're officially partners."

"If this kind of problem comes up again, I'll help you."

"I think that's also something I should do as your wife."

"Teammates and all that are outsiders. They're afraid of you, so they stay away. Most of the time, they're just thinking about their own interests. And more than that, they're just following the crowd. I don't believe killing one person is enough to make a Hunter who's worked for years become corrupted."

Puchi!

A sharp blade formed from Soul Threads stabbed viciously into the man's chest. A huge amount of soul power surged into Jiang Qianyu's body.

With that fatal strike, the last tenant also collapsed to the floor.

At that moment, the room was filled with crooked, scattered "corpses," twenty-three of them in total.

And Jiang Qianyu's vampire puppet stood right in the middle of those tenants, her eyes half-narrowed.

Thousands upon thousands of Soul Threads connected her body to every tenant on the ground. Great streams of souls flowed through those threads into her body, filling the stomach that had been hungry for far, far too long.

The sense of pleasure Lu Yunzhi had described was something she knew all too well. That really was what it felt like to eat a soul.

What she hadn't expected was that the Nightwatchers strengthened themselves the same way.

Though judging from how they framed it, they probably absorbed scraps while killing monsters. Human souls worked too, of course, but they were afraid of so-called corruption.

Jiang Qianyu stepped outside and stood on the fourth floor, looking down at the black vehicle parked in the courtyard below.

If those people hadn't shown up, she really wouldn't have known Lu Yunzhi's status within the Nightwatchers was this miserable.

Someone had even deliberately arrived at the mission site ahead of time just to trip her up.

As for how Jiang Qianyu knew that, that had to start with what happened after she dealt with the woman in white behind all the tenants.

After killing that woman in white, it was just like the burned room from last night. She had a vague feeling that she could use her own soul to control the entire scene.

Absorb the tenants' souls, then use those souls to control the scene.

The moment she finished doing all that, she sensed this car had stopped downstairs.

One of the people inside said this:

"The souls of a whole building. That's enough to make even a Class A Hunter corrupt. And she's only a Class B Hunter. Heh."

Inside the record store, Lu Yunzhi stared blankly at Jiang Qianyu's face, her lips slightly parted, not knowing what to say.

She knew very well that everything she'd just said was really just her venting what had been buried in her heart. Those words had been bottled up for too long. She couldn't hold them in anymore.

She shouldn't have told Jiang Qianyu any of this. No matter what, Jiang Qianyu was still an ordinary person.

But aside from Jiang Qianyu, there was no second person she could say these things to.

No, to be exact, Jiang Qianyu wasn't suitable either.

Her own personality was already childish enough, nowhere near mature.

And Jiang Qianyu usually acted even less mature than she did!

A girl who hadn't grown up yet, running to another girl who hadn't grown up yet to cry her heart out?

"Ah, no, Xiaoyu, I..." Lu Yunzhi's mind was a mess. Why did it feel like everything today had gone completely off script? "Sorry, I shouldn't have said all that..."

"You don't need to apologize. It's fine to say these things." Jiang Qianyu reached out and tucked a strand of Lu Yunzhi's long black-and-blue hair behind her ear. "After all, you only have me now, don't you?"

She bit down especially hard on the words "only me."

Lu Yunzhi didn't know why Jiang Qianyu reacted like that.

She just felt like Jiang Qianyu seemed... really angry.