Leng Yaozhu sighed inwardly.
Honestly, it was only thanks to Gu Yue having dyed her hair silver for some reason lately, and somehow become much prettier, too.
Otherwise, with the way she was acting—
clinging to him, chasing him down, keeping him under surveillance around the clock—
she'd have been a total creep. She should've been hauled off to the police station ages ago.
"Lin An, young master of the Universal Group. I've heard so much about you."
Leng Yaozhu stood up, a polite smile on her lips.
"You're too kind, Vice Tower Master Leng." Lin An nodded courteously.
Leng Yaozhu's gaze swept over Gu Yue, lingering on her red, swollen eyes.
A hint of helplessness crept into her voice.
"Yue'er, what are you doing here, too?"
"Wherever my wife goes, I go."
Gu Yue clung to Lin An's arm without a shred of shame, chin raised, her expression practically saying, "What are you going to do about it?"
Leng Yaozhu's brow twitched.
"...Let go of him first."
"This is hardly proper."
"Have you already forgotten everything I told you last night?"
Gu Yue reluctantly let go and stepped aside with a pout.
Only then did Leng Yaozhu turn her attention back to Lin An.
Then she froze for a moment.
She'd long heard that the young master of the Universal Group was exceptionally handsome.
But seeing him in person still came as a shock.
The boy stood in the morning light, his skin so fair it seemed almost translucent.
His brows, eyes, nose, and lips all looked as though they'd been carved by a divine hand, too exquisite to belong to this world.
And yet his eyes were crystal clear, untouched by even the slightest impurity.
No wonder.
No wonder her proud, hardheaded disciple had fallen so completely for him.
Leng Yaozhu suddenly felt she understood Gu Yue a little.
For a brief moment, an absurd thought even crossed her mind.
She wanted to step forward and pat his head.
She wanted to take him home.
She wanted to raise him.
Leng Yaozhu abruptly dug her nails into her palm.
The sting brought her to her senses.
She ruthlessly crushed that inexplicable urge.
Calm down.
You're the Vice Tower Master of the Spirit Pagoda.
You're the Heavenly Phoenix Douluo.
You can't steal your disciple's man.
She forced herself to look away, her expression returning to its businesslike composure.
Gu Yue keenly caught the flash of fervor in her teacher's eyes.
Her heart gave a lurch.
Was her teacher planning to steal her man?
She narrowed her eyes, a dangerous glint flashing in her violet gaze.
Then, without drawing attention to herself, she edged half a step forward and blocked Lin An from view.
Leng Yaozhu: "..."
She watched her disciple guard Lin An like a possessive little animal, and the corner of her mouth twitched.
Forget it.
She wouldn't hold it against the girl.
She raised a hand to signal the staff.
A specially made sealing case was carefully brought over.
It had been forged from multiple layers of Soul Conductor alloy, with countless dense sealing runes carved across its surface.
Yet even through all those layers of seals, the air around it still wavered faintly.
Leng Yaozhu opened the case.
A strange Soul Spirit floated inside.
It was semi-transparent, its body as thin as a cicada's wing.
The space around it twisted and warped, now contracting, now expanding.
"This is the Empty Cicada you asked for."
Leng Yaozhu's voice turned grave.
"It came from the Abyss Rift and has been tainted by both spatial power and the Abyss's power to distort."
"There's only one in all of Douluo Continent."
Her gaze settled on Lin An's face.
"However—"
"However, what?" Lin An asked.
Leng Yaozhu fell silent for a moment, then spoke with added solemnity.
"Its power is far too violent."
"Even a ten-thousand-year sealing formation can't fully suppress it."
"An ordinary Soul Master who tried to absorb it would have no chance of survival."
Lin An furrowed his brow.
No chance of survival.
Those four words struck the silence of the VIP room like a chunk of ice dropped into water.
"Is there really no way?" Lin An asked, unwilling to give up.
He'd always been lucky, but this time it was Xie Xie who would be absorbing it.
If anything went wrong, he'd have no way to answer for it.
"No. I mean—"
Leng Yaozhu raised one finger, her expression impassive.
"It'll cost extra."
Lin An: "..."
Gu Yue: "..."
"The Empty Cicada itself is worth five hundred million Federal Credits."
Leng Yaozhu sat back down and took a sip of tea.
Her voice regained its usual calm.
"With the accompanying sealing formation, Soul Spirit hypnotist, forced-contract formation... seven hundred million in total."
Seven hundred million.
Xie Xie nearly fainted on the spot.
"S-seven hundred million?!"
His voice cracked.
What did seven hundred million even mean?
His family had a fair amount of assets in Eastsea City, but even if they sold everything they owned, they wouldn't scrape together a fraction of that amount.
All the cultivation resources he'd ever use in his life wouldn't add up to even a tenth of seven hundred million.
Gu Yue's expression changed, too.
She turned to Lin An, disbelief filling her violet eyes.
Seven hundred million?
To buy a Soul Spirit for Xie Xie?
Had someone drugged the Dragon Queen?
"An'an, are you crazy?"
Her voice rose half a pitch, jealousy bubbling up uncontrollably.
"Seven hundred million to buy this guy a Soul Spirit?"
She leaned close to Lin An's ear and whispered through gritted teeth.
"You've never spent this much on me."
Xie Xie swallowed and hurriedly waved his hands.
"Lin An, you don't have to."
"Just buy me any old one. We don't need something this expensive."
"This is just a scam—"
He glanced at Leng Yaozhu, and his voice faltered.
Did someone really need to spend seven hundred million on a Soul Master's Second Soul Ring?
That much could buy every Soul Ring he'd need for the rest of his life.
He'd still have enough left over to buy an apartment in downtown Eastsea City.
Lin An, however, remained unfazed.
"Seven hundred million is a fair price."
"But I have one additional condition."
Leng Yaozhu raised an eyebrow.
"Go ahead."
"I want the Spirit Pagoda to record the entire process of absorbing the Empty Cicada and share the data with me."
Lin An casually named his condition.
Even if he had money to burn, spending seven hundred million on a new classmate he'd barely spoken to was bound to look strange.
He needed a reasonable excuse.
Research. That was good enough.
Leng Yaozhu's eyes shifted slightly.
As expected.
He wanted to conduct an experiment.
The Empty Cicada was rare, but its most valuable feature was actually that it shed its shell once a year.
Its cast-off shell had space-time properties and could be used as a rare material to improve the speed of mechas and Battle Armor.
But that benefit alone was nowhere near worth seven hundred million.
She'd already been wondering—
Why would the young master of the Universal Group spend so much on a Soul Ring for a classmate?
Even the richest person wouldn't be that wasteful.
But if it was for research into the power of space-time, everything made sense.
The Abyss needed to distort space-time to connect the two worlds during its invasion.
If the Universal Group wanted to counterattack the Abyss, it had to master space-time technology.
And the space-time distortion power within the Empty Cicada made it the perfect research specimen.
The more Leng Yaozhu thought about it, the more reasonable it seemed.
She looked at Lin An with a deeper meaning in her eyes.
"What exactly is the Universal Group after?"
She narrowed her eyes slightly, her voice tinged with scrutiny.
"Are you really just buying this boy a Soul Ring?"
"What is there to study in the process of absorbing a Soul Spirit? You could simply take the Empty Cicada back with you. There's no need to have him absorb it using our Spirit Pagoda's technology."
"That would be a terrible waste."
Before you continue