“Oh, right. We don’t need that money. We might as well pay more taxes and contribute more effort. That counts as doing our part for the Jiangcheng community too.”
Qin Shu’s position changed instantly and without hesitation. Pei Zhao had expressed his disagreement that directly, which meant he definitely had his reasons. There was no need for further discussion.
Captain Wu stalled for a moment. His eyes met Pei Zhao’s briefly before he instinctively looked away again. Pure reflex.
“As far as I know, once cultivators formally report their personal circumstances, they have to undergo a rigorous and detailed family-background investigation, verification of any possible violations on record, and they also have to provide enough past combat cases to prove their strength.”
Pei Zhao spoke calmly. “I completely understand why those procedures are necessary, but I don’t want Qin Shu to go through them.”
“…All right. I understand your concerns too.”
Captain Wu nodded and genuinely stopped trying to persuade them. After a short silence, he continued, “There are some matters I’ll discuss with Daoist Master Xu. If he’s willing to inform the two of you, then if a crisis ever arises in the future, I hope I can trouble you to lend a hand… Honestly, we can’t offer you any better compensation. There isn’t much people like you cultivators actually need.”
That counted as a concession. Captain Wu could not say it explicitly, but if anything truly required their help, he would contact them through Daoist Master Xu.
“Cultivators who come purely for profit might not necessarily be reliable once there’s real danger, right? Protecting Jiangcheng is everyone’s responsibility. The ones who volunteer are usually the most dependable,” Qin Shu said with a smile. “Captain Wu, don’t worry. We both want what’s best for Jiangcheng. When it’s time to put in some effort, we definitely won’t hold back.”
Those words visibly relaxed Captain Wu a little. He was not some inflexible stickler for rules, but when problems involved “supernatural” incidents, ordinary people without power had to maintain strict procedures if they wanted long-term stability.
If one of his subordinates bent the rules, that was manageable. He could stand behind them and clean up the mess. But if he started violating procedure himself, there would be a first time, then a second, then a third. Eventually everything would truly fall apart, and there would be no way to fix it.
The rest of their conversation went fairly pleasantly. Second Squad also took responsibility for Xing Yong’s ongoing care.
The only minor dispute concerned the ICU fees Qin Shu had paid in advance. The moment Captain Wu saw that Qin Shu had settled the bill, he refused to accept it under any circumstances. He practically held the two of them hostage until Qin Shu finally gave him his bank-account number.
So they argued back and forth for another while. Captain Wu even forcibly stuffed the remaining grilled meat into Qin Shu’s bag before finally giving up.
By the time Qin Shu and Pei Zhao returned home, it was already fairly late.
The white dragon, who usually stayed out all night, had obediently returned ahead of them. He had shrunk his enormous body several times over and lay quietly across Qin Shu’s roof, looking less like a dragon and more like a gigantic snow-white python.
Naturally, he was in a terrible mood. He silently turned his back on the two of them, swishing his tail from side to side and bothering Yuanbao and the eyeball, which were sleeping on the front porch.
The quiet night wrapped Jiangcheng in darkness, revealing a deceptive peace beneath which hidden currents churned.
Their house really had turned into a Pokémon breeding center. Only Coalball was still wandering around Jiangcheng No. 2 High School on his own. Qin Shu suddenly found it a little funny. Honestly, this arrangement was not bad. At the very least, the security level of their residential complex had definitely reached the nationwide maximum.
He peeled the grilled skewers out of the foil, put them in the oven to reheat, and poured two glasses of cola into the mugs they had bought that day.
“What an incredibly full day…”
They had gathered too much information and had too many things to discuss. For the moment, Qin Shu became too lazy to move. He pulled Pei Zhao back onto the sofa with him and started eating the butter cookies the cake shop had given them.
“I refused Captain Wu because I was considering the matter involving your parents.”
Pei Zhao did not have much of an appetite. He merely took a few sips of cola before getting down to business and explaining seriously, “Your parents’ identities are… somewhat complicated. Especially your father.”
Qin Shu immediately became interested. “Right. That guy’s always been mysterious. When I was little, he was around fairly often, then at some point he just disappeared. You could never find him, his phone never had signal, and somehow he was even busier than my mom.”
There had actually been a period when Qin Shu was convinced his dad had died. He had even secretly cried about it several times in the middle of the night. He was simply too embarrassed to tell Pei Zhao.
“They adopted you, but they are not your biological parents. You probably already guessed that much,” Pei Zhao said after a pause. “The reason their work keeps them so busy is also connected to your fate. You are destined to have weak familial ties, and that influence can quietly affect ordinary people without the power to resist it.”
“Weak familial ties,” Qin Shu repeated softly. “Does a Dao companion count as family?”
Pei Zhao froze. After a brief silence, he said, “…Technically, yes. The path between us has certainly had more than its share of twists. In the previous two lives, we never reached a complete ending. If one wanted to describe our bond as shallow, it would not be entirely unreasonable.”
“No way. This life has to work out. I really don’t believe in that whole ‘destined to be this way’ business,” Qin Shu said, frowning slightly as he began presenting evidence. “Right now I have you, I have close friends, and my parents treat me really well. Even if I rarely see them, our relationship is good.”
“Mm. In this life, you were born inside a human body and raised beneath a human roof. That has indeed reduced the influence of your fate considerably. In a sense, you slipped past Heaven’s notice… But precisely because of that, we cannot allow too many humans to discover that there is something suspicious about your origins.”
“So humans can’t find out… I get it. Oh, right, Zhaozhao. How did my parents adopt me in the first place? And who actually gave birth to me?”
“You were born through the creative power of Heaven and Earth. Nobody gave birth to you. If you insist on putting it that way, then Heaven and Earth are your biological parents.”
“…Huh?”
“The reason you can pass through several reincarnations without your fundamental fate changing is that the underworld cannot truly take you in. Qin Shu, you may have died before, but you never actually managed to stay dead. At most, you become a mass of scattered soul remnants dispersed through Heaven and Earth, then slowly form a physical existence again through the world’s creative power.”
“H-Huh?!”
Pei Zhao pinched his stunned face, his tone becoming more serious. “But that does not mean you are allowed to act recklessly or stop valuing your life. Do you understand? The creative power of Heaven and Earth also has limits. It rises and falls with the fortunes of the world.”
“Mmph, mm!” Qin Shu answered firmly despite having his cheeks squeezed.
Pei Zhao was still unsatisfied. He narrowed his golden eyes and continued threatening him in a low voice. “If you died now, there is absolutely no chance you could immediately be born again. This world has holes in it, Qin Shu. There is no spare power available to nourish you. If chaos continues indefinitely, you can wait thousands or tens of thousands of years before going into some ghost domain to find my corpse.”
“Ptui, ptui, ptui! Pei Zhao, don’t say something that unlucky!” Qin Shu grabbed Pei Zhao’s wrist in return, squeezing hard. “Scare me if you want, but you’re not allowed to use yourself to scare me.”
“As long as you understand how serious the consequences are. I’m only worried the threat won’t be strong enough.” Pei Zhao remained completely unruffled and continued staring at him. “Qin Shu. Have you remembered this clearly?”
Qin Shu nodded solemnly. “Clearly. I absolutely will not die. Pei Zhao, neither will you.”
At last, Pei Zhao was satisfied. Goal achieved, he immediately seemed to become another person. Every trace of the intimidating chill in his golden eyes vanished.
His gaze drifted down toward his own reddened wrist, still trapped in Qin Shu’s hand. He moved it experimentally and failed to pull free.
So Pei Zhao softened again, even sounding faintly aggrieved. “…Loosen your grip. You’re hurting me.”
Qin Shu’s breath caught. He reluctantly let go. “You really have me completely wrapped around your finger.”
Pei Zhao’s lips curved. He shifted around inside Qin Shu’s arms until he found a comfortable position, lazily narrowing his eyes as he continued, “There is one more important thing. Your father is a narcotics police officer working undercover in a border city fairly close to Yun City. That is also one reason I rejected Captain Wu.”
“…So that’s what he’s doing. Does my mom know?”
“She knows, but aside from her and his direct contact officer, no one else is allowed to know the truth. The secrecy requirements are extremely strict. If you voluntarily report that you possess supernatural abilities, you’ll undergo a higher-level background investigation. Once they start following every thread and eventually reach your father, what do you think they’ll find?”
“That my dad is some dangerous figure wandering around the border whose whereabouts are suspicious?” Qin Shu raised a brow.
Pei Zhao nodded. “Exactly. Other people would only see him as a possible serious criminal. And now that you’re legally an adult, you would naturally become a possible risk factor too. If you were placed under strict surveillance, many things would become inconvenient.”
Qin Shu fell into thought and roughly understood the complexity of his family situation. But in reality, he discovered that he was not particularly surprised.
The more he thought about it, the more obvious it became. His dad was not a cultivator. He was clearly alive, yet nobody could find him and they could barely contact him for years. Meanwhile, his wife had never seemed worried, and the family somehow still had plenty of money…
Either his father was doing something extremely dangerous and highly classified, or he was involved in a major criminal organization. Those were basically the only explanations.
And the truth was much, much better than the nightmares Qin Shu had imagined as a child.
“So when you put it that way, I guess my whole family is pretty honorable. We’re all contributing to world peace,” Qin Shu said thoughtfully. “It’s just complicated enough that explaining it to other people would take forever.”
“So keeping a low profile will save a great deal of unnecessary trouble. If you truly need someone to speak publicly, let Xu Zi Ru do it. He is naturally greedy for money and already better suited to that sort of thing.”
Let Daoist Master Xu stand at the front and become the obvious target… Considering the reputation he had maintained in Jiangcheng for so many years, that arrangement genuinely made more sense.
By the time they finished discussing the evening’s little incident, Qin Shu had also conveniently eaten all the grilled skewers they had brought home. Neither wasted any more time chatting. After washing up, they went straight to the bedroom, leaned comfortably against the headboard, and returned to the original purpose of their outing that day.
The former site of Morning Star Elementary School, now occupied by New Star Arena, which had only been built a few years ago.
The arena’s name alone looked insanely suspicious. It was barely even trying to hide anything, practically writing the words I HAVE A PROBLEM across its forehead.
The problem was that nothing had happened at the arena since it was built. Instead, the people who had suffered were the old residents who received huge compensation payments when the area was demolished years earlier.
“Morning Star Elementary School actually offered very good basic education back then. The location was excellent too. After graduating, students could be admitted directly into one of the nearby key middle schools…”
Qin Shu changed his approach. Instead of searching directly for Morning Star Elementary School like before, he looked for property-sale and rental posts from several years ago, narrowing the area to Zhongshan South Road.
As expected, the search results were far richer this time and were no longer inexplicably hidden. Many comment sections mentioned Morning Star Elementary School, filled with advertisements and discussions among parents, especially praise for its excellent advancement prospects.
After carefully studying the comments, Qin Shu suddenly understood and turned the computer screen toward Pei Zhao.
“I know why nobody discusses Morning Star Elementary School online! The location was too good. They used school advancement rates to stimulate property purchases… Most of the old homes nearby changed hands long ago. Parents bought practically all of them as school-district housing. So when redevelopment compensation was paid later, the money went to those parents instead!”
“So nearly all of them died. The ones who didn’t die went mad, and entire families quietly suffered together… Naturally, there would be no one left to talk about Morning Star Elementary School.” Pei Zhao frowned slightly.
This could not possibly be coincidence. Someone had deliberately designed it in advance.
“A sacrifice,” Qin Shu said quietly. “Killing that many people might not have been only about silencing them. I suspect there was some sort of sacrificial ritual, something used to summon something or obtain something… That victim who went insane and was later sent away to become a nun, is she at St. Maria Cathedral?”
Pei Zhao agreed with his reasoning and remembered their experiences at the cathedral very clearly. It had been an interesting meal. For once, he had eaten something thoroughly… Western.
He picked up Qin Shu’s phone and scrolled through the endless unread messages on WeChat until he finally found Father William, whom they had not contacted in quite some time. “I think we’ve met her before. Let’s ask the priest first.”
“I remember now. She was the nun beside the cathedral cemetery, the one who immediately said Liu Yang Yang was going to die. No wonder she was the only person who survived. I’m guessing she already had some ability of her own.”
Qin Shu let Pei Zhao contact the priest while he searched online for information about the owner of the arena. Then his movements stopped abruptly, and he stared at the screen in disbelief.
“…Zuo Zhe,” Qin Shu repeated quietly. “His name is Zuo Zhe. Is this the same Zuo Zhe I know?”
“Mm?” Pei Zhao tilted his head toward the computer, looking somewhat surprised himself. “You already read A Soul Cultivator’s Notes on Killing?”
“I finished it in one sitting. It left a very deep impression.” Qin Shu opened the identification photo of the Zuo Zhe he had found online and enlarged it. “Zhaozhao, have you ever seen this face?”
“I never met Zuo Zhe himself. I passed that text to you so you could study his cultivation experience and killing techniques… His ideas were extreme and his personality excessively violent. Some people might be led astray by him, but the flaws do not erase the merits. It remains an extremely valuable work.”
Pei Zhao lowered his eyes, recalling the distant past. After a moment, he said, “Perhaps I vaguely sensed that Notes on Killing would be useful to you in the future.”
“Zhaozhao, that’s incredible! How could the timing be this perfect? Did you deliberately give Notes on Killing to me back then?” Qin Shu was thoroughly shocked.
From Qin Shu’s perspective, receiving that autobiography had happened barely two days ago. But for Pei Zhao, that decision had been made thousands of years earlier while he was imprisoned inside Fengdu Prison.
If Qin Shu had not read the autobiography in time, and if the timing had not been this precise, there would have been absolutely no way for him to connect the two so quickly.
Pei Zhao thought for a moment but seemed uncertain. “My intuition was extremely strong then. Sometimes I could glimpse things related to the future without deliberately trying, so I would instinctively make certain preparations… Unfortunately, things are different now. I can see far less than I used to. Investigating anything has become very slow.”
“Why are things different now?” Qin Shu frowned, instantly changing focus. “Zhaozhao, I think you’re stronger now than you were before…”
It was a small test.
Qin Shu still understood very little about the cultivation system, but his perception had never been weak. Lord Zhaoyuan’s power and Pei Zhao’s power certainly contained similarities that felt vaguely familiar, yet there were also enormous differences between them.
Shen dragons excelled at transformation and disguise, with illusion as their primary method of attack. Pei Zhao, however, clearly did not use such things very often. He seemed to rely on them mainly to hide his identity and prevent other people from probing him, though he had indeed mastered those arts to perfection.
But Pei Zhao’s true offensive power… Qin Shu had been fortunate enough to witness it several times, both from a distance and up close. It was absolutely not part of the dragon race’s normal system of power.
That cold, dark, dim chaos was not something an ordinary dragon could release. It was some even more indescribable horror, something capable of swallowing sunlight itself, bizarre and dazzling… Qin Shu liked the heart-stopping sense of danger it produced, so the impression had remained extremely vivid.
Judging purely from the nature and level of their power, Pei Zhao was definitely stronger than Lord Zhaoyuan. Logically, that made perfect sense as well. Thousands of years had passed. How could his cultivation possibly have remained completely stagnant?
Qin Shu had never even considered the possibility that Pei Zhao might be weaker.
After a brief silence, Pei Zhao confirmed his guess. “I am indeed stronger. But some powers I have already lost can never be recovered.”
Qin Shu could faintly sense Pei Zhao’s sadness. It was an emotion Pei Zhao almost never showed.
Without hesitation, Qin Shu gently took his hand and pulled Pei Zhao into his arms. “Can you tell me why? If you can’t, that’s fine too.”
“I am no longer… a pure shen dragon,” Pei Zhao said softly. “I think I stopped truly counting as a dragon long ago. And now, none of the things I am planning are for their sake anymore.”
“Mm. I already knew that much even without you saying it.” Qin Shu paused, then lowered his voice. “Pei Zhao, as long as I can still see you and touch you, nothing else matters. Even if you were a cockroach, I’d still like you.”
Pei Zhao: “…”
“Seriously. Don’t doubt me. I’m willing to become the only cockroach lover in the entire world. I’d be proud of it.” Qin Shu spoke with absolute conviction, somehow even sounding passionately heroic.
Pei Zhao finally laughed and poked the soft flesh at his waist. “All right. Stop talking nonsense.”
“Hiss! Zhaozhao, you hit me! This is domestic violence!” Qin Shu flinched from the tickle and immediately retaliated.
The two fooled around for a while. In the end, the investigation they had promised to finish never quite got finished. Instead, they started kissing first.
Kissing was an extraordinarily magical thing. Anxiety and unease, irritation and exhaustion, the endless noisy thoughts chattering inside the mind, all of them gradually became covered and replaced by burning warmth until nothing remained in the brain except a quiet blankness.
Of course, that pure tranquility was something only Pei Zhao got to enjoy. Qin Shu struggled off to take another shower.
At first Pei Zhao did not understand why. Only after they turned out the lights and prepared to sleep did realization suddenly strike.
He rolled over inside Qin Shu’s warm embrace. A faint, subtle gleam stirred in his golden eyes as he watched Qin Shu’s confused expression and moved a little closer.
“Qin Shu, if you ever want to, I’m willing.”
“…Huh?”