He Yu’s hand trembled, and unable to help himself, he squeezed hard—the flowerpot in his hand shattered. The poor amaryllis tumbled to the ground along with the soil, and the ceramic pot turned to powdery fragments, scattering everywhere.
Sister Zhao and Brother Xie’s expressions instantly turned to terror.
He Yu was also terrified.
However, he had this one flaw—whenever he got nervous, his face would stiffen, and the more nervous he got, the stiffer it became. Normally this wasn’t great for social interactions, but right now it looked quite intimidating.
Going from an upstanding citizen to suddenly topping the most-wanted list—He Yu could hardly process it, but right now there were still two vicious villain members waiting for his next instructions.
What should he instruct them to do? And what had his previous instructions even been?
He had always thought he was an ordinary person!
He Yu’s mind raced. They had sent someone to tail Jiang Yan and her younger brother Jiang Xian, but him running into these two siblings had been purely accidental. He Yu was quite certain he hadn’t given any such instructions before, so… them sending someone to follow Jiang Yan and Jiang Xian must have been done on their own initiative.
He Yu rubbed the powder between his fingers, steeled his resolve, and the acting skills honed from years of being a corporate wage slave in his past life suddenly surged to the fore. Mimicking the callous boss he’d had in his previous life, he lowered his voice and scolded them with a stern face. “Who gave you permission to act on your own?”
The two of them lowered their heads in fear. “S-sorry, my lord, it was our own presumptuous decision!”
“We’ll pull our people back right away!”
“Who went to follow them?” He Yu asked.
“It was Xiao Liu, who’s posing as an office worker,” Brother Xie said.
He Yu’s heart clenched. Not only was his next-door neighbor one of them, but even the office worker he ran into every day was a member of the Seven Parts Association!
“What about everyone else?” he asked.
“Everyone else is still lying low, no one’s slipped up,” Sister Zhao said, tactfully handing He Yu a list.
“Go back. Without my orders, don’t act on your own,” He Yu said.
The two of them left in a state of fearful reverence, even remembering to take away the dishes they hadn’t had time to clear.
After they left, Brother Xie wiped away sweat frantically. “Lord Bronze Mask is getting scarier and scarier. I really thought we were about to be done in.”
After wiping his sweat, he started digging through files on the Paranormal Affairs Administration Bureau. If Lord Bronze Mask was going to make a move against the Paranormal Affairs Administration Bureau, and he happened to ask something next time and Brother Xie didn’t know the answer, that would be the end of him.
Sister Zhao sent a message to Xiao Liu telling him to hurry back, and said, “Lord Bronze Mask used to just carry a heavy presence, but he was never this frightening…”
Brother Xie murmured, “Lord Bronze Mask never used to bother with much, and he wasn’t one to talk much either…”
This long-term undercover mission of posing as ordinary people had been personally arranged by the Chairman, who had required them to disguise themselves as residents in this residential complex and make absolutely sure to build a harmonious, friendly community atmosphere.
Though they didn’t know the reason, they had always carried it out conscientiously. Only Lord Bronze Mask was different—although he’d accepted the assignment, every time he moved in he never once left the house, an attitude that clearly showed dissatisfaction with the mission, as if he were just going through the motions.
However, Lord Bronze Mask had always kept this same style whenever he went out on missions too—wearing a bronze mask, almost never speaking.
But these past few days, Lord Bronze Mask had suddenly changed. He had started living like a genuinely ordinary person, blending in even better than the rest of them.
“Is Lord Bronze Mask getting impatient?” Sister Zhao wound a lock of her big wavy curls around a finger tipped with bright red nail polish, looking quite worried.
“Obviously,” Brother Xie said. “A figure like Lord Bronze Mask—how could he possibly be content living disguised as an ordinary person for so long?”
“If you ask me, the Chairman shouldn’t have assigned Lord Bronze Mask to this mission in the first place,” Sister Zhao murmured. “Lord Bronze Mask must be unhappy about it, right?”
He was probably impatient, so he’d taken the initiative—deliberately letting a little ghost in, and then using that as a pretext to draw out people from the Paranormal Affairs Administration Bureau, so as to establish some connection with them.
After Brother Xie finished looking into it, his voice tightened. “Those two from the Paranormal Affairs Administration Bureau are no simple matter—they’re the son and daughter of Jiang Yanjun, who ranks third in the Bureau. Is Xiao Liu back yet? He absolutely cannot be discovered!”
“No wonder Lord Bronze Mask told us not to follow them,” Sister Zhao said, checking her phone messages. “Those two are still lost somewhere in the complex, Xiao Liu hasn’t even followed them out of the complex yet.”
The two of them exchanged a glance and both let out a sigh of relief.
After a moment, Brother Xie said slowly, “That brother and sister only just started carrying out missions for the Paranormal Affairs Administration Bureau these past few days, and they haven’t used the name Jiang Yanjun. Hardly anyone even knows Jiang Yanjun has a son and daughter, and they go by their mother’s surname too—if it’s not brought up, no one would guess their background.”
“Lord Bronze Mask really is something—when he doesn’t act, fine, but when he does…”
Sister Zhao nodded gravely. “From now on we absolutely cannot act rashly without orders.”
If they had ruined Lord Bronze Mask’s plans, there was no telling how terrible the consequences would be!
“Did you send the mission log back?” Brother Xie asked.
“Already sent it back,” Sister Zhao said.
This was the fixed weekly procedure.
“Any feedback?” Brother Xie continued.
Now that Lord Bronze Mask had started taking action, the undercover mission had changed somewhat—he figured there should be some kind of response.
“Not yet… wait!” Sister Zhao’s voice suddenly rose several octaves, her expression turning dazed. “The— the Chairman is coming over.”
…..
Meanwhile, after the two had left, He Yu shut the door, sprawled onto the sofa, and pressed a hand to his chest.
That was too close! Too close! He’d nearly been scared to death just now!
After recovering for a moment, He Yu began looking at the list, his eyes going rounder and rounder.
Good grief!
Sister Zhao next door was ranked 13th on the Paranormal Affairs Administration Bureau’s most-wanted list as the “Puppeteer,” and Brother Xie was ranked 21st as “Ghost Shadow.”
The neighbor upstairs was from the Seven Parts Association, and the neighbor downstairs was also from the Seven Parts Association. The old man doing morning exercises he ran into every day was from the Seven Parts Association, the student reciting lessons, the office worker passing by… all from the Seven Parts Association!
Even the vendor selling jianbing at the entrance to the complex was from the Seven Parts Association!
In the half month since he’d transmigrated here, he had apparently been living surrounded by villains the whole time!
He Yu’s heart filled with delayed terror.
The harmonious, friendly neighbors were gone, the happy laid-back retirement life was gone too, and on top of that he could be exposed at any moment and suffer a brutal death at the hands of villains…
Although this group hadn’t suspected He Yu’s identity for the time being, that was only because they were currently in the middle of a mission disguised as ordinary people. What if, in the future, they wanted him to carry out one of those dangerous missions targeting exorcists and ghosts—with zero memories of being Bronze Mask, that would be a death sentence!
He Yu sat bolt upright.
He needed to first get a feel for Bronze Mask’s situation!
If he probed the Seven Parts Association members around him directly, he might well give himself away. Thankfully, there was Jiang Xian!
He Yu opened his phone and asked Jiang Xian for information about Bronze Mask.
There was nothing left to search in the apartment—he had already carefully gone through every room on his very first day after transmigrating, and hadn’t found anything the least bit unusual, otherwise he wouldn’t have assumed he’d transmigrated into an ordinary person.
While waiting for Jiang Xian’s reply, He Yu decided to test out his current abilities first. Earlier he’d crushed a ceramic flowerpot into powder and hadn’t even felt any pain in his hand.
He Yu picked up the amaryllis, heartbroken.
Poor amaryllis—it had nearly been about to bloom, and now it had first been attacked by a ghost, and then frightened into falling by the Seven Parts Association members, several of its leaves snapped.
Fortunately the bulb was fine. He Yu carefully tidied up the amaryllis and replanted it in a new pot.
Once he’d finished cleaning up, He Yu glanced around, picked up a metal nail clipper, and squeezed—
The nail clipper turned into a sheet of metal.
Having tested his offensive strength, it was time to test his defense.
He Yu walked into the kitchen, stuck a finger out onto the cutting board, and carefully pressed the edge of a kitchen knife against the edge of his fingertip.
He felt nothing. This meant his defense hadn’t been broken yet—he needed to apply more force.
He Yu began to push harder.
Harder…
Harder…
The kitchen knife’s edge broke, chipping to show him the damage.
He Yu examined the knife for a while, then searched online for reviews of the knife’s brand, and concluded this probably wasn’t a quality issue with the knife itself.
After all sorts of experiments, He Yu confirmed it: he was now invulnerable to blade and fire alike, impervious to water and flame—his physical offense and defense were both plenty high. But this world dealt in the paranormal.
Just as he finished his experiments, Jiang Xian’s reply arrived.
The chuni teenager had a pretty good impression of He Yu.
Young people, after all, have all had fantasies of possessing extraordinary powers to save the world at some point. Jiang Xian, though also a chuni, hadn’t yet reached the stage, when they first met, of knocking on someone’s door and announcing “I’m here to save you.” Mainly because after the chuni teenager had set out to save people, cherishing dreams and righteous ideals in his heart, he hadn’t gained much gratitude in return—instead he’d faced plenty of suspicious looks.
Ordinary people can’t see ghosts; a few unusually perceptive ones can sense spiritual energy, but even that’s rare. Most of the time, while Jiang Xian was off fighting ghosts for people’s lives, the person he’d saved would watch him leaping about and suspect he’d lost his mind.
Suspected again and again, the chuni teenager had gradually turned a bit twisted about it.
He Yu had been the first person to look at him with a perfectly normal gaze after watching him exorcise a ghost, and that firm declaration of “I believe you!” from before had struck Jiang Xian deeply.
Wuwuwu, so there really were kind, pure-hearted people in this world willing to trust others like that!
The chuni teenager didn’t say anything out loud, but in his heart he’d already counted He Yu as a brother, and so he began sharing information about his idol without any reservation.
Bronze Mask! The king of the dark world! A hero walking through the shadows! A wanderer bearing the weight of sin!
Goosebumps rose all over He Yu’s body.
“I’ll send you some files, take your time looking through them first, we can talk about the rest once I get home.” Jiang Xian sent over a compressed folder. He and his sister were still lost, so it would be a while before he got home.
He Yu unzipped the folder. Inside were several photos.
Photos that managed to capture Bronze Mask were rare, and clear ones even rarer—most were blurred to the point where you could barely make out that it was a person at all.
He Yu opened the one clear photo that showed the full figure.
The photo had been taken at night, the sparse moonlight and a campfire just out of frame illuminating the sole figure in the picture.
It was a low-angle shot from close to the ground, the upward angle making Bronze Mask look very tall. Bronze Mask wore a long robe in ink-blue, which made him look tall, thin, and sharp-edged. He was turned sideways to the camera, as if he’d noticed someone taking the photo, and had turned his head to look over—the bronze mask on his face was clearly visible in the firelight, mottled patches of verdigris rust forming mysterious patterns against the original golden bronze color, the unrusted portions reflecting the firelight with an indescribable sort of charm.
He Yu stared at the photo for a long while. He hadn’t found Bronze Mask’s bronze mask or this ink-blue robe anywhere in the apartment. Bronze Mask must have another residence within the Seven Parts Association—his truly important belongings were probably all kept there.
But, going only by the materials Jiang Xian had sent him, He Yu had no confidence he could play the role of Bronze Mask well enough that the people around him wouldn’t notice something was off.
The Bronze Mask files Jiang Xian had gathered already counted as fairly extensive and thorough, and even so, printed out it wouldn’t amount to more than a few pages—most of it was just case text, descriptions of the cases themselves, with very little content actually related to Bronze Mask. As for his appearance, temperament, and personal relationships, there was almost nothing at all.
He Yu was still flipping through the files when his phone buzzed again.
Jiang Xian had finally gotten home, and started firing off messages to him rapid-fire:
“Did you finish reading?”
“Notice something? Almost everyone Bronze Mask has ever gone after has been a bad person.”
“That bunch of idiots from the Descent Cult go around scouring for suitable vessels to welcome their god, and they even do blood sacrifices.”
“That last one was a serial killer who’d been wanted for many years.”
“That guy was a total psycho—all his victims were young girls, disemboweled. Their grievances after death were so strong they turned into ghosts. Bronze Mask gave them a chance at revenge.”
“There’s a lot more, take your time looking through it.”
“Don’t you think he’s kind of like one of those ancient heroes who root out evil and punish the wicked?”
“Walking through the darkness, bearing a bad name, misunderstood by everyone.”
…
In short, it was very much in line with a chuni teenager’s aesthetic sensibilities.
“But just listen to this stuff, don’t go investigating or chasing after it yourself.”
“You’re an ordinary person, it’s way too dangerous for you to get mixed up in this.”
He Yu fell silent.
It wasn’t that he wanted to get mixed up in it—circumstances simply didn’t allow otherwise.
Everyone else in the Seven Parts Association was quite afraid of Bronze Mask, so fooling them wouldn’t be too difficult. But that mysterious Chairman would probably be much harder to deceive.
“Do you know anything about the Chairman of the Seven Parts Association?” He Yu asked.
Jiang Xian: “Why are you asking about him?”
He Yu: “I noticed the Seven Parts Association’s Vice Chairman is already at the top of the most-wanted list—shouldn’t the Chairman be even more formidable than the Vice Chairman?”
Jiang Xian: “He’s way too mysterious, there’s barely any information on him.”
“If you ask me, this Chairman isn’t a straight shooter—he pushed Bronze Mask out to the front while he himself hides behind the scenes.”
“I’ve got some files on the Seven Parts Association, take a look, make do with what I’ve got.”
“But let me warn you.”
“The Seven Parts Association is dangerous.”
“They’ve done a lot of terrifying things.”
“The files I’m sending you have all been screened—there’s some I can’t even send you.”
“Keep this in mind yourself, and whatever you do, don’t go getting close to them because you think it’s cool or something.”
“You could really die.”
Being warned by a chuni teenager not to think a villain organization was cool, He Yu’s feelings were somewhat complicated.
He thanked Jiang Xian for his good intentions. He Yu had no interest in the Seven Parts Association—he just wanted to get out of this huge mess as quickly as possible.
As a villain organization, the Seven Parts Association was destined to be destroyed by the protagonist eventually, and the second-in-command of a villain organization naturally wouldn’t come to a good end either. What’s more, he had none of Bronze Mask’s memories, so trying to maintain his disguise within this villain organization was already difficult enough as it was—it would be so much better if he could switch over to the Paranormal Affairs Administration Bureau instead. A righteous organization surely wouldn’t be as vicious as a villain organization.
Also, organizations like this were notoriously hard to break away from—if Bronze Mask, as Vice Chairman, tried to defect, he’d definitely be hunted down. Right now He Yu had Bronze Mask’s raw strength but no idea how to use it—if it actually came to a real fight, he might well get captured in just a few moves. If he had the Paranormal Affairs Administration Bureau’s protection, he wouldn’t have to worry about the Seven Parts Association hunting him down.
So he asked Jiang Xian again: “What do you think would happen if Bronze Mask left the Seven Parts Association and defected to the Paranormal Affairs Administration Bureau?”
Jiang Xian immediately got excited: “If someone as strong as him could abandon the Seven Parts Association and come over to our side, that’d obviously be great!”
He Yu: “Wouldn’t the Paranormal Affairs Administration Bureau put him on trial or punish him or something? He is the top of the most-wanted list, after all.”
Jiang Xian: “Nah, he’s been at the top of the most-wanted list for years and they’ve never even caught him. If you go and punish someone like that, they’re just not going to come over, are they? Obviously it’d be way better to have the most-wanted person turn from darkness to light.”
He Yu: “What if Bronze Mask wasn’t so strong anymore?”
Jiang Xian: “That… would be hard to say.”
“With everything he’s done, he’s made plenty of enemies. There are quite a few people who’d want him dead.”
“That’s why I say the Chairman of the Seven Parts Association is a shady one. All the infamy gets pinned on Bronze Mask, while he himself gets off scot-free.”
Jiang Xian was still righteously indignant, ranting about the Seven Parts Association’s Chairman, but He Yu had stopped reading further down, his heart sinking.
Given his current situation, going down the path of turning from darkness to light simply wasn’t an option. No choice but to just make do within the Seven Parts Association for now.
Fortunately, the Bronze Mask identity was intimidating enough to keep people in line—as long as he found some way to avoid running into the Chairman, he should be fine.
Use this period of time to get a clear picture of the situation first, then look for a chance to make his escape…
Come to think of it, Bronze Mask also held the position of Vice Chairman—his benefits within the Seven Parts Association were probably pretty good, right?
The next day, He Yu picked out a relatively peripheral member from the list to probe.
“Vacation?” Xiao Liu, playing the role of an office worker, looked utterly bewildered. “No need for vacation—everyone’s on call at all times.”
“My lord, you yourself operate this way—how could we possibly slack off?”
After Xiao Liu explained, He Yu understood:
The Seven Parts Association ran on a 007 work schedule—on call 24 hours a day, always ready to solve problems, no overtime pay, and definitely no social insurance or housing fund.
Vice Chairman Bronze Mask counted as a partner—he didn’t even draw a salary.
“It’s all for the sake of our lofty ideals!” Xiao Liu looked at him with an expression of fervent admiration.
He Yu: …
There was no living through days like this!
TL Notes:
chuni (中二) — literally “middle school 2nd year,” a slang term (borrowed from Japanese chunibyō) for the overdramatic, grandiose, self-styled “dark hero” mentality typical of adolescent fantasy — I’ve left it in pinyin per your request since it’s a specific cultural/slang term rather than a standard name.
007 — Chinese internet slang for a work schedule of 0:00–24:00, 7 days a week (i.e., constantly on call/working), playing off the more well-known “996” (9am–9pm, 6 days) complaint about overwork culture.