At the front desk, Zhao Xintong kept her head bowed as she tapped away on her phone, her slender, pale fingers flying across the screen. "Yuanshi Tianzun dropped by the hotel just now. He's fine and unhurt, so nobody needs to worry."
Business at the hotel was mediocre, rarely seeing a full house. Zhao Xintong had been stationed there all day and had welcomed only three groups of guests, leaving her with ample time to kill on her phone.
The companions in the group chat were deeply invested in the matter. Although Xiao Yuan had already notified them that Yuanshi Tianzun had safely returned to Songhai, she had not shared any details.
Xiao Yuan herself was largely in the dark.
[Aunt Fang: It's enough that he's safe. Yuanshi Tianzun did us an immense favor this time. We should find an opportunity to thank him properly. How about everyone takes some time to visit the hotel?]
[Farewell My Concubine: What a real man! Powerful men like that have an irresistible pull on me.]
[Sweet Red Demon: @Farewell My Concubine, we want to thank Yuanshi Tianzun, not punish him. Buzz off.]
[Zhao Xintong: @Aunt Fang, he won't be moving around outside anytime soon. Maybe later.]
[Aunt Fang: Anyone targeted by a Dominator would choose to keep a low profile.]
Aunt Fang showed her understanding.
[Zhao Xintong: One more thing to notify everyone about. The origin of this incident is that an evil organization tried using me as bait to draw out Yuanshi Tianzun. The identities of our team members have likely been leaked. Everyone needs to pack up, move, and switch jobs as quickly as possible.]
This news sent a shock through the group.
[Uncle Yang: Why didn't Xiao Yuan give everyone a heads-up sooner?]
[Zhao Xintong: Don't panic, Uncle Yang. This is already very fast. We only just figured it out.]
From Yuanshi Tianzun rushing to the Baila branch in the morning to slipping out of the ambush and returning to Songhai that afternoon, the whole ordeal had taken less than a single day.
[Lin Chong: Dammit! How did our information get leaked?]
[Zhao Xintong: The one who leaked it was Good Minister Chooses His Master to Slay. He's already fled the hotel.]
A wave of curses erupted across the group.
[Wanderer of the Mortal Realm: Don't panic. Only a handful of us have regular jobs, so just resign. People like me with no fixed abode don't care either way.]
Zhao Xintong put down her phone and looked over at Xiao Yuan, who was staring off into space. She said softly, "I've already notified everyone for you. What are you thinking about? Ever since Yuanshi Tianzun left, you've had a lot on your mind."
In truth, she had a good guess. A middle schooler was no longer a naive child. The last time Kou Beiyue came to the hotel to listen to the sutras, he had made sour, passive-aggressive remarks about Xiao Yuan and Yuanshi Tianzun being passionately entangled.
This incident had surely plunged their relationship into crisis.
"It's nothing," Xiao Yuan replied flatly. "I was just considering how to steer clear of danger moving forward. Master Wuhen isn't at the hotel, so we must be more careful. We can't drag Yuanshi Tianzun down again."
"Okay." Zhao Xintong pursed her lips and nodded.
From Xiao Yuan's tone, she could tell her guess had been right. Zhao Xintong let out a faint sigh.
All she could do was sigh. A child could hardly meddle in grown-up affairs, nor did she have any standing to chime in.
Zhao Xintong looked back down, opened a food delivery app, and said, "It's almost dinner time, Aunt Xiao Yuan. Let me order something."
"Doesn't Kou Beiyue always bring dinner back?" Yuanshi Tianzun's voice cut her off.
Zhao Xintong looked up in surprise and saw starlight swelling from the lobby floor.
Xiao Yuan's eyes flickered with a faint glimmer.
Zhang Yuanqing stepped out of the starlight and approached the front desk, looking at the middle schooler. "I just remembered I have something to discuss with Xiao Yuan. Head upstairs first."
Zhao Xintong glanced at Xiao Yuan, a smile gracing her youthful face. "Okay, take your time."
Grabbing her phone, she jogged toward the hotel interior.
Once the elevator chimed open, Xiao Yuan was the first to speak, her tone cold and elegant as ever. "You should know it isn't safe outside—including the Wuhen Hotel."
"Master Wuhen must have left you some life-saving trump cards before leaving, right?" Zhang Yuanqing bypassed the front desk unconcernedly and sat down on the recliner behind Xiao Yuan.
Neither spoke for a few seconds. Zhang Yuanqing broke the silence himself. "Didn't you say last time that you were going to tell me about Wanderer of the Mortal Realm?"
His tone was casual, as though he were just making small talk.
Xiao Yuan had her back to him, concealing her expression. She wasn't in the mood to talk about such things right now, but after collecting her thoughts, she began to recount the tale:
"He was born in a small village administered by Nanming City. It was backward and impoverished; before the year 2000, it didn't even have electricity. For villagers to make a trip into the city, it took two hours by ox cart. The only motorized tricycle belonged to the village party branch secretary.
"Farming barely put food on the table. If locals wanted to make money, their only options were trafficking white flour or growing opium poppies. Wanderer of the Mortal Realm's mother was from the provincial capital and had attended high school. She should have had a bright future and never crossed paths with such a barbaric, wretched place in her entire life.
"She was abducted and sold there for eight thousand yuan. An educated woman would naturally refuse to resign herself to a destitute mountain village. From the moment she was brought there, she thought of escaping every single day, and every single time she was caught and brutally beaten.
"Half the women in that village had been abducted from outside. Without that method, the men couldn't get wives. When one family's wife fled, the entire village gave chase, and the authorities turned a blind eye. She tried escaping for years, right up until Wanderer of the Mortal Realm was born.
"From his earliest memories, his mother was locked away in a small shed, allowed only one meal a day. He was the one who brought it to her, just like feeding a dog. Yes, feeding a dog—those were his own words.
"His biological father was a coarse, savage man. Every day after returning from laboring in the fields, he would beat and curse him, then go into the shed to vent his lust on that wretched woman. To that man, he only needed a child to carry on the family line and a strong hand to shoulder farm work. As for paternal love, he couldn't care less.
"So Wanderer of the Mortal Realm experienced neither maternal tenderness nor a father's love. His birth was the crystallization of repeated crimes. His mother loathed him; every time she looked at him, it was as if she were looking at the foulest thing in the world. His father beat him and forced him to work the fields. He gave himself the name 'Wanderer of the Mortal Realm' because he felt he was merely drifting through this earthly realm—that he didn't belong in this world at all.
"Later, the year after his mother died of illness, a local criminal syndicate arrived. They bought him for five thousand yuan and used him as a mule to transport white flour. During one of those runs, he was apprehended by the Nanming District Security Bureau. He was only thirteen years old.
"It was that very experience that led him to his future adoptive father—a captain in the Security Bureau. He was an upright and stern peacekeeper who took pity on the child and sympathized with his plight. He led a squad to arrest the man and brought Wanderer of the Mortal Realm into his own home.
"That turning point changed his life. He received a father's love and a mother's warmth, leaving behind the days of beatings, grueling farm work, and carrying drugs. At last, he put on clean clothes, slung a backpack over his shoulder, and attended school like a normal child. Step by step, he fought his way out of loneliness and pain...
"Yet those good days didn't last long. Fate had granted him tenderness and love, but seemingly only to torment him all the more cruelly. When he was sixteen, his adoptive father's informant betrayed him. Over a dozen criminals stormed their home and hacked his adoptive parents to death. He leapt from the balcony and barely survived.
"He lay in the hospital for three months, tenaciously clawing his life back from the jaws of the Reaper. After waking up, his disposition changed drastically. The scars of his childhood combined with the agony of that catastrophic loss twisted his mind, and he became an evil class. For all these years, he has lingered along the borders, serving as an anti-narcotics operative in the shadows. The drug traffickers robbed him of everything, and he swore to seek vengeance until the end of his days.
"Yet he hates more than just the drug dealers; he hates this world, hates this society. He believes his very birth is glaring proof of society's darkness, and that he ought to spend his life avenging himself upon it. But his adoptive father was a peacekeeper who guarded order until his dying breath. He suppresses his sinister impulses and malice solely so he doesn't disappoint his adoptive father."
Xiao Yuan finished softly, "That's his story."
*No wonder he and Deacon Poison Chaser act like brothers born of different mothers. If not for the tragedies of his childhood and youth, he probably would have become an Orderly class too...* Zhang Yuanqing sighed with emotion and said, "Do you know why I wanted to hear his story?"
Xiao Yuan kept her back to him and let out a faint "Mm."
Zhang Yuanqing gazed at her back, his voice low and solemn. "My Decurion once told me that evil classes are the karmic fire of humanity itself. Eradicating evil classes is putting out that fire; if the flames ever grow too large to extinguish, then humanity simply had it coming.
"At first, I agreed with his philosophy. That was until I met Ashamed to Be a Father. His story shook me deeply. Ever since, I've often wondered: do all evil classes truly deserve death? Most of them certainly do. But what about people like Ashamed to Be a Father? What about someone like Uncle Zhang?
"Their fall to darkness stemmed from the injustices of society. It was other people who backed them into a corner and pushed them into the abyss. Even so, they are still trying to redeem themselves, still trying to make peace with the world.
"When dealing with people like that, protecting, redeeming, guiding, understanding, and reforming them—that is what an Orderly class should do. I didn't save Zhao Xintong purely out of affection for you. It has always been my conviction."
Zhang Yuanqing stood up, took a step behind her, and said softly, "Xiao Yuan, you know me. Why would you say something like wanting to 'compensate' me? You've disappointed me deeply. To think the woman I like so much doesn't understand me in the slightest."
At that moment, Zhang Yuanqing seemed to grasp the art of psychological manipulation entirely on instinct.
Xiao Yuan kept her eyes fixed on the hotel entrance, her exquisite profile cold and aloof, her lips slightly pressed together.
Pressing his advantage, Zhang Yuanqing pushed forward aggressively. "Whenever trouble strikes, your first instinct is not wanting to owe me, wanting to compensate me, just so you can preserve your dignity and maintain your haughty demeanor before me.
"I've never had a place in your heart. To you, I've always been an outsider. Let me ask you: if another member of your team had paid a dreadful price to save Tongtong, what would you have done? Your first thought wouldn't be to offer compensation, because in your heart, they are family—comrades bound by life and death.
"The fact that you tried to compensate me on Tongtong's behalf only proves how distant you keep me. Don't rush to deny it. Ask your own heart."
"Nothing to say?" Seeing Xiao Yuan remain silent, Zhang Yuanqing let out a sigh. "Then should I just leave?"
With that, he raised his hand, poising his fingers to snap.
According to his romance mentor's analysis, a woman at this juncture would panic and speak up out of guilt to make him stay. And even if she didn't, a skilled master would have follow-up tactics ready.
"Did you tell me all this just to make me feel guilty so I'd obey your every whim?" Xiao Yuan turned her head to look at him.
Zhang Yuanqing's expression instantly froze, and his raised hand hung stiffly in the air.
Xiao Yuan retracted her gaze, looked back toward the hotel entrance, and said indifferently, "That line of yours might work on Tongtong, but that's about it."
"..."
Zhang Yuanqing was thoroughly embarrassed. The mentor had only taught him how to handle her asking him to stay or letting him leave, but what was he supposed to do when she called his bluff head-on?
Taking her by force was obviously out of the question, so it seemed leaving was his only option.
If the mentor had been here, he surely could have smoothed it over effortlessly. But Zhang Yuanqing was, after all, a novice just learning the ropes, far from reaching the realm where formlessness transcends technique. When confronted with an unexpected turn that fell outside the syllabus, he was utterly at a loss.
Just then, Xiao Yuan glanced at the darkening sky and said flatly, "I'm a bit tired. I'm going upstairs to rest."
With that, she took out her phone, dialed Tongtong to call her back down to watch the front desk, and walked past Zhang Yuanqing with a taut face, disappearing into the depths of the hotel.
A few minutes later, Tongtong walked down the stairs. Seeing Yuanshi Tianzun loitering gloomily by the front desk, she asked tentatively, "Did your chat not go so well?"
"Yeah."
"Can I ask what happened?"
Zhang Yuanqing thought for a moment and said, "Let me tell you a fable. A fox set his sights on a hen and tried to manipulate her. Who knew the hen wasn't born yesterday? She saw right through the fox's cunning scheme in an instant and walked off in anger. Tell me, does the fox still have a shot?"
Zhao Xintong shook her head pessimistically.
Just as Zhang Yuanqing was about to speak, his phone chimed in his pocket. He assumed Guan Ya was texting to urge him to return home for the barbecue, but to his surprise, the message was from Xiao Yuan.
[Xiao Yuan: Does what you said before—about liking older women—still stand?!]
***
Fujia Bay.
As the sun dipped in the west, bunny girls moved briskly through the lush, verdant courtyard, carrying ingredients, grills, charcoal, tables, and chairs.
They even served as electricians, running cables and setting up xenon lamps, proving practically all-powerful.
Sun Miaomiao helped out enthusiastically, carrying no airs whatsoever and happily pitching in.
Xie Lingxi was far lazier, sitting on a small stool with her knees together, frantically texting as she grumbled, "Why isn't Brother Yuanshi back yet? He's not replying to my messages either."
Having just torn open a pack of steaks, Sun Miaomiao looked up and said, "He said he had urgent business to handle and would be back later. Let's start grilling first."
"What kind of business?"
Sun Miaomiao shook her head. "Something about negotiating a deal with a courier company? A multi-billion order?"
***
Meanwhile, Little Fatty rode an electric scooter straight toward the city center. Finding a five-star hotel, he parked the scooter and easily booked a room by the hour using an Illusionist's disguise and mental manipulation techniques.
Taking the elevator up to the room, Little Fatty took out the Dreamscape Helmet, lay down on the bed, and connected to the First Elder of the Southern Sect.
Chapter 609