[Qiu Yuan: What did you do? Aren't you worried Pei Guangji will go crazy when he wakes up?]
It seemed Qiu Yuan had eavesdropped when he passed by earlier.
But from his angle, Xi Zhengqing had been blocking his view of Xin Hexue.
Xi Zhengqing was certain Qiu Yuan had secretly sent people to investigate his movements, but didn't yet know about Xin Hexue's face blindness. That was why he suspected Xi Zhengqing had used some special method.
Xi Zhengqing's lips twitched.
[Xi Zhengqing: Stay out of it. Don't interfere in my affairs.]
[Xi Zhengqing: As for Pei Guangji, whether he'll even wake up is anyone's guess.]
The reminder, however, made Xi Zhengqing realize something.
He was still posing as Pei Guangji. If he kissed Xin Hexue, wouldn't he be scoring points for Pei Guangji?
He turned to Xin Hexue and explained, [I need to leave for a while. Could you wait for me in the banquet hall on the first floor?]
Xin Hexue nodded.
Xi Zhengqing planned to change clothes and appear before the young man again as himself.
The Pei family's banquet hall was enormous. Besides the main hall, there were walkways on all four sides, ponds, flower beds, and numerous lavishly decorated rooms upstairs and downstairs where guests could rest.
Xin Hexue made his way through the main hall, amid bright lights and flowing wine, clinking glasses and a hubbub of voices.
The long tables and serving carts held all kinds of food. The aroma of truffle chocolate filled the air above hazelnut cakes, tender pan-fried beef sizzled with oil, and the scent of red and white wine drifted through the air.
He found some freshly brewed, fragrant black tea in a corner.
He touched the cup to his lips and, after blowing on the tea to cool it, took a sip to moisten his mouth and throat.
The coming-of-age celebration for the Pei family's second heir was quite a large banquet. One thing was certain: apart from Pei Guangji, all his other targets were somewhere on the estate, scattered in different locations.
Xin Hexue lowered his lashes, concealing the emotions in his eyes.
K thought he was upset because the beetle had frightened him earlier, and quietly said, [There, there, smoothing down your fur.]
Xin Hexue: [...Shut up.]
K quietly deleted the tactful words of comfort from his database.
His words reminded Xin Hexue of the black beetle he had just seen, stirring up unpleasant memories.
In his second life, Xin Hexue had been reincarnated as the child of a deposed consort confined to the cold palace in an ancient dynasty.
Perhaps because his soul didn't fit that world, Xin Hexue had rarely been clearheaded during his first eighteen years, spending long stretches in a daze. Coupled with the burden of that body, he was, in short, a foolish, sickly, and frail fifth prince.
His mother had given birth to him in the cold palace and had long since fallen out of favor. The emperor was cruel and heartless, so although the palace attendants didn't dare openly bully them, they often withheld and pocketed their allotted supplies in secret. Life was very hard.
Even though his mother yielded at every turn, some people still refused to leave them alone.
Xin Hexue remembered being locked in the five venoms room by palace attendants as a child. The room was used to punish palace servants who had committed offenses. It was a cramped little room where no daylight reached, filled with centipedes, snakes, scorpions, geckos, and toads.
Xin Hexue didn't remember it clearly, since he was rarely lucid at the time. He only remembered that he had been locked up for two days and one night before his mother finally found him, disheveled and utterly exhausted.
Afterward, Xin Hexue ran a high fever for half a month, and his health went from bad to worse.
Although he didn't remember exactly what had happened, from then on, the five venomous creatures, and even shelled insects resembling scorpions, triggered an instinctive reaction of fear and nausea in Xin Hexue.
It was entirely his body's automatic reaction, and it had developed to the point of being much like post-traumatic stress disorder.
Xin Hexue took another sip of tea and swallowed down the discomfort.
Kirk had only gotten his job as a waiter at the Pei Corporation's estate the previous week. While he was busy serving guests at the banquet, the senior employee responsible for training him suddenly pulled him aside, handed him a small packet of powder, and instructed him, "All right, Mr. Gerard is in lounge 224 on the second floor. His lover should have arrived at the banquet hall by now. Add this powder to some wine to help set the mood, take it to Mr. Gerard's lover, and bring him to the room."
The senior employee added, "Be quick about it. Mr. Gerard is one of Old Mr. Pei's trusted associates and a high-ranking official at the Federal Security Bureau."
Kirk was a young man who had only just entered the workforce. Bewildered, he said, "Isn't that a little inappropriate? Besides, I don't know Mr. Gerard's lover..."
The butler was beckoning from a distance; there was more work to do. The senior employee in charge of training Kirk left him with only vague information. "Mr. Gerard's lover is called... damn it, I forgot too. Anyway, he has typically Eastern features. Their names are all so complicated. I've met him once. He's a very beautiful Omega, anyway."
Beautiful, with typically Eastern features...
Kirk had no choice but to carry the red wine with the powder dissolved in it around the first floor of the banquet hall, looking for someone with black hair and black eyes.
Suddenly, his eyes lit up.
In a distant corner stood an exceptionally beautiful young man, tall and graceful. Light fell across his face, and his lowered lashes cast faint shadows.
Kirk hurried over, only to trip on the red carpet. He stumbled, splashing the wine over the young man's clothes before he could get out of the way.
Realizing he'd made a terrible mistake, Kirk bowed in a panic. "I'm so sorry, sir, I'm so sorry!"
Seeing him apologize again and again, Xin Hexue sighed. "It's all right."
He used a handkerchief to wipe the wine dripping from his clothes. The backs of his hands were wet with it too, and the wine had even soaked through his vest and shirt.
Kirk still remembered his senior's instructions. "Are you Mr. Gerard's lover? Mr. Gerard is, is waiting for you in lounge 224 on the second floor."
Xin Hexue frowned and studied the strange waiter. "I don't know Gerard."
Only after looking closely did Kirk realize that the young man was a Beta; there wasn't the slightest trace of Omega pheromones on him. Even more flustered, he said, "I'm so sorry, sir, I'm so sorry! Please go to the washroom and clean up! I'll ask the butler to find you some clean clothes!"
Xin Hexue resigned himself to the situation and followed Kirk to a washroom in a side corridor on the first floor.
The wet and dry areas were separated, and the room was bright and spotless, with a faint scent of expensive fragrance in the air.
Xin Hexue closed the door, only to suddenly realize something was wrong with his body.
He looked at the mirror covering the entire wall above the sink. Under the bright lights, he could clearly see his skin flushing red from within.
An allergic reaction?
Xin Hexue lifted his chin and gently touched the skin at the side of his neck. His breath was hot, and his head was growing increasingly muddled.
He braced himself against the sink.
Once he realized what was happening, he turned on the faucet and scrubbed the backs of his hands, where his skin had just come into contact with the wine.
But it was already too late.
K: [There was something wrong with that wine.]
Clearly, the wine had been drugged, and with something potent.
Xin Hexue's reaction was even faster and more intense than when Xin Bao had drugged him before.
A drug that could take effect through skin contact alone brought to mind a powerful aphrodisiac Xin Hexue had once heard was sold on the black market. If the resulting desire wasn't relieved in time, the victim would lose consciousness and die.
It was essentially a poison.
True, all his targets were in different locations around the estate.
But Xin Hexue couldn't possibly go to any of them. That would disrupt his plans.
He needed to find someone sufficiently obedient.
Xin Hexue forced his heavy head to think as fast as he could.
But beyond all that, there was an even more important factor.
His body simply couldn't withstand vigorous sex. He would fall apart.
Thinking of it that way, both paths led to death.
His communicator chimed.
[Xi Zhengqing: Where are you? Tell me, and I'll come find you. Don't move around.]
[Xi Zhengqing: The guards found someone unconscious outside the garden, with traces of a xenomorph nearby. It's dangerous.]
[Xi Zhengqing: Tell me where you are. I'll come find you.]
Xin Hexue wasn't sure whether the man had forgotten to switch accounts.
His head was spinning too badly. He cupped water from the faucet in his palm and splashed it on his face, gaining a moment of clarity.
K: [I checked. You have just enough points to exchange for the antidote.]
Xin Hexue said, "Points?"
K: [Once Affection Points exceed fifty, each additional point also earns you a point you can use to buy items in the system shop.]
K: [You currently have seventy-eight points. The special antidote costs seventy-five.]
Xin Hexue didn't hesitate. "Exchange them."
The Spark Organization, which led the xenomorph resistance, had assigned The Cutter to eliminate Gerard. The Federal Security Bureau official had proposed a plan half a year ago to mobilize the Federation's military forces and wipe out the xenomorphs completely.
A little over a month ago, The Cutter had been ordered to eliminate Gerard's eldest son, Cook. Now it was Gerard's own turn.
He had no human sense of right and wrong. The Cutter was merely the organization's most useful killing machine, and his blades swung toward his targets without emotion.
The Cutter was currently the only xenomorph capable of entering the Core District.
One of his abilities was to possess children and minors with weak wills, as well as mechanical bodies. Of course, the people he briefly possessed were not his targets, and he would not hurt them.
Something had gone wrong with The Cutter's work this time. Someone had spotted him, even though he had immediately knocked the person unconscious and left the scene.
But someone soon found the traces he had left behind, and the guards were searching everywhere for him.
The Cutter crawled through a ventilation duct.
The cold, enclosed duct was pitch-black, with light only filtering in when he crawled past a vent.
The ducts formed a complicated network and were rather narrow for his size.
The Cutter was over two meters long, not counting his bony, spiked tail.