Xu Yuan knew this Burial Village far too well, so well that even now he could still recall every single person in the village by name. The butcher who liked to sharpen his cleaver in the middle of the night. The gorgeous married woman who was always smiling and teasing everyone around her. The blind man who was blind, but not completely blind. And that ever-grinning old village chief.
Burial Village was the beginner village in the Azure Point storyline. A little village tucked away deep in the mountains along the border of the Great Flame Empire, peaceful and perilous in equal measure.
Peaceful, because all the older folks there, the uncles and grandpas of the village, treated the protagonist wonderfully. They were kind in the same ordinary, familial way as real elders at home.
Perilous, because those same uncles and grandpas only looked ordinary. In truth, every last one of them was a retired powerhouse living out their later years in seclusion. Each had once been a notorious bandit lord or a fearsome fiend in their own right.
It was a shabby little village packed to the brim with old monsters.
And then… the Chancellor personally led men there and slaughtered the entire place. Only one person survived, a young hunter who had just happened to wander into the deep mountains that day. That hunter was the protagonist of the story. And that was the real reason Xu Yuan had been trying so hard to find him.
With a blood feud like that on the table, there was basically no room at all for reconciliation between the protagonist and the Chancellor’s Manor. Once the other side fully grew into his power, no matter what reason his father had for massacring the village, the protagonist was not going to show mercy.
But now, thanks to the clues Su Jinxuan had given him, Xu Yuan had managed to narrow the protagonist’s possible paths down to three. He could also more or less guess what kind of cheat the other man was carrying.
The first type of path was the classic hot-blooded hero route. A hot-blooded orthodox protagonist naturally came with the obvious cheat, low-health battle god mode. The closer he was to death, the more he would explode with power.
The second type of path was the old-grandpa companion route. That cheat was simple too. Fully manual AI control, and under special conditions, his strength could spike dramatically.
The third type of path was the heterodox route, where he cultivated the Grand Dual Cultivation Yin-Yang Art. That cheat was three doses of Joyous Union Powder. The stuff could ignore level restrictions. It worked on men and women alike.
At that thought, Xu Yuan’s mood grew a little heavier. The first and third weren’t too troublesome. If he found the protagonist, he could just have Zhou Chen kill him.
But by Murphy’s Law, he had a faint feeling the protagonist was probably on the second route, the old-grandpa route, because that was the hardest kind to deal with.
Without the game’s special restrictions in place, if he pushed that kind of opponent too far, the other side could pull out something catastrophic at any moment.
Among the people Xu Yuan currently knew, only Xu Changge could probably kill that sort of protagonist with absolute certainty. Even that iceberg of a woman surnamed Ran would be a maybe.
The air inside the carriage was thick with a faint, lingering fragrance. Most of the time, silence had a way of calming the mind. But when your life was sitting in someone else’s hands, that same silence became torture.
Watching Xu Yuan’s profile as he said nothing, Su Jinxuan drew in a quiet breath. Her fists clenched, then loosened, clenched again, and then loosened again…
After several rounds of that, a trace of dimness flickered through her eyes. The breath she had drawn in slowly slipped back out, and she called softly, “Third Young Master...”
In truth, she already knew the answer in her heart. But people always clung to that last tiny shred of unrealistic hope.
Xu Yuan glanced at her. The easy composure she had worn before was gone again. What he saw now was unease in her eyes. It left him a little speechless.
So it seemed what she’d said before, that Mister Qin treated her like a younger sister, was probably true. If she were a deathsworn agent he had carefully raised, she likely would not be showing this kind of expression. For an unmarried young lady to hold herself together this well in the face of death was already no small feat.
“You seem very afraid,” he said.
Su Jinxuan bit lightly at her lip, the tip of one little canine showing. “The shadow guards of the Chancellor’s Manor are infamous. I’ve naturally heard of them as well.”
“If you’re afraid, then why did you dare come looking for me?”
She fell silent.
Xu Yuan’s eyes curved with amusement, but there was not the slightest trace of pity in them. “One last question. If you’re willing to answer it, then after we return to the estate, I can choose not to hand you over to Ying’er. Of course, if you refuse, I’m sure Ying’er will still be able to pry the answer out of you.”
He paused, then asked, “Su Jinxuan, what exactly was that Mister Qin trying to achieve by having you control me?”
Her fingers tightened around the hem of her clothes until the knuckles began to pale. After a long silence, she shook her head. “I... I don’t know.”
Hearing that, Xu Yuan lifted a hand and gently ran it through her smooth hair. Then he said softly, “What a shame, Jinxuan. That isn’t the answer I wanted.”
Earlier, she herself had said she had taken the initiative to share Mister Qin’s burdens. And now she was claiming she didn’t know? She’d already talked herself into a corner. How stupid.
Thinking that, Xu Yuan found himself faintly amused again. But really, this was how it should be. If everyone could stay perfectly calm under the great terror of life and death, then this world would have far too many ruthless monsters in it.
Su Jinxuan was taken away by Ying’er.
Still, in light of the information she had provided, Xu Yuan really did put in a few kind words for her in front of Ying’er. No physical torture. Just tie up her hands and feet, seal off her hearing, and toss her into a pitch-black room stuffed with soft quilts.
Watching the faint gratitude in Su Jinxuan’s eyes as she was led away, Xu Yuan nearly laughed. Modern interrogation methods might not be as immediately brutal as the torture of this ancient world, but those methods were mental attacks.
Out of sheer morbid curiosity, Xu Yuan had gone with a group of friends in his previous life to try it once at a professional experience center. He laid on a soft bed, his hands and feet wrapped inside specially made padded restraints, while the staff fitted him with soundproof earmuffs and a blackout blindfold.
That feeling… it was best not to talk about it.
The Xu estate sat in the northern part of the vast city of Stillwater, sprawling across more than 200 acres. A huge wetland lake lay within its grounds, and beyond it stretched pavilions, terraces, jade halls, and grand mansions as far as the eye could see.
Watching Ying’er and Su Jinxuan’s two graceful figures gradually disappear into the distance, Xu Yuan turned back and looked at Zhou Chen, who was drinking nearby. Then he suddenly said, “Could I trouble you with something?”
“As you command, Third Young Master.” Zhou Chen lowered his wine gourd.
Xu Yuan kept his eyes on the direction Su Jinxuan had left. “Help me investigate what happened to Su Jinxuan’s family massacre.”
A trace of surprise flickered through Zhou Chen’s eyes. “You mean...?”
Xu Yuan explained, “Su Jinxuan said Mister Qin saved her while she was fleeing disaster. Her whole family was most likely killed. I suspect there’s more to the story.”
“I see...” Zhou Chen murmured under his breath, seeming to grasp what Xu Yuan meant.
Though he had his doubts, he showed no intention of refusing. The Third Young Master’s recent behavior had gradually become enough to make him willing to place a heavier bet on him.
Zhou Chen cupped his fists and asked, “But where is Miss Su’s hometown?”
Xu Yuan’s gaze flickered for a moment before he replied, “Embrocade in Southriver Prefecture.”
In his previous life, whenever Xu Yuan had played the protagonist and first brought Su Jinxuan into Embrocade, she would always say, It’s been more than ten years. Embrocade really has changed so much it hardly feels the same anymore…
“Understood. Rest easy, Third Young Master. I’ll notify the Blackscale Guards there at once.” Zhou Chen immediately clasped his fists again. Then he turned to leave immediately.
“Wait.”
Zhou Chen halted.
Unhurried, Xu Yuan took out a stack of five 1,000-tael banknotes from his Sumeru Ring and sent them drifting into Zhou Chen’s hand with a thread of source qi.
Zhou Chen’s eyes lit up, though he still held his wine gourd and asked in a lowered voice, “Third Young Master, this is...?”
Xu Yuan chuckled. “You’ve worked hard protecting me and looking after my safety. Consider it a little money for wine, as a token of my thanks.”