Transform into a magical girl after getting off work

Three days later at noon, inside Lin Yun's office.

Having completed his morning's work and with no other tasks at hand, Lin Yun had a rare moment of peace for a lunch break where he could sit at his desk and scan the news on his computer screen with the limited time available.

Five days had passed since the night Lin Xiaolu faced danger, and in that time, besides his job and teaching a few magical girl rookies, he had also started searching the internet for various news reports, focusing on those related to Remnant Beasts and magical girls in Fangting City.

It wasn't that he wanted to use such an inefficient method, but the feedback from the Abnormal Strategy Bureau's investigation was far from smooth. In fact, even the Fangting City branch of the Abnormal Strategy Bureau seemed to have no idea why magical girls and Remnant Beasts had vanished over the past two years.

According to the files provided by Hong Siyu, there had been a total of 132 magic-related crimes and attacks in Fangting City over the past two years. Of these, 129 were committed by magicians, with 125 cases solved by the Abnormal Strategy Bureau, resulting in arrests; the remaining three were attacks by Remnant Beasts, all occurring within the half-month after Lin Xiaolu became a magical girl.

In other words, before that, there were zero sightings of Remnant Beasts for two years.

It wasn't the rare occurrence Lin Yun had initially thought, but rather a complete absence of sightings.

Correspondingly, the records in the Fangting City branch of the Abnormal Strategy Bureau showed that not a single one of their employees had ever had contact with the Seeder, "Nini"; they didn't even know if this Seeder had ever visited Fangting City.

Whether "Nini" deliberately didn't come, or encountered some misfortune on the way, remains a mystery.

What's more troubling is that without the Seeder, the Abnormal Strategy Bureau has even lost the means to contact the Magic Kingdom.

The Magic Kingdom has always held an aloof attitude towards the material realm. The Abnormal Strategy Bureau, nominally, has the right to contact magical girls and assist them in their work, but in reality, has no qualification to bind or manage them.

Besides the large central cities, the governments of smaller and medium-sized cities simply do not have the capital to negotiate with the Magic Kingdom.

This has resulted in the Abnormal Strategy Bureau merely serving as a logistical support agency for the magical girls, providing post-battle services and appropriately protecting their data and privacy.

What they can actually do mainly revolves around managing the various actions of ordinary magic practitioners—magicians in the city, recruiting suitable magicians, and arresting criminal magicians. As for magical girls, they have no rights to interfere with them.

The actions of magical girls, whether they are commendable or in violation of the rules, fall under the jurisdiction and management of the Kingdom alone.

Under such unequal and oppressive rules, the Fangting City branch of the Abnormal Strategy Bureau can only try to reach out to other cities' bureaus and attempt to contact the Kingdom through other cities' Seeders to inquire when their city's new Seeder will assume their duties.

The initial three times, the answer they received was "soon to be assigned", but after three times, the Kingdom ceased to respond.

And so, both parties fell into a strange stalemate, the Kingdom ignoring any inquiries about the new Seeder from Fangting City, and the Fangting City bureau not daring to pry further.

Fortunately, for some reason, Remnant Beasts also vanished during these two years, allowing the vast city to muddle along amidst anxiety and hesitation.

— Until Moke arrived in the city.

It sounded as if all new doubts were pointing towards Moke.

But in Lin Yun's own judgment, this likelihood was very low.

It wasn't blind faith on his part, but because he knew a deeper secret: within the Magic Kingdom, fairies are absolutely loyal to the royal court.

Of course, due skepticism could not be lacking, so these past few days he often pressured Moke, as Emerald Sparrow, to try to obtain information from it.

The conclusion was fruitless; Moke couldn't reveal anything.

Out of options, Lin Yun retained his final doubts and left a Tracking Spell on it to monitor its general movements, then refrained from expending further fruitless efforts on this issue.

In fact, he was more inclined to believe that the arrival of Moke disrupted some kind of balance in Fangting City.

However, this hidden balance was completely submerged below the surface, and to fully grasp it required further investigation.

The contribution that the Abnormal Strategy Bureau could offer was limited, and Hong Siyu's attempts to send requests for assistance to the Magic Kingdom through other cities also remained unanswered for the time being. At this moment, it seemed only he could handle all of this.

He had to plan for the worst-case scenario: the Magic Kingdom would not send support.

This was also the reason he agreed to recruit Xia Liang.

As to why he came to this conclusion, that was due to reasons unrelated to the current events.

So it has become this, him alone in front of a computer, flipping through news, diligently searching for any threads or traces. Of the news items that many bureaus couldn't determine were related to the magic-side or not, his extensive experience could provide judgment.

The good news was that he really did find some leads.

Initially, he tried to look for clues from the last two years, but the pickings were slim, revealing only that the number of missing persons had increased; he reluctantly expanded the scope to five years, and then ten years, even to the extent that the photos in the old news reports showed glimpses of An Ya, but aside from worsening his mood, he still couldn't find anything.

At the end of this fruitless search, Lin Yun resorted to a method he initially didn't want to use: Urban Legend Search.

This method wasn't his own creation, but rather came from another magical girl companion he had in Fangting City during his younger days—Su Shengzi.