Qinna Has Agreed to Our Marriage

Thousands of bare winter firs pointed straight and rigid into the night sky like the hundred legs of a centipede carcass. Sparse streetlights could only faintly illuminate the brownish-yellow earth, and the air was thick with a sweet, metallic tang mingled with the scent of soil. "Where is this place?" Igola glanced down at his boots, which were now thoroughly battered with grime and rotting mud, their soles effectively condemned on their very first day of service. Not just the Swindler; everyone had changed into a new set of clothes at Annan's demand. Wrapped in heavy leather coats and wearing full-face filter masks as they trudged through the quiet, deserted woods, no one would believe they weren't committing some sort of crime. "The Forest Park." "No offense intended, Eldest Miss, but what I meant was—why come here instead of leaving Fanmula directly?" After departing the Sennheiser Building by hovercar, Igola had assumed they would drive straight out of Fanmula. Annan, however, had driven in the opposite direction, bringing them right to the Forest Park in the city center. Once out of the car, Banjie had retrieved clothing and protective suits for everyone from his spatial artifact briefcase. Clearly, even without tonight's unexpected crisis, Annan, still deep in her rebellious phase, would have dragged them along to run away from home sooner or later anyway. Banjie said mildly, "You and Yaxiu didn't make it to the eighty-sixth floor, so you don't know that the ones hunting the Miss were those bastards from the Family Harmony Agency." Annan pointed up at the sky. "Tonight is clear and fogless. All the people of Fanmula are resting today, not doing any outdoor activities, so no one will be driving out." Yaxiu came to a sudden realization. "So the Family Harmony Agency outside the city would only need to query the Book of Gospel regarding traffic in Fanmula to pin us down with absolute accuracy! And their greatest specialty is hacking and hijacking all kinds of smart devices. If we fled directly by car, to them we'd practically be takeout boxes delivering ourselves right to their doorstep!" Unlike an idiot like Yaxiu, who only focused on enemy intelligence, Igola detected the faint resentment lingering in Banjie's words. He promptly picked up the thread, saying, "So it was those people from the Family Ruin Agency... Sigh, last time, just fighting two of their operators wore us out completely. Yet this time, Eldest Miss was able to take on a whole swarm of pursuers single-handedly? Harvey, if you guys had walked any slower, wouldn't Eldest Miss have wiped out the entire enemy force on her own?" "How could that be possible..." Annan laughed. "Those two last time had mobilized drones from across the entire city, whereas Fanmula happens to have relatively few smart automata and drones. The combat doctrine of the Family Ruin Agency revolves entirely around smart automata. So once I blasted the automata they brought with them, they had almost no way to keep me pinned down and could only try to overwhelm me with numbers. Fortunately, Banjie and Harvey arrived in the nick of time, or my sorcery power would have run dry." "Still, it took Eldest Miss's formidable strength to hold out until Harvey and the others arrived. Had it been any of us, we probably would've been captured by the Family Ruin Agency already," Igola sighed with admiration. "Eldest Miss moves so fast that we have to give it our absolute all just to barely keep up with your stride." Annan hummed a cheerful note, and Banjie turned his head to glance at Igola. Even though the mask concealed ninety percent of his expression, the softening of the young butler's gaze told Igola that his verbal massage had hit just the right spot. The fact that Yaxiu and Igola hadn't rushed to rescue Annan first would inevitably leave a thorn in both Annan's and Banjie's hearts. The only difference was that Annan hadn't shown it, while Banjie made his dissatisfaction glaringly obvious. Igola's solution was simple: making excuses was pointless. When one's own life was on the line, emotion would only insist that one's own survival came first, while reason merely served emotion by finding a thousand justifications for it. Here, there was no need to mention failing to rescue Annan at all—one just had to find roundabout ways to flatter the young mistress. Banjie viewed Annan like a daughter, so Igola praising Annan was a hundred times more effective than praising Banjie himself. As for Annan, if Igola's judgment held true, she had likely grown up starved of positive affirmation. Her mother, Qinna, went without saying, while the butler who had raised her, Banjie, was hardly someone adept at giving praise. Whenever Annan achieved something, Banjie would most likely say things like "You're amazing, Miss" or "I'll bake a cake tonight to celebrate," but such compliments were too generic, too bland, and felt far too much like humoring a child. Annan had heard them so often she had grown sick of them. Thus, Igola needed only to gently guide Annan into talking about her own battle feats, scratching right where she itched with flattering words, and the thorn would be plucked out on its own. And for Banjie, anyone who praised the Purple Moth was a brother from another mother; the resentment in his heart would naturally dissipate. Still, this tactic couldn't be overused. Annan was an adult in her twenties after all; if Igola flattered her constantly, her threshold would quickly rise. Be it praise, criticism, or love, the more stingily it was given, the more precious it seemed. Igola saw Yaxiu mouth at him: *80 points.* He had originally planned to ignore this damn idiot for at least twenty-four hours, but at the sight of that, the Swindler couldn't resist shooting him a disdainful glare: *Let's see you pull off a 100-point play, then?* Yaxiu cleared his throat. "Annan." "Hm?" Annan shot him a sidelong glance—*calling me directly by name, acting so cocky?* "Qinna has agreed to our marriage." Igola stumbled. Lisi, on Yaxiu's back, let out two startled yelps, and Banjie stiffened as well—due to the distance, he hadn't actually heard the conversation between Yaxiu and Qinna back on the game floor. Annan, conversely, remained relatively calm. "What happened?" Yaxiu explained how he had pretended to be her fiancé just to save his own skin. "...And then Qinna made up her mind to cover our escape. Eldest Miss, you won't blame me for improvising, will you?" Lisi breathed a sigh of relief. "You scared me to death! So Daddy was just lying." "If we hadn't left Fanmula, it wouldn't be a lie," Annan said. "If Qinna truly protected you on the premise that you would marry into the Sennheiser family, then even if it were false, Qinna would turn it into reality—she never does business at a loss." Lisi grew anxious. "But if you don't want to, Sister Annan, there's nothing Big Sister Qinna can do either!" "It wouldn't matter even if I refused. All Qinna wants is for Yaxiu to marry into the family; as for whether Yaxiu's wife is me or not, she couldn't care less. So long as Yaxiu's wife bears the Sennheiser surname, that is enough," Annan said. "Good thing we made a decisive run for it. Otherwise, after paying such a heavy price for Yaxiu, Qinna would definitely have devoured you down to the bone." Hearing the phrase "devoured you down to the bone," Igola couldn't help glancing over at Yaxiu. At that moment, Yaxiu's gaze was somewhat drifting... or was it yearning? "Still, would Qinna really be willing to harbor you just because you married in? She isn't that simple, is she?" Annan murmured softly, making cold sweat break out on Yaxiu and Igola. "Is there some other conflict of interest here that I don't know about..." "Look!" Igola pointed loudly toward an underground stairwell passageway not far away. "Is this our escape route?" Annan nodded. "That's right, this is it. Let's head in." Right before they stepped into the passageway, Harvey, who had remained silent all this time, suddenly halted and sneezed. He raised a hand and said, "Wait." The necromancer tilted his head back in sheer intoxication. His nose inhaled like a tempest, tracing a figure eight in the air, while his mouth murmured hair-raising musings: "Ah, ah... The mucous membranes are screaming, the heart rate is quickening, all the nerves in my body are curling up, all my pores are dilating... A hundred thousand? A million? Or ten million?... Haah!" The necromancer shuddered all over, and then, as if slipping into sage mode, his trembling abruptly ceased. In a brisk, lighthearted voice, he said, "Alright, I'm ready to head down." "Well, we're not ready," Yaxiu and Lisi said, trembling violently. "Just what kind of monster's den is down there? This is the first time I've ever seen Harvey like this—he didn't get this high even when smoking ten sticks of cat grass smoke at once." Igola raised an eyebrow. "Is it the cemetery of the Six Crest Families down there?" "Compared to a cemetery, you're probably more familiar with its other name," Annan said. "The Mermaid Fish-Mint Farm."