Shen Luolun's fingers moved through her hair, his movements as practiced as if he had done it thousands of times. In just a few moments, her hair was completely dry, and he had styled it into a fashionable new look.
Even the Northwest Hammer King would have showered him with "praise."
"Wow! Is that really me? I'm so pretty!"
Xiangling leaned toward the mirror, gazing at the unrealistically beautiful girl reflected in it. It was clearly her, yet she looked like a different person.
All she had done was change her hairstyle, yet it made such a difference!
"Of course it's you!"
Shen Luolun folded his arms and smiled confidently.
"With my skills, I could even turn Guoba into Zhong."
What a strange way to describe it.
Why use Guoba as an example, and who was Zhong anyway?
Knowing that a certain someone was being absurd again and saying things nobody could understand, Xiangling rolled her eyes at him.
"Where did you learn to do such a pretty hairstyle? Don't tell me there's a girl you like, and you learned it just for her?" the girl asked seemingly offhandedly, though she watched his expression in the mirror.
"My mom forced me."
"Your mom forced you?"
"Yeah, my mom forced me."
Shen Luolun curled his lip.
"I had to blow-dry her hair every day, and she didn't know how to style it herself, so eventually she just had me finish it for her. I got good at it with practice."
"A-Luo, you're so obedient and so good to your mom. What a good boy you are." Xiangling leaned back and nudged the boy's abs.
"Don't move your head around. I just finished setting it." Shen Luolun held her head steady so her hair wouldn't go flat.
"Oh, okay." The girl obediently sat up straight.
"You think I wanted to learn? Every day I had to get up early and fulfill a parent's duties for a woman who was supposed to be the mother but acted like a child. I had to take care of her daily needs, earn money to support the family, provide emotional support, and comfort her over whatever inexplicable grievances she suffered outside. When she was happy, I laughed with her; when she was sad, I cried with her. Sometimes I really couldn't tell who was the mother and who was the child," Shen Luolun grumbled in frustration.
Shouldn't kids his age have been snuggling in their parents' arms, acting spoiled and getting into mischief? What was with maxing out his life skills?
Sometimes he wondered if, one day, he ran away from home, the woman would cry and make a fuss as she went out looking for him, or wait at home pitifully for him to return, then throw herself into his arms and pound him with her little fists like falling rain, even bite him hard and make him swear never to leave home again without her permission!
"A-Luo, you and your mom are really close," Xiangling said enviously.
"Hey, hey, what gave you that idea?" He flicked her forehead.
"A mom like that is the most unreliable kind. She's never once met my satisfaction standards."
"Hehe, you say you're not satisfied with Auntie Jindai, but you've never once said you wanted to leave her, and you've always taken care of her. If that isn't love, what is?"
"I just don't want her to starve to death. People who can't take care of themselves die the easiest. Besides, she's my birth mother, so I have to think about my reputation a little," he insisted stubbornly.
"Haha, I'm not listening." Xiangling haughtily raised her chin.
"..."
Honestly, why are you like this too? You two are the real mother and daughter, aren't you? It's like you were made from the same mold.
Shen Luolun felt too helpless even to complain.
"Cough, cough, cough."
Lumine coughed several puffs of black smoke from her mouth, her hair a mess.
She looked utterly bedraggled, as if she had rolled out of a chimney.
Yelan was in no better shape. Her clothes and trousers were torn in more than a dozen places, and several wounds beneath them were bleeding. Drenched in sweat, she leaned on her Aqua Simulacra bow as she walked unsteadily, clearly close to exhausting her strength.
"Yelan, was that route really safe? Why did we run into so many dangerous mechanisms along the way?" Lumine asked, panting.
Only the gods knew what they had just been through-
A hail of bullets, layer upon layer of poisonous miasma, traps above, below, and on every side, and even concentrated laser attacks from the air. Worse, once they entered, there was no turning back. Their retreat was sealed off, leaving them no choice but to grit their teeth and push forward.
They had nearly lost their lives in there.
And you're telling me that was the safe route?
That was the road to the underworld!
Yelan's pretty face darkened. She felt the same way as Lumine.
That route wasn't safe at all. It was exceptionally dangerous!
Even they had faced danger at every turn, let alone anyone else. For anyone else, there would have been no chance of survival!
Perhaps there had been a major problem with the route map from the very beginning!
"There's something wrong with this route. I feel like it was deliberately designed to target intruders," Yelan said gravely.
"Could Yinyue have deliberately given us false information to lure us in?" Lumine guessed.
Yelan thought for a moment, then shook her head.
"...Probably not. I watched her microexpressions. There was no trace of a lie in how she acted or what she said."
"Besides, her interests align with ours. She doesn't want her daughter to be controlled anymore. What she said should have been sincere, and the route map is probably real too. My guess is that the mastermind somehow learned of this in advance and set all this up, turning the safe route into a dangerous one and waiting for us to take the bait."
"But how would the mastermind know? We'd already captured Yinyue and the others, and the other employees were taken away too. Could someone have slipped through the net and tipped them off?"
"That's possible. Or perhaps our opponent has some other means of learning about our actions in advance."
"Either way, we can only keep going. According to the route map, we're not far from its real lair now."
"Mm." Lumine nodded.
"But Yelan, can you keep going? What about your injuries?" she asked worriedly.
She was stronger than Yelan. Although she looked more bedraggled, she was in much better condition. At least she wasn't injured or bleeding, and she still had more than half her strength left.
"..."
Yelan clenched her fist, a sense of helplessness welling up inside her.
She was close to exhausting her strength. If she kept going, something might really happen.
Yet when her gaze fell on the last short stretch of the route map, she couldn't help rallying her spirits.
"I'm fine. They're only minor injuries. Don't worry, I can keep up with you."
"Don't push yourself. If you need help, call me." Lumine patted her shoulder.
"I will. Thank you."
"Damn it, damn it, damn it!"
Seeing the two of them safe and sound on the monitor, One-Eye paced back and forth across the metal surface in a fury.
I'm so mad, I'm so mad!
The gauntlet of mechanisms it had carefully designed had failed to eliminate them!
The worst they had suffered was a little scraped skin.
What did a scrape matter? It was utterly insignificant!
"How is that possible? How did they get through?!"
"I calculated the parameters myself! Even if a hard diamond were thrown in there, it should have come out as a pile of powder!"
"What on earth did they do?"
One-Eye was deeply resentful, but also baffled.
So it pulled up the earlier footage of Yelan and Lumine clearing the route.
But as it watched, its face went from red to green, then from green to white.
It fell into a deathly silence.
What do you mean, catching bullets barehanded and moving faster than bullets?
What do you mean, tearing alloy nets apart by hand and kicking steel coils?
Countless questions made it doubt its whole existence, bringing its brain to a halt.
Were they even fucking mammals?
They were downright superhuman!
It turned out that, besides the devil who had captured it, there were other freakishly powerful humans out there.
One-Eye looked at the nutrient pod behind it and suddenly lost confidence.
Could she stop them?
Was it too late to run now? (Sad)