Hell's Handbook

Chapter 63: Department of Supernatural Affairs

As the capital city of the country, B City had the best team of extraordinary people. Some were martial arts experts, some dabbled in secret arts, while others were professionals in extremely obscure occupations. But the star of the day was Situ Jin.

Situ Jin was the head of the Department of Supernatural Affairs in B City. He wasn’t a high ranking civil servant, but he had tremendous influence in B City. Every government official had to tread carefully around Situ Jin, because the department he headed was allowed to take action without prior approval.

“Mr. Situ, here’s the footage we just received from S City!” A female administrator opened her laptop and played a video for Situ Jin.

The footage was a video of the Ferris wheel on fire in Amusement Valley. In the video, people kept falling out of the capsules, but strangely enough, they would suddenly stop just before reaching the ground, as if they had been caught by someone.

“This sort of thing again?” Situ Jin furrowed his brows. He had watched such footage many times ever since he became the head of this department. The content of these videos was also basically identical: an action that was clearly orchestrated by a human was happening but any video or camera would fail to capture an image of the person.

“According to eyewitnesses, two superhumans in capes rescued these people and there were more than 100 eyewitnesses, so I’m quite sure this is a legitimate incident.” The administrator wore a neatly ironed suit and a pair of black framed glasses. She seemed very stern and disciplined.

Situ Jin nodded, then watched the video again several times, but failed to spot any signs of a human doing the rescuing. He looked up and said to the administrator, “Call the department in for a meeting.”

“Yes, Mr. Situ.”

It didn’t take long for six people to enter Situ Jin’s office. They covered a wide range of ages and didn’t look any different from any ordinary person on the street. But if you looked carefully, you would notice that there was a gleam in everyone’s eye, an alertness that made them look like they were keenly observing everything they saw.

“You can all take a look at this. It’s the same as the previous situation we saw. This time, we have more than 100 witnesses and there are no signs of any chemicals or drugs used, so this is not a mass illusion of sorts.” Situ Jin turned the laptop to let everyone in his office watch the video.

After watching the video, everyone remained silent. This wasn’t the first time they were watching footage like that. But other than staring at the video in a daze, there was nothing else they could do.

“In the 1960s, the previous iteration of this department, the Supernatural Investigation Unit, had discovered such happenings and managed to capture a man who called himself an ‘owner’ within the next decade. But this man soon died inside his jail cell and the unit didn’t get any information out of him. All they know is that these so called ‘owners’ definitely have something to do with these incidents.”

Situ Jin paused, then continued, “Other people have been able to see them but it’s impossible to catch them on camera. Such people pose a threat to our country. I’m sure all of you know that, right?”

Everyone in the office nodded. Public security had improved tremendously over the last few decades mostly because of advancements in surveillance and video capture technology, since that made it difficult for anybody to engage in criminal activity without being caught on camera. But these seemingly superhumans couldn’t be caught on camera at all, so if they engaged in criminal activity, it would be almost impossible to track them down.

Many important places considered these cameras that could capture everything in real time as their highest mode of security. If these superhumans decided to try anything funny, they could cause a lot of harm without getting caught at all.

“According to the information from the Unit back then, the owner they captured was unable to tell them anything in detail. The only thing he could tell them was that he was an owner. But when they asked him what that meant, he lost his ability to speak, followed by an inability to control his bodily movements and more.”

“After that, several other agencies around the world managed to capture such people, but the result was the same. Eventually, both government agencies and private organizations gave up researching these people, but these people have continued to exist,” said Situ Jin quietly.

“Mr. Situ, you’re thinking of…?” someone asked.

“I’m thinking of investigating these people again. Their existence is an unknown threat to society after all,” said Situ Jin with a grave look on his face.

Another person asked, “But how do we go about investigating these people? There aren’t a lot of them in the first place and it’s so hard to capture any of them. And even if we do capture them, what do we do with them?”

Situ Jin pursed his lips and said, “We’ll talk about that later. What we need to do now is to capture one of them first.”

“But we don’t have any clues at all. Even though this incident just happened, it’s impossible to capture the person involved unless we had already laid a trap beforehand,” said the administrator to Situ Jin.

Situ Jin paused to think, then said, “Amusement Valley is a place that requires one to show their ID when they buy tickets. Wen Yin, get me the list of people who bought tickets for the day.”

“Got it!” Wen Yin nodded and left Situ Jin’s office to get this done.

“Laddie, I want the surveillance camera footage from Amusement Valley. And I mean footage from every single camera, especially during the time this incident happened,” Situ Jin said to a small sized younger man.

“Why would you want that? I thought those owners never appear in the footage,” said Laddie in a confused voice.

Situ Jin chuckled. “That’s exactly why I want the footage. Since we can’t confirm who they are with the video, then let’s go by elimination. We’ll strike off everybody who appears in the footage, then investigate whoever’s left on the name list who didn’t appear.”

Laddie was enlightened and smacked his head before leaving Situ Jin’s office to carry out his boss’ instructions.

Situ Jin dismissed everyone else as well, but instructed everyone to remain contactable at all times. After everyone had left, he watched the video again very carefully.

“Owners…who on earth are you people? I’m going to get to the bottom of this and I’ll make sure you don’t upset the social order of this country!” There was a glint in his eyes as he narrowed them slightly.

Meanwhile, the chaos in Amusement Valley had finally come to an end, so Su Jin went to meet up with Ye Yun again. This major rescue operation had left Su Jin rather exhausted and he had used up almost all of his Spirit Power.

“Hey, why do you look like a withered carrot?” Ye Yun laughed merrily as she poked at his waist. But he wasn’t afraid of tickles and let her poke all she wanted.

“I was helping to carry the injured people into the ambulance, so I’m pretty tired from that.” Su Jin looked up at the TV in the rest area. It was showing footage from what happened at the Ferris wheel earlier.

“Huh?” Su Jin immediately noticed something amiss. The TV was showing the rescue process, but all he saw were people flying down from the Ferris wheel. He didn’t see himself at all.

“What on earth?!” Su Jin was terribly shocked. He wasn’t some ghost. He could see himself in the mirror and taking photos wasn’t a problem either. He had taken some photos with his sister the last time he went to visit her and they had turned out perfectly fine.

“What’s wrong?” Ye Yun noticed the stunned look on Su Jin’s face and asked out of curiosity.

He quickly tried to hide his emotions and said, “Oh, nothing. I just found the footage really strange. Those people jumped from such a high place but none of them were injured. Isn’t that amazing?”

Ye Yun glanced at the TV for a while, then laughed and said, “I suppose it’s some new high tech rescuing equipment! Anyway, it’s getting late. Don’t you think we should be heading home soon?”

Su Jin looked up at the sky and agreed that it was getting late, so they got up to leave the amusement park. But once they stepped out of the park grounds, they froze in shock. Every road leading out of the park was completely jammed. The only vehicles allowed to pass were ambulances. It was going to be too hard to even walk out of this place, never mind catch a bus or a cab.

“What are we going to do?” Ye Yun groaned.

Su Jin was frustrated at first too, then he remembered that he had a key to a room in the hotel right next to the park. He waved the card in front of Ye Yun and said, “Or…how about a presidential suite?”

Ye Yun glared at Su Jin, then grabbed the card and started running while yelling, “The last one to get there doesn’t get to sleep on the bed!”

Su Jin stared at Ye Yun who had left him far behind her and sighed in amusement. “That’s the wrong direction, silly.”

He ended up waiting at the hotel for more than half an hour before she finally came walking in. He grinned as he approached her and said, “What’s the point of running so quickly? You should have gotten the right direction first!”

“Why didn’t you tell me that I was running in the wrong direction? Why didn’t you run after me? Aren’t you afraid that something bad might happen to me since I’m a girl just running about out there all by myself?” Ye Yun started blaming him instead.

He ignored her ranting, took her hand and pulled her towards the elevator. She didn’t struggle and let him pull her along. They arrived at the room number stated on the card and Su Jin couldn’t help feeling overwhelmed when he opened the door. This presidential suite could be described in two words: pure luxury!

But before he could snap out of his daze, Ye Yun hopped into the room like a little bunny and dived head first onto the bed. She looked at Su Jin and declared proudly, “The slower one doesn’t get to sleep on the bed.”

Su Jin didn’t know whether to laugh at her or not. As the man, he was going to let her have the bed in the first place. But since she wanted to tease him, he was going to tease her back.

He sauntered into the room, plonked down on the bed and leaned back as he said loudly, “No way! This is the park’s compensation to ME! Either I get the bed, or we’ll have to share! You choose!”

“But but…MY DEAR COUSINNNNN…” Ye Yun whined pitifully at him, but he was already prepared for her to do that, so he pretended to be unaffected by her whining.

“Tsk! I’ve never stayed in a presidential suite before, so I’m not backing down,” Su Jin stood his ground.

She puffed her cheeks out, pulled the blanket over herself and snapped angrily, “Big deal! We’ll just share the bed then! Humph! Goodnight!”

“Good…night?” Ye Yun’s compromise left Su Jin in shock instead.