Although the greasy-haired young man had suffered a heavy blow from Su Yue and was quite injured, he didn’t dare escalate the situation.
After all, he had a respectable job. If he made a big deal out of it and the Security Officers investigated, they would discover he was in this state because he had been harassing someone. He might even lose his job.
"You just accidentally tripped?"
Hearing the greasy-haired man’s explanation, the young man in the couple glanced at the spot the man was clutching with both hands, his face full of doubt.
They were both men, so the excuse wasn’t very convincing. After all, the path was perfectly flat; there was no way a fall could have injured *that* particular vital area.
Of course, even though the young man didn’t believe the greasy-haired man’s excuse, he was just a passerby.
Since the man claimed he had accidentally injured himself, there was no need to meddle.
The kind-hearted young couple then waited by the greasy-haired man’s side.
A short while later, an ambulance arrived and took the injured man away. Only then did the couple leave the park, check into a nearby hotel, and resume the... activities they had started in the bamboo grove.
「 」
It was past ten o’clock, and the night was growing late. The streets were nearly empty of pedestrians, with only a few cars passing by.
Streetlights flashed past the windows as Lin Li drove the van steadily, heading toward his usual barbecue spot.
It was quiet in the van. Su Yue, in the passenger seat, turned to look at Lin Li and simply stared.
"Why do you keep staring at me? Is something wrong?" Lin Li asked, a little puzzled, glancing over at Su Yue while keeping the van’s speed steady.
"Why haven’t you asked me what happened back there?" Su Yue said.
There was a hint of a pout in her voice. She thought that since she’d just encountered a creep, Lin Li would have asked her about it out of concern as soon as she got in the van. But she had been waiting for a while, and he hadn’t said a word.
"What’s there to ask? It was pretty obvious what happened, wasn’t it?
That drunk reeking of alcohol saw you, got some ideas, and wanted to ’make friends.’
He asked for your number, you blew him off and tried to leave, but he wouldn’t let it go, which led to... what we saw back there. My analysis is correct, right?" Lin Li said, wearing a perceptive, all-knowing expression.
"..." Su Yue listened to Lin Li’s surprisingly accurate analysis, her expression a little stunned. She remained silent.
"What? Was I wrong?" Lin Li asked when she didn’t respond.
"No, you weren’t wrong. You’re incredible! You figured out the entire sequence of events almost perfectly..." Su Yue pulled her gaze away from Lin Li and stared straight ahead. She sighed, then muttered to herself.
’I didn’t want your analysis, you blockhead.’
’What’s wrong? I was right, wasn’t I? Why is she sighing? I really don’t get what’s going on in her head...’ Lin Li was completely bewildered, unable to understand Su Yue’s reaction.
Su Yue’s gloomy mood passed as quickly as it came. She and Lin Li arrived at the barbecue joint and ordered a mountain of food.
"Ma’am, make it extra spicy, please," Su Yue said to the owner as she placed ingredients on the grill.
"You got it." The plump owner nodded with a smile, then called to her husband to grab the beer and soda Lin Li and Su Yue had ordered.
On a hot summer night, roadside barbecue stalls only get livelier as the hour grows late.
Sure enough, by the time Lin Li and Su Yue had placed their order and found an empty table to wait, the number of customers at the stall was starting to grow.
Su Yue pulled a beer from the case, popped the top with an opener, and instead of pouring it into a glass, she took a bold swig straight from the bottle.
"GLUG GLUG GLUG..."
"Ahhh..."
After a long drink of the ice-cold beer, Su Yue’s eyes curved into crescents, her face alight with satisfaction.
"You had a company dinner and karaoke tonight. How come you didn’t drink then?" Lin Li asked after pouring himself a glass of iced soda and taking a sip.
"My boss was there, so I couldn’t really let loose! Besides, if I drank too much and got wasted, it would ruin my perfect image..." Su Yue said with a smile.
There was another reason she didn’t mention to Lin Li. If she drank too much, her overeager male colleagues would have undoubtedly fought over who got to take her home. The situation could have gotten awkward, and deep down, she didn’t want any of them taking her home anyway.
"You... If your colleagues saw how uninhibited you are after work, I think their jaws would drop," Lin Li laughed.
"Their jaws would drop? I don’t think so..." Su Yue propped her chin on her left hand. Seemingly feeling a bit warm, she raised her right hand and undid the top button of her blouse. Instantly, an alluring sliver of fair skin came into Lin Li’s view.
"Er..." Sitting directly across from Su Yue, Lin Li quickly averted his eyes. He grabbed his soda and took two quick gulps, muttering something under his breath.
"Hehehe..." Seeing Lin Li’s reaction, Su Yue’s face broke into a radiant, captivating smile, and she let out a cheerful laugh as crisp and pleasant as silver bells.
Other patrons at nearby tables heard her laughter and turned to look. Their gazes seemed to freeze on her, unable to look away.
"You should drink a little less. You have to get up early for work tomorrow!" Lin Li urged, noticing she had already finished two beers in just a short time.
"It’s fine. You know I sober up fast. After a night’s sleep, I’ll be good as new," Su Yue said, grabbing another beer from the case.
Lin Li looked at the woman who, without fail, drank a fair amount every time they went out for barbecue together. He was speechless.
「 」
At the Spiritual Energy Research Institute, Senior Researcher Zhao Tianfu had already gone home for the day. His laboratory was dark and silent.
Suddenly, in a corner of the lab, a plain-looking Jade Token resting under a glass dome began to glow with a faint, golden Spiritual Light.
Dozens of kilometers away, out in the wilderness, at the very instant the Jade Token began to glow, the space about a meter above the ground twisted. Then, a nearly invisible crack appeared in mid-air.
As time passed, the crack rapidly expanded. Soon, a spatial rift more than twenty meters long and six or seven meters wide had torn open in the night-shrouded wilderness.
Through the spatial rift, a grassland stretching to the horizon was visible on the other side.
Compared to the last one, the location of the spatial rift on Blue Star was different.
And this time, the Otherworld on the other side of the rift did not have the blood-red moon that had caused the Mutant Beasts on Blue Star to mutate.
It seemed the location of each spatial rift was random, and their sizes varied as well.
The two worlds had different concentrations of Spiritual Energy. A massive amount of Spiritual Energy from the Otherworld began pouring rapidly through the rift into Blue Star.
Before long, the influx of Spiritual Energy had increased the concentration in the area within a one-to-two-kilometer radius of the rift several times over.
A scene similar to the last time a rift appeared began to unfold. As the Spiritual Energy concentration around the rift rapidly increased, some of the Mutant Beasts living in the wilderness sensed the change and began rushing toward the area.
On the other side of the rift, in the Otherworld’s boundless grasslands, a figure poked its head out from the tall grass.
The creature looked at the spatial rift that had appeared not far away, its expression one of pure confusion.
"RUSTLE RUSTLE RUSTLE..."
It moved forward slowly, approaching the rift. As the creature emerged from the dense grass, the moonlight clearly illuminated its form.
It was a colossal lizard, over twenty meters long, covered entirely in purple scales. A single, sharp red horn jutted from the top of its head.
"ROAR...?!?"
The Red-Horned Purple-Scaled Lizard stared at the world on the other side of the rift and let out a questioning roar.
It stood before the spatial rift for several minutes before finally, filled with curiosity, it slipped through...
「 」