The Smile
After signing the lease and handing over the rent, Lu Yuan pocketed the keycard to their new home.
A year in the slum. Now, truly and finally, that chapter of his life was over.
He looked at Li Qinghe with a smile. "Qinghe-jie, let's grab a quick bite first, then head back to pack. We can move in today."
Li Qinghe blinked. "...That urgent? Today?"
"Of course. The slum isn't exactly safe — the sooner we're out, the better."
She laughed softly. "All right, all right. Whatever you say, Yuan-didi."
Time was short, so they found a nearby home-style restaurant and ate quickly, then headed back to the slum.
By the time they reached the old rental, it was past seven in the evening.
The streets were quieter than usual — even the regular loiterers and some ordinary residents had vanished from the area. Probably because of those two explosions that had recently rattled the district.
Lu Yuan knocked on Li Qinghe's door. "Qinghe-jie, want me to help pack?"
She opened the door with an amused expression. "Yuan-didi, women have *private* things, you know. You really want to help with all of that?"
He peered curiously past her into the room.
She stepped aside with a slight tug at the corner of her mouth, revealing her belongings: a large cardboard box and a single suitcase. Not much — even by a girl's standards.
"I'll carry them," Lu Yuan said.
He walked over and stored both the box and the suitcase directly into his Battle Net space.
Li Qinghe's eyes went wide. "So *this* is the Gene Warrior's personal storage? That's incredible. How convenient."
"Convenient, right? Ready to go?"
His own things took almost no time. Three shirts faded nearly white from washing, an old laptop, worn-out bedding, and a few textbooks — that was everything. The laptop might have fetched two or three hundred Red Maple Coins secondhand. He planned to throw out everything except the textbooks, keeping the laptop only because it still connected to the Battle Net well enough.
*She had been thinking she could at least stay one last night at the old place — no commute needed. But this dear brother of hers was apparently in that much of a hurry. Which meant she'd be making the trip back to the slum tonight regardless.*
Li Qinghe pushed the thought aside and stopped dwelling on it.
They left the rented room. Lu Yuan glanced back at the closed door as they walked away.
A year. Done.
It was past eight by the time they stepped out of the complex, and the streets were empty and cold.
Elsewhere in the slum — in an ordinary residential building — a different kind of night was unfolding.
In a suite on the twentieth floor, a thin man who had been lying asleep suddenly sat up.
His movement woke the woman beside him.
She rubbed her eyes and caught a glimpse of his back as he rose. She got up and followed him out of the bedroom.
She found him crouching at the edge of the living room, prying open a black leather briefcase.
She recognized that briefcase. He had brought it home.
"Darling?" she called softly.
He didn't answer. He looked back at her — and smiled.
The smile was wrong. She couldn't quite name how, but something about it made her skin crawl.
She watched, unease tightening in her chest, as he reached inside and drew out a black metal cylinder. Three colored buttons were set into its surface — red, yellow, and blue.
"Darling, what's wrong?" Her voice dropped lower.
He said nothing. He pressed the buttons one by one: blue, then red, then yellow.
A soft beep. A countdown blinked to life on the surface of the cylinder.
*Now* she understood. Now she finally knew what had been in that briefcase.
Horror flooded across her face.
Before she could move —
**BOOM!!**
A deafening roar. Fire erupted and surged outward, swallowing them both in an instant.
The thin man's face had been completely bloodless — eyes wide with fear, silent tears tracking down from their corners. But even so, the corners of his mouth had been curving slowly, steadily upward, settling into a quiet, restrained smile.
Lu Yuan hailed an autonomous hover-taxi. They got in and rode to Zizhu Community.
Getting out of the car, he looked at Li Qinghe with a grin.
The complex had a solid location — not right next to Jiuhu Mall, but a decent-sized shopping center sat nearby, with plenty of dining options. Not bad at all.
The white android was waiting at the entrance. The moment it saw them arrive, it bowed with practiced grace.
"Welcome home, Master."
The apartment had been cleaned every day since no one was living there yet. Lu Yuan had also asked for an extra sweep before they'd left. He stepped inside, glanced around, and nodded.
"Good work, Jerf."
"It is what I am here for," the robot replied with another bow.
Lu Yuan's room was the master bedroom; Li Qinghe's was the secondary.
He carried her luggage and the new household supplies to her room, asked Jerf to help her get settled, and then returned to his own.
He looked around. Clean. Quiet. Good.
He turned toward Li Qinghe with a grin. "See — with Jerf around, we save ourselves the effort of cleaning entirely. There's that, at least."
Li Qinghe looked around with a measured expression. "Convenient," she admitted. "The rent is just... a lot."
He understood. She had been living in the slum this whole time. Twenty thousand a month was genuinely serious money by those standards.
He thought back to himself at the beginning — fresh from his Awakening, thinking the government's five-thousand Red Maple Coin subsidy was a windfall. He'd come a long way since then.
She would too. He was confident it wouldn't take her long to adjust.
"Qinghe-jie, let's pick up some bedding and toiletries while we're at it, okay?"
"But mine are still perfectly usable—"
"To celebrate leaving the slum and starting fresh — everything new." He said it with a grin and steered her toward the mall before she could finish objecting.
They spent a couple of hours browsing. By the time they had everything they needed, the clock had rolled past ten. They headed back to the new apartment, arms full.
Putting everything away took time. Jerf helped with Li Qinghe's room.
By the time it was all sorted, it was eleven at night.
Lu Yuan set out his own things — three faded shirts, old bedding, the textbooks — and placed a black, helmet-shaped light-brain on his desk. The kind that looked like a motorcycle helmet, with a slightly matte, textured surface.
He ran his fingers along it and felt something he couldn't quite name.
Virtual reality gaming. Before his transmigration, it had been one of those futures he'd genuinely looked forward to. On his old Earth, the technology had never gotten there — it had promised so much and delivered so little. Here, VR had come from the Land of Origin. In this, as in so many ways, the Land of Origin had given countless civilizations across the universe a leap forward that might otherwise have taken centuries.
Once worn, the light-brain could connect to the network, access any information, and open the door to full-immersion virtual worlds.
He owned one now.
He pulled up the Light Gate's status. Still not fully repaired.
It wasn't a surprise. The higher one's cultivation, the longer they could remain in the Land of Origin — but accordingly, the longer the Light Gate needed to recover before the next entry. He checked the numbers. About a day per cycle at his current level, give or take.
By his estimate, he could probably enter by tomorrow afternoon.
But thinking about the auction, he decided to push his timing back further. The morning of the day after tomorrow would be ideal — the time he spent inside would align perfectly with the auction window, and he'd exit at just the right moment.
Once his room was in order, he knocked on Li Qinghe's door.
"Qinghe-jie, are you done?"
"All packed up," came her reply.
He returned to his room. It had its own bathroom, so he washed up there and settled in for the night.
A little later, a soft knock came from outside his door.
He was about to get up to answer when Li Qinghe's voice came through: "Nothing urgent — I just wanted to say goodnight. Goodnight, Yuan-didi."
He paused.
She had knocked just to say goodnight.
He hadn't expected that.
After a moment's thought: they'd just moved to a new place. She was probably just feeling a little unsettled — a little insecure in an unfamiliar environment. That made sense.
"Goodnight, Qinghe-jie," he called back.
He heard a sound of acknowledgment from the hallway, then the soft click of her bedroom door.
He lay there for a while. Through the walls, he heard her go to the bathroom. He glanced toward the wall in her direction, considered for a moment, then decided against reaching out with his Spirit Power.
In her room, Li Qinghe retrieved the encrypted black cube communicator from where she kept it hidden and activated it. Franming's projection materialized above the surface.
"My Lord! What are your orders?"
Her voice was calm and even. "I'll be late tonight. Everyone stay sharp — don't miss a single lead."
Franming's expression shifted. "My Lord — were you... delayed by something?"
She gave him a cold look. "Don't ask about things that aren't your concern."
He went quiet instantly.
She put the cube away and pressed two fingers to her temple with a tired exhale.
*What a mess.*
She glanced toward the wall in Lu Yuan's direction, thought about it for a moment — and decided not to use her Spirit Power.
If she had gone under years ago — staged something, let everyone think she was gone — things would be so much simpler. No midnight commutes. No two lives to maintain at once.
*But if she actually disappeared on Yuan-didi like that...*
*He'd probably be devastated.*
*Forget it,* she thought. *A mess is still just a mess.*
She rose from the bed. A ripple passed through the air around her — and black leather armor materialized, settling over her frame.
She crossed to the window and slid it open without a sound.
Fifteen stories below, the empty street lay dark and still.
She stepped out.
Her body dropped in silence. Near the ground, she twisted smoothly — a clean flip — and landed without making a sound. She glanced up once at the lit window above.
Then the shadows took her, and she was gone.