Yan Huan was boiling water in the kitchen, completely unaware that aside from the holy relic Spencer had dropped in his school bag, a piece of her Hero Fragnt had also been left behind on his bed.
anwhile, Tong Yingying stared at the Hero Fragnt in her hand, completely dumbfounded. She cast a bewildered glance around the room.
'Unless Yan Huan has so weird fetish for dyeing things in strange places, this thing most likely belongs to soone else who visited his house,' she thought to herself.
'And whoever dropped this kind of fragnt definitely wasn't here just for a normal visit.'
'A classmate?'
'Right, his school is full of blond-haired, blue-eyed foreigners.'
'But the problem is, whoever slept in his bed and left this fragnt behind is most likely a girl!'
Tong Yingying nervously glanced toward the door, only to see that chubby black cat.
Lowering her head, she sniffed Yan Huan's bedding, trying to find any evidence of another woman's presence.
Unfortunately, she only caught Yan Huan's faint scent mingled with the fresh fragrance of body wash.
"..."
'Ah, dammit!'
'Did so thieving stray cat co to devour this delicious male university student?!'
Tong Yingying sat up with reddened eyes. Staring at the strand of hair in her hand, she felt a burning urge to storm out and interrogate Yan Huan about who it belonged to.
However, a hypothetical scenario faintly surfaced in her mind.
"Yan Huan! Tell
right now, did another girl co over to your house?!"
Upon hearing this, Yan Huan would turn his head with a bright smile and nod in admission,
"Yeah, and it was soone I like."
Then she would be absolutely horrified, asking in sorrow,
"Then... what about ?"
"You?"
Hearing this, Yan Huan would likely pause for a mont before replying with an awkward expression,
"Sister Tong, I've always seen you as an elder. I thought you were just joking before, I didn't expect you to actually be this cringeworthy..."
"..."
"Not only are you almost a dozen years older than , but you also have a terrible temper, and your living habits are so abysmal it's painful to watch..."
"Ugh..."
"Wouldn't being with you be like a lifeti in prison? I'm still young, I don't want a life sentence..."
"No, please no..."
Back in the bedroom, realizing she had absolutely no status or right to question his private life, Tong Yingying clutched her head and writhed on the bed like a maggot.
Outside the door, Myau-chan, having witnessed this entire display, wore a helpless expression and complained inwardly,
"Why is her imagination so active..."
Thinking this, he turned his head to glance at Yan Huan, who was pouring water. He let out a sigh and muttered softly,
"Looks like I'll have to lend a paw, ow."
With that said, he raised his tail high and sauntered elegantly into the bedroom.
"ow~"
The adorable, high-pitched feline cry instantly caught Tong Yingying's attention. She turned her head, shot Myau-chan a look of disgust, and waved him away.
"Shoo, shoo, stay away."
"ow?"
Myau-chan ignored her completely, flopping onto his back with all four paws in the air, acting spoiled towards Tong Yingying.
Miraculously, the mont Myau-chan laid down, a small patch of black fur on his belly instantly transford into a dazzling gold, looking almost identical to the hair in Tong Yingying's hand.
"ow~"
Tong Yingying impatiently tried to shoo Myau-chan away, but in the next second, she suddenly noticed that tiny tuft of golden fur on his belly.
"Huh?"
"ow~"
Myau-chan waved his paws cutely, while Tong Yingying stared at the patch of golden fur on his stomach and let out a massive sigh of relief.
"You seriously scared
half to death..."
Looking at Myau-chan, Tong Yingying finally relaxed her grip, dropping the strand of hair onto the floor.
She then scooped Myau-chan up from the ground and scrutinized the adorable black cat.
After a second of silence, Tong Yingying scoffed.
"Turns out you're just a worthless mixed breed."
"ow?!"
Hearing this, Myau-chan instantly beca overheated, thrashing and flailing his claws wildly in her grasp.
Helpless, Tong Yingying had no choice but to toss him back onto the floor.
"Ring-ring-ring~"
"Delivery! Please open the door!"
"Coming!"
Yan Huan had just finished pouring the hot water and set it on the table. Hearing the delivery driver, he walked to the entryway to pick it up.
Tong Yingying happened to walk out at that mont. Sipping the hot water, she asked Yan Huan,
"You haven't had dinner yet?"
"Yeah. Sister Tong, do you want so?"
"Forget it, I'm on a diet."
Tong Yingying shook her head, resting her chin on her hand as she watched Yan Huan unpack the pizza and snacks he had bought.
"By the way, Sister Tong, are you not opening the tavern tonight either?"
"Open what tavern? My employees aren't even coming to work..."
"Sorry, Sister Tong, I've just been really busy lately. I'll definitely co in after a while."
Whenever this was brought up, Yan Huan truly felt a bit guilty toward Tong Yingying.
Not to ntion that she was still paying his salary right now. Even if she wasn't, and even though he had more money now, he couldn't just stop going.
After all, there was a ti when Yan Huan relied solely on the job Tong Yingying provided to support his household. He couldn't just forget his roots so quickly.
Munch~
Tong Yingying, who had just claid she wasn't going to eat, picked up a chicken nugget. Seeing Yan Huan apologize so earnestly, she shook her head and said dismissively,
"We'll talk about it later. I'm not opening the tavern lately because I have so other business and need to go abroad."
"Going back to Dragon Country?"
"I'm going to Sakura Country. I leave tomorrow and will be staying there for a few weeks."
"...Funnily enough, Sakura Country is one of the options for our school trip next week. If that destination gets selected, I might just run into you there, Sister Tong."
"Heh, it's best if we don't run into each other. I'm going there for serious business."
"You actually have serious business?"
Faced with Yan Huan's deeply suspicious expression, Tong Yingying didn't even bother explaining.
She truly did have serious business to attend to, and it was related to Nara.
Tong Yingying had made an agreent with Nara to have her track down the suspect who murdered Mama Bai.
That person had previously appeared in Linn and had now traveled by ship, eventually arriving in Sakura Country.
Nara was being heavily restricted by Sakuramiya Lily and couldn't make a move, so she had no choice but to pass the intelligence on to Tong Yingying.
In the end, she had to handle this personally.
"So, while I'm away, you better protect yourself. Don't go getting into trouble."
"...You say that like I'm so little baby under your protection."
"Are you not?"
Pinching a chicken nugget, Tong Yingying pointed it at Yan Huan and said seriously,
"That Vice President always around you is a very dangerous person. You need to be careful."
"...She already dismantled all the caras."
"I know that, but I'm talking about her as a person."
Tong Yingying chewed on her chicken nugget, falling silent for a second before adding,
"I don't know if it's just because I hate these upper-class elites, so I have a filter against them. Regardless, she always gives
an uncomfortable feeling... disgusting, like a centipede."
"..."
Hearing Tong Yingying's bizarre comparison, Yan Huan paused mid-bite of his pizza and looked up at her.
He blinked, glanced at Myau-chan licking his paws nearby, and then hesitantly said,
"...That must be your imagination, Sister Tong."
"I hope so. Anyway, it never hurts to keep your guard up. Psychopaths are terrifying, but wealthy and powerful psychopaths are even worse."
After eating a few more chicken nuggets, Tong Yingying stood up to take her leave.
"Alright then, seeing as you're still studying, I won't bother you anymore."
"Leaving already?"
As Tong Yingying stood up, Yan Huan also rose to see her out.
Just as she reached the entryway and was about to change her shoes, Tong Yingying glanced back at him.
Her face flushed slightly for a brief mont before she turned around and opened her arms toward him.
"So, what do you say? Your boss is leaving for a while. How about a farewell hug?"
"..."
Yan Huan blinked. Looking at Tong Yingying standing before him, his heart once again faced the exact sa dilemma he felt when thinking about An Le.
'What exactly are my feelings toward Tong Yingying?'
However, unlike his fear of carelessly rejecting An Le because she was a Modifier host, his inability to speak right now stemd from the fact that he truly didn't know how to describe his feelings for Tong Yingying.
Sakuramiya Hitomi turning out to be a major problem had indeed caused a significant shock to his psyche.
It felt a bit like the saying, "When a whale falls, a myriad of things are born."
Normally, whenever Tong Yingying made these half-joking, ambiguous advances, Yan Huan would completely lack an understanding of romance, brushing her off and rejecting her. But now, he found himself hesitating.
Even with soone like Spencer—a host he was supposed to hate—he had begun to notice her endearing qualities.
Was this a complete degradation of his morals, or had the enhanced fertility desires finally allowed his little head to take control of his big head?
Yan Huan had no idea either.
In his hesitation, he ultimately chose the middle ground between "not hugging" and "embracing tightly."
In the next second, Yan Huan stepped forward, gave Tong Yingying a polite handshake, and said,
"Have a safe trip, Sister Tong."
The mont Yan Huan took her hand, Tong Yingying's eyebrows twitched slightly.
She shot him an irritated glare, then gave his hand a gentle tug, domineeringly pulling him closer.
Feeling his center of gravity shift, Yan Huan instinctively adjusted his posture.
"Tong—"
"Tong my ass, stop being so bashful..."
Thud~
But in the next second, Tong Yingying threw her arms around his back, steadying his stance while simultaneously pulling him into an even deeper embrace.
The faint scent of tobacco mixed with perfu, creating a complex and alluring body scent.
The soft, mature curves of her body pressed against his chest, striking straight into Yan Huan's heart.
Hiss...
'I forgot, I just added a 5% boost to my fertility!'
At that thought, Yan Huan subconsciously started to struggle.
But it was exactly during this struggle and physical contact that Yan Huan suddenly brushed against a few hard objects hidden beneath her coat.
One had a handle, feeling like a taser, or maybe the hilt of a dagger. The other was sharply angled with a relatively long barrel.
'It's a gun!'
Yan Huan couldn't be entirely sure. Just as he was about to feel around a bit more, Tong Yingying clamped down on his hand, stopping him from touching those items any further.
"..."
"...Don't move around. Be a good boy."
It wasn't until Tong Yingying spoke that Yan Huan realized her breathing had grown sowhat ragged.
Perhaps from shyness, or perhaps from nervousness.
'If you're nervous, then don't do this kind of thing in the first place!!'
"Alright, I guess that managed to lift my spirits a bit."
A mont later, whether she was fully satisfied or simply couldn't endure it any longer, Tong Yingying gently patted Yan Huan's back and let him go.
As soon as they separated, Yan Huan quipped,
"What am I, a human tire pump?"
Tong Yingying scoffed lightly, finished changing her shoes, and declared,
"Consider that your punishnt for skipping work lately. Rember, the mont I get back, you report to work on ti. Understood?"
"Yes, yes, Sister Tong."
Tong Yingying glanced back at Yan Huan's unnatural expression. Her gaze drifted downward slightly before she hurriedly retracted it.
Scratching her cheek, she quickly pushed the door open and hurried out of Yan Huan's rental apartnt.
The evening breeze slapped against her face, finally cooling down her burning cheeks a little.
"Alright, close the door. I'm leaving."
"...Take care, stay safe."
"Hmph, I'm the Boss of the South Ward. The only people who need to stay safe are the ones crossing , got it?"
"Yes, yes, Boss of the South Ward. Have a safe trip."
Click~
As soon as he closed the door, Yan Huan turned around, only to see Myau-chan sitting on the floor, shaking his head at him non-stop.
He wore an expression that practically scread, "This family will fall apart without
sooner or later," which left Yan Huan completely baffled.
Outside, as the door shut behind her, Tong Yingying's playfully teasing expression instantly crumbled into shy nervousness.
She rubbed her face and took a deep breath, but rembering how a single embrace had caused Yan Huan to react so unnaturally, she almost couldn't hold back a smile.
"Hehehe~"
With those thoughts in mind, her mood improved significantly.
She even humd a light tune all the way downstairs.
Downstairs, a black SUV was parked by the side of the road. Two burly n and a woman smoking a cigarette were leaning against the car doors.
Seeing Tong Yingying approach, they greeted her,
"Sister Tong."
Upon seeing them, the smile on Tong Yingying's face faded slightly as she asked,
"Mhm. So, how did the investigation into this afternoon's incident go?"
"We've asked around, but no one knows what happened. As for the surveillance caras, well... Sister Tong, you already know the situation with caras in the South Ward..."
"..."
Tong Yingying wasn't surprised in the slightest. After all, whenever they handled business in the South Ward, surveillance footage was almost never of any use.
The South Ward was incredibly chaotic, filled with an endless maze of backstreets and narrow alleyways.
In a place like this, any official cara not on a main road would inevitably end up inexplicably smashed within a few days.
After all, street-level drug deals were a common occurrence. Being recorded constantly would ruin business.
The Linn authorities didn't have the budget to pour into this bottomless pit, and local shop owners had wised up, choosing only to install caras inside their own stores.
This resulted in the street caras rarely capturing any useful information.
In that sense, the sneakily angled hidden caras that Sakuramiya Hitomi had set up actually helped fill the surveillance blind spots in the South Ward to so extent.
"Hiss... Soone as massively important as the Chairman of the Jinshi Group cos to Linn, and instead of heading straight to the Kyogo Ward, her first stop is the South Ward. What do you think that ans?"
"Who knows? Could she be planning to develop the South Ward? If that's true, you're about to be filthy rich, Sister Tong. You'll make so much from the demolition payouts that your hands will cramp from counting it all."
"Get lost."
Tong Yingying rubbed her temples with a slight headache and walked over to the woman who was currently scrolling through surveillance footage.
To take a quick glance was one thing, but what she saw made her expression instantly change. She blurted out,
"Wait, rewind five seconds. Where is this footage from?"
"...Sister Tong, this is from inside a nearby dessert shop. It's one of the few caras that manages to catch a sliver of the street outside, but I already checked it. There's nothing useful."
"..."
Tong Yingying didn't say a word. She just stared at the footage showing a girl with particularly large oppai wearing a Far Moon Academy school uniform, running away in pure panic.
She rely narrowed her eyes, focusing on the white snake wrapped around the girl's shoulder in the video.
That white snake looked incredibly familiar to her...
She rembered that night when she had gotten drunk. In her dazed state, she had seen a talking white snake.
For the longest ti, she had assud it was nothing more than a dream. But now, she was looking at an identical white snake on a surveillance screen.
'This...'
"Do you guys think there's sothing weird about this girl with the snake on her shoulder?"
"Huh? Who?"
"Are you blind? There's only one girl on the screen, who else could it be?"
Hearing this, the woman monitoring the footage turned to look at Tong Yingying and said,
"I know that, but the problem is, what snake are you talking about? There's nothing on her shoulder."
"..."
Tong Yingying blinked, turning her head in sheer disbelief to look at the two muscular n.
"A'Lin, Xiao Ji, get over here and take a look at this. Is there a snake on this girl's shoulder or not?"
"Coming, Sister Tong."
The two burly n quickly jogged over, leaned in close to the screen, and examined it for a long while. Finally, they dumbly turned back to look at their frowning boss and spoke in unison,
"N-No, Sister Tong. What snake? There's only a girl with a really big chest."
"..."
Hearing three people say the exact sa thing in a row, Tong Yingying finally started to realize that sothing was terribly wrong.
She narrowed her eyes even more carefully at the screen. Yet, no matter how she looked at it, that snake appeared undeniably real.
Furthermore, it gave her a very familiar and deeply uncomfortable feeling.
It felt exactly like...
Like that Vice President she had encountered before, Sakuramiya Hitomi.
With these thoughts swirling in her mind, Tong Yingying pondered for a second before telling the woman beside her,
"This girl is from Far Moon Academy. Find out who she is. I want to know everything about her before I get on the plane tomorrow."
The woman blinked. Though clearly confused, she still raised her hand and gave an "OK" sign.
"Got it, I'll look into it in a bit."
"There are twenty minutes left before the exams begin. Everyone, grab your required IDs and stationery, and head to your designated examination rooms!"
Thursday, morning.
Far Moon Academy, Class 1-C.
An Le glanced at her examination details in her hand, stood up, and quietly made her way toward her assigned examination room.
As she walked, she seed to be deeply pondering what Little Finger had told her the previous day.
"Little Finger, to defeat them, do we really have to kill the hosts?"
"...Of course not. Well, we feed on the spiritual energy of our hosts, so you simply need to crush their minds and plunge them into absolute despair."
"Despair... giving up on everything..."
Little Finger didn't dare tell An Le that the true way to kill a Modifier was to make its host want to surrender, terrified that she might just surrender it instead. So, it simply told her to induce a sense of hopeless despair where the opponent would want to give up on everything.
If they despaired so much that they wanted to abandon everything—including their Modifier—that would achieve success too.
Reflecting on this, An Le still didn't know how she was supposed to do that.
Thud~
While absentmindedly hurrying to her exam room, she suddenly collided hard into soone else.
"Ah— sorry..."
Before even seeing who it was, An Le apologized reflexively.
But a highly irritated voice fired back from in front of her.
"Are you blind? Don't you know how to... Oh, it's you, An Le."
Hearing this familiar voice, An Le froze slightly.
Raising her head, she saw Park Seo-moon sneering down at her, flanked by two of her friends.
Park Seo-moon looked An Le up and down, then shifted her gaze to the completely empty desk behind her.
That had originally been Spencer's desk.
Behind Park Seo-moon, the two girls smirked disdainfully and said,
"You used to rely on Spencer's protection, thinking you could sleep soundly without a care in the world, right?"
"Well, look at you now. She's gone, and no one is looking out for you anymore."
Park Seo-moon scoffed coldly. Raising a hand to stop her friends, she glared at An Le and said,
"That's enough. In light of your relationship with the President, I'll let it slide if you just apologize to ..."
As if rembering that An Le had already apologized right when they bumped into each other, Park Seo-moon paused before adding,
"Apologize again, and make it sound a lot more sincere this ti!"
"..."
An Le's hollow eyes swept over the three girls before her, ultimately settling back onto Park Seo-moon.
Then, pointing a finger at herself, she asked indifferently,
"Are you talking to ?"
Park Seo-moon scoffed dismissively.
"Hilarious. If we aren't talking to you, who else would we be talking to?"
"What, you still think that Spencer can protect you? Huh? Say sothing..."
"Let
tell you, An Le—"
Just as Park Seo-moon was about to point a finger in her face, An Le abruptly shot her hand out, violently crushing Park Seo-moon's finger in her grip.
A bone-chilling cold instantly traveled from An Le's hand straight into her body, making Park Seo-moon stare at the girl's pale skin in utter shock.
'How can her body temperature be so low?'
But An Le just squeezed Park Seo-moon's hand tightly, staring dead into her eyes as she enunciated every single word.
"Do not... ever ntion Spencer in front of
again."
"Hah? You think a dairy cow like you can tell
what to do? I—"
"..."
Park Seo-moon's voice abruptly cut off.
The Thursday sun shone brightly. The coldest days of early spring had passed, ushering in the vibrant vitality of sprouting life.
Yet, whether it was an illusion or not, the sunlight that bathed the world in such flourishing life today...
...Seed to be tainted with a faint, impure shade of pink.
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