Xiang Huagong had just returned home.

After pulling off his tattered socks, he collapsed onto the sofa like a corpse laid out in peace.

What a spectacularly disastrous day it had been.

First, he got slapped by a woman because of his terrible flirting methods. Then he discovered that the woman was actually the wife of a senior partner at the law firm who already disliked him, so he was promptly fired.

And afterward, while riding the subway, he nearly got eaten alive by a monster.

Tsk.

Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket.

If the goddess of fortune gave me a kiss, I’d definitely hit the jackpot.

Xiang Huagong thought shamelessly to himself when his phone suddenly rang.

An unfamiliar number.

He answered it.

“Hello, is this Lawyer Xiang?” a woman’s voice asked. After receiving confirmation, she continued, “Can you help me? I just killed my husband.”

Xiang Huagong hadn’t expected this day to somehow become even more exciting.

Especially after hearing that it was an information broker who had given her his number and told her to come find him.

According to online rumors, this same information broker had even stopped a war between two major atavist families.

Why him?

Had he already become that famous?

Thinking about it carefully, he had only been practicing independently for a few years. His reputation within the industry wasn’t particularly huge.

Yet even an information broker like this knew his name?

And, apparently, believed with complete confidence that he could help Ying Qian.

Other than his mother, probably no one had ever had that much faith in him.

Interesting.

He loved high-difficulty cases.

And the existence of this Puzzle Intelligence Agency added a faint layer of mystery to Ying Qian’s case.

“I’ll take this case.”

…

“Puzzle Intelligence Agency? Does an organization like that really exist in this world?”

Inside an internet café, a man with heavy dark circles under his eyes muttered to himself while reading discussions on the forum. Every wrinkle on his face practically radiated exhaustion and despair.

“It’s a scam, right? It has to be a scam. Claims to have every answer… If it’s real, then wouldn’t that basically make them a god?

“Do gods even exist in this world?”

He had begged everyone.

Begged every god.

He had even begged devils.

Yet no one had ever been able to give him an answer.

The young man using the computer beside him overheard his eerie muttering and nervously shifted farther away, hesitating over whether he should switch computers altogether.

Then he saw the man pull out his phone and dial a number.

Not long afterward, the man began typing furiously at the keyboard again, seemingly writing something down.

Something about his mental state clearly seemed wrong.

In the end, the young man still chose to leave.

Teachers had always taught them since childhood: the world was dangerous now. Stay alert. Stay away from strange people!

The man wrote out an email.

In the end, he still sent it.

What if?

What if, after searching for twenty years without ever finding an answer, there truly was someone capable of giving him one?

It had happened twenty years ago.

The weather that day had been beautiful, so he brought his ten-year-old daughter to an orchard to pick fruit and then to the seaside to go fishing.

“Dad, how much longer until a fish bites?” his daughter asked while sitting beside him, nibbling on a freshly picked guava.

“Patience. Fishing isn’t really about catching fish.”

“Then what’s it about?”

“It’s about catching turtles, catching smelly old shoes, catching corpses… basically everything except fish.”

“……”

His daughter was so speechless that even her chewing slowed down. She gave him a deeply unimpressed look.

Her father burst out laughing so hard that his folding chair nearly collapsed.

He had been obsessed with fishing for more than ten years, yet somehow never managed to catch actual fish.

Instead, he always reeled in bizarre things.

Young men who jumped into rivers to commit suicide.

Massive turtles decades old.

Ancient giant worms that had somehow lived for centuries.

All sorts of weird nonsense.

Just never fish.

He had long since progressed from anger, to disbelief, to finding the whole thing hilarious. These days, every fishing trip was basically just him wondering what ridiculous thing he’d hook next.

“I want another guava,” his daughter said again.

“You can only have one more. Too much and you’ll get constipated,” he warned.

“Okay!”

His daughter happily got up to search through the bag.

The bag containing the guavas sat inside the pavilion behind them, less than three meters away.

It should have only taken a moment to grab another fruit.

Yet she never came back.

At first he assumed she was sitting in the pavilion eating to avoid the sun.

But when he called out and got no response, he turned around—

And discovered the pavilion was completely empty.

The place they were at was a long fishing pier.

That day, only he and his daughter had come fishing there.

Beyond them stretched more than fifty meters of straight walkway without a single person in sight.

He hadn’t heard any sound.

Hadn’t seen any shadow.

Yet somehow, his daughter had vanished without a trace.

The police arrived.

They confirmed there were no remnants of atavist powers anywhere nearby, meaning no atavist had been involved.

Several ocean trawlers were dispatched to search the sea. Local fishermen voluntarily joined the effort.

Nothing was found.

Surveillance cameras around the roads nearby and at the entrance to the fishing pier clearly showed only him and his daughter entering.

His daughter never left.

No one else ever entered.

And yet—

She was simply gone.

Less than three meters away from him.

In under two minutes.

Silently.

As though she had disappeared into thin air.

How could this happen?

He couldn’t accept it.

Several times he convinced himself he was trapped in a nightmare. He repeatedly jumped into the sea searching for her, nearly drowning before fishermen dragged him back out.

His wife broke down completely as well.

Eventually, she divorced him and left.

For all these years, he had constantly wandered around that fishing pier.

He frequently went to the police station asking whether there were any clues.

He begged the Tribunal Division for help.

He even camped outside Twelve Zodiac Academy at one point, hoping someone there would help him.

He was rejected.

Because there was a queue.

Why should he be allowed to cut in line?

And by the time it was finally his turn, the atavists who came to investigate merely took a quick look around before returning empty-handed as well.

His final hope shattered completely beneath their silent headshakes.

Twenty years.

Why had his daughter vanished into thin air?

Was she dead, or hidden somewhere?

The answer had become his obsession, an eternal wound in his heart that would never heal.

If he had only turned around and kept his eyes on her back then, would none of this have happened?

Could this Puzzle Intelligence Agency give him an answer?

Did it truly know what happened twenty years ago?

He had prayed to gods and worshipped Buddhas. He had even consulted tarot cards. Anything that might possibly provide a clue, he had tried.

Every single time, his hopes ended in disappointment.

Would this time be the same?

…

Jing Pei sat cross-legged on her bed, exploring her atavist powers.

She had written the setting herself. Writing it had felt easy and effortless.

Only now, when she actually had to experience it firsthand and train herself, did she realize how difficult it truly was.

It felt as though she had plunged into a boundless ocean.

Nothing but endless water stretched around her.

And somewhere within that vast sea, she had to find a single pearl.

The dragon pearl.

The thing Long Ling desired most at this stage.

First, Jing Pei had to locate the dragon pearl hidden within her immense atavist powers. Only then could she begin training herself to gather all those powers back into the pearl. Only that counted as truly mastering her atavist abilities.

Right now, her situation was this:

She could feel that her power was overwhelmingly strong, but she had no way to use it. It was like a dead sea.

She had to make it move.

But simply making it move wasn’t enough either.

Previously, she had tried every possible way to stir those powers into motion, only for sparse patches of blue dragon scales to sprout across her face.

The scales themselves were beautiful. Every single one shimmered with a deep, pure blue-green glow, like the very origin of all blue in the world.

But when those scales appeared scattered unevenly across a human face…

It became horrifying.

Enough to make anyone’s skin crawl.

Another time, her left hand transformed into a dragon claw, nearly tearing her own head off.

Jing Pei sighed.

Then she sensed her watch vibrate once and opened her eyes.

And then—

She saw the email.

Her expression froze.

The Little Girl Pier Disappearance Case?

Her expression immediately turned serious.

Only about an hour later did she finally send a reply.

【Hello. Given that you can only pay a twenty-thousand information fee, the Puzzle Intelligence Agency cannot provide detailed intelligence.

If you still wish to proceed with the purchase, please make payment through the following method.】

The middle-aged man who received the reply was instantly overjoyed.

Not detailed information—but still a clue!

A clue!

For twenty years, he hadn’t gotten even a single one!

But very quickly, that joy receded like a tide.

He had experienced disappointment too many times already.

Perhaps this Puzzle Intelligence Agency was just a scam operation, deliberately spreading rumors across forums so desperate people like him would grasp at them like lifelines before being ruthlessly cheated out of their money.

Just like all those people before who claimed they knew what had happened.

Yet even knowing there was a high chance the other side was lying—

Even though twenty thousand was all the savings he had left—

His obsession still compelled him to send the payment.

Money had long since ceased to matter to him.

Even filling his stomach no longer seemed important.

The only thing he pursued in this lifetime was the answer.

Even dying for it would be acceptable.

He transferred the money and stared anxiously at the computer screen.

And while waiting—

He waited all the way until midnight.

At some point, he had already fallen asleep slumped across the desk.

Only then did an email quietly arrive in his inbox.