Chapter 944: Chapter 944: Shadow?
“Your Majesty, may I ask about my assignment?”
Taville stood before me with a soldier’s upright posture, but there was unease on her face, and her voice lacked its usual confidence and vigor. It was surprising to see this ever-energetic researcher looking so embarrassed. I was a bit stunned at first, then I recalled that during the task assignments following the recent incident, Sandora had allocated each part of the work down to specific individuals, yet Taville was left without an assignment, and some of the tasks meant for her research department were given to other groups instead.
Well, no wonder the spectacled girl in front of me seemed so uneasy: she probably thought this was a punishment for her messing things up, and naturally, she’d feel significant pressure.
Of course, as a Xyrin Apostle, Taville wouldn’t complain about any punishment imposed on her; orders from higher beings are executed with absolute compliance—that’s the mission of a Xyrin Apostle. However, as an emotional “person”, Taville inevitably felt dejected, especially since this “punishment” involved suspending her research projects. For a scientist, nothing could be more dreadful. Even though Taville’s unease was quite understandable, it was somewhat different compared to a typical Xyrin Apostle, in short, she was more humanized. This was because Taville was considered part of the new generation of Apostles. Even though she arrived on Earth with Pandora and was one of the first generation apostles born during the Old Empire, her independent growth took place after the establishment of the New Empire, thus Taville learned to develop richer personal emotions through interactions with our family. I personally think this is a pretty good development.
“You should just take a break for now.”
I wasn’t sure if Sandora really intended to “punish” Taville, but I knew she wasn’t actually angry at Taville for her mistake this time. As someone intimately close to Sandora, I had a good understanding of my lover’s emotional shifts. Although analyzing the current situation revealed that Taville had a significant role in the deep-diving ship’s wreckage, as previously mentioned, on such uncertain projects, no one can ensure perfection, hence Sandora probably had no intent to blame Taville. Instead, she might have wanted to use this opportunity to give Taville a break, to adjust her burdens—and there’s also a fifty percent possibility that dinner time is approaching, and our Queen, who links her thinking to her stomach, was simply ruled by hunger and casually handed this message before leaving…
Based on the degree of telepathy I share with Sandora, I feel this possibility is quite high?
“I only wish to…” Taville said quickly, but I waved my hand before she could finish: “I understand your point, don’t worry, no one will force you to leave the research post, but you really need a break. You say the deep-diving ship’s accident was due to your carelessness, but honestly, no one in research can avoid mistakes—you just happened to make a significantly impactful one, I think you’re too stressed. Right now, giving you a few days to rest would be far more beneficial than having you hurriedly handle aftermath tasks. Don’t get excited yet, consider this: how many mass projections have you activated in the past month?”
Taville opened her mouth and revealed a number: “One hundred and twenty-five, with thirty-seven ongoing research projects simultaneously…”
Now it was my turn to be dumbfounded: I casually asked, not expecting Taville to say something so surprising! Wow, does she have a multi-core brain…
“Well, you could basically form a small army yourself, thirty-seven research projects, aren’t you trying to exhaust yourself?”
“I’m a special Apostle Tribe member, with a great advantage in parallel data processing.”
“But there’s still a limit,” I resisted giving a karate chop to this mature woman’s head—which I usually used to discipline a bunch of little girls at home, but it wasn’t suitable for a sophisticated woman with a class leader vibe like Taville, “Sicaro claims to be unbeatable by city management yet Ling Meng managed to trap him at the alley three times in a row? Human capabilities are limited—those who aren’t human have limits too.”
Initially blabbering nonsense, Taville found herself speechless after a long pause because normal logical people usually can’t keep up with my leaps—Qianqian being the exception, as she’s capable of jumping faster than this.
“Go rest for a while, it’s not a punishment nor a dissatisfaction with your work,” I said earnestly, patting Taville’s shoulder, feeling like a town enterprise leader encouraging an employee, “Consider it a holiday from the organization. Ever since I met you, I’ve never seen you take off that white coat. Now, here’s a seven-day holiday for you; go enjoy some personal entertainment, maybe buy a few nice clothes, otherwise, I might think your coat is a system-bound skin…”
Taville: “Uh… oh, if that’s your order.”
Although she still looked a bit unwilling, at least the unease and depression had faded; how delightful.
After returning from Shadow City, the family was indeed preparing dinner. Anwina, who stayed behind, had already set up a lavish feast, organic, inorganic, and suspicious compounds all spread out in an array, marked distinctly for “Mortal Dining Area” and “Sandora Dining Area” based on diners, in two colors of plates. When I arrived, Big Sister was repeatedly grabbing Little Baobao off the table: the little girl was in a curious mode, biting everything she saw including Dingdang, who was parallelly running around with a piece of green vegetable —such a nostalgic scene.
“I gave Taville a holiday.”
Seeing Sandora’s gaze drift towards me, I casually mentioned it, as she probably intended to ask that.
“Mm, it’s good for her. Many research projects under her had made substantial progress recently, but they’ve approached her limit.”
“Workaholics are bound to have problems sooner or later,” Miss Lin sighed earnestly, “I used to have a colleague who was a workaholic, often out on assignments for a month or two without coming home.”
Despite guessing what Lin Xue wanted to say, I cooperatively asked: “And then? Did something happen?”
“Later, his wife chased him to Dubai from thousands of miles away, catching him red-handed with his mistress—his wife was also with the organization, specializing in intelligence…”
The moral of the story is to never expect anything profound from Miss Lin’s stories—funny how I was just looking forward to her anecdote a moment ago.
After dinner, it was still pouring rain outside. Usually, the summer days are long and it should still be bright outside at this hour, yet the heavy rain turned it gloomy, like nighttime, with only a faint yellow glow on the horizon. Such heavy rain made heading out for a post-dinner walk impossible, so I continued watching the rain from the window.
Qianqian sidled up beside me, mumbling, “It’s so boring at home, I want to go out and play.”
“What’s the fun in going out in such a downpour, if you’re bored, take a stroll in Shadow City instead, they just switched to a seven-day Sunshine Autumn Theme Pack, should be enough for you.”
“Shadow City is different from outside, it’s not lively,” Qianqian’s sole criterion for life’s pleasure is liveliness, “Or I could activate the Shield and circle the city’s water system? Always wanted to do that since childhood—running around outside in the rain and all that.”
I considered stopping her, but when I turned, Qianqian was already gone: that girl, what terrifying speed, once she makes up her mind, she just goes for it!
However, various random and impulsive acts of Qianqian had long become part of daily life at home, beyond a mere sigh, there wasn’t much else to do, so I just glanced at the gloomy sky and figured it might be reasonable. I was just about to stop her when I realized she was already gone: that girl never waits…
Her reminiscing about dashing in the rain sparked some memories in me as well from when we were young and lived in a neighborhood full of old houses. Just like she said—indeed, back in those days, our neighborhood’s roads were famously bad, and a day snowy or rainy was like liberation day for the children of our whole lane. We’d race through the rain, cover ourselves with plastic sheets and run wildly, splash in the big water puddles on the fields, imagining we were wading in the South Pacific, fantasizing distances between the old town’s ditches and the flood channels of the entire city, but nothing could stop two children with vibrant imagination, right?
Years have gone by, and now here I am, turned into someone who sits at the doorstep sipping tea from a tiny kettle and watching rain pour from the eaves…
“Though the weather’s awful, it’s nice to sit and feel the breeze, don’t you think?” Lin Xue sat beside me, watching the curtain of rain beyond the eaves.
The big house at home, despite appearing quite odd due to multiple renovations, not quite a warehouse or a villa, is at least well-equipped as a mid- to high-end residence. It includes a particularly large open porch at the front door. The wide eaves block the falling rain, making the doorway a great place to enjoy the rain. Lin Xue and I sat side by side on the dry ground at the entrance, one sipping tea noisily and the other peeling chestnuts, resembling a rich landlord with his wife.
“You can be quite artsy at times?” Hearing Lin Xue’s romantic sigh about the rain, I tilted my head and blew warm air into Miss Lin’s ear. “This doesn’t sound like something my fiery mistress would say.”
“Stop causing trouble, this Miss Lin has been rolling through noble education before fifteen. Just because I’m usually a bit wild doesn’t mean I can’t be graceful. Don’t ruin the mood. It’s rare for me to keep you, this romantic blockhead, company outside in the cool breeze.”
Being able to describe the etiquette lessons of a noble lady as rolling through the mud and dirt, I had little hope for Miss Lin’s gracefulness. Especially when she said this while still fighting with me over chestnut kernels.
“It’s really so relaxing here, much more comfortable than at home,” Lin Xue shifted slightly, naturally leaning against my shoulder. “There’s a whole set of rules at home, eyes watching you everywhere, while being with you dum-dum, it’s like whatever you do doesn’t matter. Haha, tell me, isn’t it hilarious that your royal lifestyle isn’t as strict as the rules of one rustic landlord family like mine? I really don’t know how those old masters can have so many complicated rules.”
I was quite surprised, “You really think of your family as a rustic landlord?”
“Of course! The Orochi were sent off for correctional education, so who on Earth isn’t a rustic landlord.”
I thought for a moment, “But weren’t the Orochi captured by the Star Domain folks?”
Lin Xue turned, bumping the back of her head against my cheek, continuing to complain about the tediousness of life at home and the myriad of ridiculous rules.
Miss Lin is someone who really dislikes the stifling old customs at home. In her words, every family whose assets surpass those of the local township entrepreneurs is a cage. The more money you have, the tighter the cage; the more history, the smaller the cage. When it comes to a family with a hundred-year history and billions of fortunes, basically even if you fart, there would be a dozen or so people analyzing its composition behind you. Not to mention the direct family members causing trouble outside all the time, running wildly with men of dubious background, which would drive the elders mad. Miss Lin grew up under such strict family discipline, and before she was thirteen, even going out for soy sauce had half a reinforced company in plainclothes following her: though I felt she was exaggerating, it is undeniable that there are many rules in big families.
If it weren’t for her special talent making her a leader in the Superpower Team, and the behind-the-scenes boss of the Superpower Team being her own grandfather, Miss Lin might still be trapped in that cage now.
“Probably become some kind of socialite, a legendary golden flower vase.”
Lin Xue stacked chestnut shells on the ground, by now almost ten centimeters high, muttering softly, “Just thinking about it chills me—being surrounded and trained on ballroom dances and social etiquette, you know, just one kind of red wine has four bloody ways to open it. It nearly killed me. Luckily, I escaped thanks to my exceptional talent.”
Listening to Miss Lin’s bizarre childhood story, I found it incredible. I don’t know any wine that has four ways to open it, but I do know that the Light Goddess at home doesn’t care what kind of wine it is; she just bites the cap off with her teeth. That shows how ridiculous those etiquettes were.
“That’s why it’s better here,” Lin Xue commented sincerely, “Sometimes I think even if someone came to demolish your house, you’d greet them with a smile. Where does this good temper come from?”
I thought for a moment, “Are you subtly reminding me that this house has been demolished several times already?”
Moreover, if I recall correctly, the first demolition was by one of this fellow’s good friends.
While I was idly chatting with Miss Lin, I noticed a subtle change in the time-space around us. This sensation was very delicate, difficult to put into words, and most people probably wouldn’t notice it: it felt like a frame suddenly went missing from the events around you, a moment too brief to describe got cut, then reconnected.
This feeling wasn’t unfamiliar: Qianqian was back.
Using time acceleration to travel was a routine skill for Qianqian, sometimes she’d use this move to zip around the house. But in reality, that’s only how it seems to people in normal space-time; in her view, she still walks through the distances slowly in real-time. Up till now, I never understood why Qianqian used time acceleration to run back and forth when space transmission was more convenient.
“Done fooling around outside for a few minutes and finally found it boring?”
I turned to see a short-haired girl grinning mischievously, trying to startle me. Then I was surprised to see what was in her hand, “Ahem, what are you holding there?”
“This?” Qianqian scratched her head, shaking the string in her hand, “It should be Buddha beads. Just now, a weird uncle passing by the moat tossed them to me.”
I was puzzled, “…Why?”
I felt there was another inexplicable phenomenon about Qianqian. Why did an uncle passing by throw Buddha beads over… No, wait, why at such a dark, torrential downpour, would there be an uncle by the moat, and decisively passing by there?
At this point, Miss Lin suddenly cleared things up: “The Ghost Festival with a torrential downpour, standing by the moat, a white shadow with a blue glow on their head floating toward you, wouldn’t you throw something over? Qianqian, you forgot to turn on your invisibility, didn’t you?”
I was shocked, thinking I really shouldn’t have let Qianqian go out alone…
But another matter quickly interrupted my concern over this: the miss suddenly frowned while covering her eyes, letting out a “woo” sound.
“What’s wrong?”
I hurriedly supported Lin Xue, feeling a wave of anxiety.
“An extremely…bad feeling, a major crisis in life!”
Instantly, I felt the hair on my face standing up. Lin Banxian never jokes around, her alarm caused even Qianqian to rush inside on her toes, but before we could gather everyone for a crisis meeting, the miss waved her hand: “Don’t…don’t panic, it’s nothing to do with you guys, it’s about me! Major crisis, a huge life crisis is coming! I seem to be in for big trouble!”
“Hey, don’t scare me,” I grabbed the miss’s arm, while reaching out to feel her forehead, “Didn’t catch a chill, did you?”
“Your sister caught a chill! I’m serious!” Lin Xue slapped my paw away, “There’s something very, very troublesome about to happen, but it has nothing to do with the Empire or anything. Even I can’t see what it is this time. All I can be certain of is that my life will face a major problem, and you, this blockhead, are involved too!” (To be continued. If you enjoy this work, feel free to visit Qidian () to vote for recommendations and monthly tickets. Your support is my greatest motivation.)