Chapter 10
An utterly ordinary door stood before him, with a lock beside it that looked much like the scanner at his front door.
"This lock scans personal soul information. It's stricter than the one at your house, but it's not much of a problem for me," the system said. "Put your hand on it, and I can hack it for you!"
He did as instructed. After the bar on the scanner swept back and forth a few times, a green light appeared below it, displaying: Verification successful.
Click. The door unlocked.
Beyond the door was a dim, narrow corridor.
Xu Qingran followed it to the end and arrived at another mechanical door, with an old poster stuck to it.
[Across countless rivers of stars, I met you, my one and only match]
The slogan was written in graceful lettering against a backdrop of two souls slowly drawing closer. It looked like an advertisement for the Soulmate System.
Xu Qingran slapped his palm over the slogan, unromantically covering the tender words. After confirming that there was no one else in the space beyond, he pushed the door open with force.
The rectangular space was filled with tall shelves lined with neat rows of disks, making it look much like an archive. After passing through another two or three spaces, he finally came to a door that let light through.
The door had a window about the size of a person's head. Through it, he could see an employee with short, permed curls sitting in a modestly sized office.
Judging by the figure from behind, it was a woman.
Xu Qingran leaned against the door, considering how to carry out his plan, when someone suddenly entered through the front door.
It was someone he knew, too.
The woman in the chair rose in surprise. "Oh, Qing'an, what brings you here?"
Xu Qing'an greeted her politely with a slight bow, then got straight to the point. "Sister Yan, I came today to ask you for a favor."
The woman he called Sister Yan was amused by the sweet way he addressed her. "Oh, Qing'an, you're such a sweet talker. I'm an old lady in my seventies, and you still call me sister."
"Go on, what do you want me to help you with?"
Xu Qingran was surprised to hear that.
It was mainly because the woman looked only forty or fifty. Her real age did surprise him.
"This is the ultra-modern future, after all. Medical care and living standards have both improved, and the average life expectancy here is over a hundred, so it's normal," the system explained.
In the room on the other side of the door, Xu Qing'an's gentle smile held a trace of bitterness. "I'd like to ask you to replace Lu Cheng, who has a 99% soul compatibility with my brother, with someone else."
The square room fell somewhat silent.
Xu Qingran stood casually in the shadows behind the door and raised an eyebrow slightly.
The woman he had asked for help had yet to speak, but Xu Qing'an's eyes had already reddened.
He raised a hand and stubbornly wiped the crocodile tears from the corner of his eye, his voice catching slightly. "You and my aunt have been close friends for years, so you should already know the matching result she found for me that day. It wasn't easy for me to get engaged to Brother Lu Cheng, and you know how much my brother hates me now..."
"If he finds out about this too, my life might be ruined." Xu Qing'an made his accusation in the gentlest voice. "His temper has become more and more extreme. When he came back that day, he even tried to hurt my mom. If he stays around us, I'm really afraid that one day he'll do something rash and hurt someone in the family."
"But he's my brother, after all. I don't want to hurt him, so I thought that perhaps if he found a new partner and didn't come home so often, it might be better for everyone."
Most people wouldn't remain unmoved when a pretty, harmless boy showed vulnerability before them.
The woman patted his shoulder sympathetically. "Oh, you poor child. I haven't even said anything yet, so why are you already crying? Your aunt asked me to help her with the data matching that day. How could I not know about it?"
"I was planning to destroy it all tonight anyway, but you have a point. As long as your brother's situation remains unsettled, you won't be able to put your mind at ease."
"How about this? The Golden Wing Camp happened to send over a batch waiting to be matched today." As she spoke, she walked over to the counter beside her.
A long row of metal racks stood on it, with many sets of small, thin wafers neatly arranged on them.
She went to one of the racks, pulled open a small drawer in the middle tier, and began searching through a tray packed full of wafers.
"Everyone knows that most of the people sent over after failing to find a compatible partner in their own camp are poor-quality matches. I'll pick a 'good' one for your brother right now."
She put extra emphasis on the word "good."
Hearing this, Xu Qingran turned to the system. "They're all poor-quality matches? Then why is the target among them?"
The system said, "...Most, most! Apart from those who are fundamentally awful, a small number of single dogs who can't find a partner are too outstanding and have such unusual ideas that they can't find a compatible soul even after all this time!"
"The target is the latter kind!"
Xu Qingran gave a perfunctory twitch of his lips.
He didn't believe it.
The woman outside quickly found the one she was looking for. After taking it out, she looked a little smug. "You know there's a very famous Boss Chen in the Golden Wing Camp, right?"
"He's fat and ugly, has a terrible personality and a very messy private life, and suffers from all sorts of strange illnesses. He hasn't been matched with anyone in fifty or sixty years, and he doesn't even have a single close friend. He fails to find a match every year, then tries again the next. You'd be hard-pressed to find many people in the whole empire with such a glorious record."
Xu Qing'an had apparently heard of him too. "I heard he found a young boyfriend who was pretty good in every respect some time ago. Didn't it work out?"
"Oh, you haven't heard? He did finally find someone twenty years younger with a 29% soul compatibility who was willing to be with him. But Boss Chen behaved like a beast. Not only did he nearly break the poor guy through his games, he also drank heavily and beat him. In the end, the guy took him to court."
"You should know that's intentional injury in our empire, and the punishment doubles if you're married. One wrong move and you could spend the rest of your life in prison. He only got away with it because he had some money and paid for a private settlement in the end."
She held the chip between her fingers. "This is his soul information sample. What do you think about me giving him to your brother instead?"