Vacation

The first floor of the Alliance Mall, reception hall.

Gentle, soothing music echoed through the hall, putting people at ease.

Most of the people who came here were Warriors. They went outside the base to hunt monsters, then brought back materials from their bodies and sold them to the Alliance to earn money.

Many Warriors filled the hall, sitting together in teams.

They wore leather or metal armor and carried a variety of weapons and gear: swords, spears, sledgehammers, shields, and even machine guns.

Most of them were Fighters and War Generals. There weren't many Intermediate War Generals, so they needed to form teams to hunt monsters.

Several servers moved back and forth. The men were handsome, the women graceful and charming, and all wore smiles.

Only one male server stood out. He didn't have the usual service smile on his face; his expression was quite ordinary, with a hint of adorably vacant innocence. He looked more like a cute young female server.

"Gentlemen, what would you like to drink?" Xu Qing walked up to a few Warriors, bowed slightly, and asked.

"Pu'er tea."

"Coke, please."

The Warriors answered right away. They were going to hunt monsters, so they couldn't drink alcohol. It would get in the way.

"Certainly. Please wait a moment." Xu Qing nodded and turned away.

Watching Xu Qing walk off, the Warriors exchanged glances. "This server must be new. If he weren't dressed like a man, I'd have thought he was a woman."

"Definitely. I thought he was a woman at first, too. Haha."

"Too bad. If he were a woman, I'd definitely sit down and have a chat with him," a burly man said with a laugh.

Another man, whose chin was a little pointed, smiled. "Maybe he is a woman, just deliberately dressed like a man. I mean, his face and figure don't look masculine to me."

"Could be. Maybe he's trying to avoid getting harassed by Warriors. Though just dressing like a man doesn't seem like it'd be enough," another team member added.

"We'll know if we ask him later," the man with the pointed chin said.

A little while later, Xu Qing returned with their Pu'er tea and Coke. "Here are your tea and Coke. Please enjoy."

After setting down the Pu'er tea and Coke, Xu Qing turned to leave.

"Hold on," the burly man called out.

Xu Qing turned around and looked at him. "Can I help you with something?"

"Yes. Are you a woman dressed as a man?" the burly man asked with a grin.

"Huh? A woman dressed as a man? No, I'm a guy. Why would you ask that?" Xu Qing paused, surprised that the man would ask such a strange question.

Hearing Xu Qing's answer, the Warriors exchanged glances. He didn't look like he was lying. Had they really been mistaken?

"You're really a guy?" The man with the pointed chin looked Xu Qing up and down.

Xu Qing nodded. "Yeah. Don't I sound like a guy?"

"Well... you do sound like a guy. No way, you really are a guy?" The man with the pointed chin seemed to realize something and stared at him in disbelief.

He hadn't expected a man could actually look like a woman—not just in the face, but in his figure, too.

Still, if you looked closely at his build, you could tell the difference. Xu Qing was slender, but he didn't have a woman's graceful curves.

"Mm-hmm, that's right," Xu Qing said with a nod.

The other Warriors were surprised, too. They had guessed wrong. He really was a guy; he just looked a lot like a girl.

"If you don't need anything else, I'll be going." Xu Qing glanced at them, then turned and walked away.

"Hahaha... We were all fooled," the burly man laughed.

"Sure were. We even suspected he was a woman in disguise. We were just imagining things. We should've realized when he was so flat up front," the man with the pointed chin said with a laugh.

"Maybe you're too worked up. It's been too long since you let off some steam, hasn't it?" the other team members teased the burly man.

The burly man rolled his eyes. "Oh, give it a rest. We were just mistaken. What's that got to do with anything?"

By then, Xu Qing had returned to the counter.

"Xiao Qing, what did they say to you?" Behind the counter, Xu Xin wore a white shirt and black suit trousers, dressed like a professional woman.

Xu Qing scratched his head. "They asked if I was a woman dressed as a man. I said I wasn't."

"Pfft... I see," Xu Xin said with a laugh.

No wonder those Warriors had thought so. The same thing had happened back in school.

Even when Xu Qing wore the boys' uniform, plenty of people still took him for a girl. His face was very misleading, and he was also quite slender.

Only people with particularly keen eyes could quickly tell that Xu Qing was a boy.

"Sister Xin, those guys don't seem very strong. Can they really hunt monsters?" Xu Qing asked in a whisper, keeping his voice low.

From what he could sense, the Warriors in the hall weren't even as strong as the security guards the Alliance had assigned.

The guards here were all at the Intermediate War General or High-level Fighter level, while those Warriors were generally weaker—mostly High-level Fighters and Junior War Generals.

There were some Intermediate War Generals, but very few. He had only seen a handful.

"Look at you, whispering about it now," Xu Xin said with a smile. She felt like Xu Qing was a little more lively than usual.

Before, he would have said it without a care, wearing that same adorably vacant expression.

"Monsters come in all shapes and sizes, too. People hunt the kinds they can handle. If the monsters are too strong, of course they won't be a match for them," Xu Xin explained patiently.

"Oh, I see. Then I'm stronger than they are. I can take on dozens of monsters by myself," Xu Qing said confidently.

Xu Xin laughed. "How do you know you can take on dozens of monsters? You've never gone out to hunt any."

"Hmph. I calculated it. I'm worth dozens of them, so that means I can take on dozens of monsters by myself. I'm definitely right." A smug expression began to appear on Xu Qing's face.

Noticing the change in Xu Qing, Xu Xin looked curious. "Xiao Qing, your expressions have gotten more varied. Did something happen?"

"Have they? Haven't I always been like this?" Xu Qing blinked. He hadn't noticed anything.

But to Xu Xin, Xu Qing was clearly different. The most noticeable change was that his expressions had become more varied.

Before, he'd been like a capybara, always wearing the same adorably vacant expression. Now he was starting to show other expressions, like confidence and smugness.

He also seemed to have become much more lively overall.

Someone as close to Xu Qing as Xu Xin could notice the changes in him right away.

"You really are a little different, but I think that's a good thing," Xu Xin said with a smile. Seeing Xu Qing like this made her feel as if he were slowly growing up.

It was probably because he had started interacting with people outside.