Yellowing white curtains, mold-spotted walls, a cramped and dim room.
The fragrance of a woman's body mingled with the scent of blooming photinia.
*Drip, drip.*
Accompanied by the steady dripping of an old bathroom faucet, Qiu Tu slowly woke up.
He opened his exhausted eyes, shook his dizzy, throbbing head, and took in his surroundings.
A room so cramped it measured barely seven square meters, cluttered with junk. In the middle of all the clutter sat a ramshackle wooden bed.
A woman with an exquisitely curved figure and skin as white as snow lay naked on the mattress, fast asleep.
Looking at her, Qiu Tu's mind automatically supplied her identity.
The mistress of Yan Chen, Chief of the Xinjie City Investigation Bureau.
And he himself...
Qiu Tu shook his aching head once more.
A Rank 2 agent in the Xinjie City Investigation Bureau, and Yan Chen's trusted subordinate.
His primary duty was...
To ensure this mistress's safety!
Qiu Tu snapped his head up, looked down at his own completely bare body, and his face filled with shock.
Wait, something was wrong.
Wasn't he in the middle of blowing up a company? How had he become an agent?
Had he transmigrated?
Half an hour later.
In the bathroom.
Standing before a grime-streaked washbasin with water dripping from his face, Qiu Tu stared at his reflection in the cracked mirror, having pieced together the general situation.
He had indeed transmigrated.
He had crossed over into a chaotic, bloody world.
A sudden Cataclysm had destroyed most nations. Species mutated, cities fell into ruin, food grew scarce, and civilization vanished without a trace, replaced by endless turmoil, the law of the jungle, and brutal survival of the fittest.
After decades of chaos following the Cataclysm, civilization had finally begun to sprout anew.
With several powerful figures joining hands, humanity had gradually established eight major sanctuaries, slowly restoring the pre-Cataclysm order and giving mankind renewed hope.
Unfortunately, the Xinjie City where Qiu Tu found himself was not one of those eight sanctuaries. It was a zone pending planning.
In other words, a buffer region caught between the sanctuaries and the disaster zones, slated for eventual reconstruction.
There were no mature laws here, no strict regulations to uphold—only the raw rule of the strong preying on the weak.
Although the major sanctuaries dispatched mid- to high-level administrators to govern these territories, they were tasked only with preventing major uprisings; beyond that, the sanctuaries turned a blind eye.
As a result, each senior administrator reigned as a local tyrant with absolute authority over their zone. A single word from them could grant life or bring death.
Qiu Tu's direct superior, Chief Yan Chen of the Xinjie City Investigation Bureau, was one such high-ranking official dispatched from the sanctuaries. He commanded the full force of the bureau, standing as one of the three magnates ruling Xinjie City.
As for Qiu Tu, he was Yan Chen's lackey—a mid-level agent in Xinjie City who specialized in handling dirty work on Yan Chen's behalf.
Things like assassinations, tax collection, and... guarding the safety of his mistress.
Well... he had guarded her all the way into bed.
Wiping his face dry, Qiu Tu combed through the final memories of his predecessor.
In those memories, after a fierce and passionate bout with Yan Chen's mistress, the previous Qiu Tu had collapsed into sleep, only to suddenly feel his heart seize in agonizing tightness.
The man had jolted awake, fighting to open his eyes, but tinnitus and vertigo swiftly overtook him. His strength rapidly drained away until his consciousness vanished entirely, leaving his identity open for Qiu Tu to take over.
*Was it a sudden medical emergency?*
Recalling how his predecessor died, Qiu Tu felt a prickle of doubt.
Still, he didn't dwell on it. After all, sleeping with the woman of a city's Investigation Bureau Chief meant dying sooner or later didn't make much difference.
In an era where countless people perished every single day, offending such a powerful figure and simply being stuffed into a burlap sack before getting dumped into a sewage canal the next morning would count as sheer good luck. If the big shot was vindictive or twisted, having his limbs hacked off to be caged as a living torso, tormented in a state between life and death for the rest of his days, would hardly be surprising.
*Things are getting thrilling...*
With that thought, Qiu Tu looked up at the culprit behind it all—his handsome face reflected in the mirror—and a brilliant smile broke across his lips.
*Still... this is already far better than my previous life.*
In his past life, Qiu Tu had been duped by a friend and sold into northern Myanmar. Beaten and degraded day in and day out, he hadn't dared to close his eyes at night, terrified he would be buried alive or harvested for organs the next morning.
In that hell, he had cast away his morals, willingly siding with the telecom fraud syndicate to become their henchman.
Scamming, stabbing, killing. Step by step, he climbed to prominence, and then... one by one, he dragged every person who had deceived and humiliated him straight down to hell.
Afterward, he continued to rise through the ranks, eventually reaching upper management. Then, during a grand banquet celebrating the syndicate's profits, strapped with explosives all over his body, he blasted the entire syndicate and its behind-the-scenes boss straight into the afterlife.
Looking back on those final years of his previous life, ever since he had been trafficked into northern Myanmar, only one path had ever remained for him: death. Compliance meant death; resistance meant death; complicity meant death; lonely vengeance meant death as well.
Now, as perilous as his situation was, there was at least a glimmer of survival!
After all, according to his predecessor's memories, Chief Yan Chen still placed great trust in him.
As long as Qiu Tu didn't slip up from here on out, he shouldn't be in immediate danger, right?
Just as that thought crossed his mind...
*Bzz, bzz...*
The vibration of a communicator abruptly broke the silence of the cramped bathroom.
Hearing the buzzing, Qiu Tu shifted his gaze to the battered, physical-button communicator resting on the sink.
Three characters glowed on its low-resolution yellow-green screen: *Chief Yan*.
Even though he had mentally braced himself for every scenario, Qiu Tu's heart still skipped a violent beat when he saw that name.
He inhaled deeply to swallow down the shock in his chest and sternly warned himself: *Stay calm. The Chief doesn't know anything. As long as I keep my composure, nothing will go wrong.*
Yet the moment the thought formed, a sudden flash flickered before his eyes.
The next second, lines of text materialized across his vision.
[Crisis Sense triggered! Generating crisis report!]
[Your direct superior, Chief Yan Chen of the Xinjie City Investigation Bureau, is calling you.]
[He is inherently suspicious and utterly ruthless.]
[Before contacting you, he reached out to other confidants and learned that you and his mistress, Qin Shuman, deliberately sent everyone else away to leave unaccompanied. You have been gone together for four and a half hours and have yet to return.]
[Qin Shuman's maid has also secretly reported to him that over the past two days, the two of you have been constantly exchanging flirtatious glances.]
[He is currently furious and has begun questioning your loyalty.]
[However, cunning and calculating as he is, he does not wish to alert his prey prematurely, choosing instead to test you first.]
[You have only two minutes.]
[If you fail to regain his trust within two minutes, your corpse and Qin Shuman's will surface in Xinjie City's sewers tomorrow. With his power, you know there is nowhere to run.]
[The two-minute countdown begins now.]
As the prompt faded, an hourglass-shaped countdown timer slowly manifested in the upper-left corner of his vision.
Qiu Tu: ???