Chen Yanyu’s sleeping face looked adorably innocent, and beautiful too. Her skin was like cold jade, touched with a faint blush. The delicate lashes over her eyes no longer fluttered in panic, but rested still like butterflies perched on flower petals. Even her breathing was so soft it was almost nonexistent.
Even the bar’s mad, metallic music couldn’t wake the girl.
She was like a timeless little poem, written into a bright summer day of clear skies and limpid water.
Luo Qingchuan reached out and poked Chen Yanyu’s soft, fair cheek with a finger. A slight bitterness rose in his heart.
She was probably really drunk.
What do you do when your King-tier teammate disconnects in a ranked match?
He checked the time. There was still enough.
Luo Qingchuan pulled up his mask and swept his gaze around the room again.
He couldn’t bear to wake Chen Yanyu, so he decided to let her sleep a little longer.
The Sage System had a shop, and storage slots too, but they could only hold items from the Sage System itself.
The “Vast Righteous Aura Robe” was stored inside. It was a refined green scholar’s robe with a strong literati air.
Wearing that in a modern bar would be way too eye-catching.
Luo Qingchuan wanted to hide his identity, ambush Peony, win fast with surprise, kill in one strike, then leave at once.
In the cultivation world after spiritual qi’s revival, the Scripture of Calamitous Chaos that Luo Qingchuan cultivated was so high-level it could crush any other technique from a higher dimension. No one could possibly stay unmoved by it.
Once a drawn-out fight started, the utterly wicked Scripture of Calamitous Chaos would definitely attract attention. Luo Qingchuan had no interest in being targeted by Evilbane, the supernatural law enforcement agency.
Evilbane dealt with criminal demonic cultivators. At the same time, they also actively arrested those who practiced evil arts, watched them for a while, then released them depending on the situation. If someone was violent by nature, they would directly cripple that person’s cultivation and make them live as an ordinary human.
Demoncleave was responsible for hunting demons, monsters, ghosts, and all manner of dark entities. Any supernatural case caused by mysterious non-cultivators fell under their jurisdiction.
Both organizations handled extremely dangerous work. They could die at any moment.
If Luo Qingchuan remembered right, Su Yingsnow would be selected into Demoncleave in the future. Before long, she would become a high-ranking core member, surrounded by countless admirers.
In this bar, Luo Qingchuan only wanted to finish the job, brush off his sleeves, and leave with his merits hidden.
He didn’t want anything to do with either of those two major organizations.
He tugged at his mask. Luo Qingchuan waited in calm silence for a long, long time...
Like a wolf lying low in the jungle, waiting for its prey to appear.
The hands on the watch turned tirelessly.
23:10.
The music in the bar had changed again and again. Right now it was intensely dynamic, with a powerful rhythm.
The drumbeats weren’t especially noisy. They seemed to blend with the ticking of the hands.
Beside him, Chen Yanyu slowly woke.
She blanked out for a moment, then awkwardly moved her flushed cheek away from Luo Qingchuan’s shoulder.
“I... I fell asleep?”
“Mm.”
“S-Sorry...”
“It’s fine.” Luo Qingchuan smiled at her. “I’m the one who brought you here. You should’ve been resting properly in the first place.”
Chen Yanyu had come alone to the human world.
To someone like her, who had only seen things through TV dramas, everything here felt both familiar and strange. All those half-understood things needed time for her to accept.
She was tired.
But Chen Yanyu didn’t appreciate Luo Qingchuan’s kindness. She puffed out her lips, thinking his hidden meaning was that he shouldn’t have brought her at all...
“Do you think I’m dragging you down?” Chen Yanyu sounded aggrieved, but also eager to prove herself. “Just wait. I’ll show you how amazing I am!”
She’d already slept through part of it, and she was pretty unwilling to accept that.
Between the mask and the brim of his cap, Luo Qingchuan’s long eyes were gentle as autumn water. “Alright, alright. Time’s almost here, Miss Chen. Let’s both get ready. I’ll be counting on you in a bit.”
“Mhm.”
Chen Yanyu’s small body tensed for a moment.
It was her first time doing something like this. She was actually pretty nervous.
But for some reason, seeing Luo Qingchuan sitting right beside her made her stop panicking.
Chen Yanyu thought, I definitely won’t let him look down on me ever again!
Luo Qingchuan looked at the determination flickering in her eyes, smiled, and said nothing.
Yet after a while, Chen Yanyu’s attention was drawn to the main stage.
The girl let out a soft “wow,” then lightly tugged at Luo Qingchuan’s clothes and whispered, “Look, look. Two pretty ladies suddenly came up. They’re wearing so little...”
Luo Qingchuan glanced over, saw they were dancers, and nodded. “Watch if you want. They should be starting.”
The time was getting closer and closer.
Luo Qingchuan’s heart was starting to sink. He still hadn’t found any trace of Peony.
As far as he knew, he hadn’t missed a single person who entered through the door tonight.
He hadn’t seen anyone especially huge or powerfully built.
Could the Blood Demon God-Refining Art have some kind of bone-shrinking technique too?
He didn’t dare relax. He stayed coiled and ready.
In the dim light, unnoticed by anyone, the boy’s shadow at his feet had already begun to sway faintly along the floor.
Like a sharp sword trembling inside its sheath.
Or like ripples stirred across a lake by the wind.
Just then, Chen Yanyu tugged at his clothes again.
“Look, look, Luo... Luo Qingchuan... they’re really dancing now! Is this actually allowed? Their poses are so embarrassing...”
“Mm.” Luo Qingchuan only answered her, but he was even more tense than she was as he kept scanning the surroundings.
Chen Yanyu covered her little face. Her diamond-bright eyes peeked through her fingers at the stage, her cheeks flushed red.
“Luo Qingchuan, look, look... why are they suddenly taking off their clothes...”
Damn.
Luo Qingchuan was speechless. This bar was way too wild. What if it corrupted kids!
No wonder it was tucked away in some small place, cramped and crowded, yet still had a surprisingly large flow of customers.
“They probably won’t take everything off,” Luo Qingchuan said after thinking for a moment. “If you want to watch, then watch.”
A few more seconds passed.
The neon lights spilling through the bar all seemed to turn suggestive. Waves of cheers rose from the customers.
Chen Yanyu’s voice was trembling. “Luo Qingchuan, you really should look. Someone brought up a really, really long metal pole!”
Luo Qingchuan’s heart skipped a beat.
Pole dancing too?
Damn, now I kind of want to look...
But Luo Qingchuan didn’t dare drop the ball at the most critical moment.
Then Chen Yanyu suddenly added, “Luo Qingchuan, that man carrying the pole looks so scary. He’s like a little mountain.”
“Oh.”
Luo Qingchuan answered absentmindedly again.
...Wait.
The softness in Luo Qingchuan’s eyes vanished, turning brutally cold. A fierce killing aura surged up to his brow as he whipped his head around out of the darkness—
Under the wildly dancing, gorgeous beams of light, two scantily dressed dancers were twisting their waists on the main stage.
From the steps in the back, a man in work clothes slowly walked up. His whole body was packed with bulging muscle beneath his cap. He set down the steel pole in his hand.
A savage smile twisted at the corner of his mouth in the shadows.
To match the hot dance on the main stage, the bar lights kept flashing bright and dim, hammering the eyes with sharp visual stimulation.
Just before the light dimmed again, every customer saw it—
As if struck by some sudden violent illness, the man abruptly blasted a scarlet fist toward one of the dancers!
Like a brown bear slamming its paw into prey.
Cries of alarm exploded below the stage.
The audience witnessed a horrifying scene.
The image froze, and the bar sank into deathly dark silence.
The next moment—
A thunderous roar burst from the darkness, like storm clouds rolling across the sky.
The floor shook.
The whole bar seemed to tremble. Dust rustled down somewhere above, and a wineglass was jolted off and shattered.
The lights came back on.
Chen Yanyu’s hair fluttered as she stared in shock, only then realizing that Luo Qingchuan had suddenly vanished from beside her.
On the main stage—
Black shadows of calamity and ill omen coiled around Luo Qingchuan’s body. Enduring that searing pain, he threw out his right fist and intercepted Peony’s punch at the very instant of the attack.
