“How did you manage it?”
The male beastman gave a smug little grin. “Been waiting a long while for you to ask. This is an exclusive serum I went to special trouble to get my hands on, never mind just slashing two cuts, even if it were—”
He raised his hand and drew it across his own throat, palm down, miming a slit windpipe, then went on: “—even that would be no problem at all.”
“It really is useful. How long can the effect last at most?” Jiang Wangyue asked, perfectly composed.
“Three star-hours. But if it’s someone with S-grade mental power or above, it has no effect whatsoever.”
Fortunately, Tinar was still only an A-grade.
Jiang Wangyue nodded, then turned to look at Lan Xue. “We can go now.”
“Okay.”
The two figures vanished into the far end of the alley, leaving behind the male beastman, who looked down at Tinar, still sprawled on the ground, oblivious to the world, and couldn’t help giving a soft click of his tongue.
Who was it again that said this man’s Female master was a useless deadweight, a sack of straw?
That clean, decisive, one-and-done way of getting it over with, not many females could pull that off.
He glanced at the message that had just come in on his terminal, stripped off his coat and tossed it into his spatial storage band, then turned and strode off.
Early the next morning, Jiang Wangyue was woken by a burst of squabbling.
She wasn’t usually one to wake up grumpy, except when someone woke her up.
She sprang up off the bed, grabbed a coat at random, and headed outside with a cold look on her face.
At the manor’s front gate, several staff members from the Female Protection Center were hollering about something, and standing in front of them, his face frosty, was Ji Li.
“Hurry up and let us in! Otherwise—”
“Otherwise what?”
A voice edged with cold rang out, cutting off the other side’s threat.
Her face like frozen ice, Jiang Wangyue walked over to Ji Li’s side, looked at the Female Protection Center staff, and asked again, her tone less than friendly: “Go on, say it. Otherwise what?”
A flicker of contempt shot through the eyes of the one in front, and he spoke with great condescension. “Madam, there are certain matters we’ll need you to cooperate with us on for an investigation.”
“Won’t cooperate. Get lost.”
Jiang Wangyue pulled Ji Li behind her, then slammed the gate shut without a moment’s hesitation.
On her way back inside, Jiang Wangyue had already guessed the reason they’d come looking for her.
Tinar had woken up and gone running off to tattle, that was all.
But so what if she had?
Expressionless, Jiang Wangyue drew her coat tighter around herself.
Tinar was a female, but wasn’t she one too?
So what if she was C-grade?
C-grade or not, she was still a female!
If they had the nerve, let them try forcing their way in.
They… they really didn’t dare.
The male beastman at the front ground his teeth, the hand he’d raised to pound on the gate ultimately came back down.
“Hmph! Let’s go!”
The Female Protection Center people had indeed been summoned by Tinar. Discovered by the club’s staff and sent back to the Rodriguez family, Tinar insisted up and down that it was Jiang Wangyue who’d gotten her injured.
One was an A-grade female, the other a C-grade female, and even though the several male beastmen the C-grade female had matched and married came from no ordinary backgrounds, the Female Protection Center still took Tinar’s side.
Which was exactly why that scene had played out at the manor’s front gate.
When Tinar learned they hadn’t even managed to drag Jiang Wangyue out, she flew into such a rage that she smashed everything in her room to pieces all over again.
Tinar, who fancied herself an aristocrat, felt she had suffered the most enormous humiliation. Gritting her teeth, she muttered Jiang Wangyue’s name over and over with bitter hatred.
She was going to pay Jiang Wangyue back tenfold, a hundredfold!
But, she wasn’t going to get the chance.
A squad of fully armed soldiers suddenly burst into the Rodriguez family estate, the black, gaping muzzles of their pulse pistols leveled at everyone present.
Tinar’s brows snapped together and she barked out coldly, “What do you think you’re doing?!”
The officer leading the squad gave her a glance and, without another word, produced an investigation warrant issued by the newly appointed Consul.
“Come with us, Miss Rodriguez.”
By the time Jiang Wangyue got the news, she had just woken up from a second round of sleep.
Hearing what Lan Xue had to say, she couldn’t help feeling a little surprised.
“It’s not just the Rodriguez family, plenty of other old aristocratic houses that have fallen on hard times have received investigation warrants too, and they all have one thing in common. Care to take a guess, Female master?”
Jiang Wangyue raised an eyebrow, looked at Lan Xue smiling away on the other end of the video call, and replied without the slightest hesitation, “I won’t guess. Just tell me directly.”
“All right, all right,” Lan Xue said, putting on a show of giving in, though the smile in his eyes didn’t fade in the least. He went on softly: “These old fallen-aristocrat houses have all been mixed up in a fair amount of illegal dealing over the years. Our newly appointed Consul means to make an example of them first, to take the wind out of those aristocrats’ sails.”
The moment he put it that way, Jiang Wangyue understood at once.
Killing the chicken to scare the monkeys. [1] “杀鸡儆猴”, making a harsh example of one offender to intimidate the rest into falling in line jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2723809_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2723809_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });
All of a sudden, Jiang Wangyue felt a bit more curious about this newly appointed Consul.
She hoped he really was preparing to come down on those aristocrats who did nothing decent, and not just going through the motions for show.
With less than two weeks left until the start of the school term, Jiang Wangyue drew up a new plan for herself.
Study till you drop, study yourself half to death, this was something most kids from the Land of Flowers had been through, and Jiang Wangyue was no exception.
The plan she was now setting for herself was, compared to her days back on Earth, honestly far easier.
But in other people’s eyes, it looked nothing of the sort.
This world coddled its females far too much, so much so that they rarely held themselves to such strict standards of their own accord.
After all, whatever they wanted, they only had to say the word, there was no need at all to put in any effort themselves.
So when they discovered that Jiang Wangyue had been keeping up an early-morning run every day, they found it utterly baffling.
Lan Xue stood at the floor-to-ceiling window, and something seemed to occur to him, the surprise in his eyes quickly shifted into a smile.
Feng Yan, up on the second floor, was full of complicated feelings, and then he gripped the curtain in his hand tight.
Putting on an act.
Jiang Wangyue must be plotting some bigger scheme.
He absolutely could not let himself be taken in.
Having just finished her last lap, Jiang Wangyue wiped the sweat from her forehead and headed toward the house, slowly evening out her breathing as she went.
Sensing, it seemed, that someone was watching her, she stopped and looked up toward the second floor, only to catch nothing but a swaying curtain.
Jiang Wangyue knit her brows slightly. That room’s location, that was Feng Yan’s, wasn’t it?
Before she could think on it too much, Lan Xue had already slid open the floor-to-ceiling window and come out carrying a wide, thick towel, which he gently draped over her shoulders.
“The weather’s been turning colder lately. Take care you don’t fall ill.”
Her train of thought interrupted, Jiang Wangyue wasn’t annoyed, instead the corners of her mouth lifted into a faint, light smile.
“I’m fine. A hot bath in a bit and I’ll be good as new.”
Lan Xue took her by the hand and asked softly, “Aren’t you starting school soon?”
Jiang Wangyue let him draw her along, walking beside him toward the living room, and nodded as she answered, “Three more days, I think.”
“Will you be choosing to board at the school?”
Jiang Wangyue tilted her head slightly. “Is not boarding even an option?”
Lan Xue sighed. “Probably not.”
“Then why even ask me??”
References[+]