"Sluuurp..."
The clear, satisfied sound of tea drinking echoed through the luxurious living room, where one could hear a pin drop, making it especially jarring.
Su Wanqing curled up on the sofa, clutching her knees tightly with both hands, her fingernails nearly digging into the genuine leather. Her eyes were wide as she stared through the gaps in her disheveled hair at the barefoot man in the strange hemp robe beside the coffee table.
Ling Ye held the cheap enamel mug printed with a grinning yellow duck and took another sip of the piping-hot tea. His face showed no particular enjoyment. Instead, he frowned almost imperceptibly. He smacked his lips as if savoring something, then muttered in a low voice with utter nonchalance and a hint of distaste:
"Tsk, the water's too poor. Too many impurities, and the spiritual energy... pitifully thin." His tone was flat, as if he were commenting on a bowl of undercooked noodle soup from a roadside stall.
Su Wanqing: "..."
She felt as if she were about to suffocate! That terrifying tea soup had just triggered celestial phenomena and made Withered Wood Meets Spring... and he actually disliked the water?! He even disliked the drinking water in her home, which was supposedly purified through seven stages and more expensive than bottled mineral water?! Too many impurities? Spiritual energy too thin?! What was any of this supposed to mean?!
The fragments of her worldview had been thoroughly ground into dust by that one sentence, and she no longer even had the strength to rebuild it. All she could do was stare blankly at Ling Ye like a broken doll.
Ling Ye seemed completely unconcerned with his listener's reaction. He set down the enamel mug, then turned his gaze once more to the antique Purple Clay Teapot. He casually pinched up the lid with two fingers and peered through the opening at the remaining amber-colored tea. Then he glanced at the cartoon-duck enamel mug beside it. Under the crystal chandelier, the cheap enamel reflected a ridiculous gleam.
"Forget it." He sounded as if he had given up on something. He put the lid back on with the casualness of covering a plastic lunchbox. "I'll make do." His tone carried the helpless resignation of someone whose pension was not enough and had no choice but to settle.
Just then, the fingers holding the Purple Clay Teapot moved ever so slightly, unconsciously. It was as if a little water had gotten on the pot and needed to be wiped away.
A movement so subtle it could almost be ignored.
However—
"Vmmm—!"
The space in the living room once again gave off an extremely faint yet much deeper hum! This time, it was no longer the surging vitality of life, but an invisible, heavy pressure that seemed to originate from the very source of the universe. Like ripples on water, it briefly spread outward from Ling Ye, sweeping through the entire living room in an instant, piercing through the walls and covering the whole villa!
This pressure had neither form nor substance, and ordinary people could not detect it at all. But to certain beings, it was like a searchlight suddenly blazing in the night!
In the corner of the living room, the Pothos that had just been frantically sprouting and overflowing with vitality instantly froze! Every leaf seemed to have been frozen in place, even the droplets about to fall from their tips solidifying in midair! Outside the enormous floor-to-ceiling window, all the grass and trees in the courtyard that had been swaying and stretching wildly under the stimulation of the spiritual tea's vitality froze as well! Their swaying forms were forcibly fixed in the torrential rain, as if time had been paused at that very moment! Even the deafening sound of the rain seemed to be separated by a layer, becoming distant and indistinct!
Su Wanqing felt an indescribable chill shoot from her coccyx to the crown of her head, making her shudder violently! It was not physical cold, but an instinctive awe and suffocating dread at the soul level when facing some supreme existence! She abruptly hugged herself tighter and looked at Ling Ye in uncertainty, only to find him still holding the enamel mug, his expression unchanged, as if the terrifying phenomenon just now had merely been her hallucination.
Outside the villa, at the edge of the courtyard beneath the pouring rain, pressed close to the shadows of the cold, damp bushes.
Four figures dressed in black combat uniforms that nearly blended into the night, their faces covered in heavy camouflage paint, lay concealed without a sound like four cold stone statues. They were the infiltration team sent out by the Dragon Tooth squad, an advance unit codenamed "Hawkeye."
The team leader, codenamed "Hawkeye," was holding his breath. Through the eyepiece of the high-magnification thermal-imaging and psionic composite detector in his hand, he firmly locked onto the enormous floor-to-ceiling window of the villa's living room. The advanced instrument penetrated the obstruction of the curtains and outlined two clear humanoid heat signatures on the screen—one curled up on the sofa (Su Wanqing), and one standing beside the coffee table (Ling Ye).
When the spiritual tea had just triggered a second burst of vitality and caused the vegetation to grow wildly, the detector's readings had begun jumping frantically! The life-energy radiation index, spatial disturbance coefficient, unknown psionic particle concentration... every piece of data pointed to one conclusion: the man standing in the living room was the unfathomable Planetary-level energy source captured by the "Heavenly Eye" satellite! He was like a walking, gentle solar furnace, radiating terrifying energy capable of transforming the environment!
"Target confirmed... energy field stable... threat assessment..." Hawkeye spoke into his throat mic, his voice pressed extremely low like a whisper, preparing to transmit the preliminary observations to the command vehicle in the rear.
However, the instant Ling Ye's finger moved unconsciously and that invisible, heavy pressure rippled outward—
"Beep! Beep-beep-beep—!!!"
The detector's screen in Hawkeye's hand suddenly erupted in a blinding red light! An alarm shrill enough to nearly tear his eardrums apart exploded from the communications device implanted in his ear! All the values that had still been jumping wildly on the screen instantly shot up to a despair-inducing level in less than 0.1 seconds, and then—
Bang! Bzzzt—!
The detector's screen instantly turned to static! An indescribably terrifying backlash surged backward along the detection beam! Hawkeye felt as if his right hand gripping the instrument had been struck by a high-voltage current. His entire arm went numb with excruciating pain! Even more terrifying was the crushing mental pressure, as if the entire sky had collapsed, ignoring physical distance and smashing fiercely into the depths of his consciousness like an invisible giant hammer!
"Urghhh—!"
A muffled groan of pain, suppressed to the extreme, was forced from his throat! Hawkeye's vision went black, and his body uncontrollably jerked backward, slamming hard into the wet, cold tree trunk behind him! He clenched his teeth so tightly that he kept the scream from escaping, but a thread of bright-red blood had already seeped from his nostrils and the corners of his mouth!
"Hawkeye!!"
"Team leader!!"
The other three team members' terrified whispers instantly came through the communications channel! Although they had not operated the instrument directly, merely being swept by the aftershock of that invisible pressure made them feel as if an icy hand had clenched around their hearts. Their breathing stopped, their minds went blank, and they instantly lost control of their bodies, freezing in place and unable to move! They were like prey locked in the gaze of an ancient ferocious beast!
Terrifying! Absolutely terrifying!
This was no gentle energy source at all! Beneath that calm exterior lurked a prehistoric beast capable of crushing their souls in an instant!
"Retreat... retreat..." Hawkeye endured the soul-rending pain and dizziness, using the last sliver of his strength to issue a hoarse, distorted command into his throat mic. "Target... extremely dangerous... cannot be observed... cannot... be contacted... withdraw... immediately..."
Every word seemed to be squeezed out as bloody froth from his throat. He had no doubt that if that moment had not merely been an unconscious, extremely slight fluctuation of energy from the other party, but if the other party had been just a little more "serious," the four of them—including all their equipment—would already have become organic fertilizer for this thicket!
Inside the villa's living room.
Ling Ye set down the enamel mug, seeming to have finally quenched some of his thirst. As if sensing something, he slightly turned his head and casually swept his gaze over the unusually dense darkness of the bushes outside the enormous floor-to-ceiling window, where the torrential rain fell.
His gaze was calm and placid, as if it had merely passed over empty air.
Outside the window, in the shadows of the bushes.
Hawkeye, who had just barely regained a trace of mobility, was struggling to push himself up. At the instant Ling Ye's gaze swept over—
A deathly premonition a hundred times stronger than the detector's backlash, cold enough to pierce his bones, stabbed viciously into the depths of his soul like an icicle! The blood throughout his body froze instantly! He abruptly raised his head and happened to meet, through the curtain of rain and glass, those eyes that seemed ordinary beneath the warm light of the living room, yet appeared to reflect an endless starry abyss!
"Pfft—!"
A mouthful of scalding blood could no longer be suppressed and burst from Hawkeye's mouth! His vision went completely black, his consciousness instantly sinking into boundless darkness as his body collapsed limply into the cold muddy water, unconscious.
"Hawkeye!!" The other three team members were terrified out of their wits. Fear overwhelmed discipline, and they no longer cared about stealth. They scrambled over on all fours to drag away their unconscious leader, fleeing frantically toward the direction they had come from like stray dogs, vanishing into the darkness of the torrential rain in an instant.
Inside the living room.
Ling Ye withdrew his gaze as if he had merely driven away a noisy mosquito. He looked at the cartoon-duck enamel mug on the coffee table, then at Su Wanqing, curled up on the sofa with a face as pale as a ghost and vacant, dazed eyes.
"Hey," he said, his voice carrying the laziness of someone who had just finished drinking water. "Do you... have any dry clothes? This robe isn't comfortable to sleep in."
Before you continue