Chapter 2: Ke Mingqing and Superhero Dad

Ke Mingwei had just rushed home from the police station.

At this very moment, he was still wearing his light blue police uniform. His shirt pocket bulged, stuffed with an old-fashioned Nokia phone, and the corner of a red cigarette pack peeked out from the edge.

He looked up, frowning as he stared at Ke Mingqing with a serious gaze.

Ke Mingqing slung his backpack over one shoulder and paused at the doorway. He thought, "Are you kidding me? This body's father is actually Rain Crow? No wonder he didn't say a word when I talked back to him on the school bus just now."

The father and son stood quietly looking at each other, one standing with his back to the sunset at the door, the other standing in the shadows of the entryway.

Their silhouettes were cast onto the wooden floor by the setting sun, the reddish afterglow stretching their shadows very, very long.

Ke Mingwei took a deep breath. Only after a long while did he finally speak, breaking the silence that enveloped the entryway.

He crossed his arms and said, enunciating almost every word, "I heard about what happened on the school bus from my colleagues at the police station."

"Oh."

Ke Mingqing replied casually. Without even raising his head, he walked into the house with his backpack. But Ke Mingwei stepped in front of him, his tall 1.88-meter frame towering like a mountain.

"Do you know how dangerous that was?" Ke Mingwei asked, his tone noticeably turning cold.

Ke Mingqing sighed and looked up straight into his eyes. He thought, "You realized it was hard to lecture me while wearing a mask on the school bus, so you waited until we got home and you took it off to scold me again, right?

"As expected of Horror Crowman. Truly adaptable... Since you love lecturing so much, I'll just listen to you."

So he hung his head and said in a low voice, "I know, Dad. I just wanted to protect everyone else."

Seeing his usually stubborn son yield so quickly, Ke Mingwei froze slightly, his anger immediately dissipating significantly.

He fell silent, scratching the stubble on his cheek, reflecting on whether his tone had been too harsh. He thought, "Didn't I start fighting crime with the exact same mindset back in the day?"

The only fatal difference was that Ke Mingwei had become a Superpower User at the age of sixteen, while Ke Mingqing showed no traits in that regard. In the annual routine genetic tests, Ke Mingqing's results invariably showed him to be an ordinary person.

Ke Mingwei thought for a moment, rested a hand on his hip, and sighed.

"There absolutely cannot be a next time. The nature of this incident is very serious... It's not just about your safety. Have you considered that if you angered that criminal, it could have caused him to take it out on the people on the bus—"

Ke Mingqing interrupted him. "I know, I know. You want to say that I could have gotten a whole bus full of people killed, right?"

Ke Mingwei remained silent for a moment, then nodded.

"Isn't that exactly what Rain Crow said? How come you speak in the exact same tone as him?" Ke Mingqing looked up and asked. "Dad, were you two taught language arts by the same teacher?"

Ke Mingwei frowned slightly. "It means that Crow-whatever guy makes a good point, and you should take his words to heart."

"Yeah."

Ke Mingqing thought, "Dad, you're pretty good at playing dumb. No wonder you've managed to hide this from the family for so many years without a single one of the other six people in the house knowing your true identity."

Just then, the phone in Ke Mingwei's shirt pocket suddenly rang.

"There's still work at the station... I'm heading out." After saying that, Ke Mingwei grabbed his police jacket hanging on the wall, draped it over his shoulders, and walked toward the door without looking back.

Stepping onto the threshold, he suddenly paused, turning his head to glance at Ke Mingqing out of the corner of his eye. He instructed, "By the way, you are not allowed to go out tonight. Stay home and behave yourself, understand?"

Ke Mingqing nodded helplessly.

Ke Mingwei pondered for a moment, seemingly wanting to say something else to his son, but the phone in his pocket kept ringing annoyingly.

Thus, he left with a dark expression, not even bothering to close the front door.

Ke Mingqing breathed a heavy sigh of relief. This was absolutely the day he felt most thankful for having been an orphan in his past life.

He tossed his backpack onto the shoe cabinet and waited until Ke Mingwei's footsteps faded into the distance before slowly walking over to close the door. But just then, someone suddenly reached out and pushed against the other side of the door, stopping him.

Ke Mingqing peered through the crack and saw a young girl wearing a blue and white school uniform. She had a delicate, pretty face and a cold temperament, her hair tied in a high ponytail with a black hairpin.

This was his sister, Xia Zili. She was the same age as Ke Mingqing; both were sixteen.

The reason her surname was Xia stemmed from a family rule: girls took their mother Xia Wenna's surname, while boys took their father Ke Mingwei's surname.

Xia Zili was currently wrinkling her nose slightly, staring at him with a cold expression.

"Please come in, my lady," Ke Mingqing said respectfully, letting go of the door. He then defended himself, "Why are you looking at me like that? You're acting as if I saw you before I tried to close it."

Xia Zili remained silent, merely looking up at him before brushing past him.

However, the moment she stepped through the door, Ke Mingqing saw a Superhuman Species Panel materialize above her silhouette. Its background was pitch-black.

[Superhuman Species Code: Magic Girl Embers]

[Type: Magical Girl]

[Danger Rating: B+ Level]

[Superhuman Introduction: Magic Girl Embers's Magical Dress is a deep black Gothic dress with a hem resembling a black rose. Her weapon is a floral-patterned umbrella named Cinderella. She is a Quasi-A-Level Magical Girl contracted by the Magical Girl Company.]

[Currently Known Weaknesses: 1. A Magical Girl who has experienced killing has the potential to corrupt into a Witch. The player may attempt to induce this.]

Ke Mingqing thought, "This is bad. Dad and my sister are actually both from the Superhuman Species... What about the rest of the family? So the original owner of this body lived with several Superhuman Species for so many years and didn't notice the slightest abnormality about them?"

In the original owner's memories, Xia Zili had always clung to him since they were young.

But once puberty hit, she seemed like a completely different person. She became unusually distant toward everyone in the family, turning around and leaving the moment she heard her parents try to lecture her.

Typically, upon returning home from school, Xia Zili would toss her backpack onto the sofa and lock herself in her room, shutting out everyone else. From time to time, she would also run away from home without a word and ignore her family's texts.

When she returned the next day, she would at most offer an excuse like, "I crashed at a classmate's house last night," entirely unwilling to give her family any further explanation.

Ke Mingqing could now understand why his sister's change had been so drastic.

First, she had hit her rebellious phase.

Second, obtaining extraordinary power at this age with an adolescent mindset made it very difficult to maintain a level head.

She likely felt that she had to study hard at school while simultaneously saving the world. Thus, it was easy to develop a sense of impatience toward those around her. She probably thought to herself, "I carry so much on my shoulders, I'm under so much pressure, and yet I still have to get scolded when I come home. Do you Muggles even have the right to do that?"

Over time, she naturally grew resistant to communicating with her family.

By now, the setting sun had already sunk below the horizon, and the sky had darkened. In its place, the lights of countless households lit up beneath the veil of night, stretching into the distance like a long dragon formed by the vibrant glow of the city.

In the entryway of the residential building, Ke Mingqing and Xia Zili walked into the living room in silence, like two strangers.

Ke Mingqing walked over to the water dispenser and poured himself a glass of water. Meanwhile, Xia Zili set her backpack on the floor, sat on the sofa, and turned her head to quietly appraise Ke Mingqing.

Xia Zili lowered her head in thought for a moment before initiating a conversation, a rare occurrence.

"What you did... has spread all over the school's website."

"And then?" Ke Mingqing didn't care.

Xia Zili stared unblinkingly at him, only speaking after a long pause. She looked up and then lowered her eyes. The shape of her lips looked as if she wanted to ask, "Were you hurt?", but the words that slipped out were the exact opposite.

"It was ridiculous... Don't do something so ridiculous next time. It's so embarrassing for me if people find out you're my brother."

After tossing out that remark, she grabbed her backpack from the sofa, got up, and ascended the stairs toward the second floor.

Ke Mingqing turned his head, silently watching her leave. He thought, "Why is everyone in this family so awkward?"

He also returned to his room on the second floor, closed the door, and sank into his leather chair, staring blankly out of the corner of his eye at the family portrait on the wall.

Sweeping his gaze over the faces of his eldest brother, second sister, third sister, and mother, he thought, "Since it's already confirmed that my sister and father are from the Superhuman Species, it seems likely that the remaining four might also be hiding secret identities."

TICK TOCK...

TICK TOCK...

The blood-red countdown above his head was still ticking away without pause.

Ke Mingqing looked up at the notification panel hovering just beneath the ceiling.

[Countdown remaining: 179 days, 4 hours, 1 minute, and 35 seconds.]

[If the ultimate mission—"Extinct Superhuman Species"—cannot be completed within the specified time limit, your life will be terminated by the system.]

"If all six people in my family are from the Superhuman Species, that means..." Thinking this, Ke Mingqing pillowed his arms behind his head. "As a Level 1 noob, I'm surrounded by a bunch of max-level bosses before I've even left the beginner village?"