"My opinion of Senior Zi?" Xi Mengyao thought for a while before reluctantly giving an answer. "She's just a relatively ordinary senior. Usually I don't have much interaction with her. Even when we meet, we just exchange greetings and that's it."
"Oh, I see. Has she had any unusual behavior?" Leticia pressed.
Songstress had said she really liked Xi Mengyao. Although she claimed to hide it well, Leticia believed that truly loving someone couldn't be concealed.
If Songstress really liked Xi Mengyao as much as she claimed, Miss Xi lying in bed should have some awareness of it.
"No, usually Senior Zi always looks very busy. We juniors don't really dare disturb her." Xi Mengyao shook her head.
"Ah, I see. I understand." Leticia nodded thoughtfully. "You said before that you were called here by a phone call from your agent, right?"
"Yes, I remember very clearly. That morning I received his call saying he wanted me to come here to scout locations." Xi Mengyao nodded, her expression showing no signs of lying.
Not a trace of guilt. Leticia could also sense the openness in this girl's heart.
Bai Ling and Songstress hadn't told Xi Mengyao about their discoveries, so this young lady still firmly believed in her own account.
What Leticia needed to do now was make her recognize the discrepancy between memory and reality. If lucky, Xi Mengyao might remember something.
"But your agent never called you. He said he was at the agency all that morning, and others confirmed his statement." Leticia paused and observed Xi Mengyao's reaction.
After seeing the girl's face show disbelief, she continued: "There are no call records on either your phone or his. According to Bai Ling's investigation, you didn't make a single phone call that morning."
The girl's eyes widened as she quickly took out her phone and opened her call history to search. "That's impossible. I clearly remember being called here."
But no matter how she searched, that day's call records were completely clean, with no trace of the call she mentioned.
"How could this be?" Xi Mengyao pressed her forehead. She wanted to know why her memory had errors.
But no matter how she thought about it, her brain told her that that day, she had been called here by her agent's phone call.
Was her brain deceiving her?
"Your memory has been tampered with." Leticia pursed her lips and said to Xi Mengyao. "Perhaps that very morning, someone implanted the idea of coming here into you. This is a conspiracy."
But why would that person do this?
What was special about Xi Mengyao? Nothing, right?
She was just an ordinary, slightly prettier small-time actress.
Perhaps it was to... hmm, she couldn't think of what it was for.
Could it be to make them blame Lin Qingyu?
That was possible, but if that was the goal, wouldn't picking anyone randomly work? Why specifically Xi Mengyao?
That day at noon, Songstress had just mentioned Xi Mengyao, and immediately afterward, Xi Mengyao had an accident. Too much of a coincidence.
Leticia was thinking, and Xi Mengyao was also thinking. The room suddenly fell into strange silence.
After a long while, Bai Ling carefully poked her little head in from outside the door. She wanted to see what the current situation was.
Why couldn't she hear any conversation?
"Are you a thief? Looking so shifty." Leticia turned and glanced at Bai Ling, then waved at her. "Forget it, I've asked everything I needed to ask. You can come in."
Bai Ling chuckled and was the first to enter from outside.
Then came Xue'er and Songstress. As for the elven physician, she felt this had nothing to do with her and didn't plan to enter.
"How did it go?" The first to ask was actually Songstress.
"Little Xi wasn't lying. At least in her memory, things happened that way." Leticia briefly explained her speculation. "I can only say her memory was tampered with."
"This was all premeditated?" Bai Ling asked.
Leticia nodded. "You're not completely stupid."
"But what was being plotted, we currently don't know."
After saying that, Leticia paused, then said quietly: "I have a way to restore the part of Little Xi's memory that was tampered with, but this method looks a bit evil."
"Ah, how evil?"
"Actually it's not that evil, it's just that Little Xi needs to enter a state where her body and mind are completely relaxed, then I enter her mental world to search for that section of artificially modified memory." Leticia explained. "That section of memory is now covered by false memories, but it ultimately exists. If we find it, we can figure out who's behind all this."
"The only problem is that kind of openness is rather... wild." Leticia winked at Xue'er.
Xue'er was stunned, then had a look of sudden realization. "Miss Su is talking about that method, right?"
"Right, that method. Xue'er, you've seen me use this method before. You explain—ah no, describe it to them."
Xue'er nodded repeatedly. She took out a small bottle of crimson potion from her pocket and said to Bai Ling and Songstress: "The method Miss Su mentioned has successful precedent. It was during that incident that I met Miss Su."
Bai Ling frowned upon hearing this. She opened her mouth wanting to say something, but found Leticia frantically making eye signals at her.
These eye signals seemed to mean: quietly watch Xue'er perform?
Hmm?
This was acting? Acting for whom?
Bai Ling thought left and right and found there seemed to be only one possible audience: Miss Songstress.
"This potion can make a person enter a mentally dazed state. In that state, Miss Su can enter Miss Xi's mental world to explore the truth." Xue'er was seriously spouting nonsense. Actually, what she held was just a bottle of perfume.
"It's just that this potion has strong addictive properties. I can't guarantee that after using it once, Miss Xi won't develop a..."
"Absolutely not!" Songstress immediately interrupted Xue'er. "If that's the price, I'd rather not know the answer."
"It's only theoretically possible to be addictive. The person from last time turned out fine, didn't they?" Leticia also began persuading.
"No! I can't let Little Xi take that risk!"
...
"Tch, Songstress seems quite normal too. Doesn't seem like there's a problem." At the end of the day, Leticia sighed, feeling like she had accomplished nothing today.
She had originally wanted to see if Songstress would react with panic, but whether it was because Songstress's stress tolerance was too strong or she really had nothing to do with this matter, Leticia and Xue'er both felt Songstress had no problems.
Her reaction was too normal—normal to the point of no abnormality.
"Are you suspecting Senior Songstress?"
"What else?" Leticia stretched lazily. "You trust her because she's your senior. You have a preconceived notion that she's not suspicious. But to me, she was once my enemy, and I never trust my enemies."
Mm, absolutely no trust.
Just treat it as truth.
"What about me? Don't you trust me either?" Bai Ling immediately seized the opportunity to ask.
That Leticia trusted Bai Ling seemed to have been put on the table and become everyone's consensus.
Otherwise, would Leticia carelessly come to the human world when she had absolutely no combat ability? Would she follow Bai Ling to the Hero Association to fool around? Would she follow Bai Ling to that place with security tighter than parliament?
She dared to go, which could only prove one thing: Leticia believed Bai Ling wouldn't hurt her. She trusted this girl who had once nearly killed her.
"I trust you least of all!" Leticia naturally wouldn't admit this. She slapped the sofa armrest beside her and vehemently retorted: "How could you have such a delusion? I tell you, I, Leticia, have never trusted you, you bastard."
Being indirect again. Bai Ling felt her facial expression might be developing in a strange direction—the kind where you want to laugh but also want to hold back from laughing.
This expression naturally couldn't escape Leticia's eyes, and this young lady understood the meaning of this expression quite well.
"You're laughing at me!"
"No, absolutely not." Bai Ling immediately began denying. She hadn't laughed at all.
Oh, more accurately, she hadn't laughed out loud.
"You did! Absolutely did!"
"Really didn't."
Watching Her Majesty and Bai Ling wrestling on the sofa, Xue'er, who was wearing an apron preparing dinner, covered her face and shook her head helplessly. She always felt that when Her Majesty interacted with Bai Ling, her personality would develop in a rather strange direction.
She would become rather unreasonable.
Always starting arguments with Bai Ling over small matters. Previously it was just verbal sparring, but now it had escalated to physical contact. What next—would they start using feet?
Ah wait, they were already using feet.
Watching Leticia kick toward Bai Ling only to have her ankle grabbed by the girl, leaving her unable to move, Xue'er felt she should step in to stop this farce.
She took a step forward, but the sounds from the pot behind her told her that if she left now, today's dinner would transform from delicious cuisine to dark cooking. As a maid, Xue'er couldn't tolerate such a thing happening.
So, Your Majesty, please do your best on your own!
"Let me go!" Leticia maintained her leg-raised position, face red as she spoke. She felt this position was incredibly embarrassing, and maintaining it was rapidly draining her stamina.
Her leg was already trembling.
As for Bai Ling, she looked at the black-stockinged small foot in her hand, inwardly marveling at how truly beautiful Leticia's feet were.
This was the first time she had observed Leticia's feet from such close distance. Previously, she had at most seen Leticia's thighs, but feet—this was the first time.
After all, Leticia had never directly kicked at her before.
Hearing Leticia's words, Bai Ling quickly released her hand. She also felt this position seemed somewhat inappropriate.
While Leticia was still struggling to withdraw her foot, Bai Ling let go, and she immediately lost her balance.
But the current Leticia already had magic power—it was impossible for her to fall.
However, she had confidence in herself, but someone else didn't have confidence in her.
When Bai Ling saw Leticia waving her arms and falling backward, she reacted almost instantly, running behind Leticia at top speed and opening her arms to embrace the girl.
From Leticia's perspective, a familiar starlight that made her want to vomit flashed by, and she was embraced by something warm.
Moreover, due to the position, she felt the back of her head seemed to sink into two soft things.
Thinking briefly, she roughly understood what was behind her head. It had to be Bai Ling's two... things. Only she would do something like this.
Qila wasn't fast enough, Xue'er's weren't that small—it could only be Bai Ling.
"Let go." Leticia said with a red face.
"Oh." Bai Ling released her arms holding Leticia.
The girl walked forward a few steps, turned back to Bai Ling and said: "I now have mag—"
"Sister! You really are here!" Just as Leticia was halfway through her sentence, Bai Ya, who had just returned from school, came running in energetically from outside.
This girl seemed to have completely forgotten about knocking when she entered.
"Sister Qianqian is here too." The little girl happily greeted Leticia, then asked what Qila was doing. "Where's Little Qi? I want to invite her to go out and play tomorrow."
Ah, speaking of which, it seemed to be another weekend.
Since the people around her were all unemployed or worked year-round, Leticia had no sense of the weekend's arrival.
But this time, she couldn't let Little Ya take Qila away.
"Little Qi is working. Little Ya, don't disturb her." Leticia said with a smile.
But her sister clearly had no intention of giving Leticia face. Just as her sister finished speaking, Qila emerged from the study, yawning.
Seeing several girls in the living room, she naturally greeted them: "Good afternoon, sister, Sister Bai, Little Ya."
"Little Qi, Little Qi, let's go out and play tomorrow!" Seeing Qila appear, Bai Ya immediately rushed over.
"That won't work. I've been a bit busy recently." Qila shook her head, then cast her gaze toward the two sisters watching from the side, signaling them to quickly help her get rid of Bai Ya.
"Sister is busy, Sister Qianqian is busy, and now Little Qi is busy too. What exactly are you all busy with!"
Bai Ya felt everyone was hiding things from her. A few days ago, when her sister said she wanted to send Lin Qingyu somewhere else for recuperation, Bai Ya had asked where she would be sent, but her sister had been evasive and refused to answer.
Now even Sister Qianqian and Little Qi were starting to hide things from her, conspiring with her sister to keep her forever in the dark.
Bai Ya was unhappy, truly very unhappy.
"Little Ya, not letting you know about these things is to protect you." Leticia looked around and found she seemed most suitable to give Bai Ya some counseling.
Bai Ling? This person's emotional intelligence deserved a negative score. Expecting this dummy sister to comfort her sister would be like expecting tigers to become vegetarian someday.
Qila was even more out of the question. She just wasn't good at dealing with Bai Ya, but if Bai Ya was unhappy? What did that have to do with her?
Let her be unhappy. As a Demon Princess, she wasn't going to comfort Bai Ya while her sister was still present, was she?
She wasn't that bored or benevolent.
So in the end, it still fell to Leticia, this big sucker, to make Bai Ya less sad.
"I've already grown up! Sister has always hidden things from me before, and she's still hiding things from me now. I can know about everything!" Bai Ya shouted somewhat angrily. She felt like she was just a girl who knew nothing, living her whole life in stories woven by others.
When she was little, first her parents disappeared, then her sister vanished too. Heaven knows how Bai Ya had lived alone until now.
And now? Her sister had returned, but what changes had she brought to Bai Ya's life?
None!
In the end, Bai Ya was still a little girl. What she wanted was care from her sister, not watching her returned sister continue running out all day and night.
Sometimes Bai Ya really wondered if her sister had actually returned. No, she had returned, but it made Bai Ya feel this sister might as well not have come back.
Before her sister returned, Bai Ya could still fantasize about how her sister would take care of her after returning. But now, cold reality told her that her sister actually needed her care instead.
"Why won't you tell me? I think I can know!"
Leticia frantically signaled to Bai Ling and Xue'er, who was peeking from the other side. She really was at her wit's end.
How to comfort an angry sister had never been a question she would consider.
Because after she did things that made her sister angry, she usually didn't dare face her sister.
As for Qila, due to her upbringing, this princess appeared quite reasonable. Most of the time, she could understand her sister's decisions and choices.
In other words, Leticia didn't need to counsel Qila—Qila would counsel herself before Leticia needed to.
What a good sister!
"If there's really no choice, just tell Little Ya. It's not that big a deal, right?" Leticia winked at Bai Ling.
It would just mean telling Little Ya that your sister is actually the frequently-appearing-in-news Guardian of Humanity, the invincible Stellar Sword Saint.
Your Sister Qianqian also isn't ordinary. Though her identity isn't as outrageous as your sister's, she's just the boss of the demon race who've been fighting humans for decades.
Your good friend Su Qi is the Demon King's sister—in layman's terms, the Demon Princess.
You're the only little cutie in this house who's an ordinary person. Happy? Surprised?
Wait, thinking about it this way, Bai Ya might get scared by all this.
"That..." Bai Ling opened her mouth, then looked toward Leticia. "Why don't you tell her instead."
"She's your sister, not mine. I've never done anything like comforting sisters!" Leticia said quite shamelessly, uttering words that left even nearby Bai Ya momentarily stunned.
Qila glared and pinched her sister's waist, making Leticia cry out in pain.
"I'll tell her then." After punishing her sister, Qila coughed twice, drawing everyone's attention. "Actually, we've all been busy with the same thing these past few days."
"And Little Ya, that Lin Qingyu you brought back is the key to this matter."
"To protect her safety and yours, we sent her to a very, very safe place."
"Can I know where she is now?" Bai Ya raised her hand to ask.
"I think we can tell Little Ya." Leticia poked Bai Ling's side. "She's so far away, just have your people watch Little Ya so she can't run off."
Under so many watchful eyes, how could Bai Ya possibly run from here to that manor on the other side of Central City?
She wasn't a superhuman.
"Mm, here." Bai Ling took out her phone, opened the map, and told her sister Lin Qingyu's current location.
Looking at the map, Bai Ya found she didn't recognize this place, and the location seemed quite remote.
"This place is almost in the suburbs, right?" she asked.
"Bai Ya, you need to understand something—this world isn't as safe as you imagine." Qila said calmly. "Placing her there can avoid dragging innocent people into this."
"Is it very dangerous?"
"To be precise, extremely dangerous." Leticia took over from Qila. "There's something I need to tell you—Lin Qingyu isn't actually a pure human."
"Ah?"
"Little Ya should have heard of Elves—those green-haired little people living in forests. I remember Elves are quite well-known among humans due to their looks." Leticia asked.
Bai Ya did know this. Their textbooks had photos of elven warriors, and the description of the elven race was: beneath beautiful appearances hide demonic hearts.
They weren't the elegant, noble race from fairy tales and novels, but beings dominated by greed and desire just like other races.
"Is Little Yu an elf? But her hair isn't green, and her ears aren't pointed."
In ordinary people's eyes, the biggest characteristics of Elves should be green hair and pointed ears.
But Lin Qingyu had black hair and round ears—she didn't look like an elf at all.
"Because she's a Half-Elf. Cross-racial love ultimately births such tragic children. They're not accepted by this world—no matter which side, they're the lowest-class characters." Leticia continued.
"Half... elf?" Bai Ya's eyes widened. Humans and Elves could actually produce offspring?
"Yes, Half-Elf." Leticia nodded.