When Tangyuan was finally released from the black room by You An, it was already the following day.
The youth was lying flat on his bed, looking listless as he stared up at the ceiling. The corners of his eyes still retained an unfaded reddish tint, making him look as though he had just been crying.
Even though it was nothing more than a lifeless silicon-based organism, Tangyuan weirdly experienced the complex emotions of an aging father watching his child get lured away by another man.
It didn’t want to speak, afraid of stirring up unpleasant memories for its master, but tears were dripping patter-pat-patter from its electronic eyes.
You An: “…”
He reached out to cradle the weeping little system, gently stroking its round head.
“What’s wrong?”
Hearing that slightly hoarse voice, Tangyuan finally lost all restraint.
[Waaah, Master! You—you sacrificed so much to complete the mission!]
Realizing what the little guy had misunderstood, You An let out a dry, helpless laugh. “I’m fine, it hasn’t reached that point.”
Though he looked utterly wretched, Song Chengyu still had a shred of conscience left and hadn’t gone all the way to the end.
Even so, he had essentially been played with from head to toe.
He still had a former fiancé back in the real world; naturally, he was no naive, inexperienced virgin.
Yet it hadn’t even been a month since he transmigrated here. To You An, Song Chengyu was nothing more than a benefactor who treated him reasonably well.
With a gloomy expression, You An lowered his gaze to look at his thighs, where a searing heat seemed to linger, causing him to wrinkle his nose in disgust.
The memories of last night were simply too unbearable to look back on. In the end, Song Chengyu had forced him to say every single explicit, shameful phrase imaginable, both things he had said before and things he hadn’t.
The dark-haired youth had reached out with a long arm, wrapping it around his waist from behind and bringing the youth’s weak, boneless hand to his lips to graze against them. “What should you call me?”
With his misty blue pupils unfocused and drifting, he had stared blankly at the lace trim on the vintage curtains.
“Song Chengyu…”
“Wrong,” Song Chengyu had coaxed step by step, “something more intimate.”
That person also liked to tease him like that. What had his answer been back then?
It seemed to have been…
“Jingshen, big brother.”
His complexion instantly drained of color.
[What’s wrong?]
“I think I said the wrong thing,” You An rubbed his temples with a headache. “He won’t figure out that I’m not a native resident, will he?”
Whether viewed from the perspective of keeping his true identity hidden or avoiding being thoroughly devoured, he needed to break free from this world as fast as possible.
You An opened the system panel to check the mission parameters once more.
His objective was to survive until the ending, which was a remarkably broad concept. “Tangyuan, what are the conditions for triggering the ending?”
Sensing his earnestness, Tangyuan pulled itself together. [The condition is determined by Song Chengyu’s career path and romance path. You can leave the world and claim your reward as long as you complete either one of them. If you finish both, you’ll secure double the energy value.]
[Song Chengyu’s career path is annexing the four major bases to become the post-apocalyptic leader of Country H, while his romance path is ending up with the protagonist shou, Xin Zhou.]
“Why are the conditions tied to Song Chengyu?”
You An felt a bit puzzled.
Expecting some profound underlying reason, he instead heard Tangyuan reply, [Because he is the protagonist of this world, and this is a gong-focused novel.]
Tangyuan also informed him that once the countdown mode was activated, as long as the system verified that the mission was fulfilled, he could choose a reasonable method of death to depart the world.
It looked like the romance path was completely broken. You An made a prompt decision. “Activate the countdown immediately. I’m only going for the career path ending.”
Aside from the District A Base, which was controlled by the Xin family, the other three bases were governed by three separate noble clans. He needed to figure out how to help Song Chengyu annex those other bases as quickly as possible.
In the study, Song Chengyu listened expressionlessly as his adjutant reported the latest updates.
“Leader, those are the latest movements within Country H.”
“I understand.”
As the door clicked softly shut, Song Chengyu snapped back to reality. The tip of the fountain pen he was holding had leaked a blob of dark ink across the paper; due to excessive force, it had punctured right through the back of the page, leaving a deep indentation in the wooden desktop.
He knitted his brows in slight annoyance. His absent-mindedness had been showing since morning, and every time his pen touched the paper, scenes from the previous night kept flashing before his eyes.
Thanks to the zombie emperor’s crystal core, his five senses had sharpened to an unprecedented degree, meaning every single quiver and gasp from that pretty face had been effortlessly captured and carved into his memory.
It was as if he could still catch the moist, sweet, and decadent fragrance of the youth, resembling a budding flower drenched and soaked through by a heavy rainstorm.
The self-control he had always taken pride in crumbled into utter disarray in front of the other person. Song Chengyu acutely sensed that something was wrong with himself.
He had never been passionate about romance, believing that yielding to desire was a sign of weak willpower, and he had possessed no prior concept of such things before this.
Even during high school, when his peers were all experiencing fluttering heartbeats, he had always walked alone.
This wasn’t to say he couldn’t read those looks of admiration or appreciation. Whether in his past life or the present, countless men and women had sought to cling to him due to his exceptional strength and superior appearance.
To those with ulterior motives, he gave neither thought nor care. In his eyes, they were no different from walking chunks of meat.
Perhaps this loss of control was the result of years of enforced abstinence. At that thought, Song Chengyu belatedly realized that he might have gone a bit too far by making the person cry last night.
However…
“Jingshen?”
Accompanied by a somewhat playful, dry chuckle, the handsome face of the youth gradually clouded over. He picked up the phone and dialed the internal line, his voice as cold as ice.
“Investigate and see if anyone in Country H has ‘Jingshen’ as the last two characters of their name. Report back whether they are dead or alive.”
You An looked at the lavish spread on the serving cart with a sense of speechlessness. He felt as though he had thoroughly degenerated into Song Chengyu’s caged canary, with someone arriving promptly to deliver meals the moment the hour struck.
Lacking any real appetite, he picked up the knife and fork, intending to pull the plate a bit closer, when he noticed something amiss with the texture right under his hand.
Beneath the plate… there seemed to be something else.
Realizing this, You An’s heartbeat skipped a beat for a split second. His breathing grew shallow as he felt around discreetly with his hand, sensing that the object felt rather like a slip of paper.
Who on earth could it be, and for what purpose had they left it here? Could someone be trying to bypass security to pass him a message?
He gripped the note tightly within his palm, eager to unfold it and see what was written, when the sound of the doorknob being pressed downward instantly stiffened his spine and sent him scrambling in panic.
“Ugh!”
The note slipped into his sleeve, but his index finger accidentally scraped against the fork, causing You An to let out a muffled hiss of pain as a tiny bead of bright red blood welled up on his porcelain-white fingertip.
Song Chengyu strode over, cradling his hand with an uncharacteristic tenderness hidden in his tone. “How could you be so careless?”
With that, he gently used his thumb to wipe away the drop of blood.
Yet the exact moment of contact, a jumbled mass of memories rushed into his mind like broken puzzle pieces. The blood-red slit pupils resembling those of a serpent constricted sharply.
So… that was how it was.
You An’s mind was entirely fixed on the note hidden inside his sleeve. With his nerves stretched to their absolute limit, he failed to notice Song Chengyu’s abnormal behavior.
The dark-haired youth stood up, a thoughtful gleam in his eyes, and acted as though nothing was amiss as he fetched a bandage from the medical kit to patch him up meticulously.
Taking advantage of a trip to the bathroom, You An finally examined the contents of the note.
“Tomorrow at three in the afternoon, location XX. Can we talk? Don’t be afraid, I’m here to rescue you.”
The signature at the bottom was Xin Zhou.
He never could have imagined that it would be Xin Zhou.
According to Xin Zhou’s message, he wasn’t here to exact revenge, and he was well aware that You An was being placed under house arrest by Song Chengyu.
You An crumpled the note into a small ball and flushed it down the drain, already weighing his options in his mind.
When all was said and done, if he wanted to accelerate Song Chengyu’s annexation of the four major bases, he couldn’t just sit around passively. Besides, Song Chengyu was growing increasingly dangerous. He had to put some distance between them as soon as possible.
Perhaps out of consideration for the somewhat exaggerated marks still visible on the youth’s body, Song Chengyu didn’t pull anything today, simply holding him from behind as they drifted off to sleep.
You An noticed that the other seemed unusually fond of this posture, wrapping his entire body securely in his arms, a habit quite similar to a certain someone.
He couldn’t quite name the emotion he was feeling, but whenever he remembered it by chance, a lingering daze would wash over him.
How on earth had they ended up walking step by step to this point?
Enveloped in that familiar embrace, as if soothed by its warmth, he gradually relaxed and safely surrendered to a heavier wave of slumber.
By noon the next day, You An was pacing back and forth inside the room in deep contemplation.
Ever since Song Chengyu revealed yesterday that he had awakened a mental-type ability, the system panel had updated with several setting-patch descriptions:
A Level 10 ability user who devours a zombie emperor’s crystal core can awaken mental-type abilities.
Mental-type ability: Can control ability users of a lower level than oneself, within a radius of one hundred meters centered on the user.
Both the zombie emperor and ability users who devour its crystal core can absorb memories through blood.
“In other words,” he struck his left palm with his right fist, “as long as I take advantage of a moment when Song Chengyu isn’t paying attention and run beyond that radius so he can’t track me down, I can shake off the mental control.”
The clock’s hour hand steadily ticked closer to three. Changing into a fresh set of clothes, he steeled his resolve and pushed open the door.
Within the District A Base, he was free to move around, but the meeting with Xin Zhou could under no circumstances reach Song Chengyu’s ears. Therefore…
“Please.”
The youth clasped his hands together in front of his chest. This kind of gesture, typically pulled off by beautiful anime heroines, looked entirely natural and unforced when he did it.
“But…” The man standing before him looked rather troubled. “The leader gave strict orders that I must follow you every step of the way.”
You An narrowed his eyes slightly, recognizing the fellow as the one he had previously called into his room to question, someone who seemed to possess a rather easily flustered personality.
“Are you planning to follow me into the bathroom and watch me there too?”
“I—I didn’t mean that!” The man’s wheat-colored face flushed bright red instantly, and he began stammering incoherently in defense.
“Relax,” You An took the man’s hand, raising his eyes to look at him. Having climbed his way up from the status of a lowly outcast on a trash planet to the top tier, he always knew precisely which angle made him look his absolute best. “I won’t cause you any trouble.”
Soft, fair hands enveloped his own, while the youth’s misty blue eyes shimmered with a moist luster, the tip of a rosy tongue peeking out slightly as he spoke, radiating a beauty capable of luring someone into depravity.