Over the next few weeks, Wei Ying does as much research into magical girls and monsters as she can dig up. 

The Imperial Court publishes very basic need-to-know level information about magical girls and monsters. With particularly diligent searching, she can also find:

- conspiracies that magical girls (either in general or some subset) deliberately farm witches so they can harvest them
- theories that monsters are imaginary actually and just the excuse magical girls give for lording it over people
- rumors about there being domesticated monsters that give magical girls their powers
- screeds about how racist it is that so many magical girls are Chinese, even the ones who were actually born in other countries and especially the older and more important ones
- concerns about wishes being monkey's-paw bargains that never work out right
- explicit erotica shipping the Imperial Secretary, Ling Wen, with basically everyone else who has ever been seen in a room with her

She cross-references these theories and rumors against each other, checking which ones are believed by how many credible people and which ones only seem to be believed by crackpots, and what any actual magical girls have to say about them. 

(Also, who is Imperial Secretary Ling Wen and why is she the RPF bicycle?)

Absolutely nothing about Ling Wen's internet footprint beyond the fanfic itself suggests that the bicycling has any basis in fact, And Yet. She seems to do administrative management and records keeping for the Imperial Court.

She starts making inquiries. She tries to find websites that magical girls frequent and ask them questions, and she asks RPF writers what's so appealing about Ling Wen. 

Magical girls frequent sites such as various password-protected Imperial fora and informal sites such as Abracadabra and Puellae. They do things like monster tracking, monster-type name contests, meetups for sparring and hanging out, bickering about local chapter leadership elections, and getting into side arguments about the statute of limitations on people who made wishes like a really long time ago that were not, to the modern turn of mind, strictly ethical.

She finds some sites where people are discussing monsters that aren't locked to just magical girls and asks if anyone knows anything about monsters who can feed off animals. 

(The RPF writers who get back to her are divided among "idk it's just what we do in this fandom", "she's hot", "her job sounds super fake so probably she slept her way into it", and "look at this photo from 1918 of her and Jun Wu, look at how they're LOOKING at each other" about a perfectly unremarkable black and white photograph in which the parties are making eye contact at all.)

Someone is sure a monster killed her cat. Someone says in Indonesia there's a folk superstition that if you do enough cockfighting the monsters will be appeased.

She asks if the cat person knows anything about what kind of monster the cat-killer was and makes inquiries about monster varietals in Indonesia. 

Cat person is not magical and cannot see monsters but Mr. Meow would never run away.

Monster trackers in Indonesia are... written in Indonesian. With the help of Google Translate she can determine that the common types there are called (something that translates as) "evil mosque", "corpse flower", and "liquor river", but there are other less frequent sorts.

She makes inquiries in less magical-girl-related circles she frequents whether anyone is interested in helping her translate something from Indonesian. 

It's not widely spoken but if she is willing to pay money this guy knows somebody!

Laaaaaaan Zhaaaaaaan?

--Yeah okay this is a legitimately valuable project. 

She is totally willing to pay money!

Hand-translation of the Indonesian websites confirms the "corpse flower", "evil mosque", and "liquor river" monster types endemic to the region but does not indicate that the magical girls think any of them are eating animals or appeased by cockfighting.

Hmm. Mildly disappointing, but she wasn't placing a ton of confidence in folk superstitions anyway. 

She continues poking around magical girl websites making inquiries, being careful not to be rude or repetitive enough for people to just dismiss her as a sockpuppet or a troll. 

noon9834: where did you say you met this girl?

Why?

noon9834: sounds like someone I know

Tell me something about her I would know from having had lunch with her but haven't mentioned online. 

noon9834: white gem

Ok now convince me you're not a creepy stalker

noon9834: at this point is there anything I could tell you where you wouldn't go "that sounds like what a creepy stalker would say"

You could tell me something about yourself that if I run into her again I could mention it to her and she'd be like "yeah I know who you're talking about and they're definitely not a creepy stalker"