“How could I possibly think that?” The words of refutation had only just left Han Jie’s mouth when he realized Meng Qingtong was deliberately changing the subject. He then said with a solemn expression, “That may be related to your constitution that attracts evil demons, but as for exactly what the connection is, I will investigate it thoroughly in the future. So, if I agree to cooperate with you, it is largely for this purpose…”
“Alright, alright. You just want to say that your motives aren’t pure, telling me not to be in such a hurry to bare my heart and soul.” Meng Qingtong waved her hand to interrupt him. “The fact that you can lay everything out on the table like this instead shows that you’re the most suitable person. Anyway, I won’t change my mind casually. Whenever you’ve thought it through and nod in agreement, I’ll be waiting respectfully anytime.”
“Cooperation, cooperation, mutual benefit—there has to be something to gain. If you really didn’t want anything, then I’d be the one panicking. One who is busy for no reason is either a thief or a rapist. I don’t have any money, so wouldn’t I only be left with being deceived for my looks?” Her voice was crisp and quick, matching her footsteps, carrying the vitality appropriate for her age, and leaving one truly unable to quite keep up.
Han Jie didn’t know what to say, so he silently followed her.
The scorching sunlight spilled across their feet; the cool mountain breeze blew across their cheeks. It was nothing but an ordinary midsummer in the ordinary mortal world, yet to someone like him who had once had to squeeze every hour dry for all it was worth, it was terrifyingly unfamiliar.
But he had no opportunity to let his thoughts wander. Meng Qingtong kept drawing him into conversation, rambling about this and that, chattering away.
It wasn’t annoying, because she had a good grasp of boundaries. After confirming Han Jie’s identity, no matter how curious she was, she didn’t beat around the bush regarding his privacy. She only prattled on about some things that those who had been through it needed to pay attention to.
As she spoke, Meng Qingtong suddenly turned around, held Han Jie’s arm to make him stop, and looked him up and down for a moment. Then she took out her phone and swiped at it a few times, her expression suddenly becoming several degrees more serious, as if she were facing some major life decision.
Han Jie, who had originally been responding only with “mm” and “oh” while concentrating on studying, had to pause his thoughts and ask, “What is it?”
Meng Qingtong flattened her lips and said with a hint of grievance, “If only there were a way to let you integrate into society dressed like this without revealing your identity. Just thinking that I have to dress such an ancient-style beautiful youth who fits my aesthetic so well into something ordinary and vulgar makes my heart ache.”
Han Jie fell silent, even feeling slightly uncomfortable. All the small modifications to his rebuilt physique were for the convenience of cultivation; his appearance shouldn’t have changed much from his previous life. Before this, he had never been praised repeatedly in such a manner. The closest instance was when a senior sister from Three Stars Hanging Moon Mountain once pinched his face, praising him for being a delicately carved, jade-like pretty doll after washing up.
As she spoke, Meng Qingtong pulled out her phone again. “No, all-natural classical handsome guys are too rare. I must preserve a beautiful memento. Han Jie, let me take a few photos as a keepsake, okay?”
Han Jie hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
“If you could even strike a pose… alright, that’s pushing my luck. Forget it, forget it, let’s just shoot like this. Uh… Brother Han, could we… that… um… smile a little? Photos look best with a smile.”
The mortal world, by and large, was probably filled with just such trivial matters. He sighed softly and was just preparing to force out a smiling face when he saw her eyes suddenly light up as she pressed the screen several times in rapid succession.
Han Jie didn’t understand why, but since they would be dealing with each other for a long time to come, he was willing to indulge her in small matters. He faintly curved the corners of his lips and broke into a smile for her.
Meng Qingtong stared with wide eyes and snapped several more shots. While reviewing them, she held her chest and muttered, “My god, no filter needed. You look good melancholic, and even better when the melancholy breaks into a smile… I’m wavering here. Why don’t you try deceiving me for my looks? I suddenly feel like I’m very gullible.”
Han Jie said helplessly, “Miss Meng, I’m not skilled at deceiving people.”
“I can tell. You’re also not skilled at joking.” She shook her head with a smile. “By the way, don’t keep calling me Miss Meng. That kind of address stopped being popular eight hundred years ago. You look about my age on the outside. Calling me by name or Little Meng is fine. If others ask… just say we knew each other from the orphanage long ago. Ninety-nine percent of orphans in the whole district pass through Eastding City at some point. I can check if connections through this route can get you an identity card.”
He completely didn’t understand this kind of matter, so he just nodded, silently focusing on accelerating the absorption of the chaotic information in his sea of consciousness.
“Mm, we’re almost at the mountain road. I’ll call a car. If the driver asks, just say you came out with me to shoot a short costume drama. We’ll head straight to town and get your appearance properly fixed up first.”
Han Jie spoke no more. His inward-looking mind was busy organizing his sea of consciousness, while his outward-released divine sense was observing this unfamiliar world with full effort. The remaining bit of thought drove his already familiar body to follow this girl he temporarily still trusted, obeying her arrangements.
Although Han Jie had already extracted knowledge beforehand to understand the thing called an automobile, actually seeing and riding in one, he still felt immense shock.
His divine sense enveloped and permeated the vehicle body. With just a simple circuit around it, he could recognize how much terrifying craftsmen’s heart and effort this massive, complex metal instrument contained. What surprised him even more deeply was that in quite a few places within it, he could detect the existence of spiritual patterns and long-lasting spiritual arrays. This meant that many spiritualists were currently no longer obsessed with individual cultivation, but instead invested their energy into what were once considered heterodox side paths—and the results were striking.
Ordinary mortals without the talent to mobilize spiritual energy and cultivate spiritual power could still drive and enjoy such a treasure. Was this the way Meng Qingtong spoke of to make the world better and better?
Meng Qingtong didn’t even wait for the driver to ask before actively striking up a conversation, effortlessly steering the topic to the news playing in the car: special effects production companies jointly protesting spiritualists’ unfair competition in the film and television industry; Bingding District United Court ruling on geothermal energy distribution disputes; the actors’ guild declaring that spiritualists using divine sense to act as paparazzi should all be regarded as heretical cultivators; and so on.
The car stopped directly in front of the largest salon in town. Meng Qingtong went in, pressed Han Jie into a seat, called over a stylist with a head full of colorful hair, whispered a bunch of instructions, then went out to buy two ice cream bars. She sat in the chair next to him, handed him one, and happily started eating.
“Beauty, we just got in a new hair mask here, with three percent spiritual energy added. Want to get a treatment together? Right now is the seventy-fifth anniversary of Peace Day, and we’re running a promotion. Charge five thousand to the membership card, get two thousand free, plus a free spirit stone moisturizing care package…”
Meng Qingtong licked her ice cream bar in small bites, treating the stylist’s sales pitch as background music. Her free hand rummaged through her backpack. Before long, she took out a card dropped by a certain Xuedun earlier and called out to the salon owner sitting in the corner playing on his phone: “By the way, there’s a girl named Sun Xiangru who works at your shop, right?”
The owner immediately raised his head and signaled the stylist to shut up and pause the sales pitch. “Yes, that’s my niece. You know her?”
Meng Qingtong shook her head. “There have been quite a few thief rabbits roaming around here lately. Your family lost something too, right?”
The owner’s butt immediately left the comfortable sofa. He walked over with wide eyes, sizing up the small frosted card in her hand. “Yes, yes, yes. She went to the academy for new student intensive training and left something at home. Then it inexplicably went missing. Is… is it this thing?”
Meng Qingtong closed the card in her palm, pressing it against her leg. “Did your niece say what she lost?”
“She said it was a very important contact card. She was afraid of losing it if she brought it to school, so she deliberately left it at home.” The owner looked extremely regretful. “In the end, I couldn’t even keep watch over such a small thing. How embarrassing. I don’t even know when it disappeared.”
Seeing that Meng Qingtong neither intended to keep it for herself nor immediately return it to the owner, after saying a few nice words, the owner finally realized something and said with a smile: “Little sis, you went through all this trouble to bring my niece’s thing back. I won’t say anything else. Your boyfriend’s full styling treatment, sis will treat you—let’s be friends. Come, come here. That Tony, not you, the tall Tony in the back, come give this beauty a full treatment too, with the best hair mask.”
“No need. Just fix up my friend properly.” Meng Qingtong bit down heavily on the word “friend,” then pinched the card between her fingers and handed it over. “The card is from the Spirit Alliance. Remember to keep it safe this time. Otherwise, when your niece returns and misses an opportunity to join the Spirit Alliance, she won’t even have a place to cry.”
The owner clearly didn’t understand what the Spirit Alliance was, but he didn’t care either. He thanked her repeatedly, took the contact card, and hurried to the back room.
On the contrary, Han Jie was mentally exhausted and didn’t want to rummage through his sea of consciousness for the answer, so he asked curiously, “What kind of object is that contact card? Is it different from a phone?”
“Different. A phone is a general communication tool; even exclusive signals encrypted with spiritual power are still subject to supervision by the Spiritual Security Department. Setting up a divine sense channel consumes too much mental energy and can’t be maintained for long periods. A contact card is a secure communication tool with many restrictions and not very long range. Only spiritualists who have had their personal information branded onto it can use it… But it’s too inconvenient. Nowadays only some old-fashioned organizations still like using these things internally. Sooner or later they’ll be eliminated just like landline phones.”
He pondered and said, “The Spirit Alliance you mentioned earlier, is it such an organization?”
Meng Qingtong deliberated and weighed her words, hesitating for a dozen or so seconds before saying: “They tried to recruit me when I was a new student, but I didn’t agree. So I don’t know the specific situation. All I know is… their officially registered organizational name is the Spiritual Power In-Depth Research Alliance, but according to rumors, the formal name they use internally is the Spiritual Power Liberation Alliance.”
Probably misunderstanding that he wanted to search for his past sect and afraid he might let something slip, Meng Qingtong immediately continued: “Actually, thinking about it is quite sigh-worthy. The Spirit Alliance, a new generation organization with only a few decades of history, is already considered the biggest and oldest among civilian spiritualist organizations. The Great War of the Nine Cauldrons more or less completely wiped out all those cave-dwelling sects and whatnot from before.”
“Good thing,” the stylist chimed in from the side. “Otherwise how would us ordinary people have the good lives we have now?”
“Who’s ordinary like you? I’m a genius spiritual cultivation maiden.” Meng Qingtong joked around harmlessly. “If this were a few hundred years ago, I might very well have been the closing disciple of some famousorthodox mountain sect.”
Han Jie endured the stylist’s fiddling with his head, sighed lightly, and said as if to himself: “I was my master’s closing disciple. Unfortunately, they… I probably will never see them again.”
That final send-off from the Upper Realm fairy had made him traverse who knew how much space and time. In this completely unfamiliar, prosperous world, he involuntarily felt an empty loneliness, and the heart sword “Desolate Silence” in his soul began to stir restlessly along with it.
Seeing the stylist glance at Han Jie with some curiosity, Meng Qingtong quickly changed the subject: “By the way, I haven’t asked yet. What do you like to eat? Noodles, rice, or steamed buns and dumplings?”
Han Jie thought back seriously for a moment, but finally said helplessly: “Anything is fine. You arrange it.”
Even something like bread was nothing but conveniently portable dry rations. He felt that his distant memories of food from the past had no value as reference in this world.
But the owner, who happened to come out at this moment, clearly misunderstood his manner of expression. When the stylist took him to wash his hair, the owner leaned over and whispered to Meng Qingtong: “Your boyfriend’s attitude is a bit perfunctory, little sis. Eagerly chasing isn’t a good deal. Don’t spoil him too much. Being handsome can’t be eaten as food. Besides, you’re quite pretty yourself. Fix yourself up properly; you’re no worse than the little celebrities on TV.”
“Not my boyfriend.” Meng Qingtong sized up Han Jie, who had finished washing his hair—the trimmed hair wetly hanging down, an expression that seemed lazy and indifferent but actually revealed an almost imperceptible helplessness. It was truly a sight that could both strike one’s aesthetic sense and stir up maternal instincts. She took out her phone and snapped two photos, muttering in a somewhat subtle tone: “Can’t even afford a motorcycle. As for supercars and whatnot, I can only look at them…”
Han Jie’s mind was distracted, but his hearing was still quite good. His thoughts were simple; he just felt he would need to trouble this girl in many ways going forward, so he smiled slightly and said softly: “It’s fine. If you can’t afford it, I’ll buy it for you in the future.”
“And you still say he’s not your boyfriend!” The salon owner immediately burst out laughing, her ambiguous little eyes brushing back and forth between the two like a paintbrush.
Meng Qingtong was stunned, and her face immediately flushed a faint red, like a few drops of tomato juice dripped into honey water. She waved her hand, quickly put on a smiling face, and deliberately said teasingly: “Come on, you young master whose fingers have never touched spring water—how would you know how much human suffering is packed into earning money?”
She was too embarrassed to let this topic continue. She picked up her phone, took a look, and called out: “Oh no, the client is asking again. When we’re done later, let’s go over there first and return the thing, okay?”
Han Jie nodded, raised his gaze, looked at his completely new self in the mirror, and fell into silence again.
When the styling was completely finished, Meng Qingtong as usual took commemorative photos of him and, while she was at it, set one as her wallpaper. She admired it with satisfaction for a while, then took him into the called car, heading toward the client’s home.
The ride-hailing app had coupons available. She fiddled with it for a full ten-odd minutes and finally succeeded in saving seven yuan, five jiao, and eight fen, smiling like a flower.
Seeing her like this, Han Jie was finally certain that she had gone to that salon just now not because it was large-scale and looked high-class, but because that contact card could be exchanged for a free styling session. As for why she didn’t also get a free treatment while she was at it, it was probably because she felt that simply coming to deliver something wasn’t worth that much.
Perhaps only by calculating carefully and taking advantages within one’s moral boundaries like her would one not generate more Xuedun.
When they arrived, standing downstairs in the old, dilapidated apartment building, Meng Qingtong looked squarely at Han Jie and said very seriously: “You have to promise me that when we go up in a moment, you absolutely must not strike at the evil demon you see. Unless you’re certain you sense intent from the other party to attack people. Can you do that?”
In the past, such a request wouldn’t even have entered Han Jie’s ears.
But now, he just nodded slightly with a thoughtful expression.
Very quickly, he learned the reason.
After the doorbell rang several times, the one who opened the door for the two of them was shockingly an evil demon!