In the alley, the atmosphere was a little tense. Because those people had been following him earlier, Xu Nan's heart was still thumping madly.
After half a minute passed, he finally calmed down.
He lightly shook off the arm of the person who had pulled him in and asked in a low voice, "How did you return? Didn't you flee to South America?"
Lu Junyi looked like he had suffered the vicissitudes of time. Although he wore a face-mask and shades, it was unable to hide the feeling of desolation in his aura.
"Who said that? I went to Mexico instead."
Xu Nan was puzzled. "Could it be that you feel the chicken rolls there are not delicious, hence you came back?"
Lu Junyi shook his head. "It's a long story. In any case, my escape failed and I was almost caught like a turtle in a jar. You should know that my family background is stronger in Beijing. In Jiangnan, my connections cannot be compared to that little lass."
Xu Nan thought for a while. "You are talking about Wenxin? She wouldn't want your death, right?"
"It's not so bad to that extent." Lu Junyi took off his shades. His gazes were filled with fatigued. "She most probably would castrate me."
Xu Nan: "..."
"Go, let's find a safe place to talk," Lu Junyi spoke quickly. "Also, I'll quickly remove the stitches. It has been delayed for too long."
Xu Nan waved his hands. "It's fine."
"Why are you so polite to me? You have to remove the stitches sooner or later, you don't have to try and be brave."
Xu Nan awkwardly replied, "They are already removed...I settled them myself."
Lu Junyi was badly shocked. He surveyed Xu Nan from top to bottom. "Quickly whip it out for me to see. Will there be any residual effects?"
Xu Nan raged, "Right here? I'm not a flasher! In any case, I have a question I need to ask you. Do you know anything about job-holders?"
Lu Junyi contemplated. "We are brothers, so I won't hide things from you anymore. I did receive a job inheritance from the Alter World, but how did you know about this?"
Xu Nan coldly laughed. "You are still playing the fool? All those you operated on before have become job-holders!"
Lu Junyi was badly shocked, even his shades almost fell. "For real?"
Xu Nan could tell that his expression wasn't a pretense. He was puzzled. "You have no idea?"
Lu Junyi slapped the wall as he raged.
"If I knew, how would I charge the patients so cheaply? I would have raised my prices by at least 800 or 1,000 times! Quickly tell me what's going on exactly. Those I operated on all became job-holders? What about you?"
Xu Nan thought for a little. Lu Junyi was different from the others. Most probably, he was one of the few in this world whom he could trust.
Hence, he didn't conceal his secret. "Warlock."
Lu Junyi clicked his tongue. "In that case, would your body emit green light in the future? Would you wear many things on your head? Would you even roar 'orcs will never be slaves!'?"
Xu Nan chortled, "That's a warlock from [World of Warcraft]. My type of warlock is different from those."
"What's the difference?" Lu Junyi curiously asked.
"My skin color."
Xu Nan calmly spoke.
"Come with me for now, I will bring you to a safe place."
...
"This is the underground city you mentioned?"
Comrade Little Lu, who had been on the run for several days, stared at a short shanty house underground as he spoke in amazement.
This was a self-built house Xu Nan had requested the imps to build for him. Imps often liked to stay in burrows, but after Xu Nan thought about the drainage systems that would be constructed in the future, he didn't allow these imps to dig any more burrows without explicit approval.
Xu Nan calmly spoke, "Isn't this just the start? There's still a blueprint and my vision of the future. We will accumulate things slowly. Are you not forced to be at the end of your rope by Wenxin? You can stay here first, I won't collect rent from you."
Lu Junyi glanced at the giant panda watching a Thai drama from her Ipad. He rubbed his eyes. "This is?"
"This is Soupy, my magical pet. Her temporary job is to be responsible for the security of the underground city. In the future, when you stay here, you can just call for her if you need her."
Xu Nan passionately introduced her.
Sadly, Soupy completely ignored him.
"It is a giant panda, right? It knows how to watch a drama? Does she understand the Thai language or can she read the subtitles?" Lu Junyi felt that this was too amazing.
Xu Nan didn't explain. From the side, Soupy replied with contempt, "This old lady knows many languages. I even know the Sichuan dialect. Do you know it?"
Lu Junyi rubbed his temple. He then sat on the small wooden bed in the temporary wooden hut and stared at Xu Nan.
"Brother, give me some time. I need to get used to it. This world is changing too fast. Giant pandas know how to verbally attack people; also, I have not slept for 40 hours. Let me rest first. I will remove the stitches for you once I wake up. After that, we will discuss and plan properly for things…"
Xu Nan consoled Lu Junyi with kind words. Lu Junyi was too tired, and he fell into a deep sleep quickly.
Before he slept, he wrote a list of patients he had operated on for Xu Nan.
After all, his private hospital had just been opened for a short time. The number of people that had gone to his hospital for operations was actually very little. Among which, Xu Nan saw a few familiar names.
These included Zhang Yingluo, Wenxin, and himself.
"If my conjecture is correct, these people should all be job-holders now. They are simply like timed-bombs placed in the H City."
Xu Nan glanced at the list as he sighed.
Other than Wenxin, Lu Junyi clearly had some other encounters. Xu Nan was filled with anticipation to know more about Lu Junyi's job, so he would ask Soupy to take good care of comrade Little Lu.
On a more pressing matter, the great captain of the city's law enforcement, who was responsible for exploring the upper reaches, had not returned even after a long while. This caused the originally optimistic Xu Nan to feel some worry.
He opened up his WeChat. Although he didn't know how far below the ground he was in now, his mobile signal was incredibly good. It was just that he had no way to contact Qin Lele, and he also didn't know where she had run off to.
He created a chat group and added himself, Lu Junyi, and Qin Lele into it. After that, he thought carefully and chose the fourth person.
[Miss Shi San].
It was different from the silence of the earlier two. When Miss Shi San was added into the group, she immediately typed out a series of questions.
She was seemingly very astonished to see the chat group's mental-sounding name—[Xu Nan's Underground City].
[Miss Shi San: What the hell? Xu Nan, you want to play a tabletop role-playing game? I don't have the time.]
Xu Nan swiftly replied, "Where are you recently? When will you return to Jiangnan? Brother Junyi has run into trouble."
[Miss Shi San: I know, he was courting death. He was clearly a lowly being with just the qualifications to be a vet, yet he went to open a private hospital and obtained a false certification. Wasn't this simply cheating people? He made an innocent woman into such a state (Wenxin), he ought to die.]
Xu Nan turned completely pale with fright. Although he thought he understood Lu Junyi very well, there seemed to be something wrong with his black history.
(Wait! I shall first ignore 'with just qualifications to be a vet'.)
Xu Nan typed, "I need a blueprint of an underground city. If you don't have anything much on your plate, hurry up and return to H City. There are many things inconvenient to discuss on WeChat."
[Miss Shi San: Sure. I will go to your house this Friday night. I will also bring a gift for Xin`er.]
Their conversation then stopped.
Xu Nan felt very curious about the words Miss Shi San said - qualifications to be a vet - he even felt a little like slapping Lu Junyi awake. However, he was soft-hearted after all. He glanced at Lu Junyi who was clearly much skinnier than before and his slap ultimately didn't slam down.
"Are you slapping or not? You are so effeminate." Soupy, who was watching a Thai drama, glanced at Xu Nan. "Do you need my help for a slap?"
Xu Nan immediately shook his head.
What a joke. If Sister Soup really launched a slap, Lu Junyi's head would explode even if he inherited the job abilities of the metal garurumon.
...
After that, Xu Nan could only wait with an incomparable yearning for Lu Junyi to wake up. But soon after, he realized something was wrong.
Lu Junyi didn't enter ordinary sleep. He seemed to have entered a special state of extremely deep sleep. His breathing was very weak and his heartbeat was soft and without strength.
Xu Nan wasn't a doctor, so he was quite anxious about this. In fact, he even felt like bringing him to the hospital.
Luckily, Soupy came over for a look and stated that Lu Junyi was fine. It was just that the amount of time needed for him to wake up should be pretty long. At the fastest, it should be about three to five days.
Xu Nan cast the identification spell but was unable to ascertain Lu Junyi's job. It seemed like the opportunities this fellow had weren't simple at all.
Maybe, his deep sleep had something to do with his job.
During this period, Xu Nan completely skipped school. He placed construction of the underground city and Lu Junyi at the top of his priority list.
In the meantime, Qin Lele returned twice to replenish her supplies before heading out even deeper.
According to the future captain of the law enforcement team, she said that she had discovered some interesting things in the upper reaches. But now, she needed to verify even more information first. When the time is right, she would bring Xu Nan and the others along to head there together.
Qin Lele's disappearance naturally attracted Zhang Yingluo's questioning. However, in the face of her questioning and the so-called invitation to join the Thousand Awn Society, Xu Nan ultimately chose to hide things from her and decided to reject the invitation.
It was unknown why. At the start, he clearly liked Zhang Yingluo. But from the start up until now, he had no way to relax the wariness in his heart against her. On the contrary, for Qin Lele who was clearly more simple-minded, Xu Nan felt that he could trust her more.
As for the Thousand Awn Agency, it was an agency destined to disappear in the future. Xu Nan didn't feel any need for him to join it.
Time slowly passed, day by day. Very soon, Friday arrived. It was also on the 27th of November.
There were only two days left before the first day of warning.
The prophecy in the [Ten Days of Warning] was very important to Xu Nan. If the first day appeared, it would mean that everything he had seen before was real.
He had made ample preparations for the first day, and today was very important. Because firstly, it was Friday, the date when Miss Shi San would arrive at H City.
Secondly, Xu Nan was prepared to reap his harvest of this month's activity points.
"It isn't easy for me to wait until Friday...Usually, couples might be very frisky with each other, but they don't have too much time and the conditions aren't right. However, on Friday and Saturday night, the path leading to the 'Garden of Eden' would become incomparably smooth, freed of obstructions."
Xu Nan sat on the roof of the tallest building of the university city*, overlooking down from a great height.
Below were the streets with the hotels. Right now, the atmosphere was one of feasting and pleasure-seeking. The majority of people on the streets were couples.
Xu Nan smiled. He didn't do anything and simply glanced at his mission card. The activity points were like rockets, constantly surging upward.
[Activity points +500, from Lu Quan and Li Yingying]
[Activity points +500, from Fang Jiewei and Chen Lu]
[Activity points +800, from Song Xiaocheng and Qi Zijun]
...
Xu Nan felt a little surprised. He could see the names of the lowly person Song Xiaocheng.
He sent a WeChat text over, "You also went to get a room?"
Song Xiaocheng replied with lightning speed. "Yup! But I don't know why even after going to a few hotels, the receptionists all said that all the rooms are already booked. This is illogical. Even if it is a Friday, how could the business of these hotels be so flourishing?"
Xu Nan laughed out loud. He then sent a smiley emoticon over.
"Because your father, me, booked all the rooms in the hotels of the university city!"
...
Note:
University city refers to the region in the city where the university is located.