Schedule Update
Hey guys,
From now on, the release schedule here will be daily.
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The guild car was black, long, and had the kind of interior that made Ren feel slightly guilty about eating a convenience store rice ball in it. He ate it anyway.
Lu Changcheng sat beside him in the back seat, reviewing something on his tablet. They had been talking since they got in, the easy back-and-forth of two people who had known each other long enough to not need transitions. One topic to the next, no preamble required.
In the front seat, Lucy drove.
Lucy was Lu Changcheng's personal secretary, twenty-six years old, efficient in a way that bordered on frightening, and the single most organized human being in the Dao Guild's administrative structure. She had been driving the Guildmaster for three years. She knew his schedule better than he did. She had never once been surprised by anything he did.
Until this morning.
She kept her eyes on the road. Her expression did not change. She was a professional.
Her mind, however, was running at full speed.
Yesterday, she thought, I dropped the Guildmaster off at his condominium at approximately ten forty-five in the evening. I watched him take the lift up. Alone.
She checked the back mirror briefly. The Guildmaster was laughing at something the masked man had said, a real laugh, not the polite professional version he used at meetings.
This man was clearly already waiting in the Guildmaster's condo when I dropped him off. Which means he got in before ten forty-five. Which means the Guildmaster knew he was going to be there.
She returned her eyes to the road.
When did they meet? The Guildmaster's schedule yesterday had no unaccounted time. No unlogged visits. Nothing.
The masked man shifted slightly in his seat, and Lucy caught another look at him in the mirror. Black shirt, dark slacks, normal enough. Good posture. Lean build. The shirt fit across the shoulders and chest in a way that suggested the fabric was doing genuinely heroic structural work. Those buttons were trying their absolute best. The muscle definition was, objectively, extremely visible.
Her brain produced one specific thought before she could intercept it.
I kind of want to bite—
NO.
Lucy kept her expression neutral.
Focus, she told herself. You are a professional. You are a professional. You are a professional.
The mask, though. That mask.
White porcelain, completely featureless except for the hollow black eye sockets. No expression, no markings, nothing. A mouth appeared and disappeared depending on whether he was speaking, which was not how masks worked. There was no strap, no band, nothing holding it to his face. It simply sat there like it had grown there, which was the most unsettling explanation and also the one that felt most accurate.
The Guildmaster has not been on a date in five years, Lucy thought, completely against her will. I maintain his schedule. I know this for a fact. And now there is a mysterious man with good arms and a deeply disturbing mask who was apparently waiting in his private condo.
She paused.
Good arms, she repeated internally. What is wrong with you, Lucy. Stay on task.
She checked the mirror again. The two of them were talking with the ease of people who had known each other for years, finishing each other's sentences, laughing at references she did not understand. The Guildmaster looked relaxed in a way he never did in meetings.
They are very comfortable with each other, she noted.
Very.
She thought about the fashion-forward architecture magazines that had started appearing in the Guildmaster's office about three years ago. She had assumed it was an interior design phase. She had not thought much of it.
Oh no, she thought.
Oh no, no, no.
She slapped herself across the face.
Not hard. A firm corrective tap. The kind a person delivers to themselves when their brain has departed the premises without permission.
Both men in the back seat flinched.
"Are you alright?" Lu Changcheng asked.
"Mosquito," Lucy said immediately. "I'm fine. Apologies."
She returned her eyes to the road.
You are a professional, she told herself firmly. You do not speculate about your employer's personal life. You do not read into things. You are not writing a story in your head right now. You are driving a car.
The masked man said something and the Guildmaster laughed again.
Lucy's grip tightened slightly on the wheel.
The mask has no strap, she thought, despite herself. That is objectively terrifying. What kind of person walks around with a mask that has no strap. What is holding it on. She did not want to know the answer. She did want to know the answer. She was not going to think about this.
She thought about it.
The Guildmaster is beautiful, she admitted, in the privacy of her own skull, where no one could hear it and she could deny it under oath. He looks like someone designed him specifically to walk out of a cultivation drama and ruin people's expectations for normal human beings. This is a documented fact that she had never once acted on because she was a professional.
And this masked individual, setting aside the nightmare fuel attached to his face, appeared to be roughly in the same category physically, in a completely different way, in a way that was objectively notable and had nothing to do with anything.
Together they were, objectively, a match that would make Wattpad heaven.
NO.
She slapped herself again. Same cheek. Harder this time.
Both men flinched again.
"Another mosquito," Lucy said, without being asked.
"We are in a sealed vehicle," Lu Changcheng said.
"It was very persistent."
A silence from the back seat.
"Ghost," Lu Changcheng said, apparently to the masked man, "I think she knows."
"She definitely knows," the masked man said.
"I don't know anything," Lucy said, which was a lie, and everyone in the car understood this.
.
.
.
She focused on the road for the next four minutes with the discipline of someone who had made a decision and was committed to it. The conversation in the back seat continued. She did not listen. She was professionally not listening.
Then: "Ehh, Master Lu."
She had not planned to say it. It came out anyway.
"Yes," Lu Changcheng said, with the tone of someone who had been expecting this.
"I can feel a very faint killing intent directed at me from somewhere inside this vehicle."
"You're imagining things. There are only three of us here."
"That is what I thought."
"Then there's nothing to worry about."
Lucy looked in the mirror. The masked man appeared to be looking out the window with great interest in the passing scenery, which was a road and some buildings. Her eyes narrowed.
She returned to the road.
"Yes," Lu Changcheng said, after a moment. "We are using aliases in the car. Less chance of the wrong people picking up the wrong information. You can call him Ghost."
"Ghost," Lucy repeated.
"That's fine," the masked man said.
She filed this. Ghost. No last name. No guild affiliation she recognized. No record in any schedule she had processed. Arrived in the Guildmaster's nineteenth-floor condo without using the main entrance, apparently, and was now sitting in the back seat discussing clinic logistics as if this were a normal Tuesday.
It was, in fact, a Tuesday.
"Now," Lu Changcheng said, "about the clinic space. What do you need?"
"A black room," the masked man said. "Two blocks tall. Sealed."
Lu Changcheng's brow furrowed. "Two blocks tall."
"The ceiling height is important."
"What for?"
"I'll make sure it's worth your while. Consider it a surprise."
"I don't generally enjoy medical surprises."
"You'll enjoy this one."
Lu Changcheng looked at the back of Lucy's head for a moment, then back at the masked man. "I'll have something arranged. It won't be a problem."
"Thank you, Brother Lu."