Yinxing was woken up by the savory aroma of roasting food.
Rubbing her eyes, her hazy vision gradually focused. In the warm yellow light, a figure was sitting by the charcoal fire, occasionally turning the chestnuts on the wire mesh.
The shells of the chestnuts, which had been slit with a cross, were roasted to a deep brownish-red, making the chestnut meat inside look golden-brown.
That rich aroma was precisely the smell of roasted chestnuts~
“Awake?”
Just as she was about to sit up, she realized she was covered with a thin, quite warm blanket. She tilted her head, her disproportionately large eyes blinking as she looked at Ling Xiao.
“I thought you weren’t coming.”
He lowered his gaze and shook his head. A very soft sigh rolled from his throat, and the corners of his lips curved into a helpless arc as his hands continuously turned the chestnuts on the iron rack.
“I remember I gave you points?”
He picked up a few roasted chestnuts, placed them in a disposable foil bowl, and handed them toward Yinxing.
“Want some? I think I did a pretty good job roasting them.”
“Yes, I do.” Yinxing felt a tiny bit embarrassed. She had told him she would roast chestnuts for him, but in the end, he was the one roasting them.
There were only a few chestnuts on the grill, so she asked with some confusion, “Why are you only roasting this many? There are still a lot left, roast a few more.”
Ling Xiao extended two fingers. They were well-proportioned and slender, and his skin was as white as a magnolia flower.
His gaze locked directly onto her. He intentionally lowered his voice a bit, the corners of his mouth dipping down, and his tone carried a hint of pity.
“But you only gave me two.”
The implication was that he had been very honest and hadn’t touched a single extra one.
Meaning that the bowl she was currently holding still belonged to him. Even though she was the one who brought them back, it gave her the feeling that she was freeloading and taking advantage of him.
“You gave points, so you can eat them. You can eat as many as you want.”
After all, he had given over four hundred points. After deducting his debt of 276, he still had 124 points left. He was a big-spending customer who had wiped out her debt, so she definitely needed to reward him properly.
Being human meant that a drop of water received in favor should be returned with a surging spring.
“I’ll come roast some more. Just right, I need to eat more anyway.”
However, the sharp chestnut shells left her a bit at a loss as to where to start. Ling Xiao, on the other hand, pulled out a dagger from the side. “Let me do it.”
His movements were extremely deft. The dagger moved as if he were chopping cabbages; with just one or two strokes, he shelled the chestnuts directly, picked them up one by one, and carved cross-slits into each.
Yinxing very consciously took the chestnuts and placed them on the wire mesh to roast, filling up the entire grill.
She added a small piece of wood to the fire below. Looking at those sharp cuts, it was hard not to guess whose handywork it was.
“Um, I was a bit too tired and fell asleep without realizing it. I didn’t do it on purpose.”
Ling Xiao didn’t seem too surprised by this. He stretched out a finger and pointed at the wall of morning glory vines woven together behind her. “Because of this?”
Yinxing didn’t think it was very strange. This man was very different from others; his gaze was so clear that it seemed he could see right through her.
She didn’t have much to hide either, so she nodded.
“There was a really loud thunderclap just now, and I was afraid it would rain heavily, so I asked for a tiny favor. I was scared the rain would blow in, which is why I thought you wouldn’t come over anymore.”
The perpetrator of that loud thunderclap showed not a single trace of abnormality on his face. “It didn’t rain.”
After pondering for a moment, his expression turned somewhat solemn.
“Your sequence ability is able to stimulate plant growth, isn’t it?”
When people don’t know how to speak, they tend to become exceptionally busy. She concentrated entirely on struggling with the chestnut in her hand while squeezing out an affirmative hum.
“Who else knows?”
She probably hadn’t been detected as having a sequence ability, otherwise, she wouldn’t have been assigned to this district. With his level of authority, investigating a resident’s information was very easy.
That meant her sequence ability was hidden far too deeply.
Did she have some kind of purpose?
Yinxing shook her head, pointing to her skin-and-bones body and her disproportionately large head. “I can only use a tiny bit, and then I get super sleepy.”
He understood; it was because of her physical condition.
“You’d better not use this ability in front of others.”
“Why?”
Didn’t sequence holders seem to be treated pretty well in the safe zone?
Ling Xiao lowered his eyes, appearing to sink into his own thoughts. His jaw was clenched tightly, emotions suppressed within his tightly pursed lip line. The scattered rays emitted by the night lamp brushed across his brow bone, yet failed to pierce the deep pool of his gaze.
“Because if someone manages to control mutated plants, humanity might gain the power to retake control of the world.”
Yinxing still had soft, sweet, roasted chestnuts stuffed in her mouth. Perhaps due to the intake of carbohydrates, her eyes were filled with confusion.
Munch munch… delicious, delicious… munch munch… What on earth was he babbling about?
He had said so much, but she hadn’t taken in a single word. Ling Xiao couldn’t help but feel helpless.
He leaned in closer, his gaze sharp. “My point is, if others find out you possess a plant-related sequence, they will likely hack you into pieces, slice you up for research, and extract your ability. Understand?”
Now she understood. The roasted chestnut in her mouth instantly lost its flavor, and the bowl in her hand suddenly emptied as the remaining chestnuts were snatched up by the man beside her, crushed with a crunch, and popped into his mouth.
Those roasted, sweet, and soft chestnuts really were delicious, without a single trace of bitter or strange taste. No wonder she had been eating them so happily.
Low-pollution-value food, truly a rarity.
“I won’t tell anyone, and you—you mustn’t tell anyone either!”
Yinxing’s face turned pale. People were dangerous, and she just wanted to stay alive. Being hacked into pieces and sliced up was simply not something humans did!
“We’re—we’re friends, right? Besides, I even treated you to chestnuts, so you can’t, you can’t betray me!”
She was somewhat panicked, speaking incoherently, saying whatever came to mind, trying to blackmail him with things she thought might threaten him.
“Otherwise, you won’t get to eat anything this delicious ever again! You’ll only get to eat those stinky vegetables that make you smell even worse!”
Ling Xiao’s eating motion paused. He turned his head to look at her and asked a different question.
“So, do you have other sequence abilities?”
Yinxing shook her head. “I don’t know, but I can smell things that aren’t stinky.”
Her wrist was abruptly grabbed, with a force strong enough to make Yinxing bare her teeth. “Remember, nobody can know about your ability. You must never tell anyone!”
Swallowing heavily, her mind filled with sliced, fresh-grade Yinxing, she could only nod.
“I won’t! I won’t tell a soul!”
After a moment, she reversed roles, grabbing his arm and warning, “And you aren’t allowed to tell either! Absolutely no one!”
Ling Xiao’s expression relaxed considerably. “I won’t. You just said we’re friends, and I wouldn’t betray a friend.”
Only then did Yinxing feel relieved. She trusted him quite a bit; if he really wanted to send her off to be sliced up, he wouldn’t have warned her about these things.
“It’s getting late. Get some rest, I’m leaving.”
“Wait.” Yinxing looked at the small room filled with quite a few items and subconsciously asked, “What about these things?”
He gently curved the corners of his lips. “Aren’t we friends? I just picked them up along the way. You probably need them more.”
As he stepped across the small doorway that had been opened, the dense leaves seemed to shrink back, desperately curling inward in the night as if afraid of touching anyone.
In the blink of an eye, that figure completely vanished into the darkness.
With a voice that sounded like a murmur or a sigh, he seemed to be speaking to himself.
“Interesting friend. Watch closely…”