After cleaning the room, Lü Qian left.
Lying in bed, Han Xiao narrowed his eyes in comfort and relaxed. Now all he had to do was wait for the Thirteenth Bureau to come knocking.
"My strength still isn't enough."
Han Xiao knew full well that borrowing someone else's influence was only a shortcut to dealing with Germinal. His own strength was what he truly had to rely on, and he also needed strength to make the Thirteenth Bureau see him in a different light.
For now, he had few opportunities to do missions or fight monsters, leaving him with technical work. Building machinery cost money, so he had to go out and earn some extra cash. There were plenty of opportunities in West Capital, but turning them into strength of his own would be a long and arduous journey. As a classic song put it, Zhang Guolao, hooves pointed west, carried Monk Sha along with the Calabash Brothers. They took the high road west in search of scriptures and walked tens of thousands of miles.
There were still six months until the open beta, and he had to be ready before then.
After tidying his room, Han Xiao returned to the first floor. Lü Qian was working at the lathe, repairing some household appliance. Her round, perky butt was wrapped in hot pants, exposing a pair of long, straight, fair legs. He could not help taking a couple of extra looks.
Lü Qian wiped the sweat away with a towel and said, "The orders are all in the drawer."
Business at the repair shop was slow, and most of the orders had been sitting there for a while. Han Xiao picked an easy one at random and got to work at the lathe.
The repair shop closed at seven that evening.
Lü Qian changed into a long white dress for lounging at home and let down her hair. Her lustrous black locks fell over her shoulders, giving her an even more approachable, gentle, elder-sisterly air. There were patches on her dress, showing that money was not exactly plentiful. Han Xiao could not help wondering whether she dressed so skimpily for work to save on fabric.
Old Man Lü only appeared at dinnertime. He had locked himself in his room all day, doing who knew what.
"Dinner's ready."
With his free-flowing long hair and bald crown, Old Man Lü did not look like someone who did housework. Lü Qian had taken care of all the cooking.
Han Xiao picked up a piece of red-braised pork and popped it into his mouth. It was rich without being greasy, bursting with savory juices. His eyes lit up.
"Good, isn't it?" Lü Qian asked with a beaming smile.
Han Xiao had no time to answer. His mouth never stopped moving.
Now this is food! What have I been eating for the past six months?
"There's plenty more. Take your time." Pleased that her cooking had been appreciated, Lü Qian kept putting food on his plate.
After they had eaten for a while, Old Man Lü suddenly spoke. "What's your real background?"
Han Xiao paused with his chopsticks. "I'm just an ordinary person."
"How could a lousy lie like that fool me? Come clean, kid." Old Man Lü gave a cold, grunting chuckle, running his palm over his bald crown and smoothing his long hair. He looked just like a braised egg with hair.
Han Xiao raised an eyebrow. "What if I don't tell you?"
"You won't?"
Old Man Lü raised his voice and flung his hair back with earthshaking force, tossing it with the wild abandon of a heavy metal guitarist and the bold spirit of one who would never let the wine cups stand empty. A great cloud of loneliness and sorrow fluttered toward Han Xiao.
What a fearsome snowfall over the motherland's vast rivers and mountains! Han Xiao's gaze sharpened. He spun swiftly and leaped five meters away, crossing his arms in a blocking stance, ready for anything.
Old Man Lü narrowed his eyes. "Fine skills. Could that be the legendary Four Old Black Geese Ballet Footwork?"
"You know your stuff."
"Hmph, it's nothing special. I have another move, Three Thousand Zhang of White Flakes. Those it lands on die, and those it touches lose their souls. Do you dare take it?" Old Man Lü held two fingers slightly raised, pinching a lock of long hair as if wielding a weapon. He stood as still as deep water and as immovable as a mountain, every bit a grandmaster.
"Such a divine skill exists in this world?" Han Xiao's expression changed.
"My realm of mastery is beyond your comprehension."
Old Man Lü gave a smug chuckle.
Lü Qian wore an approachable smile, but a dark cloud crackling with lightning and thunder gathered behind her like a manifestation of heaven and earth. She tapped the table with her chopsticks, neither lightly nor heavily, and said calmly, "Sit down and eat."
In the blink of an eye, both men were back in their seats, looking perfectly calm, as if nothing had happened.
West Capital covered a vast area, divided into eight districts and three satellite cities, all connected by military railways.
District One was the core area at the city center, home to all the government office buildings. No ordinary citizens were allowed inside.
Tensions simmered beneath the surface among the Six Nations. Though the Germinal Organization was their common enemy, they were also rivals, and none had absolute allies. Assassination attempts against high-ranking officials had never ceased. Although the nations publicly blamed them all on the Germinal Organization and certain supercriminals, their intelligence agencies knew perfectly well that at least seventy percent were the work of other nations.
The intelligence agencies of the various nations, the Germinal Organization, wandering warlords, arms dealers, information brokers, supercriminals, assassin organizations, hackers, and other outlaws made up the planet's underground world.
The Dragon Horn Building housed Stardragon's core government institutions and was where its top leaders worked. In theory, its outer walls could withstand a direct hit from an intercontinental missile, so Stardragon's leaders did not have to worry about a missile landing on their heads during a meeting.
Beneath Dragon Horn was the headquarters of the classified departments.
Dragon Horn Building, underground, on a floor not marked in the elevator.
The headquarters of the Stardragon Homeland Strategic Defense Bureau.
Dozens of enormous black screens hung on the walls, vast quantities of matrix data flashing across them. The sound of typing filled the air as countless intelligence officers hurried busily back and forth, like cogs keeping the intelligence agency known as the "Thirteenth Bureau" running. Countless pieces of intelligence, great and small, flowed in to be processed before being sent to the appropriate departments.
The Thirteenth Bureau was Stardragon's eyes and ears, the dagger hidden up its sleeve.
"Reporting, Director. We've located Zero."
The quiet, bespectacled female secretary hurriedly knocked and entered the Intelligence Department director's office. The director sat behind his desk with a serious expression, a glistening wet mark at the corner of his mouth. "Speak," he said in a deep voice.
"Director, you were just slacking off and taking a nap, weren't you?" The bespectacled secretary gave him a skeptical look.
"Enough!" The Intelligence Department director glared. "Get to the point."
"Zero is currently hiding in a mechanical repair shop in the Seventh District."
The head of the Intelligence Department turned his chair away and pondered for a while before turning back around. "The higher-ups want us to make a gentle approach," he said gravely.
"You turned around to wipe off your drool, didn't you?"
"I really regret promoting you..."
The bespectacled secretary adjusted her glasses, and a glint flashed across the lenses. "How exactly should we proceed?"
"Since Zero came to West Capital alone, the implication is that he's seeking protection. He's already shown an intent to cooperate... Prepare for both possibilities. Apply the informant protection protocol, and don't let Germinal's spies in West Capital learn he's here. Have the hacker division intercept all messages mentioning Zero's whereabouts. Don't let any intelligence leak through the network. At the same time, send people to probe him discreetly and see if he's a spy deliberately sent by Germinal. Don't approach him rashly until that's confirmed."
"There are two possibilities with a defector worth a million to Germinal. First, he has some key intelligence. Second, he possesses formidable strength, and it's hard to assess how dangerous he is. We mustn't alert him. I don't want a repeat of the last operation to capture Black Spider, when we blew up two streets and still failed. The bureau chief chewed me out for two hours over that."