519 Chater 519: Betrayal (1/2)

There was absolutely nothing I could do. No one believed me. Even though I told the teacher that Xu Wu Cheng pushed the bookshelf over, she wrote it off as an ”accident.” I showed her the recording, of course, but she dismissed it.

”Use your common sense,” she had told me with a laugh. ”Of course it's a freak accident. Unless you used magic – and since we didn't sense any mana from him despite being in the same space – there is no way for a normal human to physically push a bookshelf over. The shelf weighs about a ton or two!”

She had me there. Again, I told her that Xu Wu Cheng was a vampire, and all I got was another laugh in return.

”You've been watching too many movies or reading too many vampire novels.” The teacher shook her head. ”Vampires went out of vogue years ago! Even since that novel series about sparkling vampires and badly written romances, vampires haven't been popular for years! Oh, I know. You must have been reading shoujo manga or manhua. But even these have gotten a bit stale over the years. People have simply stopped reading them.”

That wasn't true. I hadn't read a vampire novel or manhua in a long while. Let's just say Vampire Sphere traumatized me, even if Twilight hadn't.

So I went home, bitter and disappointed that no one would believe me. Adrian did, but there was nothing he could do. He wasn't in the high school division, what was he supposed to do? He couldn't act as a witness because he wasn't actually there to see anything. Gritting my teeth, I resolved to speak to Headmistress Teresa Taylor the next day.

”…you came to my office just to tell me this?”

She raised an eyebrow. I gestured toward the recordings.

”If you would just watch these…”

”Oh, I have. I've surveyed the reports you made to the teachers. I trust their judgment. And if Xu Wu Cheng and Nan Gong Ji Yan have already come forward and clarified the matter, then it's done. Settled. There is no need for you to keep harping on it. It's almost as if you've an obsession or a grudge. It's unhealthy.”

I honestly felt like screaming. Why wouldn't anyone believe me!? Well…if they did, then the story would end here, Xu Wu Cheng would be imprisoned and killed, his schemes would fall apart, the vampires would be driven off, and we wouldn't be able to continue this parody. Thus Xu Wu Cheng was protected by incredible plot armor. No matter what I did right now, I couldn't stop him. If I were to attack him in the corridor, the teachers would show up and stop me.

There was absolutely nothing I could do.

”What do I do now?” I scowled, and then I realized that I had no idea what he was scheming. He had made ambiguous declarations about destroying the school as well as made references to some Night Blood Tribe or whatever, but right now I had utterly no intelligence on any of those. I realized that I was going about this the wrong way.

If the authorities didn't believe me, then I had to find another way to disrupt his plans. And to do that, I needed to gather intelligence. Information was vital, and if I didn't know my enemy, I would never be able to win.

”How do I…?”

I tried following the dude, but he was a slippery fellow. Even though I had a flock of Corvus tracking, he would always disappear into the shadows after school, leaving not even a single trail. I had no idea how he shook off my Constellation spirits, but the guy was clearly skilled. There had to be something I could do. I just didn't know what.

Would the Hunter Association know something about this?

”Please stop slandering my sister.”

Zhao Yan folded her arms and glared at me when I pulled her aside one day to tell her.

”I know you've been following her for a bit, and reporting to the teachers about her apparent vampiric transformation. It's becoming a bit bothersome. Even though I owe you quite a bit, you are going too far and crossing the line. Please, just let my sister off.”

”But…!”

Zhao Yan shook her head. ”I'm sorry. That's enough. I trust my sister. She will never do anything as stupid as that. And I know Xu Wu Cheng is pretty handsome and popular with guys, but that's not a reason for you to be jealous of him and drag his name through the mud.”

What the hell?! Zhao Yan – like the others – thought I was slandering Xu Wu Cheng because I was jealous of him!? This was utter bullshit!

Then again, from an outsider's point of view…I guess it was only reasonable that people would see that. It was unfair, but people were ultimately biased. Reality was harsh. People would rather believe the people they wanted to believe and hear the things they wanted to hear than the truth. No matter what period it was, humans never changed.

I was on my own.

Resigned to solitude and alienation, I changed my tactics and continued to try and maintain my surveillance of Xu Wu Cheng. Even though I did several discreet background investigations, I found nothing. No past, no family, no background…nothing. It was almost as if he just ghosted into existence from nowhere.

As the days passed, I was no closer to finding out what his scheme was. I was wondering if I should just forget about the whole thing and remain vigilant for whatever Xu Wu Cheng plotted, only for me to stumble upon a clandestine meeting between the members of the Guang Zhi Yi Sect. Of course Nan Gong Zhao Yan and Nan Gong Ji Yan were both present along with Yi Shen and Kai Lin. I just happened to pass by the room they were inhabiting as secretly as they could. The four of them had locked the door in what they thought was a secure location, but they never bothered to cast anti-eavesdropping wards or use soundproof spells. Amateurs.

I was about to pass them by when something that Yi Shen said caught my attention.

”This is an urgent issue!”

Uh…what was urgent, exactly? Who the hell began their sentences like that? That sounded downright unnatural.

”There are many corpses in the area near Meng Ting Academy and Yi Wen Academy. From the autopsies, it's clear that someone has sucked their blood dry.”

Meng Ting and Ti Wen Academies? I had never heard of those. They must be magic academies like Saint Teresa Academy. Well, as long as I didn't hear Saint Teresa or Hennepin Academies among the list of casualties, I needn't worry.