It was the first time Sean had ever wanted to describe how a girl tasted, even though she had just slaughtered people without blinking and had even tried to cut his head off.
Like a freshly peeled lotus seed after the rain, laced with a trace of raw astringency.
This probably shouldn't have lasted long, but for some reason, their shadows swayed against the wall in the firelight for quite some time.
But Sean quickly lost his initial surprise and that vague sense of thrill. She was far too stiff...
He felt like he was chewing on a piece of tasteless, plain gelatin.
So much so that he pulled back slightly in displeasure.
Yet Luo Xi grabbed his head firmly, seemingly very displeased with his attempt to pull away. The young girl appeared extremely agitated.
Just as Sean was resigning himself to it, a warm, sweet sensation made his eyebrows shoot up in surprise.
Luo Xi finally pulled back.
"You actually used your ton—"
Sean didn't finish the sentence. His surprised expression quickly vanished as he watched the girl straighten up, her eyes turning completely glacial.
Only the hand she used to retract her Battle Blade was trembling slightly.
'Everything he said was true...'
Luo Xi's hand trembled hard for a moment before she quickly regained her composure.
She wiped her mouth nonchalantly. Her gaze and tone were equally flat as she looked at Sean. "She's in your hidden room, right?"
Sean gave a slight nod. Propping himself up with one hand, he mimicked her gesture and wiped his own mouth. "Convinced?"
Luo Xi nodded calmly. Ever since the incident with her older sister, she possessed the sharpest perception in the entire Iris Hive Tribe. And to verify this man's claims, she had resorted to her most foolproof method.
She didn't care who Sean was. She only cared whether her own people had sold out their comrades.
'It was all true...' The entire tribe had exhausted nearly all its resources to send them down the mountain. 'And you dared to betray your own people...'
To Luo Xi, this was a betrayal that cut to the bone. It was also a crime punishable by death.
Yet she held on to her reason and retained one last sliver of hope—she needed to question them in person.
Sean understood Luo Xi far too well. He saw exactly what was on her mind with a single glance. "Want to interrogate your tribesman? After all, even if my information is real, there could always be discrepancies, right?"
Luo Xi nodded again.
"We'll head back eventually, but not right now." He thought it over for a moment. "Give it two more days. We can't go back yet."
"Why?" Luo Xi asked, her eyes frighteningly detached. "If everything you told me is the truth, I'm willing to cooperate with you. Wouldn't going back right now be ideal?"
Sean shrugged. "Our boss hasn't woken up yet, so I don't dare go back."
When a person's brain crashed, they lost much of their situational awareness. That had been the case when Sean first woke up, but his head was clear now, and he instantly realized what was wrong earlier.
Before Sheryl breached the room, the suppressing fire from outside the window had belonged to Sean's own escort squad. However, a portion of those bullets had been aimed directly at him. Everyone in his squad capable of firing from a hoverboard was equipped with a fire-control prosthetic eye...
There was a mole in the Gold Ghosts who wanted him dead.
If it hadn't been for Luo Xi's energy field back in the tower, Sean would have already been shot.
Luo Xi grasped the situation after a brief moment of thought. She looked at Sean, subconsciously softening her tone just a fraction. "I see..."
Sean curled his lip dismissively. "There are a lot of people in Paradise City who hate my guts. Enemies and allies alike."
Luo Xi felt a flicker of confusion. Not only had she verified that Sean was telling the truth about the Iris Hive Tribe, but she had also confirmed the authenticity of his other claims.
He wasn't exactly a good person, but he was equally far from the image of the "Villain Sean" that circulated throughout Paradise City.
Why?
She hadn't been in Paradise City for long, but she had heard the Gold Ghosts' name loud and clear. In a place where nearly all resources were monopolized, for a small slum gang to claw its way into becoming a behemoth was almost unthinkable.
Yet, while the leader of the Gold Ghosts, Jin Kui, was incapacitated and unable to govern, this so-called second-in-command who was put forward turned out to be an arrogant, domineering thug with absolutely zero tactical foresight.
Through endless farces, pointless conflicts, and shameless atrocities, this second-in-command had single-handedly shrunk the Gold Ghosts' influence by a quarter.
But Luo Xi now understood that the man sitting in front of her was absolutely not the incompetent brute the rumors made him out to be.
So what was it all for?
Sean naturally knew what was running through Luo Xi's mind, but he merely flashed a wicked grin. "Don't overthink it. Sometimes, I just do things because I feel like it."
"Including sleeping with the fiancée of a high-ranking executive from the Company on your very first day in charge?" Luo Xi asked calmly.
Sean didn't care in the slightest. He even licked his lips. "That girl... was incredibly wet."
Luo Xi shifted her body slightly away from him, her face completely expressionless. "Good. That means I don't have to take responsibility."
Pfft... Sean nearly burst out laughing.
Watching this little hatchling pretend to be a grizzled old sparrow was genuinely hilarious.
Still, despite his amusement, Sean mostly just felt like everything was completely fucked.
Had he actually done that many bad things? Not a staggering amount, but definitely not a few.
That was the Sean from the plotline, of course. If the current him were to answer, he naturally hadn't done any of those bad things, and he wouldn't be lying—blowing the neighbor's outhouse sky-high when he was seven didn't count.
More importantly, those things Sean had done previously were indeed entirely intentional.
The early and mid-game plotlines flashed rapidly through his mind. He couldn't help but look back at the silent girl. She was staring blankly into the scattered fire, casually extending a hand toward the searing heat to absentmindedly toy with the flames.
She had walked out of an impoverished but pure-white nest, trekking alone across that terrifying wasteland, desperately trying to force herself to become cold, ruthless, and mature. But at the end of the day, she was still only eighteen.
Thinking back to Luo Xi's various endings in the game, Sean shook his head inwardly.
In the vast majority of those plotlines, the Iris Hive Tribe never even made it out of the mountains.
There were only two routes where they actually left the peaks. In the first, Luo Xi died, and the entire tribe was reduced to test subjects for the Academy.
In the second, the Iris Hive Tribe suffered a catastrophic disaster in their new territory and was nearly exterminated.
Through all that, Luo Xi never succumbed to darkness. After taking vengeance on her enemies single-handedly, she settled her few remaining people and set out on a journey to help other tribes suffering similar fates. Ultimately, she died in battle somewhere in the unnamed darkness.
It was one of the reasons why her popularity on the forums remained sky-high, despite her having absolutely zero romance routes with the protagonist.
However...
A trace of guilt flashed beneath Sean's lowered eyelids. But after a brief moment of hesitation, his gaze swiftly hardened into resolute coldness.
'I need to play the role of this world's Sean perfectly. Because, as one of its creators, I know exactly how completely beyond salvation this world is.'
'Anyone who holds onto a bottom line won't survive...'
'So, let me give you a push, and then we'll dive into this bottomless paradise together.'