Never Expected

"Miss Zhao, please come with me." Li Shuangyue gestured for her to follow and headed into the villa.

"Sorry to trouble you, Mister Li," Zhao Han quickly said gratefully.

"No need to be so formal. Just call me Brother Li," Li Shuangyue said with a smile as they walked. "I'm very happy to have you staying here, because I'm sure you'll be able to help me with a lot of things."

"Uh, I'll definitely do my best," Zhao Han said, clenching her fists. "Brother Li, you can just call me Xiao Han too."

"Alright, Xiao Han." Li Shuangyue nodded and led her toward the villa.

But they did not enter the main hall. Instead, they took the exterior staircase straight up to the second floor.

As they walked, he explained, "The Young Master and the old master both live on the first floor now. I live in the bungalow out back. Ever since Madam left, no one has lived on the second floor."

"Mm." Zhao Han curiously looked around. Compared with her uncle's large villa, this place was much smaller, but it was also more refined.

A light fixture hung above the staircase, brightly illuminating the passage. At the top was a balcony.

Several flowerpots were piled along the south side, but the flowers and plants inside looked somewhat wilted. Some leaves had already turned yellow and dried up, while the soil in the pots was cracked and dry. Clearly, they had not been cared for very well.

On the north side of the balcony were two doorways.

Li Shuangyue walked to the north side, pressed the fingerprint lock beside the door on the right, and opened it to reveal a spacious room.

"Xiao Han, you'll stay here. The door can be locked from the inside, and it can't be opened from outside. As for the rest of your things, I'll contact President Zhao and have them moved over tomorrow."

"Thank you, Brother Li."

Half an hour later, after Driver Li Shuangyue's meticulous arrangements, Zhao Han was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief in her new room.

The room was not small—at least a little larger than the Wooden House where she had lived alone before—and it even had a separate bathroom.

Everything inside was new, but Zhao Han was in no mood to wash up or sleep. She quickly took out her phone and began carefully reading the text message.

After going through the long list of suspects, she took out the notebook she carried with her and studied it carefully for a long time.

Once she had finished all that, she locked the door from the inside and prepared to activate the Seed of Narration within her body.

She had learned in class that Alien Power usually manifested in two ways: passive activation and active use.

Her Seed of Narration was like that. At certain important moments, it would automatically play a passage of narration for her, catching people completely off guard. If she expended Alien Power to activate it herself, narration would appear as well.

Through the narration, she could obtain important information, such as news she could never learn through her usual channels, as well as intelligence on important figures.

Most of this information concerned things that had already happened or were currently happening, but occasionally there would be spoiler-type narration.

For example, many ancient novels had spoiler-type narration like this: "XX would never know that the decision he made today would leave him filled with endless regret..."

Or this: "XX did not know that this would be his journey to death."

Or again: "XX never expected that because of this one action today, thirty years later, people would call him the XX Great Emperor."

Zhao Han did not know whether those XXs regretted it or not, but she did know that most audiences who had spoilers forced into their faces regretted it quite a bit.

Still, she really wanted to see spoiler-type narration right now.

Ideally, it would be something like this: "XX never expected that his identity as the killer had already been discovered by the wise Zhao Han through meticulous analysis, powerful deduction, a keen mind, extraordinary insight... All that remained was evidence."

With seventy percent anticipation and thirty percent unease, she closed her eyes. Her thoughts stirred as she connected with the faintly glowing, oval gray seed in her mind.

"Zhao Han never expected that after making a difficult choice and obtaining the list of suspects, although she had gained Wenren Sheng's initial trust, she herself had already become the killer's next must-kill target."

What? This must be an illusion. It should have told me who the killer was, so I could amaze everyone tomorrow.

Other people use evidence to find the killer. I use the killer to find evidence.

There must have been an error. Let's try again.

But the gray seed had already fallen silent. It no longer emitted white light, as though it had entered a long hibernation.

After struggling for a long while, Zhao Han could only give up resentfully. She was too weak right now. Using it actively once meant she would need a long time to replenish her energy.

Still, this was not entirely bad news. At least she knew she had value as bait—wait, could there be any news worse than that?

Wenren Sheng was lying in bed when he suddenly opened his eyes. A new stream of information appeared.

You have obtained all information on a rare Alien Power. Your Mystic Cognition has increased, and your Mystery Points limit has risen by 4, reaching 104 points.

So she really was just a fledgling bird. She had actually used her Alien Power directly above his head without taking any protective measures.

Or perhaps she simply did not know how to hide it yet.

Wenren Sheng was rather satisfied. Raising it by 4 points in one go was definitely no small amount. It was enough to prove how rare the other party's Alien Power was.

He looked up at the ceiling. A cloud of white dust-like mist had faintly appeared there and was slowly dissipating.

As long as someone nearby actively used Alien Power, his Seed of Mystery could analyze information about their Alien Power, unless they had protective methods or were stronger than him.

If it was an unknown Alien Power, it would raise the upper limit of his Mystery Points.

In addition, resolving mysterious events acknowledged by the Seed of Mystery also had a chance of raising the upper limit of his Mystery Points.

That mysterious event, "The Angry Judge," had yet to be fully resolved.

At this thought, he closed his eyes, and a new image flashed through his mind.

Zhao Han, Mystery Points: 0/9.

Mysterious composition: Extraordinary Power (beginner Extraordinary Physique), Mystic Cognition, Seed of Narration.

Seed of Narration?

As the name suggested, its effect should be to see narration within stories. One definition of narration was: "The speaker does not appear on screen, but directly uses language to introduce the film's contents, explain the plot, or offer commentary."

Without a doubt, this was a support-type Alien Power with powerful effects. If used well, it might not be inferior to prophecy- and divination-type Alien Powers. After all, narration was both highly accurate and highly reliable.

Wenren Sheng now knew that Zhao Han had actively used the Seed of Narration's ability, but he did not know what she had just seen.

But given her current power rating, it was impossible for her to see anything too important.

After all, there was a universal rule in the mysterious world: the more powerful an ability was, the greater the price required to use it.

There was also another saying: "If your power isn't enough, make up for it with your life."

For example, an Otherworldly User with a Master Level Seed of Prophecy might fall unconscious for three days just to glimpse a possible future. If an Entry Level user tried to force a similar result, they would explode and die.

Alien Powers often protected their hosts, unless their hosts insisted on courting death—then they would not forcibly stop them. Death was death; they could just find another host. For masters who refused advice, it was better to abandon ship early.

And Zhao Han did not seem like the type to court death.

By tomorrow, this mysterious event should have progressed. He would see whether she truly deserved the protection she was currently enjoying.

Thinking this, he pushed those images aside and recalled a book he had just read, The Refining Process of Fighting Skills...

The night passed.

Morning light spilled into the courtyard. Along with footsteps, alarm clocks, birdsong... the villa came alive once more.

At barely five in the morning, Wenren Sheng began his workout in the Swimming Pool. Swimming was an excellent form of exercise, engaging a large number of muscles while maintaining and improving the skill known as Extraordinary Physique.

In the Mysterious Realm of this world, Otherworldly Users had to undergo extensive, grueling training to learn any mysterious skill.

Through the transformation and refinement of Alien Powers, abilities possessed by Ordinary People could be elevated into mysterious skills, granting all sorts of extraordinary effects.

After swimming for half an hour, he climbed ashore and went behind the villa. There was a small training ground there, which he used to practice Fighting Skill.

Fighting Skill encompassed everything and was extremely complex. Refining it into a mysterious skill was exceptionally difficult.

The Fighting Skills of the ordinary world came in countless varieties: traditional martial arts, free combat, Muay Thai, judo, boxing... But many had various restrictions and were not complete killing arts. Learning them meant being inherently lacking from the start.

The Mysterious Realm was naturally different from these ordinary skills. Every school and every lineage existed for only one purpose: a fight to the death.

Many Otherworldly Users in combat fields had been trained from childhood. After scientific training and specialization in a particular school or lineage, they could only refine it into a mysterious skill after activating their Alien Powers, thereby gaining unimaginable effects.

Before awakening, Wenren Sheng had merely been an ordinary student with no relevant knowledge at all.

Over the past three years, he had made Fighting Skill his main area of study. Yet even after Extraordinary Physique rose to Intermediate Level, and another mysterious skill that seemed to be inherited through his bloodline, Mystery Resistance, also rose to Intermediate Level, he still had not managed to refine Fighting Skill.

He had consulted quite a few prominent figures. Their advice was all the same: steel himself and grind through it with time. There were no shortcuts.

To refute that claim, he had specifically gone to learn Extraordinary Memory.

Extraordinary Memory had indeed helped with practicing Fighting Skill. At the very least, it made learning all kinds of forms much more convenient.

But it still could not allow him to directly refine the corresponding skill. In the end, he still needed patient training. However, after grinding away at it for so long, he had a feeling that after a while longer, he would be able to refine some kind of Fighting Skill into a mysterious skill.