CH 65

Translator: Abo Dammen

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The moment President Lou stepped through the door, he sensed the barometric pressure in the room had plummeted. A quick scan located the source.

Ruan Zhou sat on the sofa, turning a pink envelope over and over in his hands, his face etched with unmistakable displeasure.

Beside him, Liang Ziang wore a grim expression, while the butler looked as though he desperately wanted to speak but didn’t dare.

This was the first time President Lou had ever seen genuine anger on Ruan Zhou’s face.

President Lou’s footsteps faltered. The butler, spotting him, reacted as if seeing a savior and hurried over to explain the situation.

After hearing the butler’s account, President Lou clicked his tongue softly.

Of all the people for this scam company to target, why did they have to send that letter to Ruan Zhou? Were they actively courting death?

“Absolutely outrageous, isn’t it, President Lou?” Ruan Zhou lifted his eyes as he noticed him enter.

President Lou had never heard him use that tone of voice before.

Ruan Zhou was always polite, gentle, and respectful of boundaries. But the man sitting here now looked ready to demand, face-to-face with the sender, Where exactly did you get the nerve to ask for money?

A cold sweat broke out across President Lou’s back. “Ah, yes, yes, precisely.”

A single sentence from the man had exerted an immense, suffocating pressure. This was the nature of a transcendent being.

President Lou wiped his face.

Ruan Zhou held the letter up once more, pinched between two fingers, and gave it a final glance. He turned to Liang Ziang. “There’s no return address on this envelope. Could you ask your father for it?”

“Ask my father?” Liang Ziang was momentarily taken aback.

How would his father know the address of this company?

Ruan Zhou explained, “If Mr. Liang truly intends to repay this debt, he would need to wire the funds to a corporate account. That would require the recipient bank’s branch address. We can go search that area. We might find a lead.”

Could that actually work?

The line of reasoning was something Liang Ziang had never once considered.

For a normal company, such an approach made perfect sense. But what they were dealing with seemed to be an anomaly…

How could an anomaly possibly open a bank account?!

President Lou gave him a firm shove. “Would President Ruan’s advice ever be wrong? Go ask your father!”

Liang Ziang stared at his uncle in disbelief, but all he found in the older man’s eyes was unwavering certainty.

President Ruan’s way never led astray?

Liang Ziang steeled his resolve. “Alright.”

Watching them leave, Ruan Zhou turned his attention back to the debt collection notice. Slowly, deliberately, he extended his fingers and began to tear it apart.

His movements were unhurried, methodical. The high-quality cardstock, impossibly, yielded like tissue paper, shredding into tiny flakes no larger than fingernail clippings.

He dusted off his hands, swept the fragments into the trash bin, and only then did a fraction of his anger seem to abate.

President Lou stared at the trash bin and gave an involuntary shudder. He couldn’t explain why, but he felt as though he had just witnessed a public execution.

Truly, the more one interacted with anomalies, the more one’s own mind began to malfunction.

President Lou asked, “What should we do next?”

“We wait for the address,” Ruan Zhou said.

Xiao cursed the Anomaly Control Bureau with every sweep of his mop.

What had the Bureau been thinking, outsourcing work like this? Under normal circumstances, their own personnel should be handling this cleanup.

Unless… they were desperately short-handed.

Either casualties had been so high that new recruits couldn’t fill the gaps, or anomalous incidents were occurring so frequently that they simply couldn’t keep up.

The fact that no officer had appeared during the entirety of Xiao’s shift was the most damning evidence of all.

Either scenario was excellent news for his organization.

Xiao hauled severed limbs back and forth, making trip after trip to the disposal area. Finally, just before the end of his shift, he managed to finish cleaning the scene.

Looking at the now spotless, utterly transformed apartment, a gratified smile spread across his face. It was true, then. When a person was agitated, doing housework helped. Organizing one’s physical surroundings felt like organizing one’s own thoughts.

Xiao felt an unexpected sense of peace settle over him.

When the Anomaly Control officer pushed open the door and saw a room even cleaner and more orderly than it had been before the incident, his jaw dropped.

He checked the time. Barely ten hours had passed.

The man was unbelievably dedicated. He had worked without the slightest slacking for ten straight hours. His eyes held nothing but a pure, unwavering commitment to the task.

Diligent, dependable, willing to endure hardship. The officer had never expected to witness such a radiant display of virtue in a simple janitor. A wave of shame washed over him.

If an ordinary civilian could pour such devotion into his work, what excuse did he, an officer, have for not striving harder?

“Mr. Zhou, you are truly remarkable.” The officer gave him a sincere thumbs-up.

Xiao felt only a biting irony. He, an operative of an anti-government organization, was being praised by the official Anomaly Control Bureau. Was this not a profound failure in its own right?

“It was within my responsibilities. I find the work rather enjoyable, actually,” he lied smoothly.

“I will make sure you receive overtime pay for this!” the officer declared.

Xiao’s mouth twitched. “Thank you.”

It was only as he picked up his mop bucket that the exhaustion finally hit him. He took the subway back to his rented apartment and collapsed into bed, falling instantly asleep.

Halfway through the night, the black phone rang, shrill and insistent.

“How did things go today? Why didn’t you report in immediately?” The voice on the other end was sharp with interrogation.

A wave of raw irritation surged through Xiao. “I just spent ten hours stuck with those Bureau lunatics! Can you give me a moment to breathe?!”

The voice on the other end swore in shock. “You’ve been compromised? Did they interrogate you? Torture you?”

Xiao snapped, “Spending all your time cooped up with that monster has rotted your brain! I was assigned a job.”

“I’m merely concerned for you.”

“You don’t need to be. I have the situation under control.” Xiao paused, then a thought struck him. “Right. I need more operational funds.”

“What do you need to purchase? I can send the supplies directly.”

“Dish soap. Laundry detergent. One of my mops broke. Also cleaning rags, rubber gloves…”

Silence answered him from the other end of the line.

After Xiao departed, the Anomaly Control officer reported back to Fei Shilan.

“Exceptionally capable. Completely uncomplaining. Tireless, emotionally stable. His SAN index remained steady throughout the entire operation.”

“That outstanding?” Fei Shilan was genuinely surprised upon hearing the assessment.

For someone to be this remarkable, Ruan Zhou must have meticulously handpicked this talent specifically for the Bureau.

“When he reports in tomorrow, take him to the new incident site. Our Bureau has been dealing with an unusual surge of anomalous phenomena lately. Money is no object.”

“Understood.”

Consequently, when Xiao arrived the following day hoping to catch a breather, the same officer from yesterday immediately sought him out.

“Our leadership has noted your exemplary work ethic and decided to assign you additional tasks. I guarantee, by the end of the month, your paycheck will reach a figure you find entirely satisfactory!”

Even beasts of burden weren’t driven this relentlessly.

Xiao stared in stunned disbelief before hastily dialing Xiao Xie. He asked when he could transfer to the other company and begin work there.

Xiao Xie informed him to wait another couple of days until President Ruan returned.

Glancing at the time, Xiao calculated that another two days of this Bureau work would literally kill him. He pulled out his phone and messaged his comrade. “Have you located Ruan Zhou’s position?”

“Located. He is in Linquan City.”

What was Ruan Zhou doing in Linquan? Could he be executing some other plan?

Xiao refused to sit passively and wait. He needed to seize the initiative and create his own opportunities. That was the only way to complete his mission.

After finishing that day’s assigned work, Xiao requested two days of leave and boarded a transport heading for Linquan City.

Linquan had once been an industrial powerhouse, rich in mineral resources. Later, with the shift towards environmental protection, the city’s economy had pivoted increasingly towards tourism.

During the transition period, a wave of opportunists had amassed fortunes, while another wave, unable to adapt, had swiftly crumbled into obscurity.

The Liang family was among the enterprises that had fought their way to the top. Their influence was at its peak, a definitive top-tier presence throughout the entire Linquan region.

If something went catastrophically wrong within such a prominent family, the repercussions for Linquan, and for President Lou and Ruan Zhou who had just secured their investment, would be devastating.

Ruan Zhou sat on the sandy beach, a soft-serve cone in hand, still mulling over the matter of the bills.

The company had been registered while President Lou was in the hospital. Xiao Xie had handled the paperwork. Their information shouldn’t have been leaked. Moreover, he wasn’t even the legal representative. How had anyone gotten hold of his details?

Was it President Lou’s doing? Or was the entire situation a charade orchestrated by the Liang family themselves?

Something felt off, but he couldn’t identify any concrete leads.

Ruan Zhou sucked at the rapidly melting ice cream. He decided to set the problem aside for now.

The cool sea breeze caressed his face, tempering the oppressive summer heat. Beneath a massive beach umbrella, the young man in shorts and a t-shirt lounged idly. The joyful noise of the surrounding crowd faded into a comfortable white noise. His earlier frustration was very nearly carried away by the wind.

“The environment here really is wonderful,” someone said beside him.

“It is,” Ruan Zhou agreed reflexively. Then, he paused. He turned his head. “What are you doing here?”

Lin Lin was dressed in a black short-sleeved shirt, hands tucked into his pockets. A pair of sunglasses was pushed back into his thick, snowy white hair. His entire being seemed to radiate a pale, almost luminous glow.

In contrast, Ruan Zhou’s complexion was far more normal, even showing a slight flush from his extended time at the beach.

They had only been apart for almost four days. Ruan Zhou hadn’t even fully processed the separation, and here the man was again.

“I’m here on business,” Lin Lin said, settling down beside him.

Ruan Zhou was skeptical. “Back in Xinhai, you barely ever took business trips. But the moment I come to Linquan, you suddenly have business here?”

Lin Lin sprawled out next to him. The beach umbrella shuddered from the motion, casting a dancing pattern of shadows over his form.

“You wouldn’t happen to have come looking for me, would you?” Ruan Zhou asked.

The sun was sinking towards the horizon, dyeing the young man’s eyes a clear, pale orange. It traced soft, gentle lines along his silhouette.

He possessed the most harmless, gentle appearance imaginable. Yet within him resided boundless, terrifying power.

Lin Lin heard himself answer. “Yes.”

“Didn’t you just say you were here on business?” Ruan Zhou countered.

“I came for you too.”

The sunlight was piercing, but Lin Lin maintained his usual air of lazy nonchalance. Yet Ruan Zhou could see the unmistakable earnestness in his eyes.

“Your information network is quite impressive,” Ruan Zhou murmured, shifting slightly to make more room. He drew one leg up, resting his chin on his knee.

Lin Lin was now sprawled so close he was practically pressed against Ruan Zhou’s leg.

The sea breeze drifted gently by. Ruan Zhou caught a faint, elusive scent, something medicinal.

He looked down, his gaze slowly tracing the bridge of Lin Lin’s nose, his earlobe, the line of his neck, and then he spotted a sliver of white gauze peeking from beneath the collar of his shirt.

“You’re injured?”

Lin Lin shifted slightly away. “Where? No.”

Stubborn to the core.

Ruan Zhou caught his arm. “Pull your collar aside.”

A similar scene had played out between them once before. But the intent this time was entirely different.

“I want to see how serious it is,” Ruan Zhou clarified.

After a long moment, Lin Lin reluctantly tugged at his collar, revealing a glimpse of the bandages beneath.

The wound was at the junction of his neck and collarbone, and a faint trace of fresh blood had seeped through. Ruan Zhou’s brow furrowed.

“Just a scratch,” Lin Lin said.

The recent anomaly had been somewhat troublesome to deal with, but compared to past injuries, the wound truly was minor.

“Stay still.” Ruan Zhou reached for Lin Lin’s wrist, wanting a closer look.

Lin Lin evaded his grasp, instead catching Ruan Zhou’s arm in a swift counter-move. With a gentle but inexorable pull, he threw Ruan Zhou off balance. The young man stumbled, catching himself on one knee. His right leg braced his weight while his left leg planted itself between Lin Lin’s thighs.

He had been stopped from examining the wound, but his movement was now thoroughly restricted.

“Go ahead, then. Look all you want.” Lin Lin offered no further resistance. He tilted his head slightly to the side, baring the vulnerable expanse of his throat.

Ruan Zhou’s eyelashes trembled. He reached out and carefully drew the collar aside.

He was practically pressed against him, his breath a warm caress that burned straight through to Lin Lin’s core. Lin Lin couldn’t suppress the sudden bob of his Adam’s apple.

Their posture was so intimate that, from a distance, any onlooker would draw a very specific conclusion.

Xiao had followed his tracker’s directions all the way to the edge of the beach. The greater part of his body was expertly concealed, only his eyes visible. He took in the entire scene in a single glance.

Through his earpiece, his comrade asked what he was seeing.

Xiao observed the two men for a long, analytical moment, his brow furrowed in concentration.

“They’re kissing,” he reported.