Before the remaining four Hunters reached the rooftop, Jiang Qianyu had already set the field.

She used a huge number of Soul Threads to almost seal off the entire rooftop. With a single thought, she could activate them all.

And unless she chose to trigger them herself, they were very hard to notice.

On top of that, it was night. Visibility was poor. By the time they realized something was wrong, it would already be too late.

The tangled Soul Threads crisscrossed everywhere, dense as a web. Even a simple movement could leave someone tightly bound.

These threads couldn't harm the body, but the damage they dealt to the soul was enormous.

It was basically like true critical damage in a game.

If the human soul were a giant slab of jelly, then these Soul Threads were fishing line—tough and deadly. They didn't need much force to slice that "jelly" clean apart.

Once a soul was cut open, she would devour the severed part directly. For the person who lost it, that wound could never heal on its own. Unless, of course, they were willing to eat someone else's soul to patch themselves back together.

Obviously, the four Hunters present knew that too. They did their best not to touch those black, half-transparent threads. But when they glanced behind them and saw that dense maze of lines, saying they felt no despair would be a lie.

They were trapped.

There was no way forward, and a BOSS was standing right there.

As for retreating, unless they could move like gymnasts, just avoiding those threads would take a huge amount of time.

The problem was, the little girl in front of them wasn't a statue. She wasn't going to just watch them leave and do nothing.

The only female Hunter in the team finally broke down and burst into tears.

Back on the fourth floor, she had already been on the verge of collapse.

So many people had died. The corpses had nearly piled into a mountain. The whole room had been filled with nauseating blood.

And in her ears were those chaotic sounds—wailing, begging, cursing...

In the end, all those messy voices slowly vanished because of them.

Those had been living, breathing people. Not mutated monsters.

She alone had killed nearly ten of them.

And now, it was her turn.

In Li Dandan's eyes, the tiny, adorable girl standing ahead was a demon wearing the sweet skin of a human face.

The two men beside Li Dandan were already stretched to the limit. Her crying nearly made them curse out loud. One of them supported her, while the other still gripped a short blade. But his eyes were full of helplessness. The knife in his hand gave him no sense of safety at all.

Their weapons had all been specially treated. They were effective against strange entities and horrors.

In past missions, as long as they still had their weapons in hand, they had confidence.

If they were careful enough, keeping themselves safe had at least been possible.

Teammates helped each other. How dangerous could a Class B Hunter mission really be?

On the way here tonight, they hadn't taken this mission that seriously. What they thought about more was Lu Yunzhi, not the mission itself.

Now, looking at the little girl in the gothic dress, barely over 1.4 meters tall, they regretted it to the core.

This thing was a monster.

Those dead tenants had all been under her control.

She had deliberately sent those tenants on suicidal attacks, forcing them to kill the tenants with their own hands.

Dozens of lives. And she had smiled through it all, as if she were watching something genuinely hilarious.

Jiang Qianyu had no idea that, in the minds of these Hunters, her image had already collapsed into that of a demon. She raised her left hand into the air and lightly lifted a finger.

At once, whole swaths of Soul Threads snapped taut.

The Hunters panicked and hurriedly tried to cut the threads with their weapons.

Their specially treated weapons really could sever the Soul Threads. The problem was that the threads had astonishing regenerative power. Once cut, they drifted in the night wind, then fused with other threads again, forming another tangled "three-dimensional fishing net."

"You, the big guy in the trench coat. How about we make a deal?"

A sweet smile appeared on the doll-like face. Even the curve of her lips was perfectly lovely.

"You already understand, don't you? If this keeps going, you'll all die. You don't have many choices. One wrong thought, and you'll die for it."

Jiang Qianyu took a few steps forward, ignoring the vicious look in the Hunter captain's eyes.

"So you're thinking about it right now. Should you abandon these three teammates who are basically out of combat power, or keep working with them against me?"

"As the captain, no matter how you look at it, you should choose the latter."

"However, you're afraid. You don't know my true strength, and you don't dare bet on whether I still have more hidden cards. Because you can't afford to lose that bet. You're afraid of dying."

"You're afraid your other souls will end up like your right hand, cut apart bit by bit by me, then eaten."

"After all, wounds on the body can heal with time. Wounds on the soul can only be repaired by eating someone else's soul."

As she spoke, Jiang Qianyu had already walked right up to the Hunter captain. There were at most two meters between them.

Very close.

So close that Jiang Qianyu had to tilt her head up with her tiny frame just to meet the tall captain's gaze.

The captain stared fixedly into those dark red vertical pupils. One hand clutched the arm that had gone completely numb. His teeth were clenched tight.

"Who the hell are you?!"

The strange horrors in an ordinary Class B Hunter mission wouldn't have intelligence this high.

Their minds were usually muddled. Most of them just followed instinct and killed.

"Don't interrupt me. I'm not done yet." Jiang Qianyu raised a hand and removed the Soul Threads blocking the space between the three Hunters and their captain. "So here's the deal. You kill them, and I'll let you leave. How about it? Pretty fair, right?"

"The three of them are already close to their limit, aren't they? If you take them with you, can you really escape?"

"Or you could try using that knife in your hand to kill me. That might cost you quite a lot."

"I suggest you think it over carefully. I can give you half a minute." As she spoke, Jiang Qianyu rubbed her stomach. "Anyway, all I want is a good meal. You, or the three behind you, either way, it's just enough to fill me up."

"Once you make your choice, it'll save everyone trouble, won't it?"

Jiang Qianyu felt like some big villain in an anime. The kind who gains the upper hand, then refuses to finish the enemy off in one move. Instead, they stand there talking at the heroes, only to get taken down by some last-second power-up fueled by bonds and belief.

Of course, that only worked in fiction.

If you asked Jiang Qianyu, she didn't believe family or friendship could create power.

She only believed the human heart was complicated.

For example, right now, after she said all that, the Hunter actually took a few steps back.