Chapter 65

A Fate Beyond Words

Xiao He was not a superstitious person. He did not believe in gods or ghosts. But the dream had been too vivid, too brutal.

The oppressive pressure of the creature tearing through space. The bright red blood when it ripped through human bodies. The screaming — pain and terror all at once. He couldn't shake any of it.

He remembered standing in front of a child, and then the creature's tendril punching through his chest before he'd had time to react.

He remembered the fog swallowing the whole estate, the creature descending into Master Chen's body. He remembered the dead coming back to life — as though they'd forgotten both their fear and their pain — and endlessly replaying the last five days before they died. Living again and again, only to walk the same path back to death.

He'd drifted through the garden unable to do anything but watch as everyone died, revived, and died again without understanding.

"Drink some water." Tiger could see the color hadn't come back to his face. He poured a cup and handed it over.

"Thank you." Xiao He looked out the window. Still dark, with occasional insect sounds drifting in. "Brother — I forgot to ask last night. What should I call you?"

"My friends call me Tiger or Xiao Hu, either is fine." Tiger turned up the air conditioning, watching some color ease back into his face. "Dreams always mean the opposite. Don't let it bother you."

Tiger.

"I have a friend who came to Chen Garden looking for work — they turned him away because he's born in the year of the Tiger." Xiao He went to the bathroom and washed his face with cold water, steadily walking himself back to full clarity.

"Ha — I must have gotten lucky." Tiger said.

Yes. The Main God system forced me through the door.

"Brother — would you tell me more about the dream?"

An undercover officer this shaken didn't have ordinary dreams. Tiger was sure of it.

Xiao He went through the dream in detail.

The first part Tiger could follow without much reaction. But when Xiao He reached the part where the evil entity entered Master Chen's body, and everyone in Chen Garden forgot their deaths and began looping through the same five days on repeat — Tiger's heart slammed.

Loop. Instance resetting. Players cycling through.

Xiao He had the dream. But the one who was truly afraid was Tiger.

"Go to sleep." Xiao He had talked himself back to steadiness, and now looked at Tiger — who had clearly been shaken harder than he was — and felt the urge to offer comfort. "Don't be scared. You said yourself dreams are all backwards. If anything actually happens, I'll put myself in front of you."

"Right, right. It's all made up." Tiger gave a hollow laugh, turned off the light, and lay back down.

Xiao He the police officer said he was watching from outside in the dream — a bystander observing everyone die and revive in cycles. Which meant he had never been part of this instance to begin with.

But this person who had never belonged to the instance was now here. Inside Chen Garden.

So what was Chen Garden right now — an instance already running, or a world not yet converted into one?

If it hadn't fully become an instance yet — then what was it?

A construction zone where the Main God was building an exploration instance. Or—

Had this always been a living world, and the evil god's intrusion was what turned it into a space for players to attack?

*

By the time the light came through the window, Tiger sat up to find Xiao He already fully dressed, his blanket folded into a sharp rectangle.

"You're up, brother?" Xiao He set breakfast on the table. "Come eat."

"Thank you." Tiger pressed a hand to the hot container. The staff dormitory wasn't close to the kitchen. He must have run.

"Tiger — I need to get to work." Xiao He finished his meal in a few quick mouthfuls. "See you at noon."

"All right." Tiger waited until he'd gone, then looked at the precisely folded blanket on Xiao He's bed. He picked it up, shook it out, and re-folded it loosely before leaving the room.

Half an hour later, the staff member checking internal tidiness opened the door, glanced in, and marked the cleanliness column with a check.

*

Xiao He and several other servants carried breakfast to the guest building. The bodyguards at the entrance accepted the trays and let only Xiao He through.

The other servants understood — honored guests valued privacy — but they were still a little envious that Xiao He had earned that kind of particular regard.

First time through the main door. Xiao He looked carefully around.

Xu Chenzhu was seated in a carved wooden chair, reading. He had the look of a nobleman who had crossed a thousand years of time and simply appeared here — entirely at home in the ancient architecture around him, as though the building had been built for him specifically.

The room was silent. Xiao He didn't dare make a sound. He set his tray on the table and stood quietly beside it.

From the moment he'd entered to now, Xu Chenzhu had not looked at him once. Seated there, he resembled a painting without life.

Then footsteps came from the corridor. Xu Chenzhu put down his book, and the quality of his eyes changed entirely.

"Good morning, Mr. Xu." Chao Musheng leaned over the railing on his way down, two small tufts of hair sticking up from his head, swaying with each step.

Xu Chenzhu looked up, a quiet smile surfacing. "Good morning, Zhaozhao."

Chao Musheng reached the bottom of the stairs and noticed Xiao He in the corner. He smiled at him. "Good morning."

"Good morning, Mr. Chao, Mr. Xu." Xiao He lifted the breakfast covers. "Please help yourselves."

"Meow." A small black cat came down the stairs behind Chao Musheng — several months old at most, fluffy as a compressed ball of coal.

"A bl—" Xiao He's eyes went wide. He watched the small black cat rub its head against Chao Musheng's trouser leg, then take a few dignified steps over to Xu Chenzhu and sit down squarely in front of him.

Ink Blob: "Meow."

Human's servant. Where is my breakfast.

Xu Chenzhu closed his book, held the cat's gaze for one second, stood, and went to the kitchen to retrieve its designated meal.

"Shh." Chao Musheng saw Xiao He staring and raised one finger to his lips with a smile. "That's a secret. Don't tell anyone."

"Of course." Xiao He collected himself. "Mr. Chao — is this Mr. Xu's pet?"

"No." Chao Musheng watched Xu Chenzhu come back out with the cat food and laughed quietly. "This is my cat."

Oh?

Xiao He was genuinely baffled. The employee's cat, and the employer fetches its food. Was this normal?

*

"Why are you smiling?" Xu Chenzhu set the cat food in front of Ink Blob and came to sit beside Chao Musheng.

"Just — thinking about today. I don't really want to go anywhere." Chao Musheng yawned. "I want to find somewhere shaded and breezy and lie around drinking tea and zoning out on my phone. I slept badly."

"Did you dream?" Xu Chenzhu spooned the morning congee into Chao Musheng's bowl.

"I can't quite remember. My mind was just unsettled." Chao Musheng said. "The game division sent over a new structural concept last night — I actually think the direction is quite good. With sufficient technical backing, achieving that kind of result is entirely viable."

Xu Chenzhu: "You think it can work?"

"Yes." He nodded. "With Kunlun's current capabilities, there shouldn't be any problem."

"All right." Xu Chenzhu had no hesitation at all about Chao Musheng's assessment. "Later today, have them send the formal proposal through. I'll sign off on it."

Xiao He found himself thinking, in a slightly dazed way, that the dynamic between Xu Chenzhu and Chao Musheng was nothing at all like what he'd imagined the relationship between a powerful CEO and an employee would look like.

*

After breakfast, the bodyguards set up two hanging chairs in the courtyard. Chao Musheng settled into one with his phone and a mobile game; Xu Chenzhu and Secretary Liu worked inside.

Xiao He refilled Chao Musheng's tea, privately very worried that if Chao Musheng's colleagues could see how completely at leisure he was, they might feel moved to cause him harm.

"Stop watching me like that — I'm on leave." Chao Musheng rocked the chair. "Come sit and talk for a bit."

"I don't think I should—"

"You've already given yourself away. No need to keep up the act with me." Chao Musheng pointed to the other hanging chair. "Brother — what made them send you in particular?"

If Chao Musheng hadn't run interference for him last night, this man would have been escorted out already.

"The plan was to bring a senior officer and let me tag along for experience." Xiao He gave a sheepish smile. "I didn't expect to end up being the only one who made it in."

"The steward gave me twenty thousand yesterday and asked me to monitor what you and Mr. Xu say and do." Xiao He thought about the cat who had eaten its fill and gone straight back to sleep. "He also specifically asked whether there was a cat in your courtyard."

"Whatever you're investigating — I can make things easier for you." Chao Musheng poured him a cup of tea.

Twenty thousand. The Chen family paid for informants this cheaply? The steward must have pocketed the rest.

"Thank you, Mr. Chao." Xiao He was genuinely thirsty. "But my organization specifically told me not to involve ordinary civilians in anything dangerous."

"Did Chen Er come into contact with any controlled substances?"

Xiao He's instinct was to shake his head — and then he remembered he couldn't disclose case details to civilians.

Chen Er hadn't touched anything he shouldn't have, yet the relevant departments had still sent someone undercover. So the Chen family had a different problem.

Chao Musheng wasn't the kind of person whose curiosity ran to interfering with active police work. He stood. "Come on — is there anywhere you need to be?"

If his grandparents ever found out he'd had the means to help and played ignorant, he would hear about it for years.

"I—" Xiao He hesitated, reluctant to say.

"The wooden building in the north courtyard, or the main residence in the east?" Chao Musheng stretched. "Sitting this long gets uncomfortable."

"Mr. Chao." Four bodyguards fell in as he stepped toward the door.

"Don't hesitate — walk with me." Chao Musheng understood what Xiao He was being careful about, and simply moved. Even if you're here as an undercover officer, you need to know the layout first.

"This path leads to the north courtyard. Master Chen enjoys his private comforts, so there's almost no surveillance along this stretch." Chao Musheng said, in a tone of easy observation. "Though the Listening Rain Pavilion area has security patrols going through regularly."

"Apart from the courtyard where I'm staying, most guests are housed in the western part of the estate." He stopped mid-sentence and looked up toward the water pavilion beyond the willow trees.

On the pavilion, a middle-aged man in a long robe was practicing swordwork.

The blade cut through the air in arcs — and then he drove it through a wooden pillar.

Xiao He drew a sharp breath. That's a genuine practitioner.

"Visitors?" The man pulled the sword from the pillar with a clean sweep that curled into an elegant flourish, and turned to face Chao Musheng. "I am a humble scholar staying at Chen Garden as a guest — my surname is Xuan. May I ask where the young gentleman comes from?"

Chao Musheng: "..."

A practitioner of the antique style.

He estimated the diameter of the pillar with a glance and made a considerable effort not to smile.

From a physics standpoint, driving a blade through a pillar that thick and then withdrawing it with that kind of casual wrist motion was simply not how structural forces worked. His physics marks had actually been quite good.

"I see above this young gentleman a canopy of auspicious purple, and you approach from the light itself." Master Xuan took Chao Musheng's silence as the dazzled response it clearly wasn't, and sheathed the sword. "Young sir — your fate is of a quality beyond words."

Chao Musheng was now fairly certain this was a setup aimed directly at him.

He turned his most pleasant expression outward. "Is that right?"

"Certainly." Master Xuan clasped his hands behind his back. "Please, young sir — come into the pavilion and let us speak at greater length."

Of course. Young people today all loved to hear flattering prophecies.

He'd taken the bait immediately, hadn't he?

"I would be most honored to hear Master Xuan's wisdom." Chao Musheng stepped into the pavilion. A man who could call moths going into a lamp 'inauspicious' had to have a full repertoire of nonsense at his disposal.

And if Chao Musheng was going to inflict the man's own half-archaic mode of speech back on him — well. That sounded like a very satisfying morning.