A Flower for Crow

"Daydream?" Bai Zhou furrowed his brows, bewilderment in his eyes. What did that mean? They had all arrived in the city only a few days ago. How had Uncle Xiang already picked up chic buzzwords he couldn't even understand? Fortunately, Bai Zhou could at least follow what came next: [Little Zhou, you don't need to worry about us. Thanks to you, everyone from Wancheng has been moved to No. 27 Human Care Sanitarium. It's comfortable here—night and day compared to the hospital before. Every day, people deliver our meals, chat with us, and treat our ailments. Only recently did news from the outside finally reach us, letting us know what became of you. At first, we were worried sick, but then we heard them say you'd made quite a name for yourself in Tinghai. That's wonderful. I could tell since you were a boy that you had it in you. Sure enough, your Uncle Xiang didn't sell you those near-expired four-flavor instant noodles at a discount for nothing. There are many folks you know here at the sanitarium too—Old Man Wang, Auntie Zhang... They're all doing fine; they just miss you. Still, the outside world isn't like Wancheng. Making a name for yourself out there can't be easy. Uncle Xiang is writing to tell you that if you ever get tired out there, just come rest with us. Have a daydream or two with us, and all your troubles will vanish. Little Zhou, if you have time, come visit everyone. We all miss you. If you don't have time, that's fine too. We'll be right here every day anyway. Waiting for you.] A crumpled letter of barely two or three hundred words, written in clumsy, crooked characters across a page and a half, with blue ink soaking through the cheap paper to leave two small holes. Yet it was precisely handwriting like this that carried the most touching, unvarnished power, brimming with sentiments that moved Bai Zhou to the core. Bai Zhou read those few hundred words back and forth three times, his gaze returning to the opening line, unable to pull his eyes away for a long time. [Little Zhou,] [Do you want to join our daydreams?] A returning hero, when the dust settled at the journey's end, looked forward not to bouquets of roses, but to a letter from home. And for Bai Zhou, who had no family, this greeting from Wancheng was undeniably a letter from home. He had constantly worried about the folks from Wancheng. Ever since emerging from the minor world and clearing his identity, the very first thing he had done was check with the Special Control Bureau to confirm the townsfolk's safety. The Bureau had organized a rescue operation immediately, sweeping through like a tempest and shattering what Luo Tunan had called the "Wancheng Subject Ward Experiment"! Every move had unfolded with thunderous speed, uprooting Major Luo's strongholds like autumn winds sweeping away fallen leaves. In the end, Elder Song of the Special Control Bureau and the Statute Emissary of the Hall of Statutes had personally intervened. Elder Song had even dispatched his secretary to inspect the scene in person and arrange accommodations for the people of Wancheng. No. 27 Human Care Sanitarium. Bai Zhou remembered the name. Elder Song's secretary had mentioned that it was an official facility in the suburbs used to house the populace from Wancheng. Though styled as a sanitarium, it was effectively a sizable secret base. The Special Control Bureau had built many such facilities in the suburbs, specifically to house citizens tainted by Ruin Realm pollution and official personnel suffering psychological crises. Among them, No. 27 Human Care Sanitarium was currently designated exclusively for the people of Wancheng. In truth... the issues of physical screenings and mental pollution that Luo Tunan had brought up at Base 36 were very real. Uprooting the Blood Worship Cult's strongholds and rescuing the Wancheng populace hadn't been an undertaking Base 36 could manage on its own. It had been part of a thunderous retaliatory strike by the Special Control Bureau against the cult back then; Base 36 had merely played a supporting role, ultimately being assigned the aftermath of settling the civilians. It was just that Major Luo's screening methods had been far too brutal, and the hospital he had used to house the Wancheng folks had long been secretly under his thumb. ...Now that everyone had been relocated to No. 27 Human Care Sanitarium, Bai Zhou could finally breathe a sigh of relief. To be honest, Bai Zhou had initially feared the worst had happened to them. Reflecting on it later, however, it made sense. According to Major Luo's philosophy, ordinary people weren't even qualified to serve as Human Material, and death had always been a means rather than an end to him. The worth of the Wancheng townsfolk was roughly zero; at most, he would examine their bodies to see if the Blood Worship Cult had done anything to them. The final outcome had turned out rather ironic: Bai Zhou, having passed the test and remained with the Special Control Bureau, had narrowly escaped death time and again. Meanwhile, the ordinary folks of Wancheng who had been carried off on stretchers were mostly living fairly well right now. The twists and turns of life were always full of irony. Unfortunately, Bai Zhou had been swamped these past two days, and the suburbs were simply too far away... With Tinghai currently swept up in gathering storms, Bai Zhou was the center of everyone's attention. A trip out to the suburbs offered no guarantee against trouble, or else he truly would have planned a visit to the sanitarium. By all rights, this ought to be a time for celebration, a high point in life where he could rest on his laurels and savor the moment. Yet Bai Zhou found himself busier than ever... In a daze, it felt as though defeating Luo Tunan two days ago had happened two centuries past. Still... "What on earth is a daydream?" Bai Zhou's brow remained tightly furrowed, his mind tangled in doubt. Those words gave him a naggingly bad feeling—or rather, anyone who read them would inevitably overthink it. "You look quite troubled." Above the lake's surface, the barefoot purple-haired young woman floating in midair spoke softly. "A mindset like that is hardly suited for learning a secret technique." As she spoke, she produced a thin pane of glass and waved it twice. "If something is truly bothering you, why not just ask Elder Song and the others directly?" "Good idea." Bai Zhou nodded, his gaze shifting to the pane of glass in her hand. His voice paused, his eyes blinking twice. Noticing his stare, the purple-haired young woman blinked back. "Come to think of it... you have Elder Song's number, right?" She added, "I'm not very familiar with these things. Someone else always handled it for me before—so if you have his number, I won't bother placing the call for you." "Oh..." Bai Zhou understood. "So you don't know how to use a phone either?" The purple-haired young woman froze at his words. "What do you mean, 'either'?" As he spoke, Bai Zhou's gaze toward her couldn't help but soften with a touch of warmth. To find someone so unusual on Blue Star gave him the unexpected feeling of meeting a fellow countryman. "A phone, right?" Bai Zhou patted around inside his robes. In the blink of an eye, beneath the girl's somewhat bewildered gaze, he produced a long string of mobile phones tied together with rope, clattering as they emerged. Every single phone was a brand-name model, stamped either with a bitten pineapple or labeled 'Supreme Huami Special Edition.' A few even bore patches of dried blood, making their origins exceedingly questionable. The purple-haired girl: "?" "You certainly look like you have quite a side business," she said, her voice faltering with a strange stiffness. "So, what should I do next?" Bai Zhou asked earnestly. A great question. The purple-haired young woman fell silent. One on the water, one on the shore, the two of them stared blankly at each other. "I know nothing about electronic devices," she finally admitted. "Though I never expected you to be in the exact same boat." "We're still different," Bai Zhou replied solemnly, waving a hand. "Because I actually think I understand phones fairly well." "I know you can use them to watch videos, pawn them for currency, and use them to kill people if necessary," Bai Zhou said. "I'm just not very practiced with the specific operations... Um, I'm currently learning." The purple-haired girl: "?" What did he mean, using a phone to kill people? What was this guy rambling about?! Yet Bai Zhou wasn't making wild claims; every word came from personal experience. Fang Xiaoxia watched videos on her phone. Adjutant Han had set aside a new phone alongside gold bars as a reward. And on the black box known as 'F-14270 Death Phone,' someone had left a dying message about murder: [Write hypocrites into the phone's memo pad, and you can kill them... I will become the god of the new world!] How formidable was that? It could even call down an apocalyptic strike from an extraterrestrial civilization. A single phone, a single shout of "Hey, come out!" had shattered all eighteen years of Bai Zhou's daily life in Wancheng. A truly remarkable invention. So at times, Bai Zhou genuinely marveled at the wisdom of the people of Blue Star, that they could develop an all-purpose phone with such versatile functions. He just wasn't sure whether this too counted among the technologies they had excavated from ancient ruins... Still, right now... What did "making a call" actually entail? Under the purple-haired young woman's increasingly solemn gaze, Bai Zhou pondered the literal meaning of "beating a phone call" with great seriousness. Beat the call, beat the call... Did you have to beat the phone into submission? What if he beat it until it broke? "Um..." The purple-haired young woman attempted to explain. Yet since it took her well over a minute just to power on and unlock her own phone, explaining this concept to Bai Zhou proved harder for her than slaying a powerhouse above Level 6. One was a youth from Wancheng who knew nothing of Blue Star's civilization; the other was a traditional young lady of the Western Federation who never touched electronic gadgets. At this moment, they were evenly matched in ignorance, neither able to explain what they meant to the other. "...The wind tonight is rather noisy." Finally, above the breeze-swept lake, the purple-haired girl's white skirt fluttered in the wind. Her eyes took on a remarkably profound look as she offered a philosophical sigh from the bottom of her heart: "Indeed, people simply cannot easily understand one another." Be that as it may, Bai Zhou knew full well that in modern society, he couldn't go on like this forever. In the past, he would have opted for a simpler method and walked straight over to find Elder Song. Right now, however, glancing at the crumpled letter in his hand, he abruptly resolved to keep studying how to use a phone. Fortunately, there was still Crow. With Crow providing private instruction unseen by the purple-haired girl, Bai Zhou asked for the girl's Pear-brand phone. Two minutes later, Bai Zhou located Elder Song's name in the contacts and dialed the very first phone call of his life since arriving in Tinghai. "Is that really Bai Zhou?" Elder Song sounded quite astonished that Bai Zhou was using the purple-haired girl's phone, his imagination even running wild over the implications. "That's right, her phone is in my hands right now." Bai Zhou delivered his reply with utter confidence, speaking in the brazen tone of a ruthless kidnapper declaring, *Your daughter is in my hands.* "...Ah, a daydream? Yes, I know about that. In fact, you could say that's No. 27's specialty," Once he grasped Bai Zhou's confusion, Elder Song explained over the line. "There's an F-grade black box there called [Daydream]. The attending physician at No. 27 Human Care Sanitarium uses it to effectively soothe the agony caused by mental pollution in patients." "Rest easy. Once the storm blows over, you can visit anytime you like." Elder Song continued from the other end, "It should only be a few days now; the mop-up is in its final stages. Tomorrow, you can even take a stroll around the immediate neighborhood, as long as you don't wander too far." "There's one more thing..." Elder Song's tone grew heavy. "That bastard Luo Tunan conducted quite a few studies on those folks, subjecting them to excruciating torment. Some even died during the experiments." "Keep that in mind when you see them..." Hearing this, Bai Zhou lowered his gaze. "I will." "I'll go see them in a few days." With the call completed, Bai Zhou's heart was finally at ease. Just like that, Bai Zhou hung up his first phone call since arriving in Tinghai. From this moment on, he could be considered to know how to use a Blue Star telephone. Frankly, it gave him a distinct sense of accomplishment—one that, to Bai Zhou, felt even more worthy of commemoration than slaying two painter assassins from the Fine Arts Society. In a sense, it signified that he had taken another step toward integrating into this world known as Blue Star. A person always had to look forward. Though he constantly longed for that destroyed city of Wancheng, when word from his old acquaintances actually arrived, making those past days feel as though they were standing right before him— It gave him all the more drive to stride ahead. That was precisely why he had taken the initiative to figure out the phone just now. Making peace with the past allowed Bai Zhou to begin embracing this world. And in turn, this world embraced Bai Zhou. "Well then." The purple-haired young woman took her phone back from Bai Zhou's hands and waved it lightly. She looked at Bai Zhou, blinking her deep eyes, and asked, "Aren't you going to save my number?" After a moment's thought, she added leisurely in somewhat halting Eastern Federation Mandarin: "Even though I never use my phone to contact anyone." She winked at Bai Zhou. "Still, I recall that back in the Fog Capital, plenty of people wanted my contact information, but none could get it." Beside them, Crow, who had just felt quite proud of herself for teaching Bai Zhou how to make a call, couldn't help rolling her eyes upon hearing this. Folding her arms, Crow turned her head, her scrutinizing gaze sweeping up and down the purple-haired young woman's extraordinary figure. She curled her lip. "Tch, Western Federation women, all of them..." The rest of Crow's muttering grew so quiet that no one could make it out. Once the purple-haired young woman left her number and tucked away her phone, she clapped her hands twice. Ripples stirred across the lake's surface beneath her suspended feet. "Now that no one is around, we can get down to business!" "Business..." Bai Zhou carefully folded the letter back into its envelope and looked up at the young woman before him. After this brief exchange, his guard against her had dropped by ten percent. While maintaining his baseline caution, Bai Zhou felt a spark of anticipation rise within him at her words. Because he knew what she meant by "business." "That ancient rubik's cube was something I obtained while exploring a ruin in the Fog Capital's Ruin Realm. Inside lies the legacy of a secret technique from the Adventurer pathway." "Frankly speaking, if Thousand-Blade Vortex Slash were complete, it might be the strongest Level 4 secret technique I have ever seen," the purple-haired young woman said earnestly. "Yet what a pity it is—and the pity lies precisely in it being a Level 4 secret technique, lacking the profound mysteries of Intent and Spirit." "If obtained by a Level 3 Adventurer who relied on it to advance to Level 4, they would hold an utterly crushing advantage among their peers." "Unfortunately, neither of us is Level 3, and I'm not even an Adventurer." Regret and lament colored her words, but Bai Zhou didn't see it that way at all. Keeping his expression impassive, Bai Zhou mulled it over in his heart. What was the big deal about a Level 4 secret technique? Combine the strongest Level 4 technique with the strongest Sixth Basic Slash, and it would instantly become the strongest Level 6 secret technique! For the purple-haired young woman to acknowledge it as the strongest proved that while this technique lacked the application of Intent and Spirit— In terms of sheer skill, it had likely reached the pinnacle of perfection. This was precisely the vessel Bai Zhou needed most. As long as he poured in the premium gasoline known as the Nine Basic Slashes, the engine would immediately roar to life with a blast that would stun everyone, capable of roaring down the highway even if mounted onto a tractor. "Still, even so, this secret technique holds immense research value," the purple-haired young woman continued solemnly. "My elders examined the rubik's cube thoroughly and discovered that the missing portion is the movement technique of the Vortex portion." "The part preserved within the cube is Thousand Blades, which governs slaughter and adaptability!" She said, "And when speaking of Thousand Blades, one cannot fail to mention the unique resource excavated alongside that ruin—one that exists only within those grounds: Thousand-Blade Magic Stones!" Thousand Blades? Vortex? A unique resource from the ruin, the Thousand-Blade Magic Stone? Bai Zhou watched her attentively. Not to mention, he had already... ... "It can repair and advance weapons, and... basically never enters the trading market." "Currently, the Thousand-Blade Magic Stones that have circulated into the world..." "Considering that the Thousand-Blade Magic Stone itself has:"