Chapter Fourteen: The Final Night

Gazing at the luxuriously decorated living room, Nangong Yuchen was in no mood to appreciate it. Instead, he simply asked Angel, "Which room am I sleeping in?"

"The room on the left, near the balcony, was where Kexin stayed for the past few days. You can sleep in there for now!" Angel paused slightly before adding, "As for Kexin, she'll share a room with me!"

Dragging his exhausted head and body, Nangong Yuchen walked toward the left room. Right now, all he wanted was a good, long sleep.

Angel quickly stopped him, wrinkling her nose as she sniffed the stench of sweat all over him, and said with a hint of dissatisfaction, "Go take a shower!"

"Fine!" Knowing he was filthy after fighting for the better part of the day, Nangong Yuchen had no choice but to head toward the bathroom in the direction Angel pointed.

As he reached the door and raised his hand to pull it open, the door was pushed outward from the inside. A tall woman with a sweet face, wrapped in a bath towel, stepped out.

Taking in the woman's appearance, Nangong Yuchen froze in shock and blurted out, "Who are you?"

Mulin Bershir also stopped in her tracks, stunned. "Nangong Yuchen? Why are you here?"

Nangong Yuchen took two steps back, clearing the doorway, turned to Angel, and asked in astonishment, "Angel, what is this..."

"Sorry, I forgot to mention it on the way here. This is my cousin, Mulin! She lives here with me too!" Angel walked over and explained with an awkward smile.

"Uh..." Nangong Yuchen had never expected that Angel, who always acted so solitary and mysterious, actually had a cousin. He turned his gaze toward Nangong Kexin, as if asking whether she had known about this.

Nangong Kexin nodded. When she first arrived here, she had been just as shocked as Nangong Yuchen, but she had gotten used to it over time.

*Cousin?* Looking at the woman before him, Nangong Yuchen felt a flicker of suspicion. Was she, like Angel, from that distant place?

And what kind of place was that distant place, the one he was destined to go to? What was he expected to do there?

Just as Nangong Yuchen stood there in a daze, Mulin Bershir smiled and said, "Since Qi'er let you stay here, you can rest easy and stay for the time being. But there's only one guy here... don't go having any wicked ideas at night, or I'll throw you off the eleventh floor!"

Her voice was magnetic and gentle, but the final words carried a heavy, unmistakable threat!

Nangong Yuchen gave a speechless shake of his head, entered the bathroom, and locked the door behind him. *Wicked ideas?* With his heart weighed down by so much right now, how could any impure thoughts possibly arise?

Once he had stripped off all his clothes and placed them on the rack, he noticed that hanging right there were various pairs of women's underwear and undergarments in all sorts of colors and styles...

"Sigh!" This left him utterly speechless. With dark lines tracing his forehead, he turned on the faucet and began to wash away the grime...

---

Twenty minutes later, Nangong Yuchen emerged from the bathroom. After briefly greeting the three women sitting in the living room, he went straight to his room.

"Angel, you go take a shower first, I'll go later!" Nangong Kexin said, a look of deep worry on her face as she walked toward Nangong Yuchen's room.

Inside the room, Nangong Yuchen had just lain down when he heard someone knock. With no other choice, he got up, slipped his shoes back on, and opened the door.

"Kexin?" Seeing his older sister standing outside, looking haggard and weighed down with worry, Nangong Yuchen asked anxiously, "What's wrong, Kexin?"

"...Yuchen!" Nangong Kexin squeezed past him into the room, pulled the door shut behind her, and threw herself directly into Nangong Yuchen's arms, her voice trembling. "Yuchen, I'm worried about Mom and Dad..."

Her voice broke into sobs as she continued, "The morning we were going to go see Mom and Dad, I... I actually dreamed that Mom and Dad were buried beneath the prison building... Sob..."

Seeing the tears brimming in his sister's eyes, Nangong Yuchen felt a pang of heartache. He knew that everything that had happened today had terrified Kexin, making her fear that their parents might be dragged into disaster as well. In truth, wasn't he worrying about the exact same thing? But right now, all he could do was gently wipe the tears from his sister's face and comfort her. "Mom and Dad will be released tomorrow. Once they're out, we'll protect them, and nothing will happen. Besides, didn't Principal Yang say just a while ago that they'll be safely released by tomorrow afternoon?"

After Nangong Yuchen comforted her for a long while, Nangong Kexin finally stopped crying. Raising her head with a pitiful look, she asked, "Really?"

"Yeah!" Nangong Yuchen wasn't lying to her; Yang Long had indeed told him this before gathering them all together.

A little while later, Angel called out from the hallway for Nangong Kexin to take her shower, and Kexin finally left Nangong Yuchen's room.

Watching his sister depart, Nangong Yuchen closed the door and lay back down on the bed.

Yet, after the episode with Nangong Kexin, all sleep had completely vanished from his eyes. His mind was flooded with everything that had happened over the past two days.

Tossing and turning, he suddenly remembered the night he transformed into a demon—the middle-aged man sent by Lu Shijie to hunt him down had continuously interrogated Cheng Tianyou about the spacetime ring. At the time, because he was turning into a monster, his mind had been in chaos and he had pushed the matter to the back of his mind. Recalling it now, he sat up in bed, overcome with suspicion.

"The spacetime ring?" Nangong Yuchen hurriedly grabbed his clothes and pulled the spacetime ring he had kept closely concealed from the zippered pocket!

"It was this spacetime ring that nearly cost both Kexin and me our lives, and... because of it, Mufeng died?" As he recalled the middle-aged man's words from back then— *'Did you really think that even if Mufeng died without saying a word, we wouldn't be able to figure out that the spacetime ring was in your hands?'*—a deep wave of remorse surged within him. That brawny man truly had never exposed him, yet because of him...

"Hah! The Lu family, Lu Shijie must die!" Nangong Yuchen stared with murderous intent at the spacetime ring pinched between his fingers, the killing intent in his eyes lingering for a long time.

Before breaking through to the First Tier, his physical stats hadn't reached 100, making it impossible for him to open the spacetime ring. But now, his consciousness easily invaded its interior.

"This is... what?" Nangong Yuchen discovered that inside the three-meter-wide volumetric space, apart from a deep blue energy sphere floating quietly in the center, there were no other items at all. Out of curiosity, he reached in and pulled it out.

The moment it touched his hand, he was utterly shaken by the terrifying energy contained within the deep blue energy sphere! His lips trembled involuntarily, and he muttered dazedly, "What... what on earth is this..."

---

Night. The Lu family villa.

"Slap!"

In the grand hall, Lu Bolong struck Lu Shijie across the face with a fierce backhand, roaring in fury, "It's been a whole day! Where are the Ling brothers? How can four First-Tier mecha warriors let a mere brat slip through their fingers? Useless! Trash!"

Glaring at his son, who kept his head bowed in silence, Lu Bolong continued his angry tirade, bitterly disappointed in him. "Do you have any idea how difficult it is to cultivate a mecha warrior? In the simplest of missions, two of them actually died! Are you trying to drive me to an early grave? Huh?!"

Then, remembering the message he had received from Nangong Yuchen earlier today, his anger flared even higher. He delivered another heavy slap to Lu Shijie's other cheek, gritting his teeth as he snarled, "Not only did you fail to kill him, you didn't bring back the spacetime ring, and on top of that, you let that brat break through to the First Tier! Did I send you out there to help him level up, huh?! Do you have any idea what it means to be a triple-path cultivator? Do you know how terrifying a triple-path cultivator is, huh?!"

Just as Lu Bolong raised his hand to strike him again, the butler standing nearby couldn't help but plead for Lu Shijie. That finally brought Lu Bolong back to the pressing matters at hand, and he bellowed, "Get lost! Don't you dare step a single foot outside this villa for the next two days, or I'll break your legs!"

Watching his son retreat with a face full of bitter resentment, Lu Bolong shifted his tone and questioned the butler, "What's going on today? Didn't you say there were a hundred mutated beasts in Districts C and D? Why did so many more suddenly show up, to the point that even Mela and Heide had to be deployed?"

"Family Head, I'm not entirely clear on that myself, but Lady Marian said she still has over a hundred mutated beasts at her disposal," the butler replied.

"Hah! Good enough then. Go notify Lady Marian later and tell her to deploy fifty mutated beasts each to Qinghu Town and Luoting Town tomorrow. I want to force the military inside the Tech City to scatter completely!" Lu Bolong said with a dark expression.

"Understood!"

"And tomorrow, I'm hoping to borrow Lady Marian's Third-Tier strength," Lu Bolong added.

The butler nodded, taking it all in. Once all his instructions were given, the butler asked with a worried expression, "Family Head, Shangguan Yufeng has asked us and the Mu family to send mecha warriors to reinforce Districts C and/or D, but we haven't sent a single soldier. Won't that..."

"Won't what? Anyway, as long as the energy barrier is shattered tomorrow, our mission will be accomplished. When the mutated beast army strikes then, the entire Ruxia City will be mine! Do I still need to fear a mere Shangguan Yufeng?" Lu Bolong said with a ferocious grin.

"But just in case... we fail?" the butler persisted, still uneasy.

"Failure is impossible!" Lu Bolong snapped, irritation flaring up. Just as he was about to blow his top, he met the butler's fiercely loyal gaze and forced himself to hold back. As his anger slowly subsided, he spoke in a low voice, "...You stay at the villa tomorrow. If the energy barrier of Ruxia City hasn't been shattered by four o'clock tomorrow afternoon, or if I... if I don't come back, take Madam, Shijie, and Shiyu, and flee..."