On the way back,
Lu Chen took out his phone and quickly swiped his finger across the screen, searching for the location of “Longhu County.”
It was about thirty kilometers from downtown Jiangdu.
Taking a taxi there would only take about an hour.
He decided to first call a cab, go home to grab a few things, and then head straight to Longhu County.
“Hey! Lu Chen! Lu Chen!”
Hearing someone call his name, Lu Chen instinctively turned his head and realized that Li Ruoyi had been following right behind him.
“Classmate Li?” Lu Chen stopped walking.
Li Ruoyi jogged up to him, breathing a little heavily. “Why are you walking so fast? I could barely catch up.”
“Sorry, I didn’t notice. What’s up?”
“I…” Li Ruoyi hesitated, her expression complicated.
Lu Chen noticed a mix of three parts affection, three parts surprise, and four parts barely concealed fear on her face.
She must have been pretty scared by the way he had transformed into Yama just now.
“Lu Chen, is there… nothing you want to say to me?” Li Ruoyi hesitated for a long time before finally asking in a low voice.
“Say what? Did I scare you just now?” Lu Chen scratched his head and smiled. “Sorry, I just really hate people like Song Hao, so I came down a bit hard. Otherwise, something like this would just happen again next time.”
“Yeah, I understand that.” Li Ruoyi nodded, finally mustering the courage to look up. She took a deep breath and asked, “So, the person who was worshipping the King of Hell at the Zhao Clan Temple the day before yesterday… was also you. Lu Chen, how did you suddenly become so powerful? I really can’t believe it.”
“Didn’t the city lord say it? Everyone has their own karmic opportunities. Me… I guess I found mine too.”
Lu Chen glossed over it lightly.
“Okay, congratulations.”
“Yeah! Well, if there’s nothing else, I’ll be going.”
“Wait!”
Li Ruoyi called out to him again.
Somehow, her eyes rimmed with red, and her nose twitched slightly.
“What’s wrong, Classmate Li?” Lu Chen was genuinely confused.
Li Ruoyi sniffled, as if she had been dealt a heavy blow, and said with reddened eyes, “Lu Chen, how can you be this amazing… When you’re like this, I… I get really scared!”
“Scared? It’s not like I’m going to eat you.” Lu Chen thought she was just frightened by his earlier King of Hell appearance.
But Li Ruoyi shook her head vigorously. “I’m not scared of how you looked just now… I’m scared that I’ll never be able to catch up to you. Before, your grades weren’t as good as mine, so liking you didn’t put any pressure on me. But the day before yesterday, when you raised your divine connection degree to 5% all at once, I started feeling pressured. I couldn’t believe it was real. Later, I told myself, maybe you just got lucky. 5% isn’t that much. If I worked a little harder, maybe I could still catch up.”
She paused, her voice catching with a sob:
“But what about today? A divine connection degree of 50%… What am I supposed to do about that? I can never catch up to you in this lifetime. And that’s not all. You actually have such a deep connection with the Underworld too… I’m guessing that dharma projection of yours just now was at least over 20% divine connection, right? One at 50%, one at 20%… You’ve walked a path in two days that would take others an entire lifetime. Lu Chen, I’m scared… I’m scared that we’ll end up becoming people from two different worlds.”
By the end, as if completely defeated, she burst into loud sobs.
Lu Chen was momentarily stunned.
Was this… a confession?
He chuckled softly, shook his head, and stepped forward. “Classmate Li.”
Li Ruoyi was still crying.
“Sigh, don’t you worry…”
The crying stopped abruptly. Li Ruoyi looked up, a hint of expectation in her eyes, looking at him.
Lu Chen smiled and said in a relaxed tone, “The gap between you and me is destined to get bigger and bigger. So you really don’t need to be afraid. Just accept it.”
Li Ruoyi: “???!!”
“Alright, stop crying. This isn’t the age for talk about love and romance anyway. Work hard! I wish you a speedy entry into the special advanced class. I’m off!”
With that, Lu Chen turned and left without looking back.
Li Ruoyi stood frozen in place, taking a good while to process what just happened.
What he said just now… was he trying to comfort her, or was he trying to comfort her?
No, wait!
“Lu Chen, you insufferably dense straight guy!”
Li Ruoyi stamped her foot in anger, but couldn’t help but find the whole thing bitterly funny.
… …
“Mom, I’ve taken on a school task. I need to go away for a few days. Remember to burn incense for me morning and evening.”
Back home, Lu Chen packed his bags quickly. Before leaving, he didn’t forget to call his mom and let her know.
“Where are you going, son?”
“Longhu County.”
“Longhu County? What are you going to that godforsaken place for?”
“To do a task. Gotta go, Mom. I have to leave now.”
He hung up the phone, bowed respectfully towards the two deity tablets at home, then slung his backpack over his shoulder and headed downstairs.
Just as he reached the entrance of his residential complex, he heard a honk.
Turning his head, he saw Sun Yourong leaning by her luxury car, waving at him.
“You’re here, Miss Sun?”
“Don’t call me Miss Sun anymore. I’m only a year older than you. Just call me Yourong. And from now on, I won’t call you Mr. Lu either. I’ll call you Lu Chen. How’s that?”
“Whatever, a name is just a label. Did you… come looking for me specifically?”
Sun Yourong nodded. “I heard you took on an S-rank task. You’re going to Longhu County to pray for rain?”
Lu Chen was slightly stunned, then smiled. “You big families really have amazing reach. I barely accepted the task, and you already know about it.”
“What’s so amazing about that? A little asking around is all it takes.” Sun Yourong’s smile faded as she spoke. “But honestly, when I first heard, I was really shocked. But then I thought about it, you never play by the rules anyway, so it didn’t seem so strange anymore. Come on, get in the car!”
Lu Chen: “Where to?”
Sun Yourong: “Longhu County, of course. I happen to be free these two days. I’ll go with you.”
Lu Chen quickly waved his hand. “No need to go through the trouble, Miss Sun. I’ll just go myself.”
“Didn’t we agree you’d stop calling me Miss Sun?”
“Then I’ll call you Sister Sun. You’re older than me anyway. Calling you ‘Sister’ doesn’t put me at a loss.”
Calling her “Yourong”…
Lu Chen really couldn’t bring himself to say it. It would give him goosebumps all over.
Sun Yourong: “…”
“Fine, suit yourself. But if I go with you, you not only get a driver, but also a bodyguard. Aren’t you going to appreciate that?”
“No thanks. I don’t like troubling other people.” Lu Chen declined. Bringing a girl along would inevitably cramp his style.
“You!” Sun Yourong raised her delicate eyebrows. Here she was, the esteemed heiress of the Sun family, someone who was usually the center of attention wherever she went in Jiangdu City.
Now she was voluntarily offering to be his driver and bodyguard, and he was actually turning up his nose at it?
“Alright,” she changed tack, “then don’t you want to know what exactly happened in Longhu County to cause a three-year great drought?”
“Three years? The task description said one year, didn’t it?”
“The task is the task, the actual situation is the actual situation. This drought actually started three years ago. All the information you can find online has been sanitized. You simply can’t find out what really happened.” Sun Yourong pointed at herself, her tone confident. “But I know.”
Lu Chen frowned, thought for a moment, and decided not to waste any more time. He pulled open the car door and sat straight down in the passenger seat.
Seeing this, Sun Yourong smiled faintly and muttered under her breath, “Gotcha~”
She started the car and drove towards Longhu County.
On the way, Lu Chen casually asked, “By the way, Sister Sun, your grandfather is alright now, right?”
“Thanks to you, my grandfather was discharged from the hospital today. I originally wanted to invite you over as a guest. He really wants to meet you too. But when he heard you took the Longhu County task, my dad sent me to go with you. So here I am.”
Sun Yourong paused, glanced at him from the corner of her eye, and said with a slightly teasing tone, “Oh, speaking of which, you really stole the show today, turning into Yama like that.”
Lu Chen neither confirmed nor denied it, getting straight to the point. “Tell me about Longhu County. What’s really going on? I just looked it up. It says the locals offended the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea, who’s in charge of rainfall, so the Dragon King got angry and refused to send rain.”
Sun Yourong nodded. “That statement isn’t wrong, but it’s too vague. It’s basically saying nothing. The real situation… is far beyond what ordinary people can imagine. It’s been classified by the relevant authorities. Even many people in the Jiangdu city government don’t know the inside story.”
“That serious? What’s the inside story then?”
Lu Chen’s curiosity was completely piqued.
Then, Sun Yourong slowly spoke a single sentence that was enough to be earth-shattering:
“Someone beheaded a dragon.”
There’s more to come
