Every story has a villain.

"Don't jump!"

Dean shouted as he rushed to the bridge, wrapped his arms around the waist of the woman in red, and pulled her down from the railing.

The moment her feet hit the ground, the ambushed woman instantly turned her face toward him.

As described in the book, her facial contours were distinct yet retained a soft beauty. Her eyes resembled black gems washed by morning dew, sparkling with an alluring brilliance, and a beauty mark near the corner of her lips added an extra thirty percent to her stunning appearance.

She was like a pulsating red flame, emitting an intoxicating fragrance that instantly and involuntarily accelerated Dean's heartbeat.

"No wonder the Malcolm father and son were obsessed with her."

Suppressing the unusual glare in his eyes, Dean asked with concern, "Are you alright, ma'am?"

"Ruben? Thank God, you're finally back! I didn't know what to do by myself without you all this time!"

The woman threw herself into his arms with pleasant surprise, her crisp and melodious voice feeling like a feather brushing across his heart, causing an itch within.

"What, don't you recognize me anymore? I'm Mary!"

"I—I'm just too happy, it caught me off guard!"

Dean forced a smile, gazing at the flawless face before him. A strong sense of unreality and stiffness arose in his heart, as if he were watching the performance of a hyper-realistic AI robot.

That was not how it was written in the book, either.

According to the plot, he should have brought Mary under a tree and they would introduce themselves to each other.

Yet how did she recognize his identity at a single glance?

Dean's thoughts raced as he suddenly realized that Mary must have already met the real Ruben; the two of them knew each other and had exchanged vows of eternal love, completing the first half of the book.

The current plot should be officially entering the unknown second half!

Yet where had the real Ruben gone, failing to stay with the female protagonist?

...

Mary's slender fingers wiped away the sparkling tear at the corner of her eye, biting her red lips as she looked up at him. "Tell me quickly, how on earth did you escape from the clutches of the devil?"

"What clutches? Who kidnapped me earlier?"

Dean's eyelids twitched.

"We fell in love at first sight and decided to get married in Reno, then go on a cross-country road trip together. But before we could set off, a humanoid monster suddenly descended from the sky, grabbed you, and flew away." The woman said this with curved lips and a yearning expression, before her pretty face suddenly turned pale and she looked around anxiously, her nervous posture resembling a rabbit dodging a natural predator.

"A flying monster?" Dean's face darkened.

"Why don't you remember anything?" Mary held her skirt with one hand, hooked her other arm around his, and ran toward the head of the bridge, saying with lingering fear, "I don't know what it was. It looked like a beautiful woman, but with a pair of huge black wings on its back, and its nails and teeth flashed like awls and hooks."

"Why did it capture me?"

"I don't know either!"

As Mary's words fell, the familiar sound of a water bubble being popped—"pop, pop"—echoed in the air once again.

Dean abruptly stopped in his tracks, staring ahead with a solemn face.

Moonlight flowed like water across the dark Virginia Street Bridge. Ten meters away at the head of the bridge, a graceful figure materialized out of thin air.

She stood quietly without a stitch of clothing, her physique as beautifully sculpted as a Venus statue, yet she possessed wolf-like slender and sturdy reverse-bowed calves. A thin layer of soft down covered the vast expanse of skin exposed to the air, reflecting a silvery glow.

A messy cascade of black hair, dense like water weeds, covered the key parts of her body.

Amidst the dark hair emerged a face with high cheekbones and clear lines. It was not delicate, but carried a wild, captivating charm.

Her thin lips were coated with a deep crimson lip gloss that looked like dripping blood.

Her large, bright eyes were as pitch-black as if possessed by a demon, devoid of even a shred of white, and they stared coldly at Dean.

Her entire being radiated a fatal, venomous beauty.

Sweat beaded on Dean's forehead as his drunkenness sobered by seventy percent in an instant. He immediately summoned the "Phantom" armor to wrap around his body.

His gaze swept across the opposite woman's large-jointed fingers, which were tipped with black, awl-like sharp nails, while her toes resembled sharp little hooks—extremely dangerous.

What on earth was this freak?

"Run, Ruben! It's going to catch you!" Mary's pretty face tightened as she pulled Dean, blocking him with her own body.

However, this action provoked the woman opposite them. She opened her bright red lips, and her row of dense, jagged teeth clicked together.

A low roar—

A harsh sonic wave swept across the open air, brushing past the bodies of Dean and Mary. The two of them instantly felt as if their heads had been struck by a hammer. Amidst dizziness and vertigo, a trace of bloody sweetness oozed from their throats and noses, leaving them frozen in place, unable to move!

Behind the naked woman, a pair of huge, pitch-black wings covered in bone membranes grew out like inflating balloons. Her reverse-bowed thighs compressed like springs and then suddenly released.

With a forward dash, she flew straight up into the sky above the bridge.

Whoosh—

A magnificent banner embedded with bone spurs was unfurled across the pitch-black night sky.

The membranous wings flapped.

Air currents surged.

Half-woman and half-bat, the female fiend hovered in the air for a second before plunging toward the ground amidst a strong gust of wind.

In the blink of an eye, Dean shoved Mary aside, his shoulders shuddering as his entire body lost control and lifted into the air.

The pair of hook-claws on the monster's feet hooked into his shoulders, carrying him away from the bridge like a gust of wind and plunging deep into the night, leaving the woman in red crying out in sorrow on the bridge.

The bat-woman flew with Dean along the Truckee River.

The bone-chilling wind lashed against his cheeks and skin, a powerful stream of cold air rushed into his nasal passages, and the wind howled in his ears.

All scenery crawled beneath them, and the buildings along the Truckee River retreated rapidly.

Soul and shell broke free from the restraints of gravity, soaring freely!

Dean clenched his fists and then immediately relaxed.

To find Ruben, he had to take a trip with this monster.

In less than a minute.

The monster beat its wings, paused its flight, turned its speeding body around, and plunged headfirst into a dark tunnel opening beside the Truckee River before releasing its claws and dropping Dean onto the damp, cold ground.

The latter instantly rolled along the ground to widen the distance, facing the monster and vigilantly activating his divine perspective.

With a perception as high as 13, Dean was able to maintain a certain level of vision even in the dark.

The surroundings were gloomy and damp, the air hung with an unpleasant garbage stench, the ground was piled with standing water that submerged one's ankles, and emerald moss and water weeds grew along the circular sidewalls.

Deep within the tunnel, a faint gleam of light could be faintly discerned.

"How bizarre, how could there possibly be a tunnel around here?"

According to common sense, the police and detectives would have searched this place countless times.

It could only mean that this cave, much like Mary and the bat-woman, had appeared out of thin air!

Without waiting for him to ponder further.

The bat-woman standing at the entrance twisted her shoulders, retracting the shield-sized wing membranes back into two scars on her back.

The down all over her body also slowly faded away, revealing skin as smooth as silk and an hourglass figure.

To be fair, viewed in the dark, she looked quite sexy.

"Who are you, and why did you bring me here?!"

Dean asked cautiously.

However, the bat-woman did not answer; she lifted her sharp chin toward him, signaling him to continue walking inside.

Dean's eyes flickered as he slowly retreated toward the speck of fire deep within the tunnel.

The monster simply watched him straight on, a hint of greed and brutality faintly surfacing in its pitch-black pupils.

...

After making a few turns in the cramped darkness, Dean reached the end of the tunnel, a slightly drier open space.

The surrounding walls and ceiling were overgrown with strangely shaped stalactites and moss.

In the center of the open space burned a warm, bright campfire, near which a disheveled man sat in a daze.

He wore a tattered black trench coat like a blanket, his messy flaxen hair hanging past his ears and the back of his neck. Because he hadn't bathed in a long time, his wrists, cheeks, and exposed skin were dirty as if smeared with a layer of rotting mud, and he exuded a faint, spoiled odor, looking even more unkempt than a homeless person.

Next to his feet lay a pile of small bones, identifiable as fish and mice, beside which sat a bucket of cement filled with dirty water.

The moment he saw him, Dean's investigation progress jumped forward, reaching sixty percent!

"Ruben?" Dean called out.

The man's shoulders trembled visibly to the naked eye. He turned his head, rubbed his eyes in disbelief, opened his mouth wide, and shouted with a heavy, nasal voice like a severe cold:

"Shit! Am I hallucinating... I never wrote this plot, outsiders shouldn't be able to get in, who the hell are you?!"

He shouted as he grabbed a torch to protect himself, his grime-covered, skinny, and bony body stretching out like a sewer savage.

"Don't be afraid, I'm a private detective specially hired by your father, Malcolm Van Helsing... Dean." He spread his hands to indicate he meant no harm.

"Malcolm sent you to find me?" The expression on Ruben's bearded face softened slightly, his gaze sweeping across Dean's face. The mirror-like sense of familiarity made him pause. "Y-you, why do you look exactly like me?!"

"Fake, disguised with special effects makeup." Dean patted his face, evasively making up an excuse. "Makeup is all high-tech these days, enough to pass for the real thing; even an ugly duckling can be painted to look like a celestial fairy."

"And you're the author of *Ruben Van Helsing*; you should know that to find you, I first had to disguise myself as you, and then arrive at the Virginia Street Bridge at a specific time to trigger the plot in your book."

"True, as long as you follow the pattern in the book, you can trigger the plot. But it's too incredible." Ruben's black eyes rolled as he lowered the torch pointed at Dean. "How did you figure it out?"

Ruben looked up and down at Dean's face, which belonged to him.

"It's no big deal, I've seen even more bizarre and dangerous things." Dean breathed a sigh of relief as he felt the other's hostility dissipate, sitting by the campfire to warm his freezing hands. "Anyway, we are friends, not enemies. Now, I expect you to answer a few questions honestly."

"Go ahead and ask," Ruben sat down right across from him and handed over a wooden skewer stuck with pitch-black roasted meat. "Want some?"

One could clearly see the unblinking, bulging eyeballs of a dead "duck neck" and its crispy roasted black tail.

"Thanks, I'm not hungry right now." Dean politely declined the skewered roasted rat. "Have you been staying in here for the past six months?"

"Six months? That matches the time I calculated. Yep, I've never left the tunnel." Ruben nodded, his fingers tracing the rows of tally marks carved into the wall.

"How have you survived?"

"The bat-woman delivers food and drink to me every day—mice or fish... Although it looks terrifying and is hard to accept, once you roast it, it tastes a bit like chicken, crunchy and good enough to fill the stomach." Ruben's face was calm, as if he were recounting mundane daily chores.

A flash of surprise crossed Dean's eyes. This guy had pretty strong adaptability; locked up in such a dirty, damp, dark place, eating only rats and fish every day, and yet his mental state remained normal.

"I've only read the first half of your autobiography, where I saw you rescue Mary from jumping off the bridge, but I haven't read the second half," Dean asked. "What on earth is that bat monster?"

"Have you ever heard the saying 'good things take time'?" Ruben raised the corner of his brow and explained with a straight face, "How can love ever be smooth sailing? It takes going through some tribulations to become even more solid."

"..." Dean lowered his head, the campfire illuminating his darkened face.

Ruben remained unconcerned, calmly continuing to share his creative motivation while taking a bite of the roasted rat skewer.

"Most stories shape a villain, so I created a villain—a virtual monster modeled after the bats frequently haunting the sky above the Virginia Street Bridge, with a dash of fantastical elements—"

"The woman who drops her ring on the bridge, some of them despairing and jumping into the river to commit suicide."

"And those women who jump into the river—not everyone is as lucky as Mary to encounter a hero like me. They unluckily fall into the water and drown in the river."

"Their lingering resentment and grievances gather near the bridge, wandering for decades without dissipating, and finally possess a bat, transforming into a bat-fiend."

"She is jealous of Mary, whom I saved, and yearns for a brand-new romance. So just as Mary and I were about to embark on a new chapter in life, she kidnapped me, imprisoned us in a secret tunnel, and comes every night to torture me, forcing me to submit and tempting me to mate."

At the mention of mating.

Ruben's raspy voice paused, the gaze behind his bangs solemn.

"This can be considered a test of the unwavering loyalty of love between Mary and me. I will never yield to the monster's threats."

"Do you think you're Shakespeare's Romeo?" Dean grinned, revealing pale teeth as he clenched his fists. "Wouldn't it be better to write a sweet love story instead of making unnecessary complications and burying hidden dangers for yourself?"

"Before this book, I didn't know what I wrote would become reality!"

A stubborn expression bloomed on Ruben's grime-covered face as he stared back at Dean without flinching.

"Forget it, the awakening of superpowers has no rules, and I won't blame you." Dean reached out his hand to him. "Let's go, leave this ghost place with me, and go see Mary and your father, Malcolm!"

"NO," Ruben shook his hair, which was emitting a spoiled odor, and said with a hint of yearning, "According to the plot in the book, I have to stay here for a full year before I can finally reunite with Mary."

"Then half a year later, how did you deal with that monster?" Dean asked, somewhat puzzled. "Also, how did you write the ending of this book?"

Ruben straightened his face and fell silent for the first time, obviously reluctant to bring up the ending.

A trace of cold light flashed in Dean's eyes.

No matter what, he couldn't let this brain-cracked fellow continue staying here; after all, there were only three or four days left in the event time limit.

"Are you sure you want to stay for another half year? Your father, Malcolm, can't wait that long!" Dean said regretfully.

"What's wrong with that stubborn old man?" Ruben's tone trembled, growing nervous.

"He was diagnosed with late-stage cancer not long ago and is now lying in the hospital's intensive care unit. According to the doctors, he has at most another month or two left." Dean offered a silent apology to Malcolm in his heart. "If you go back after half a year, the only thing you'll see is his tombstone."

"I still remember Malcolm lying on the hospital bed, begging me to rescue you, saying he wouldn't hesitate even if it meant losing his entire family fortune!"

This time, even the dense beard and mud streaks could not hide the anxiety and fear on Ruben's face. He involuntarily snapped a stick in half and tossed it into the fire.

"The time hasn't reached a year, so we can't get out. The bat-fiend strictly adheres to the settings in the book, guarding the exit and absolutely refusing to let us leave, and I didn't set any other exits."

Dean pondered.

"Then we'll sneak out while it goes out to forage."

"As long as I leave the campfire's range, it will sense it immediately."

"Just stay behind me, I'll take care of it myself!"

"Detective Dean, I advise you not to throw your life away. It is a supernatural monster that I spent years designing, referencing vampires, Frankenstein's monster, gargoyles, and bats."

"Not only can it fly, move as fast as lightning, and master special sonic wave attacks, but most importantly..." Ruben said with a proud look, "Conventional attack methods cannot completely eliminate it."

"Even if you have Superman's laser eyes and burn it to ashes, it can quickly regenerate from the ashes because its essence is not a normal living organism."

"..."

"Why did you design the villain to be so powerful?"

"Those folks at the publishing house kept complaining that my writing was too cliché, so I innovated to give them a surprise," Ruben said earnestly. "The harder the villain is to deal with, the more it highlights how unbreakable the love between Mary and me is."

Dean rubbed his temples. "Didn't you give the bat-fiend a fatal weakness?"

"There is one," Ruben said hesitantly.

"Then you're not completely foolish. What weakness?"

"True love," Ruben said, holy radiance flickering in his eyes. "The bat-fiend was born from the resentment and jealousy of women who committed suicide by jumping into the river. Only true love can melt the hard ice in its heart, allowing it to let go, be liberated, and vanish."

"Two grown men here—where are we supposed to find true love?" Dean's voice became as repressed as an erupting volcano.

"It doesn't necessarily have to be romantic love between a man and a woman. According to the settings in my book, as long as it feels warmth—familial love works too—it can comfort it and conquer it!" Ruben defended.

"I can't exactly adopt you as my adopted son to give you paternal love. Can the bat-fiend understand our conversation?"

"According to the setting, it can only understand simple dialogue; our conversation is too complex for it to comprehend."

"Forget it, I don't care anymore. Introduce its abilities to me in detail again. When it comes in to mate with you, I'll make my move!"