A Remote Village

Hao Ren put down the phone and stood there in a daze.

If it had been the old him, he would probably have assumed the zero-second call duration and strange caller number meant his phone was malfunctioning, then gone back to doing whatever he needed to do without another thought. But now, he was in an exceptionally sensitive state.

Looking at the two abnormal tenants in the living room, secretly competing with each other while also howling for food, he realized that his life had completely departed from the ordinary. Some things he had always dismissed as after-dinner chatter and urban legends might be real. Some myths might be real. Even some wild ideas that only appeared in movies... might be real too.

Hao Ren had become extremely sensitive, so sensitive that if the little tabby cat named "Gun" meowed one extra time, he would take it as some kind of omen. Recalling that irregular phone number gave him chills all over, and more importantly—he remembered that he had never submitted a résumé to any Import and Export Trading Company!

Right, he had sent out plenty of résumés, applying for all kinds of jobs, including two positions recruiting male escorts and one recruiting pet therapists—who the hell knew what kind of profession that was—but he had absolutely never applied to an Import and Export Trading Company! Hao Ren knew perfectly well what his education and abilities were. He was the kind of freak who needed a calculator just to buy a bunch of celery. How would he dare apply to some trading company... so they could sell him by the pound?

In Hao Ren's mind, an Import and Export Trading Company was probably about the same sort of establishment as a little convenience store at the mouth of an alley. His horizons were about that broad.

"Landlord? Landlord, you're spacing out!" Lily's excitable voice came from beside him. Hao Ren finally snapped back to himself and nodded at the two abnormal creatures. "Oh, an employer called to tell me to go for an interview this afternoon..."

"Don't worry, Landlord, I'll watch the house for you!" Lily happily raised a paw and waved it, as if this were some wonderful occasion. "Watching houses is what I'm best at! I guarantee you won't lose anything!"

"That sounded like something a dog would say." Vivian never forgot to sneer at her archenemy, and every jab hit right on target. Still, Hao Ren wanted to say: You're already this broke and destitute, so could you stop acting so high and mighty? Do you even still deserve to call yourself a vampire?

Lily shot Vivian a glare, but then tossed her head to show she did not care. Her stomach had started growling again, instantly wiping out her anger and putting her into a state of steadily declining combat strength. She slumped over the table and looked weakly at Hao Ren. "Landlord, hurry up and cook. Once I eat, I'll help you watch the house..."

Hao Ren was slightly dumbfounded. Had he found two tenants, or two ancestors to worship? He had been a landlord for so many years, but this was the first time he had seen tenants who could act so completely at home!

But he quickly chalked it all up to cultural differences between species and laughed it off. In any case, these two nonhuman girls were not people he could handle. If he wanted a peaceful life in the future, the right path was to raise the two female superhumans' favorability now—then at least, when Lily and Vivian started fighting again, he would have the confidence to yell at them a little: as both their landlord and feeder.

After much difficulty, Hao Ren managed to fill the stomachs of the two nonhuman girls, and in the process confirmed that Vivian really did eat ordinary human food. At last, the final stone in his heart dropped to the ground. By the time he had settled all this, it was already eleven. Lunch could obviously be skipped; the vampire and werewolf could just snack their way through until evening. Of course, considering that Vivian was now penniless, while Lily would absolutely never share her food with Vivian—canines guarded their food—he specially went out and bought a whole box of biscuits for Vivian. The poor Vampire girl was so touched that tears nearly streamed down her face... What kind of situation was this?

Because of vampire habits, Vivian needed long stretches of sleep during the day. Not long after eating, she went upstairs to tidy her room and prepare to rest. Lily, meanwhile, was at her most energetic during the daytime, so she would guard the front door downstairs and watch the house. The two were finally separated by their respective species' habits. Hao Ren no longer had to worry about them tearing down the house while he was away, which allowed him to head to the address provided by that mysterious woman for his "interview" with a little more peace of mind.

That was right. Despite his many doubts, Hao Ren had still decided to go and see what was going on. Whatever was coming could not be avoided. If that woman was also connected to the "oddities" he had encountered these past two days... then there was no way he could avoid her. Just looking at Vivian and Lily's combat strength made that clear. This was not a field an ordinary person could navigate just by using their brain—not that his brain was necessarily good enough for it.

Naturally, he had considered bringing Lily along, but decided against it after thinking it over. First, he had only known Lily for two days. That werewolf girl was a little simple-minded... all right, she was actually just a little dumb, but being a little dumb was not a reason to bully her however he pleased. Dragging Lily into dangerous situations as a shield based on that tiny bit of trust was truly indefensible. Having her stay at home to guard against vampire attacks before had been a last resort. Second, Hao Ren was still a seven-foot man, a dignified, upright fellow. Just because he had run into some strange things these past two days, was he really going to get so nervous that he needed to drag a girl along as a bodyguard just to go out for an interview... How could he live that down if word got out?

So he decided to grit his teeth and go see what was happening.

While standing beside the bus stop waiting for a ride, the images of Vivian and Lily in their... "abnormal" forms surfaced in his mind again. He muttered to himself, "Is it really okay to leave those two at home?"

To be honest, Hao Ren had worked as a landlord—if that even counted as a profession—for several years. He had seen all kinds of tenants, and people from every walk of life had lived in his big house. The most important thing for a landlord was recognizing whether tenants were trustworthy, whether they were dangerous people, or perhaps outright thieves and con artists. There had never been a shortage of cases where someone rented out a house, brought in thieves, and suffered severe losses in the end. Hao Ren certainly did not need to worry that the two female superhumans at home were the latter, because he knew... the female superhumans in his house were far more dangerous than thieves and con artists!

Was it a mistake to leave them at home so casually? Would he come back to see ruins? Would he see more than two hundred heavily armed SWAT officers? Would he see a convoy from the Chinese Academy of Sciences clogging up the South Suburbs? Would he see two Americans in black suits and dark sunglasses press some kind of automatic pencil against him and click it?

With his head full of such unrealistic nonsense, he boarded the bus and headed toward another desolate place not far from the South Suburbs.

The address the mysterious woman had given him over the phone was a place Hao Ren had heard of but never visited. It was extremely remote, already beyond the city's reach, practically a little village drifting outside the city. There was no Direct Access bus from downtown. Even from the already remote South Suburbs, there was only one ramshackle shuttle every hour that went there.

This remarkable place was called Wangba Tuozi.

Obviously, that was also a remarkable name. The author hoped it would not get censored for its vulgar wording—because this godforsaken place really was called Wangba Tuozi.

Hao Ren rode that battered old bus, which leaked wind from all sides and looked as though it would fall apart if it hit any slightly larger pothole, for half an hour. Along the way, the number of passengers getting on and off never exceeded three at its highest. He even suspected that the driver's bitter, world-weary face existed solely to match the vehicle's utterly infuriating condition. But in the end, he was delivered safely to his destination and dropped off somewhere that looked almost no different from the wilderness they had passed through earlier.

The bus drove away, clattering in a steady four-four rhythm, much like Hao Ren's current mood: surging with emotion, he nearly wanted to throw back his head and howl at the sky—he had obviously been scammed! That woman on the phone had not even bothered to draft a script before scamming him, had she?!

Walking down from the highway and following a narrow path for a short distance would bring him to Wangba Tuozi. Standing on the high ground beside the road, Hao Ren could clearly see the whole place. It was an old, primitive village with only a few dozen households by the look of it. Nearly half the houses were still crumbling mud-brick structures. The village buildings were arranged haphazardly, carrying the feel of several decades ago. The largest building in the entire village was a small brick building in the center, and it looked to be about the same size as Hao Ren's house...

The woman on the phone had lured him here under the name of an "Import and Export Trading Company."

No one whose IQ was higher than their shoe size would believe this, right?!

Yet Hao Ren had still been lured here.

(That's right, there will be two updates a day from now on... Apparently that helps a new book build momentum. Since there are two updates, could everyone give a few more recommendations? If you do not have recommendation tickets, clicks or promotion would be good too~~)