The Queen of Players

He Li?

Xu Ye pulled the blanket up to his chest and looked at her pitifully.

The woman had long, wine-red waves of hair and looked about twenty-seven. She wore a well-tailored business suit and high heels, with black stockings hugging her long, shapely legs.

Her features were delicate and her skin fair, with an exotic, mixed-race look.

"Xu Ye, I want to wear women's clothes like these. Just once, please!" Alice sat on He Li, looking envious.

Xu Ye decided to ignore her.

"Handsome little Xu, what are you looking at? We've only just met. Isn't it a little rude to stare at me like that?" He Li studied Xu Ye with a smile. Her words were perfectly ordinary, but her eyes brimmed with alluring charm.

She was simply a little curious.

What was so unusual about this boy that the captain cared so much about him, even falling out with the nobles over him?

Besides, despite his serious injuries, the captain had actually been in a good mood when she visited him that morning.

Xu Ye was about to speak when her phone rang.

He Li shrugged, apologized, and answered. Her voice softened, becoming utterly plaintive, with even a hint of tears. The speed of her transformation made Xu Ye marvel at how terrifying women could be.

"Lei, I really do like you. I never did anything to betray you. My feelings for you are genuine, and I really want to be with you, but..."

"I'm sorry. Let's leave it at that and delete each other's contact details."

"I don't want this either."

"I checked our zodiac signs. We're incompatible. It's fate-we can't spend our lives together. Sob..."

Halfway through her sobbing, He Li decisively hung up, switched off her phone, then brushed the hair beside her ear back and smiled at Xu Ye.

"What... happened?" Xu Ye asked, somewhat confused.

"Nothing much. Just a breakup. His father disapproved of us being together and even threatened to take me before the Tribunal."

"Surely it wasn't that serious?" Xu Ye's eyes filled with surprise. In these chaotic times, minor matters generally never reached the Tribunal.

He Li took a sip of coffee. "...Because I was dating all seven of his sons at the same time, and they found out. There was nothing I could do."

She spread her hands.

All innocence.

He Li blinked her moist, seductive eyes.

Xu Ye: "..."

A queen of players!

Have a little decency, Xu Ye thought to himself.

He Li leaned closer, a wave of rose fragrance washing over him. "Handsome little Xu, want to get to know me better?"

Xu Ye's expression did not change. "My mom said not to date older women. I wouldn't be able to handle them."

He Li shook with laughter. "You're much more entertaining than those hopelessly straight-laced men on the team, little guy."

He could joke around, his emotions were stable, and there were no signs of extreme behavior from his second personality.

He Li silently made a mental note.

"Enough joking. Let's get down to business. I'm a frontline combatant with the Ninth Squad. I was out on a mission yesterday. I specialize in using blades, but I'm not an Awakened. There are a few things the captain didn't explain clearly, so he asked me to fill you in and make arrangements for your life from now on."

"There are Five Great Safe Zones on Planet Earth, corresponding to the Five Great Powers: Sky City, the Dawn Tower, the Land of Exiles, the Twin Star Corporation, and the Lost Abyss."

"Sky City has four cities under its jurisdiction. Pollution Incident Removal generally falls to our Dawn Blade."

"The Dawn Blade has thirteen teams in total. Since Night Spirit City has relatively few pollution incidents, only two teams are stationed here: our Ninth Team and the Eighth Team."

"Why..." Xu Ye had barely begun when He Li finished his question for him.

"You want to ask why our Ninth Team seems so weak, right?"

"That's because ten years ago, every Awakened on the Ninth Team died in a Disaster Level pollution incident."

He Li's tone grew calm as she handed Xu Ye a brand-new computer.

"This computer is for you. There's plenty of information on it for you to read."

Xu Ye took it and quickly skimmed through.

The danger ratings for pollution incidents, from lowest to highest, were Terrifying Level, Nightmare Level, Horror Level, Disaster Level, Hell Level, and Destruction Level.

He Li paused thoughtfully before saying, "Yesterday's pollution incident, for example, was classified as Horror Level. Incident 001, meanwhile, was a global Destruction Level incident."

"If an ordinary team encounters a Disaster Level incident, they're certain to die."

"The captain's had it pretty rough, too. He killed his father with his own hands."

"Huh?" Xu Ye abruptly looked up.

He Li explained, "It's not what you're thinking. There are actually two ways to become an Awakened. The first is for someone with high spiritual sensitivity to take a special Awakened Potion."

"The second is rather cruel: kill an Awakened!"

"If you're an ordinary person and kill an Awakened, you'll gain their Sequence 9 talent."

"If you're Sequence 9 and kill someone at Sequence 8, you'll gain the talent they had at Sequence 8. Of course, killing an Awakened of the same sequence won't give you their sequence talent. And if an Awakened dies on their own or is killed by an Aberrant, their sequence talent will automatically disappear."

"Before the captain's father died, he didn't want his talent to be lost or taken by someone else in Sky City, so he asked the captain to kill him."

"You could call it a form of inheritance."

Killing your own family...

Xu Ye drew a quiet breath. It was simply unimaginable.

It seemed the captain had suffered a great deal, too.

Still, that meant he would have to be wary of other Awakened himself.

He Li shrugged. "That's why our Ninth Squad is so weak now. Apart from the captain's father, all the other Awakened were killed by Aberrants."

Xu Ye nodded, then suddenly remembered something else. "Do Awakened have a special attraction for Aberrants?"

"So you noticed." He Li raised an eyebrow. "Devouring Awakened accelerates an Aberrant's mutation. Generally speaking, though, Aberrants with even a little intelligence won't be too blatant about it. After all, this is our territory."

"As for your arrangements from now on..."

"Let me check the schedule."

"Come to the team's base the day after tomorrow for some tests and training. In a month, the Five Great Powers will, for the first time, gather all the new Awakened from the past year for centralized training. It'll be held right here in Night Spirit City, and you'll have to attend too."

"This training is also meant to strengthen cohesion among the Five Great Powers. Pollution incidents have become increasingly frequent in recent years, while the Five Great Powers have each been acting independently, without sharing much intelligence or technology. I imagine the higher-ups also hope this joint training will help smooth out our relations."

"As for the month in between, you can go to school or rest at home."

School?

Hearing that word, Xu Ye froze for a moment. Some of this body's original owner's memories of school flashed through his mind.

He tapped his head, set those memories aside for now, then looked at He Li, a little embarrassed.

"Sister Li, do you have any money on you?"