Money was not everything, but without money, nothing was possible.
"Just as the West could not exist without Jerusalem."
"We must also have our own US Dollars."
Su Lin was busy tying up the man in the suit at his feet with plastic rope, his hands cuffed behind his back.
"With all due respect, what you just said made no logical sense." Klein tore off a strip of black tape and slapped it over the man's mouth. "Also, these guys kept Pound Sterling in their safe."
"Ask that slick-haired guy where I can get some red bills. I don't want to go to the bank to exchange foreign currency!"
"You could ask him where the underground banks are." Klein dragged a slick-haired man toward the corner. "I'll get it out of him right away."
"The safe password is 1314520."
"Seriously?!" Su Lin felt goosebumps rise all over his body. As he stood, he kicked the man in the black suit at his feet. "These guys even understand romance?"
"I thought you people had no hearts."
Inside a luxurious suburban villa, all the security personnel lay sprawled across the ground.
The classically decorated room was riddled with bullet holes across the books, porcelain, and carpet, while shattered glass littered the floor everywhere.
A bald middle-aged man had black tape over his mouth and stared at the two people before him in terror.
One was covered in black armor and wore a pitch-black crown. The other was dressed like an ancient swordsman, his face masked, clad in white with a longsword strapped to his back.
He seriously suspected that he had spent the past several decades living like a dog.
Just two people had wiped out dozens of fully armed security guards.
Even guns could not break through their defenses.
Was this some superpower blockbuster, or had he been transported into a television drama?
His mind raced, yet he could not remember where he had provoked this pair of martial artists with their blend of Eastern and Western styles.
Something from the past?!
That should not have been possible.
Riiip—the black tape was torn from his mouth.
"Two great heroes."
"Shh." Su Lin placed a finger to his lips.
The bald middle-aged man immediately fell silent as a cicada in winter.
"Human trafficking. You really know how to play, setting up such a huge villa." Su Lin took out a notebook, thought for a moment, then tossed it aside. "You have five minutes. Write down the information of every colleague you know, as well as anyone else involved in illegal business."
Ten minutes later, police cars surrounded the place. When they opened the room, they found the bald middle-aged man curled up in a corner, his eyes vacant as though he had witnessed something utterly horrifying.
"He's gone stupid." After examining him, a Police officer gave that conclusion.
"What happened here?"
With Su Lin's abilities—or rather, the system's abilities—he could even become a human printing press by tomorrow.
But that would have been far too boring.
Moreover, currency represented the value of social resources to a certain extent. Printing vast quantities of a country's currency could easily cause inflation in that country.
"Isn't it tiring to wear that armor?"
One person, carrying a stack of sacks full of liquid funds, appeared in a small forest deep in the mountains.
Klein tossed the sacks to the ground and removed his helmet.
"It's fine."
Sefirah Castle had not followed him into this world, so naturally he could not draw upon Sefirah Castle's power to contain the Black Emperor's Sequence card. He could only cosplay in person.
Actually, a Faceless did not need to hide himself so carefully.
If Su Lin had not guaranteed that this world currently possessed no extraordinary powers, Klein would never have personally gone into action with his true body.
To put it bluntly, what he had done tonight was look for people at clubs and use divination to see whether they were engaged in illegal activities.
He followed the clues through the Seer's Sequence abilities and investigated them one by one.
"We agreed that I get thirty percent." Klein shook the heavy sack.
"No problem."
Su Lin did not ask what Klein wanted this world's money for. It was only right to receive payment for labor, and as for what Klein intended to do with the money, that was none of Su Lin's business.
"I thought you'd be living quite comfortably." Klein said.
"What doesn't cost money these days?"
"True enough." Klein felt that deeply.
Su Lin dismissed the Historical Projection and stepped out from the Void nearby, making Klein's brow twitch. Well damn, that hadn't been his real body just now?
"You should find an agent, actually." Klein offered a suggestion. "Help him solve a few problems, or give him some cultivation techniques, and let him earn money for you in society."
"I'll consider it in the future." It was not as though Su Lin had never considered such things, but he had not needed much money before, and neither had the other group members.
Compared to living in an urban city on Earth, they preferred to spend their time at Water Mirror Peak, which was better suited for cultivation, only occasionally returning to the city to experience modern life again.
"Let's go. Time to head back."
After returning to Water Mirror Peak, it was the same as before. Su Lin brought Klein to the residential area and let him choose a house.
"Do you want to try cultivating?" Su Lin pointed at the ancient building atop the mountain, reached by white jade steps.
"No." Klein did not hesitate. "I'm no longer really human. Whether I can cultivate is hard to say, and I can only keep walking this one path to the end."
"If you come across something like those items in novels that calm the mind and dispel negative mental states, keep an eye out for me." Klein paused. "I'll trade something with you then."
"Alright." Su Lin nodded. "It's already four in the morning. It's late. Get some rest."
"Thank you for tonight."
"Sweet dreams." Klein made a gesture, meaning a prayer to Evernight for good dreams and peace.
After closing the door, Klein lay on his side in bed, looking at the room's elegant decorations and the Bai Yun beyond the wooden window, yet he could not shake the irritation in his heart.
After a while, Klein got up, put on his shoes, left the house, followed the path he remembered to the teleportation gate, and stepped through it.
He arrived in Rong City and hailed a taxi to the entrance of a five-star hotel.
"Here's your ninety yuan change."
"Sorry for the trouble."
As he entered the hotel lobby, the night-shift receptionist was watching a web drama. Seeing a guest arrive, she tapped twice to minimize the webpage.
"Welcome."
Klein snapped his fingers and said softly:
"Sorry for the trouble, please get me a room. The best one."
"Please show me your ID card."
In the receptionist's eyes, Klein presented his ID card, and she registered the guest in the computer system.
"Alright, Suite 01 on the seventeenth floor."
The receptionist put the ID card back into her wallet. As she stepped away from the registration camera, she gracefully handed Klein the room key.
"Two thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight yuan, sir."
Klein took thirty red banknotes from his pocket and said to the receptionist:
"Keep the extra. Thank you."
He took the elevator to the seventeenth floor and used the keycard to open the door. Inside was a suite of over a hundred square meters.
He casually entered a room with floor-to-ceiling windows, drew open the curtains, and lay down on the bed. The velvet pillow and soft Simmons mattress were no better than the room at Water Mirror Peak.
Yet as he looked at the bustling skyscrapers outside, the vehicles passing along the elevated road, and the tiny lit windows like grains of rice, the faint irritation in Klein's heart gradually faded.
As a Mythological Creature, he rarely felt sleepy in such a natural way.
His eyes narrowed slightly, then slowly closed as he drifted into dreamland.
Thank you to Chan Pa Gudu for the 1,500-point donation! Thank you to Hao Jiu Mei Yong for the 1,000-point donation! Thank you to Hua Shui de Chuan and Lü Dawang for the 100-point donations! Thank you all so much! As a new author, I'll keep working hard!
(End of Chapter)