Poison Flower

After much deliberation, I ultimately decided not to use "Firefly" to tail Zhu Shi.

Leaving aside Maza, who could leave at any time, since I had decided to build a relationship with Zhu Shi and Luoshan, it would be inconvenient to do something that might damage that relationship. Zhu Shi wasn't Chang'an. As a Demon Hunter, she might discover my "Firefly." Although she hadn't seemed to notice when I eavesdropped on her phone call just now, or when she and Chang'an were at the hospital before, it would be hard to say what might happen over time. Everything had to be done in moderation.

As I walked home, I continued savoring my earlier exchange with Zhu Shi.

This was the first time I had formally revealed that I was a superpowered person to someone else, especially someone I knew. Although I had always insisted on concealing my true powers, I had secretly hoped for a chance to show off in front of others.

If you became rich and powerful but didn't return to your hometown, it was like wearing fine clothes while walking through the night. Gaining great power without displaying it to anyone around you was no different from that.

When I was in high school, I would sometimes indulge in fantasies before falling asleep. I imagined that there was someone with extraordinarily keen powers of observation and deduction who would discover the subtle suspicious points about me through the slightest clues. After going through a series of fantastical deductions and self-denial, he would rebuild his worldview through agony, then follow the clues to find me. Filled with shock and unable to accept reality, he would finally state his deduction—Zhuang Cheng, are you really a superpowered person?

At that point, I would calmly admit that his deduction was correct in front of him and display my superpower. That's right. I am.

Who could have expected that this time, although I had admitted the truth that I was a superpowered person in front of my friend's younger sister, my friend's younger sister would actually transform and reveal the identity of a Demon Hunter from a mysterious organization before me?

It felt completely different from what I had imagined before...

Just as I was dwelling on this with mixed feelings, my phone suddenly played the sound of an incoming text message. When I took it out and looked, it was from Zhu Shi. The message contained only one paragraph:

"By the way, Senior Brother Zhuang, you're not allowed to go back and investigate the cave in the Fifteenth Floor room tonight. Just in case, I've already asked an agent to keep watch over it!"

What a junior sister with an enormous contrast between before and after.

When we had first met, she had called me senior brother, probably because she had already been planning to enroll at Xianshui University. Now that she had actually entered Xianshui University as a freshman, I could be considered her senior brother in the proper sense.

"Got it, Junior Sister Zhu." I sent the text back.

After some time, I arrived at my front door. On the way, I had specifically bought some late-night snacks and put them in two plastic bags.

"Firefly" had returned before me and confirmed Maza's condition. Maza was still at home, just as she had been when I left, on the sofa in the living room.

However, she seemed extremely tired now, curled up on the sofa. The mystery novel I had recommended to her earlier was open halfway beside her head. Some old magazines I had bought out of curiosity in the past were also lying on the coffee table, showing signs of having been read.

She was still wearing the gray shirt and pants I had given her. Perhaps she had taken my words—"Feel free to use anything in the house"—to heart. Somehow, she had found several rubber bands and used them to secure the sleeves and pant legs, which had been rolled up layer after layer, around her wrists and ankles.

I opened the door and entered the house, then came to her side. Her sleep looked terribly restless. Her eyes were tightly shut, her brows furrowed, and her throat emitted unintelligible whimpers like those of a small animal. Even in sleep, her entire body remained tense as a drawn bow.

Although I had been thinking earlier, Now that I have Luoshan, do I still need Maza? when I saw her again, I couldn't help casting all those thoughts aside.

It wasn't only because I still needed Maza to neutralize the unknown repulsive effect between me and anomalous incidents. To be honest, I hadn't thought about that aspect at all at first. Sometimes I had to admit that I was a shortsighted person who leaned more toward whatever was within reach, as well as an immature person who was easily swayed by emotion. Her figure awakened the mysteries about her that had settled in my mind, making me once again unable to free myself from her.

I turned around and placed the two plastic bags on the coffee table. To make it easier to keep watch over her, I still wanted to carry her into the bedroom like last time and sleep on the sofa myself. However, the moment my fingers touched the backs of her knees, she suddenly jolted awake, her eyes snapping open. In an instant, she sprang up nimbly, one hand grabbing my arm while the other struck toward my throat.

This development felt like it had happened during the day too. Was I about to be locked in another joint technique by her?

That thought surfaced reflexively. Although I knew I wouldn't be in any danger, it was like someone deliberately jumping out to scare you when you turned a corridor corner. Anyone would be startled, and I was no exception.

Then, in the very next instant, her swift and nimble movements stopped as if someone had pressed a pause button. The hand that had been about to clamp around my throat also slammed on the brakes, changing from "grabbing" to "touching."

"Zhuang Cheng?" she asked uncertainly.

"It's me." I calmed my racing heart as well. "I'm back."

She stared blankly for two or three seconds before lowering herself back down and sitting cross-legged on the sofa.

"Where did you think you were?" I asked.

"Sorry," she said sullenly.

"I'm not blaming you." I placed one of the plastic bags on her thighs. "Look. See what I brought you?"

She looked down, her nose twitching slightly, and her eyes lit up. "This is..."

I took out a steaming cheese-filled chicken cutlet from the plastic bag and said in a friendly tone, "I figured you'd be hungry around this time, so I brought you some late-night snacks."

"When am I ever that gluttonous?" she protested unhappily, though her eyes couldn't leave the fried food in my hand.

I deliberately asked, "Then you don't want to eat it?"

"...I do," she said unwillingly.

"Go ahead." I put the chicken cutlet in her hands, then took something else out of the other plastic bag. "There's ice cream too. You can eat this after the chicken cutlet."

"Ice cream? I've seen it mentioned in written materials before. They say it's delicious..." She widened her eyes at the chocolate-flavored ice cream in my hand.

That's right, eat it. Go ahead and eat as much as you like. Better yet, ruin your stomach, and then you won't be able to leave my house... I hid my ulterior motives in my stomach and continued recommending the late-night snacks. She grew increasingly eager.

Suddenly, she raised her head and asked suspiciously, "Aren't you eating?"

"I am."

It seemed that if I merely watched her eat, she wouldn't touch the food. Fortunately, I had anticipated this and bought two portions.

After a long while, we finished everything. She seemed more or less satisfied and unconsciously revealed that happy smile again.

Perhaps she had already been sleepy to begin with. After eating, she became even sleepier, her eyelids gradually fighting to stay open. I urged her to sleep on the bed in the bedroom, but she insisted on sleeping on the sofa.

"There's only one bed, isn't there? This is your house, so you should sleep on the bed." She was much more relaxed than before. "You're a really strange person. Are there really only kindhearted fools like you in this era? If this were the Doomsday era, someone like you would die very quickly."

"That's not necessarily true. There are plenty of bad people in this era too." I shamelessly accepted the title of kindhearted fool, then asked, "From what you said earlier, it seems you've encountered some materials about this era in the past. What did they say?"

"I haven't encountered many materials, and a lot of them were written by people from the Doomsday era based on their memories and impressions. I heard that in the era of civilization, people were all extremely virtuous." She spoke with complete seriousness. "Anyone who grew up in the Doomsday era would find it impossible to believe. They only knew how to deceive and harm one another, with their hearts set on securing benefits for themselves. Meanwhile, people who grew up in the era of civilization were honest, united, rational, hardworking, and willing to make sacrifices..."

She thought for a moment, then added, "They were also extremely serious about their work. They would even scrub toilets until they were so clean that the water inside could be drunk..."

"Wait, wait, wait..." The more I heard, the more something seemed wrong. "What kind of person left that final part behind, based on what memory, in what kind of material?"

She picked up an old magazine from the coffee table, flipped to a page, and pointed at the words. "Isn't that what it says here?"

I delivered my final verdict. "That's a fabricated Ghost Story. It's fake."

"I didn't really believe those things either, but after seeing you, I've started to wonder whether the various legends I heard about the era of civilization might actually be true." By the end, she couldn't hold back a yawn.

"Just so we're clear, I'm not going to drink toilet water," I said.

"Why would anyone ask you to do that? You've shown me such kindness. I don't even know how to repay you..." She grew increasingly drowsy, her body swaying unsteadily.

After quite some time, she finally couldn't hold on any longer and fell asleep again.

Could her tendency to become so sleepy also be related to the soul trauma she mentioned? I tried carrying her in my arms again. Although she insisted on sleeping on the sofa, if I wanted to notice her movements in time while she slept, she naturally had to sleep on the bed while I slept on the sofa. This isn't because I'm softhearted. It's the rational choice. This time, she didn't wake up. I carried her into the bedroom, laid her flat on the bed, and covered her with the quilt.

I didn't know whether she was having another nightmare, but her brows gradually furrowed again, and her body grew tense.

I reached out a finger and smoothed the wrinkles between her brows. At the same time, I silently concentrated heat and warmed the inside of the quilt. Her expression gradually softened, and her entire body relaxed.

The happy smile on her face after tasting delicious food surfaced in my mind, along with her knees swaying slightly like a child's. I looked again at her calm, relaxed face now.

I slowly withdrew my finger and began considering everything that had happened before.

Although there were still some things I couldn't determine, based on my observations and experiences, I no longer needed to add uncertain qualifiers such as perhaps, possibly, or maybe to the truth of Maza's jinxed constitution.

The cave, the ritual formation, Luoshan, Zhu Shi, Agent Kong, the Fallen Demon Hunter... Ever since Maza arrived, I had begun encountering one mysterious thing after another that I had never come into contact with in my life before.

It was as if I were the protagonist of a fantasy story. Before the story began, I had been living a boring, uneventful life. But after the story began, it was as though I had suffered an incredible run of bad luck, with one disaster following another.

Although I had worked so hard in the past, I had never been able to come into contact with anything related to the supernatural. Now, those things seemed to come looking for me of their own accord, and it seemed that every step I took from then on might lead to a new adventure.

If this wasn't Maza showing me favor, how else could it be explained?

At the very least, I was willing to believe that was the truth.

And that meant I had to take Maza's jinxed constitution affecting "the people around those close to her" as my basic premise and decide how to handle my relationship with her in the future.

I had to make a choice—

Either I would give up continuing to associate with Maza, drive her out of my house immediately, and return to a boring, uneventful life that could ensure my safety and wouldn't implicate anyone else;

Or I would distance myself from all ordinary human relationships, part ways with my family, friends, and classmates... part ways with normal society, and choose the path of maintaining my relationship with Maza.

What a remarkable Poison Flower.

Good. It suited me perfectly.

I liked poisonous flowers. The more poisonous, the more delicious.

I chose to maintain my relationship with Maza.