The Grand Deception

Lingling arrived shortly after. Using her status as a Hunter Master, she had the police seal off the area and kept everything quiet.

Mo Fan had already spoken with the school authorities. The academy made clear they couldn't do much to help — not unless Mo Fan actually managed to track down the Vampire.

But just after Mo Fan and Zhao Manyan left the grove where the incident had taken place, a tall, well-built man in a black overcoat stood in the distance watching everything unfold, a cold sneer on his lips.

"You see that? You're utterly insignificant. Those high-and-mighty Mages could never spare a single tear for someone as lowly as you. They handed everything off to the police — they don't even dare notify the Hunters' Alliance. That's because they're afraid word will get out that they failed to protect you, tarnishing their precious hunter reputations." The man in the overcoat spoke in a voice that shifted between slow and rapid, almost hypnotic in its cadence.

His coat was wide, and tucked beneath it was a slender young woman. Her mouth was covered, and her body had been rendered completely immobile by some strange fragrance.

Her eyes were wide open. She had witnessed it — Mo Fan and Zhao Manyan standing over what they believed to be her corpse — but she refused to give a single grain of credit to this Vampire's poisonous words.

She was furious beyond measure.

Mo Fan and Zhao Manyan had seen what they thought was her dead body lying in that grove. There had unmistakably been a corpse there...

But she wasn't dead. She was right here, being held captive by this vile Vampire!

So what had Mo Fan and Zhao Manyan actually seen?

*Her sister.*

This Vampire had stolen her sister Liu Xian's corpse — and had kept it perfectly preserved for nearly three months. God only knew what he had been keeping it for all this time.

Even worse, he had used her sister's corpse to fool Mo Fan and Zhao Manyan.

Mo Fan and Zhao Manyan owed her nothing, yet they had thrown themselves into protecting her with everything they had. Thinking of the expressions on their faces when they saw what they believed to be her body, Liu Ru wanted nothing more than to tear this Vampire apart with her bare hands...

"Don't hold your breath. They'll forget you completely before long — and soon enough, you'll understand just how much I care for you." Nie Dong let out a strange, unsettling laugh.

The sound of it was more grating to Liu Ru than anything she had ever heard, but there was nothing she could do. Her own strength was pitifully weak. All she could do was stand there, helpless, watching everything unfold around her.

"Doesn't it feel like a relief? These past days must have been so unsettling for you — always thinking of me, I imagine. Now that you're in my grasp, I'd wager there's a certain sense of freedom in it, wouldn't you say?" Nie Dong continued toying with her.

Liu Ru's eyes brimmed with tears, but she held on to her defiance: "You think far too highly of yourself. You're nothing but an ugly, filthy specter that won't stop haunting me — I never once took you seriously."

"And now? Ha ha ha ha! No one gets to dismiss me. But that's perfectly fine — we have all the time in the world to get acquainted... Oh, and don't go counting on death as an escape. For the Blood Clan, death is merely another kind of rebirth." Nie Dong broke into wild laughter.

Liu Ru fell silent. His words triggered something from her reading — books had recorded that Vampires possessed the power to transform humans into members of their own kind.

*He wants to turn me into one of them.*

"Human lives are ultimately too brief. The patience of the Blood Clan comes from the fact that our lifespans rival the heavens and the earth themselves. The hatred you feel for me right now — I don't mind it in the slightest. After we've spent years together, decades, even centuries, you'll look back on all this animosity and see it for what it truly was: a petty little quarrel." Nie Dong continued.

Liu Ru was stubborn to her core, with a rare kind of courage — as though losing her sister had dealt her a blow so profound it had driven out fear entirely.

She was immovable now. But if she were transformed into the very race she despised most, every last one of those inner defenses would collapse in an instant.

The Blood Clan needed blood. Turn her first — then unleash her on those two Mages as prey. The looks on their faces would be absolutely priceless.

Those who chose to stand against the Blood Clan almost always ended up shattered from within.

Back at the apartment, Zhao Manyan gave Mo Fan a full and detailed account of everything that had happened.

Zhao Manyan knew what Vampires were capable of, so he had maintained his usual protective measures around Liu Ru — even accompanying her to class.

What he hadn't anticipated was that there were two of them. One had drawn him away as a diversion, and the other had slipped in and snatched Liu Ru the instant his attention wavered.

Zhao Manyan had put a backup measure in place — one of his retainers was stationed outside the school, which meant getting Liu Ru off campus should have been nearly impossible. His retainer was no ordinary person...

What he hadn't counted on was that the Vampire had drained Liu Ru right there in the grove. The whole thing took only a matter of minutes. Using the tracker Lingling had placed on Liu Ru, Zhao Manyan had locked onto her position quickly — but when he arrived, all that waited for him was a cold, still corpse.

"Only a few minutes?" Mo Fan asked, his expression grave.

"Yeah. The moment I saw her, I called you right away," Zhao Manyan said.

"Two Vampires..."

He had read about this. Vampires who lurked among humans typically operated in what could be called a family — not bound by blood, but by creation. A powerful elder would claim a section of the city and surround themselves with several Vampires they had personally turned. The elder enforced a code of conduct among them, teaching them how to blend seamlessly into human society, how to feed without drawing attention, and how to defend their territory from rival Vampires.

Mo Fan had brought in backup — but the cunning Vampire had done the same. The situation had just become considerably more complicated.

"What I don't understand is, the two of them working together should have been more than enough to take me out. If I were their target, I might have been able to stall until my retainer arrived..." Zhao Manyan said.

"They won't move against us directly because we're Mages," Mo Fan said. "A Mage's death immediately draws the attention of both the Hunters' Alliance and the Tribunal. These creatures still need to hide behind human faces and scrape by in this city. Killing us would be cutting off their own way out."

"Right... I just feel terrible about Liu Ru. Watching her go from a perfectly fine young woman to something like a frozen corpse in the blink of an eye..." Zhao Manyan said, guilt heavy in his voice.

"Frozen?" Lingling spoke up suddenly from nearby.

"Yeah — once the blood's drained, the body loses heat naturally. When I checked her pulse, she was ice cold," Zhao Manyan said.

"What is it?" Mo Fan asked, puzzled.

Lingling pressed her small brows together, deep in thought.