(a)

The next morning, the sky was high and cloudy. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

"Xianglin!"

The old wooden door was rudely pushed open, "crunching" and spitting out several broken pieces of paint. The brass bell hanging on the door frame rang weakly a few times, reminding the shopkeeper to come and pick up customers.

"Xianglin, are you there?"

Marisa shouted a few times, but received no answer, and walked through the shelves to the back room.

Uncharacteristically, instead of wearing the iconic Grand Wizard hat today, she had a bandage around her head. She walked staggeringly as she walked with a broken broom broken in two and tied together with duct tape, as if she were going to fall at any moment. Coupled with that dirty, tattered black dress, she now looked almost like a beggar.

Marisa has just had the worst day of her entire career, and she still hasn't recovered yet.

Yesterday, she couldn't solve the case, but instead knocked herself into a mess, and within two minutes of coming to her senses, she was involved in Flandrolu's barrage battle, and a dozen was a whole day, and she was about to fall apart.

And that's not all, Marisa was dragged into a crazy drinking party before she could escape, and she vomited and drank until dawn, cup after cup.

This broken Red Devil Pavilion is really not a place for people to stay, Marisa secretly swore that she would never go to that ghost place again.

Hopefully, she will remember this vow when she recovers from her injuries.

All in all, she finally dragged the remaining half of her life to Xianglintang, and Marisa still had a lot of things to take: hangover medicine, bruising medicine, gauze, bandages, red potion, sewing kit, the latest issue of "Juvenile Sauce Shop", etc., etc......

"Xianglin, I'm in!"

Marisa pulled open the bedroom door, as she always did. This guy goes in and out of Xianglin Hall at will on weekdays, and he really doesn't think of himself as an outsider.

But today, she saw a face there that she had never seen before.

"Hmm...... Huh?"

A blonde girl, several years older than Marisa, sat up in a daze with one hand on her mattress, looking at Marisa with a puzzled expression, apparently still unfigured out what was going on.

She wears an ill-fitting men's pajamas, which Marisa remembers to be Rinnosuke's clothes. The loose pajamas didn't fully cover her body, revealing a small patch of snow-white skin on her chest - I didn't want to admit it, but this guy was in pretty good shape, at least much better than Marisa.

Seeing this, Marisa almost thought that Rinnosuke had woken up and become a woman, and then she noticed the man lying on the floor next to the bed, snoring and sleeping like a dead pig.

"Excuse me, are you ......"

The strange blonde girl quickly straightened her shirt and faced Marisa with some embarrassment. Although she didn't know this dirty little girl, she knew that the other party must have misunderstood something.

"Xianglin...... You ......" Marisa shuddered, the once-broken broom creaked as she gripped it, "Big-pervert!"

She cried out, and then used all her strength to smash the broom into Rinnosuke's face, almost killing him in his sleep.

"What...... What's the situation?"

Rinnosuke rubbed his head and got up, only to see a black back rushing out of the door.

That's when he realized that he had forgotten his glasses.

(b)

Suzu Motoi had a dream.

She dreamed that the red night sky enveloped the entire Gensokyo, and blood-like raindrops poured down. She stood alone in the middle of the ruined village, unable to do anything as the last remaining land was swallowed up by the crimson waves.

What exactly does this dream mean?

Unfortunately, before she could find the answer, she was drowned in blood, and this brief dream came to an end.

Suzu got up from the pile of books and stretched. Strange to say, after this little nap, she felt even more tired.

"I'm starting to get sleepy early in the morning, Suzu. ”

Looking in the direction from which the voice came, Honju saw the girl who had been waiting for a long time: she was dressed in a luxurious kimono, and her short neatly trimmed purple hair had a flower-shaped hair ornament pinned to it—and it was clear that this guy was the child of a rich family.

It was her friend and regular customer, Barnyard Aqiu. Ah Qiu is the ninth-generation head of the famous family "Barnyard Family", young but knowledgeable, and is highly respected among the people as the compiler of "The Origin of Gensokyo Origin". However, in Xiaoling's opinion, Ah Qiu is just like her, just a little girl who loves books.

"Ahaha, I stayed up late last night to read, and I was a little sleep-deprived. ”

Suzu scratched the back of her head, looking a little embarrassed.

"If you don't pay attention to sleep, you'll soon become an old woman!"

"I'll pay attention!"

Some of them stuck out their tongues mischievously, and Suzu brought the topic to the point:

"What kind of books are you borrowing this time?"

That's right, borrowing books. The Suzuna-an, which is run by the Honju Kosuzu family, is the largest library in a human village. In that small bookstore space, there were thousands of books crammed into the area, and when there were empty spaces on the shelves, they were stuffed on the shelves, and when there were no empty spaces, they were piled up on the desks, chairs, floors, warehouses, and bedrooms...... The space in the store is limited, and there is a constant stream of new books, so the problem of space allocation has always bothered Suzu.

Unlike other bookstores in Renri, Suzuna-an's collection of books is not only large and varied, but also includes all kinds of strange books, such as books from the outside world, magic books, yokai books, and even some other strange books that cannot be read at all. For ordinary people, these books are waste paper, but for the few who can read their contents, such as Suzu herself, they are simply the treasure of the world.

"Please give me some books related to vampire lore, the older the better. ”

Barnyard Aqiu put forward his own request, and added a sentence at the end:

"By the way, it's better to have a book coming in from the outside world. ”

"Vampire legends, okay!"

Suzu left her seat and ran to a wall of books, carefully searching for books that met the customer's requirements. In a few moments, she returned to the counter with a large stack of books, new and old, thin and thick.

"Look, how about these?"

As soon as she let go, she piled the books on the table and patted the top one lightly, putting on a proud expression. By the way, the name of that book is "I Am Legend".

"Hmmm......"

Ah Qiu picked up a few books casually, looked at them twice, and nodded with satisfaction.

"I knew that there would be nothing wrong with coming to Suzu for this kind of thing. ”

"That's how it should be!" said Suzu, holding his head that didn't have much wisdom, proudly, "If you want to read a book that isn't available anywhere else, come to Suzuna-an." ”

"Speaking of which, why would you want to borrow such a book?" she asked again after the advertisement.

"Well, don't you know about the recent vampire attacks?"

"Vampire attack, wasn't it not long after the vampire-related mutation ended?"

She has found a few good books in the past few days, so she has been hiding in the house and not going out, and it is not very clear what is happening outside.

"Hey......" Ah Qiu sighed, obviously there was no way to take her little friend, "If you have time, you can go out to see the world more, stay at home and read books every day, your head will rust!"

"Hehe, I just don't have time in the last few days. Speaking of which, what is that 'vampire attack' like? Tell me about it!"

"At first, it was in the Youkai Mountain, where a white wolf Tengu guard died mysteriously, and all his blood was drained before he died, which caused quite a stir over there, and even the captain of the guard was dismissed. ”

"Uh-huh, and then?" Suzu listened with interest as she propped her cheeks in her hands.

Then, similar corpses began to appear all over Gensokyo. The deceased, without exception, were all youkai, and they all died of excessive blood loss, and there was no sign of struggle before death, and the modus operandi was the same. ”

"That's right...... But don't you think it's unusual for a vampire to attack youkai in a row?"

"That's right, in this Gensokyo, there has never been such an incident of picking on monsters. This can be regarded as a mutation!"

"That's ...... Is it a mutation?"

Xiao Ling thought about it carefully, and as a human being, she really didn't seem to notice any changes.

For someone like her, who doesn't listen to anything outside the window and only reads the books of the sages, she can probably only react when the flood reaches her heels.

For some reason, she remembered the inexplicable dream she had just had.

"It's a mutation, a mutation!" Ah Qiu slapped the table and said with some excitement, "Something big will definitely happen in the future!" ”

"I guess it's not her job to protect the youkai!ah, by the way......" Suzu patted her head, as if remembering something very important, "Speaking of vampires, I happen to have a rather strange book here, I think you might be able to use it." ”

From the bottom of the counter drawer, she pulled out a large book that she knew was old at a glance. The pages of this thick book were yellowed, and its cover was a somewhat cracked cowhide with a line of Latin scrawled on it.

Ah Qiu picked up the book, glanced at the contents twice, frowned and said:

"It's a demon book again?"

"It's a book written by a vampire, and it's not strictly a book, it's an experiment log. ”

"Experiment logs?"

"That's right, about 400 years ago, a handful of ambitious vampires conducted a forbidden experiment, wanting to rely on the power of ancient demons to lift the curse on their bodies and gain the ability to walk the day. The contents of this journal are the whole process of that experiment. ”

"In the end, did they succeed?"

Ah Qiu was a little curious about the results of the experiment, because the "vampire of the day" made her instinctively uneasy.

"It didn't say it," Xiao Ling shook her head, "This journal says that the demon summoning ceremony was interrupted, I'm afraid there was some accident, right?"

Barnyard Aqiu wordlessly stroked the cracked cowhide cover, and finally made up his mind and said:

"Suzu, can you help me translate this book......?"

"Piece of cake!"