Southeast Asia. A certain country.
An abandoned port.
The searchlights of the container terminal swept across rows upon rows of rust-eaten metal boxes, the beams dragging long white tails across the damp concrete ground.
A sea breeze, thick with the smell of diesel and brine, poured in from the direction of the docks, ruffling the puddles in the storage yard into ring after ring of ripples.
In the shadow of the seventh row of containers, a man leaned against the wall of a box, smoking.
The cigarette was a cheap local clove brand—ten yuan for three packs off a street stall—and it hit the throat like inhaling burning bargain-bin tires. But its virtue was that it was cheap and strong.
He held the cigarette in his mouth, his left hand shoved into the pocket of a leather jacket washed pale from wear, his right hand casually gripping a black canvas travel bag.
The bag's zipper wasn't fully closed, brazenly exposing a length of coldly-gleaming metal gun barrel poking out of the edge.
Siegfried Kaslana, forty-seven years old.
The current head of the Kaslana family.
To the outside world, he was the suave chairman of a multinational trading conglomerate, his gilded business cards printed with lengthy titles in three languages. At the chamber-of-commerce galas of European high society, he could put on a bespoke suit and chat with any socialite for half an hour about vintage red wine.
Internally, he was Schicksal operative number K-0017.
The sheer thickness of his combat record file could crush a dog to death.
"Whoo—"
He exhaled a thick plume of smoke, then flicked the butt with a curl of his finger, sending it flying precisely into a puddle five meters away. With a hiss, the ember died.
Fifty meters ahead, three pickup trucks—modified so thoroughly their own mothers wouldn't recognize them—were parked in front of an opened container.
Seven or eight burly men with brutish, meaty faces were grunting and heaving wooden crates onto the pickups.
The dimensions and dead weight of those crates made it obvious at a glance that they were not exactly legitimate agricultural produce.
Two of the men had AKs slung over their backs, the straps hanging loosely off their shoulders, muzzles pointing down.
Two of them lounged against the truck doors like big shots on lookout, AK-47s slung across their backs, straps draped sloppily over their shoulders, muzzles pointing—unprofessionally—straight down at their own feet.
Siegfried sighed, reaching into his travel bag and fishing out a pair of snug black thin tactical gloves.
He put them on.
Lacing his fingers together, he stretched them back forcefully—a muffled series of "crack-crack" bone pops echoed in the shadows.
"Overtime hours, here we go."
He muttered the words, then stepped out from the shadows.
Three minutes later.
The clamorous dock had returned once again to a deathly silence.
The seven brawny men who'd been hauling crates just moments ago were now lying peacefully on the oil-slicked ground, their poses a veritable bloom of a hundred flowers.
Some sprawled face-down like frogs, some lay spread-eagled on their backs, and some had curled up in agony like fully-cooked mantis shrimp.
There wasn't even a single drop of blood on the scene, yet absolutely not one of them could get back on his feet under his own power.
Siegfried's method of beating people down was clean and precise to the extreme—all textbook-grade joint locks and nerve suppression. He hadn't even had the heart to stomp more than a few of their bones broken.
Pure physical magic.
As for the eighth man—the leader of this pack of smugglers—he was at that very moment being humiliatingly strung up upside down by his own faux-rhinestone-studded belt, tied to the side mirror of a pickup truck by Siegfried.
The leader had a wad of some rag torn from god-knows-where stuffed in his mouth. Thanks to the blood rushing to his head, his eyeballs bulged out like a dead fish's.
Siegfried crouched in front of him, picked up one of the AKs that had fallen to the ground, ejected the magazine with practiced ease and took a glance, then clicked it back in.
"A knockoff made in Yiwu, right?" He shook his head in disdain and tossed the gun aside like garbage. "Even the recoil spring is soft and limp. This piece of junk jams after three rounds. You lot are supposedly multinational smugglers—and you run a business worth billions with these water pistols? It's an outright insult to my entire career."
The leader writhed frantically like a caterpillar hung from a tree, letting out muffled, indistinct "mmph-mmph" sounds—no telling whether he was begging for mercy or cursing.
Siegfried stood up, brushed the dust off his pants, and pulled a phone from the inner pocket of his jacket.
The screen displayed the icon of an encrypted communication channel, its green signal light blinking.
He tapped to connect.
"Amber, the dirty work over here is done. Seven small fries plus one gift-wrapped ringleader, all painlessly packaged up. I'll send you the coordinates right away—tell the local Interpol folks to bring a banner of thanks when they come collect the goods. I didn't touch the contraband in the container; send your own people to inventory it."
From the other end came the sound of keyboard clacking, rapid "tap-tap-tap" rhythms.
"Received, Lord Siegfried. Coordinates confirmed. The local liaison station's people will arrive in twenty minutes."
Amber's voice was young, female, carrying a kind of professional composure.
"Thank you for your hard work. Also, President Otto asked me to pass along a message to you."
Siegfried wedged the phone between his ear and shoulder, freeing up both hands to start packing the travel bag.
"Go on."
"He's sent you a personal gift. Two tickets for a top-tier luxury penguin-watching tour in the Antarctic Circle, along with a warm reminder that he specifically designates you and Madam Cecilia to go on vacation together."
The hand stuffing the gun into the bag came to an abrupt halt.
Then he laughed out of sheer fury, the corner of his mouth twitching a couple of times.
"Have that golden-haired old fox translate for me: am I going to Antarctica to watch penguins, or going to Antarctica to rescue penguins?"
The keyboard sounds on Amber's end paused for a second.
"...Both. Recently there's been a rampant gang of illegal armed poaching organizations operating in the Antarctic Circle. Though small in scale, they've had a vicious impact on the polar ecosystem. President Otto's exact words were: he hopes that while you and Madam are enjoying a romantic ice-and-snow holiday, you might, in passing, deal with this bunch."
"In. Passing." Siegfried repeated through gritted teeth this word so full of every evil capitalist's smug face, and yanked the travel bag's zipper shut with a sharp zip, slinging it heavily over his shoulder.
"That guy Otto really knows how to squeeze out surplus value—capitalists would shed tears of shame just looking at him!"
His words were vile, but there wasn't actually much heat in his tone.
Having worked at Schicksal for over twenty years, he'd long grown accustomed to Otto Apocalypse's way of doing things.
This head of the Apocalypse family was, on the surface, a world-renowned surgeon and the president of the Schicksal financial group. Behind the scenes, he controlled a peacekeeping organization spread across the entire globe.
His methods were sinister, his mind unfathomably deep—but one had to admit, some dirty work really could only be pulled off by a man like that.
Siegfried didn't like Otto.
But he didn't hate him either.
It was like how you'd never love a broken wrench caked in engine grease, but when a screw comes loose, you're not going to throw it away either.
"Fine then, I'll note down the Antarctica hunting job and treat it as a free vacation. Anything else? If not, I'm clocking out."
"There is."
Amber's tone suddenly shifted.
The keyboard sounds stopped entirely.
"There's a new development. Shenzhou has suddenly made a big move over there."
Siegfried raised an eyebrow.
He leaned against the front of the pickup, the sea breeze tousling his hair into a mess.
"What big move? Are they planning to build a base on the moon?"
"A few days ago, Shenzhou officials secretly pulled out an elite unit and sent them to Arc City to participate in a top-secret training project. The information lockdown is extremely thorough—the classification level is the highest possible."
Siegfried tapped twice on the strap of his travel bag with his fingers.
"Top-secret? Don't tell me Shenzhou is preparing to whip up a few super-soldiers."
"Lord Siegfried, if it really were that... it would actually count as good news."
There was a rare trace of human emotion in Amber's voice—not tension, but the kind of bewilderment that comes from having one's whole worldview shaken.
"Some of the intercepted fragmentary intelligence has already been uploaded to your portable terminal via encrypted channel. Please review it yourself."
Siegfried pulled a palm-sized tablet terminal from his jacket pocket and pressed his fingerprint to unlock it.
The screen lit up.
He saw the first image.
A 3D model rendering of a humanoid mech.
Deep gray all over, its height labeled as 2.8 meters, the armor thickness data for its shoulders and chest densely annotated alongside.
The filename at the bottom of the image read "Titan Project · Mass-Production Type."
The second image.
It was an even more exaggerated, even more terrifying colossal mech. Its height was labeled at a full twenty meters!
Its design was far rougher and more savage than the first "Titan"—rather than a mech, it was more like a walking steel fortress packed full of cannons.
The filename read: [Wotan · MSR-7 · Decisive Battle Weapon].
Scrolling further down.
There were extraordinarily advanced energy system technical specifications.
There were materials science analysis reports that completely surpassed modern technology.
There were satellite tracking records of a large batch of top-tier scholars being secretly mobilized.
Siegfried stared at the screen for five seconds, not even noticing the cigarette ash dropping onto his leather jacket.
Then he flipped the terminal over to look at its back, then flipped it back again, as though confirming whether he'd accidentally opened up some game app called "Metal Max."
"Amber, am I still not sober from last night's drinks? Or has our Schicksal intelligence department collectively started writing science fiction novels?"
"I'm sorry to say, Lord Siegfried, this is not a Hollywood sci-fi movie script." Amber's voice returned to that emotionless composure. "Based on our big-data monitoring of global personnel movement over this period, a combined total of more than eleven national-treasure-grade top scholars from the Mu Continent have, most eerily, secretly traveled to Shenzhou. They span multiple core fields including high-energy materials science, quantum physics, and cutting-edge bioengineering."
Siegfried swiped his finger across the screen, calling up the analysis page of the communication records.
"And these scholars, who originally had no connection whatsoever, all had the same final communication target before they disappeared—all pointing to one and the same civilian organization."
Amber paused, as if giving Siegfried time to mentally prepare.
"A game company named... [Anti-Entropy Entertainment]."
Siegfried's finger froze.
Anti-Entropy Entertainment.
That name—he knew it far too damn well.
Over twenty years ago, when Siegfried was still a hot-blooded young greenhorn, he'd participated in a secret special-forces military training camp jointly held by multiple nations.
That was the starting point of his ridiculously overpowered career, and also the first time he, as the heir to the Kaslana family, made contact with Schicksal's vast peripheral network.
At that training camp, he met a young man wearing glasses.
Welt Yang.
It sounds fantastical, but the very first time Siegfried laid eyes on that frail, bookish fellow named Welt, an absurd notion involuntarily popped into his head: this guy—I absolutely know him.
It wasn't the kind of "seems familiar" you feel passing someone on the street, but something deeper, more mystical.
It was as if a certain past-life memory were carved into his DNA—as if in a former life he'd stood shoulder-to-shoulder with this bespectacled guy, shouldering rifles and taking beatings together in some godforsaken end of the world.
Because of this eerie déjà vu, the two of them strangely became inseparable partners during the training camp.
Siegfried was in charge of physical endurance drills and "physical persuasion" demonstrations for close-combat courses; Welt handled tactical simulations, intelligence processing, and cleaning up Siegfried's messes.
One was a pure brute-force type with a head full of muscle; the other was a pure brains type with a head full of scheming. By rights, these two ought to have found each other insufferable, yet somehow they just clicked—could even huddle under the covers after lights-out and trash-talk their instructors together.
After the camp ended, the two exchanged private contact information.
In the first few years, when neither was too busy, they'd occasionally place a transoceanic call, drinking beer and chatting about how life was going.
Later, Siegfried, as Schicksal's ace operative, was sent by Otto like a dog to every corner of the world to carry out high-risk missions.
Welt, it seemed, had founded his own enterprise over there and grown busier and busier, and the connection between the two of them gradually faded away.
Until once more...
During the boring downtime of some undercover mission, Siegfried happened to catch on a hotel television the hot-blooded mech-combat anime produced by that company Welt had founded, named "Anti-Entropy Entertainment"—it was called "Arahato."
He watched one glimpse of the first episode, and then... as head of the Kaslana family and an S-rank Schicksal operative, he shamefully fell down the rabbit hole.
Not only did he catch up on all three seasons, he also bought the complete set of insanely expensive, out-of-print Blu-ray collector's discs.
He even once, under a sockpuppet account, spent three straight days and nights on an anonymous otaku forum flaming it out with a few haters over the question of whether "the ending of Arahato season two counted as a botched finale"!
Of course, this earth-shattering, socially-suicidal dark history was something he'd take to his grave rather than tell anyone.
A forty-seven-year-old, stubble-faced assassin operative, arguing online with a bunch of middle schoolers over the plot direction of a mech anime.
If word of this got back to Schicksal Headquarters, he could just peel his old face right off and use it as a shoe insole for the rest of his life.
"Anti-Entropy Entertainment..." Siegfried chewed these four words in his mouth with extraordinarily complex feeling. "Isn't that the anime company that bookworm Welt started? What, they're not making anime anymore, and now they're switching careers to building Gundams in real life?"
"You know the person in charge of Anti-Entropy Entertainment?" There was a rare trace of surprise in Amber's tone.
"Old comrade-in-arms. We ate out of the same pot over twenty years ago." Siegfried stubbed out the finished cigarette on the hood of the pickup and slipped the terminal back into his pocket. "So then, what's that old fox Otto getting at?"
"The President's orders: you are to immediately abandon your vacation, proceed at once to Arc City in Shenzhou, and remain on standby around the clock."
"Why standby? I'm on vacation!"
"Because, depending on how Shenzhou's subsequent moves unfold, you may need to forcibly join that top-secret organization in Arc City under some identity."
Siegfried fell silent for two seconds.
"Huh?"
On the other end of the comm, Amber let out a rare sigh.
That sigh wasn't impatience—it was the instinctive reaction of a professional confronting information beyond her range of comprehension.
"More intelligence is still being decrypted. The classification level this time is simply too high; our infiltration methods only obtained a small fraction of the periphery. But going by the current information..."
Her voice paused for a moment.
"Six months from now, this world will experience a catastrophe great enough to overturn the cognition of all humankind. Shenzhou pouring its entire national strength into assembling these era-transcending armed forces in Arc City... is precisely to respond to that coming apocalypse."
The sea breeze blew in from the direction of the docks, flipping up the hem of Siegfried's jacket.
On the pitch-black sea in the distance, a massive freighter fully loaded with containers was slowly pulling away from the harbor.
The deep, drawn-out blast of its horn was like the lament of some giant beast, echoing low in the cold air of the pre-dawn hours.
"Sounds... exactly like the cliché opening of a third-rate Hollywood apocalypse hero flick."
Siegfried stroked his chin.
There was a layer of short stubble on his chin—these past few days he'd been so busy rushing missions he hadn't had time to shave.
He suddenly remembered something.
"Come to think of it... I recall that no-good son of mine, that brat Kevin—he's currently bumming around in Arc City, isn't he?"
Amber's keyboard sounds started up again, "tap-tapped" twice, then stopped.
"Yes. Mr. Kevin Kaslana currently resides at the Golden Courtyard apartments in Arc City. His registered occupation is... CEO of a game studio named miHoYo."
"Game studio?" Siegfried's voice shot up like an old father who'd just heard his son was dating too young. "That stone-faced kid has been cold as an ice cube since childhood. He never said he liked playing games before! What kind of preposterous cross-industry career move is this?"
How old is Kevin this year? Twenty-three? Twenty-four?
Then he awkwardly discovered that he, as the father, genuinely couldn't damn well remember his son's exact age.
This godawful realization made even a battle-hardened old hand like Siegfried feel a slight, uncomfortable pang of guilt churning in his stomach.
Back when Kevin was very little, Siegfried and Cecilia had reached a consensus as firm as an ironclad order: they must absolutely never tell Kevin about the curse the Kaslana family bore, nor the dark secrets of the Schicksal organization.
Just like how that old pervert Otto had never told the things about Schicksal that couldn't see daylight to that stumpy little Theresa Apocalypse.
At the thought of Theresa, Siegfried's expression turned strange.
He'd sparred with Theresa before. That girl looked petite and adorable, but she was actually born with divine strength—simply a Humanoid Tyrannosaurus wrapped in l0li skin.
Siegfried's professional assessment was: if that girl had received professional special-forces killing training, single-handedly strangling to death a fully-armed mercenary squad barehanded wouldn't be a problem at all.
And yet it was precisely this Humanoid Tyrannosaurus who was fanatically obsessed with being some kind of magical girl and national idol!
And that death-siscon/granddaughter-con Otto (to this day Siegfried still hadn't figured out how their generational seniority was even calculated) was truly, insanely doting on her.
Together with Kallen, the two of them used Schicksal's vast capital to stir the pot behind the scenes in every possible way—madly throwing money to buy traffic and hype, forcibly propping up this l0li-on-the-outside, actually-a-not-much-younger-than-himself unmarried older single woman into the hottest top-tier idol in Shenzhou's entertainment industry!
Every time he saw on TV Theresa in her lace-trimmed performance outfit, bouncing around the stage going "Theresa is the world's cutest," Siegfried felt that—yeah, this godawful world really should just be destroyed after all.
Not that he had any right to talk about Otto, though.
The Kaslana family was, on the surface, a merchant dynasty; in secret it took part in Schicksal's global peacekeeping operations. This path was far too dangerous.
He and Cecilia only hoped that Kevin could choose his own life cleanly and freely.
Becoming an ordinary white-collar worker was fine, becoming a car mechanic was fine—even becoming a stone-faced head of security at some game company would be fine!
As long as he didn't have to be like his failure of an old man, brawling in the mud with a pack of desperate smugglers on a fish-reeking dock at four in the morning.
But "not telling him the secret for his own good" and "completely-out-of-contact widower-style parenting" were two utterly different things.
Siegfried was well aware in his heart that on the second matter, he'd done an absolutely premium job of being a giant pile of dogshit.
"Lord Siegfried."
In Amber's usually emotionless voice, there was a rare trace of pity and helplessness—the kind directed at a lonely old man.
"A warm reminder: you do still remember you have a biological son like this, don't you? I just casually looked up your private encrypted communication records."
"Your last phone call with Mr. Kevin took place a month and a half ago—forty-three days ago, to be precise. And that heartwarming father-son call lasted a grand total of a pitiful two minutes and seventeen seconds."
"Aiya, well, there's nothing to be done about it!" Siegfried's old face flushed red, and he stiffly changed the subject.
He shifted the heavy travel bag from his left shoulder to his right and began striding toward the dock's exit.
"You know it too—that skinflint Otto works me like a production-brigade donkey, tossing me into war-torn zones all over the world every single day."
"You can't seriously expect me to be frantically trading fire with terrorists from behind cover while also, calm and composed, chatting on the phone with that brat about domestic trivia like whether he's had dinner yet, can you?"
"Lord Siegfried, on this point I must correct you. The last time you phoned Mr. Kevin, there were indeed dense gunshots in the background audio."
"See! I told you so!"
"However, that wasn't any terrorist firefight. After voiceprint comparison, that was the burst-fire sound of AK-47s firing warning shots into the air. As well as..." Amber mercilessly exposed him, "as well as the sound of you brazenly shouting 'Ura!' in Russian. At the time you appeared to be in some underground bar celebrating a drinking-bout victory."
"..." Siegfried, rarely, was stumped. "Fine! It was a bar! But at the time I really was hoping to ride the buzz and have a good heart-to-heart with that empty-nest youth about life and ideals! It's just that those Russkies across from me had drunk too much and weren't cooperating—they insisted on dragging me into a vodka contest!"
Siegfried walked out through the dock's main gate.
Parked outside was a rented gray Toyota, its body splattered all over with mud.
He pulled open the door, tossed the travel bag onto the passenger seat, and sat down in the driver's seat himself.
"Alright, alright! Cut the nonsense. I'll accept this cursed transfer order to go stand by in Arc City."
He started the engine.
The Toyota's engine coughed twice, then turned over with a "putt-putt-putt."
"You go tell that guy Otto: since he's making me go to Arc City on a business trip, use company funds to help me prepare a decent gift to bring over. Don't be a cheapskate."
"May I ask what type of gift you'd like? A limited-edition sports car? Or shares in some publicly-listed company?"
Siegfried stroked the steering wheel and thought seriously.
That stone-faced son of his—what the heck did he even like these days?
...Damn it. As his own father, he despairingly discovered that he genuinely couldn't answer at all!
"...Just, buy something random!" The old father, humiliated into a rage, broke the pot since it was already cracked. "Send someone to Arc City to ask around, see what he's been lacking lately, just pick something expensive! And remember to get a receipt so I can expense it!"
"Understood. I have faithfully recorded your fatherly love." Amber's tone seemed to carry a hint of mockery.
Siegfried shifted into gear and floored the gas pedal, driving this beat-up Toyota onto the remote highway leading to the local airport.
On both sides of the road stood dense, sky-piercing palm trees.
Their enormous fronds rustled in the cold, gloomy pre-dawn sea breeze, as if countless people were whispering.
The edge of the sky had already turned a faint fish-belly white.
"This lousy assignment... might as well take the chance to go to Arc City and check in on that brat Kevin, the one who keeps a dead man's face on all day."
Siegfried gripped the wheel deftly with one hand, his other hand tapping some nameless rhythm against the window frame out of boredom.
"I'm guessing he's just about forgotten all about me, his frequently-out-of-contact deadbeat old man."
On the other end of the comm, Amber tactfully didn't pick up on this remark so full of a middle-aged man's bitterness.
Siegfried didn't keep wallowing in sentiment either.
The Toyota accelerated on the empty highway, its engine sound shifting from "putt-putt-putt" to a steady hum.
In the rearview mirror, the dock lights grew ever more distant, finally becoming a string of blurry points of light that vanished behind the silhouettes of the palm trees.
Siegfried reached out and switched on the car radio.
The station was playing a local pop song, its melody so upbeat it was a bit noisy.
He flipped through a couple of stations and settled on one playing classical music—a piano piece. He couldn't tell whose work it was, but the tempo was soothing.
He leaned back in his seat, driving one-handed, his eyes on the dead-straight highway ahead.
Arc City.
That old comrade Welt, whose head was full of scheming, was there.
That stone-faced yet stubborn foolish son, Kevin, was also there.
And a mysterious "world-class event"—said to occur six months from now, which not even Schicksal's intelligence network could make sense of—was there too.
"Tch... Shenzhou, Arc City, Anti-Entropy Entertainment building mechs... what the hell kind of third-rate Hollywood apocalypse popcorn-flick opening is this?"
For some reason, he kept faintly feeling that this Arc City trip would absolutely not be as relaxing as imagined.
If he had to put it into words, it was something close to intuition.
Even though he hadn't landed yet, he kept getting the feeling that his forehead was about to get walloped square-on by some white-haired shorty swinging a giant alloy door.
Siegfried muttered a line to himself, his voice mostly drowned out by the piano piece and the engine's rumble.
"Vroom—"
He slammed the gas pedal all the way down.
The battered gray Toyota let out a roar, tearing through the darkness before dawn, racing at full speed toward the airport—and toward the very heart of that storm about to sweep across the whole world.
And at very nearly the same moment, inside Theresa Apocalypse's apartment.
"What? Cecilia, say that again?"
Theresa practically leaped straight out of bed. The comm display read the four characters "Cecilia."
"Did you just say Siegfried is coming to Arc City? What's he coming for? To see Kevin?"
Cecilia's gentle voice came from the other end: "Siegfried said it's been too long since he's seen Kevin, and since he happens to be passing through Arc City this time, he'll drop by to see Kevin—oh, right, Kevin works at a game company now, doesn't he? Can I send the exact address to Siegfried?"
"No, absolutely not!"
Theresa blurted out almost reflexively.
That old scumbag Siegfried couldn't be doing this on purpose, could he?!
That peerless great villain who'd dumped poor little Kiana all alone and forlorn in the Deep Mountains and Old Forests of that Tai Xu Sword Sect, who'd secretly sired an illegitimate daughter behind Cecilia's back—he actually had the nerve to swagger openly into Arc City?!
Theresa's brain, having been steeped for years in 8 p.m.-slot family-ethics soap operas, instantly began spinning frantically like a supercomputer. A meticulous and melodramatic logic chain rivaling a "Detective Conan" theatrical movie rapidly took shape in her mind—
Case solved!
That scumbag Siegfried probably had no idea at all that the illegitimate daughter "Kiana" he'd abandoned back then was now, of all the rotten luck, living right here in Arc City!
Otherwise, lend him ten times the guts and he still couldn't possibly be rushing over here this brazenly, this openly, this shamelessly!
He absolutely intended to use the excuse of seeing his son to come here for a publicly-funded vacation and pick up women on the side!
Bronie's request still hovered in Theresa's mind. Indeed, at present she really didn't have any more evidence to prove Kiana was Siegfried's daughter.
And moreover, if Siegfried suddenly showed up at miHoYo Studio completely unguarded, and had a tragic "father-and-daughter meet but don't recognize each other" collision with that silly girl Kiana...
Oh heavens!
She didn't even dare imagine what might happen!
But—
As long as I can find a way to secretly pluck a few of that guy Siegfried's white hairs, and then quietly obtain some of little Kiana's hair, and send them straight off for a rush paternity test—
Once I've got the ironclad report, this Academy Director will just slam that 99.99%-match test result right into that scumbag Siegfried's face!
Then let's see how he wriggles his way out of it! Let's see how he atones with his death before Cecilia!
But the top priority right now is to minimize the secondary trauma to little Kiana. A time like this is exactly when Bronie should step up—she said she'd help me out, so let's have her use some other method to keep Siegfried and Kiana from crossing paths when he visits the studio!
"Theresa? Theresa? Did something happen? You've gone quiet this whole time since a moment ago."
"Ah, no, it's nothing! Cecilia, I'm just saying, that guy Siegfried hasn't called Kevin in so long—he definitely doesn't even know what Kevin likes these days. So after he lands, I'll go pick him up."
Cecilia on the other end of the line was momentarily stunned, then let out a soft laugh: "Aiya, Theresa really is so considerate. Then I'll have to trouble you. Don't be fooled by how careless and easygoing Siegfried seems—he actually does really care about Kevin."
"Really. Truly. Cares? Does. He?" Theresa ground out each word through gritted teeth.
"What?"
"Ah! Nothing, nothing! I'm just, uh, sharpening my knife ready for the... cough, I mean, I've got an important idol appearance to rush off to soon, so I'll hang up first! Mwah!"
"Mm, wishing you a smooth day at work."
"You too!"
After hanging up the phone, Theresa rolled her eyes hugely.
Cares about Kevin? Don't make Auntie laugh!
If he really cared, how could that scumbag Siegfried go a whole year barely meeting his own son a handful of times?
Rumor had it he was too stingy even to make a single phone call, sustaining the feeble father-son relationship entirely by sending money! His current balance of fatherly love was probably only good enough to raise an illegitimate daughter now!
Sometimes she really wanted to pry open that guy's skull and take a look at what exactly was packed inside. Forget it.
Theresa shook her head. Now wasn't the time to dwell on this—Siegfried's flight would arrive this afternoon.
However, given that old bastard's vile "lazy dog + entitled lord" personality, the moment he landed there was absolutely no way he'd head straight to miHoYo. He'd definitely first find a high-end hotel or a bathhouse to catch some more sleep, and grab a couple of drinks while he was at it.
She still had ample time to deploy her troops and set up a heaven-and-earth net!!
"Hey, hey, hey? Bronie? Wake up, stop sleeping! This lady's got a top-secret mission of the utmost urgency!"
She swiftly dialed the number of a certain hacker deity—one who habitually slept by day and roamed by night, and who at this very moment was in all likelihood still pulling an all-nighter grinding FPS games.
"Arc City's number-one hacker! Quick, put that cyber-brain of yours with its IQ of 180 to work and help me out! Someone's coming to 'take our tower'!!!"
At the same time.
Inside Su Yu's bedroom, Unit 302 of the Happiness Community.
Kiana, hugging that giant HOMEI plush pillow, rolled over, drool from her mouth having trickled all the way onto Su Yu's pillow.
"Heehee, Su Yu you big dummy, quit groping me~"
Crouched at the head of the bed, the heterochromatic cat-bug Chongchong watched the foolish antics of this human below and let out a nearly imperceptible sigh.
Sigh.
This generation of two-legged beasts really was one harder to raise than the last.
This white-haired human not only snatched cat food, but even drooled while sleeping—her brain definitely wasn't quite all there.
And at this moment, this not-quite-all-there white-haired human—who in her dream was still fighting Su Yu over a fried chicken drumstick—had absolutely no idea that—
An earth-shattering bloodbath and an ultimate melodramatic asura-hell storm, born of her Auntie's wildly overactive imagination and set off by an "illegitimate daughter scandal," was already careening down toward her originally peaceful chow-hound daily life, trailing sparks and lightning all the way!
____
Gift for Everyone: Once we hit 30 Powerstones, I'll release +1 bonus chapter
________________________________________
If you want more chapters, please consider supporting my page on (P). with 50 advanced chapters available on (P)
👻 Join the crew by searching Leanzin on (P). You know the spot! 😉