Magic City Urban Enforcement!

Leaving the library, Mo Fan was in excellent spirits.

His goal was still a long way off, but he'd at least walked away with substantial gains.

Perhaps when tallied precisely, those rewards didn't add up to anything astronomically high — but a fixed sum of cash wasn't what Mo Fan needed.

Even if someone handed him tens of millions outright, there would still be a vast gap between that and a single raised finger. Opportunities like sweeping an entire department's resources off the table simply didn't come around every day.

Dean Xiao understood exactly what Mo Fan needed, and he had converted all those resources into things that would genuinely make Mo Fan stronger.

With the capital to grow stronger, why worry about money not rolling in? The old Dean had said it himself: at the advanced tier, a single windfall could easily reach the tens of millions. When that day came, saving enough to match one raised finger wouldn't be so impossibly distant.

"My fire element is the Rose Flame now — market value alone tops twenty million. The two million in scholarships and prize money the school gave me apparently can't even buy a single Spirit Grade Lightning Seed... and from what I hear, Lightning Seeds run even higher than that." Mo Fan muttered to himself. "That money'll just have to go toward improving my quality of life."

He'd earned money. He was going to spend it.

The desolate suburban outskirts were no place to keep living. And now that Xinxia had enrolled at a prestigious school in Zhejiang, her mobility wasn't great — he absolutely had to hire someone to look after her.

Once he was richer still, he'd get her a female bodyguard too. Her gentle nature meant she'd endure mistreatment in silence rather than push back, and he couldn't let that go on indefinitely.

School regulations were firm on one point: first-year students were required to live on campus.

But next year, once he moved to the main campus, sorting out proper accommodation would be a must. The dormitory was fine enough — everyone cultivated and lived their own lives without treading on each other — but it had its inconveniences. Take Zhao Manyan: that guy would absolutely be living off-campus by then. Hotels near the school were nowhere close, yet he kept dragging women back to the room, locking the door, and *studying the strategic pathways toward humanity's sustainable population growth*. Had he ever once stopped to consider how that made the dog feel?

Dean Xiao had also offered Mo Fan a piece of sound advice.

Grinding in isolation was worthwhile, but combining cultivation with real combat experience could push progress just as fast — while building genuine, practical strength alongside it.

Mo Fan took combat seriously. He still remembered those four Intermediate-Level Mages from the Dongfang Clan, swept away in a single move by Chao He's curse technique, purely because their actual combat experience had been thin as paper.

No matter how high your cultivation, no matter how powerful your skills — if you didn't know how to fight, none of it mattered. After turning it over carefully, Mo Fan decided to return to his old trade: Hunter-mage.

Sparring partners at school were plentiful, but sparring was ultimately artificial. Only going through it the way a Hunter-mage did — constantly facing real danger, constantly being ground down and sharpened — could forge genuine strength.

And besides: being a Hunter-mage actually paid.

Getting his Lightning Element upgraded to a Spirit Seed was the ideal. The prospect of doubling his combat strength was simply too tantalizing to ignore.

"Mo Fan, where are you headed? I've lined up a few girls from the Water Element for tonight — soft and dewy-fresh, absolutely your type. Your brother here simply cannot handle all of them on his own..." Zhang Pinggu spotted Mo Fan heading for the door and hurried to intercept him.

"Suffocating in here. Going to the city to get some air," Mo Fan said.

He was heading for the Hunters' Alliance. He'd have liked to meet those Water Element girls — but factoring in Zhang Pinggu's track record with these arrangements, whoever he'd scraped together was unlikely to be visually inspiring. He declined.

Now if it had been Zhao Manyan doing the inviting, Mo Fan would have nodded on the spot.

The Hunters' Alliance was out in the Lujiazui district. Several of the major powers had each claimed a skyscraper in Shanghai's forest of towers — like a cluster of statuesque women, endlessly preening and competing for the public eye.

Mo Fan arrived at the Hunters' Alliance building and rode the elevator up to the fiftieth floor.

The Alliance's main hall occupied nearly the entire floor. The bank of elevators serving it alone numbered fifteen; the foot traffic inside was staggering.

The walls of the hall were ringed with LCD screens scrolling a continuous feed of text — bounties and commissions from every corner of the country, laid out for the Hunter-mages filling the space.

Magic City's Hunters' Alliance tower was, by reputation, the nation's most comprehensive intelligence hub. Even overseas bounties found their way here to be posted. Hunter-mages could comb through the full catalogue and find exactly the bounty or commission that matched their abilities and ambitions.

Since he needed to keep attending classes, taking up roving wilderness hunts was out of the question.

What Mo Fan preferred was urban demon-hunting — and in a city as vast as Magic City, what demon or ghost would dare be absent? If playing small-time code enforcer back in Bo City had been beneath him, then why not aim higher — become the urban demon-hunter of Magic City Shanghai itself?

Slaying demons, chasing beauties, cultivating while earning coin — what wasn't to love?

"Sir, to conduct urban demon-hunting in Magic City, you'll need to hold at least the rank of Hunter Elite. Based on the records you've submitted from Bo City, your current qualifications aren't sufficient to register as a demon-hunter here in Magic City." The Hunter's Assistant Mo Fan had paid to consult delivered the news with an apologetic expression.

"How does someone earn the Hunter Elite rank?" Mo Fan asked, almost out of habit.

"You need to accumulate sufficient completed bounties and commissions. Our dedicated review division converts your completed work into Contribution Points, and once you hit the required threshold, your Hunter rank advances automatically. According to the data you submitted from Bo City, your current rank is Intermediate Hunter, with a contribution total of 785 points. You need 9,215 more points to reach Hunter Elite," the assistant replied.

*Oh, you've got to be kidding.*

So he was still a rank rookie at heart. Nowhere near qualified enough to play urban demon-hunter in Magic City.

"I believe my current abilities are more than sufficient to handle higher-difficulty bounties and commissions. Is there really no other route?" Mo Fan asked.

"In that case, you can only accumulate points the conventional way. The Hunters' Alliance has a responsibility to its clients. We cannot allow Hunter-mages who haven't met the requirements to claim bounties — if they fail to deliver, it harms the client and takes the opportunity away from Hunter-mages who would have succeeded." The assistant's reply was entirely mechanical.

"Fine, fine." Mo Fan let out a wry laugh.

He'd oversimplified the whole thing. Even urban enforcement came with strict qualifications. In the language of his old world, even city code enforcement officers apparently needed a doctorate these days.

"That said, in your situation, you might consider joining a Private Hunting Firm," the assistant added, proving she wasn't entirely without value.

"A Private Hunting Firm? What's that?"

"The Hunters' Alliance permits established hunter teams and master hunters with strong reputations to open their own private firms. They attract clients directly through their name recognition — people seek them out by choice and request them by name for specific commissions. Private Hunting Firms typically charge higher rates, but their completion rates and efficiency are correspondingly reliable." The assistant explained.

The picture clicked into place for Mo Fan immediately.

A Private Hunting Firm was essentially a private detective agency. Clients with problems came to you.

Making him start from scratch slaughtering low-level pests would be a criminal waste of his time. But a Private Hunting Firm meant no hard rank requirements, no trawling through an ocean of listings in the main hall every day — when trouble came looking, it walked straight through the door.

"Perfect. That's the one. Help me find a Private Hunting Firm to join." Mo Fan slapped the table, and something ignited inside him.

After sitting through over seven hundred episodes of Detective Conan, he was finally going to get a chance to show what he was made of.

He needed a signature line.

*That's right — I am the devastatingly handsome detective who specializes in impossible cases; who cures every ailment and resolves every affliction the moment he sets foot on the scene; whose very name alone is enough to make ten thousand girls' ears burn with longing and their entire bodies flush with heat — the one and only, Mo Fan!!*