Chapter 102: Fan Filter |
The setting sun bled red, and the evening clouds filled the sky.
Beneath the floor-to-ceiling window, in the deepening dusk, Tong Hua sat leaning against the sofa facing the elevator. Her face was serene and her expression grave, as solemn and composed as a painting.
The faint fragrance of tea in the air, the sounds of the game coming from the television, the short videos blaring from an old phone, or even the snack shelf tucked away in a corner, could shake her focus anymore.
After cleansing herself, fasting, and centering her mind, she had entered a state of unity between humanity and heaven without sorrow or joy, only feeling a vast stillness within. She only had one thought left. Right now, I am terrifyingly strong!
Amid all the noise, her heart remained calm as still water. She held a petal of bougainvillea plucked from downstairs between her fingers, her gaze distant and unfathomable as she waited for the wind to blow.
Mr. Zhang slurped his tea and looked at An Ran in confusion. “What’s wrong with her?”
The boy, whose wrist still bore faint scars, paused his game. He glanced back, hesitated for a long moment, then whispered, “She’s been like this since this morning. I looked up these symptoms on a search engine. It seems like she has a terminal illness.”
“Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet!” Mr. Zhang said helplessly. “Is it possible she just took the wrong meds again?”
An Ran shook his head firmly. “No way. Mr. Ji told me that if you take the wrong meds, your eyes turn red and you keep calling other people’s names non-stop. I’ve seen it myself. It’s real!”
Meanwhile, Tong Hua remained unmoved on the sofa. She was as unshaken in patience as the earth[1], her thoughts as still as the void. Only a faint, disdainful smile curled at the corner of her lips.
Heh. You think you can shake my mind with mere offensive words? Dream on. Ji Jue? He’s like clay chickens and pottery dogs, mere dry bones in a grave[2].
Ever since that crushing defeat, she had trained her skills and tempered her body day and night. She had been running a thousand meters every day, doing thirty push-ups and thirty sit-ups, all for this very moment! She did all that not to prove how great she was, but to tell everyone this: I’ll take back what I lost with my own hands!
She drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out.
Tong Hua, believe in yourself. You can do this! You’re not the same person you used to be! They’re just minor hallucinations. They can’t scare you. Face them bravely and overcome them! The battle has already begun!
As vibrations came from the elevator, a sharp glint flashed in her eyes, bright as a candle flame.
He’s coming, he’s coming! He’s here!
The cables were moving, the elevator rising. She could hear it. This was fate! Fate was knocking at the door!
Tong Hua clenched her fists, feeling the wind brimming with killing intent.
The bougainvillea in my hometown must be in bloom by now, right? In this battle, life and death do not matter. If I fall here, bury me beneath the flourishing coconut trees. Like a trial decreed by destiny, this inevitable showdown has finally drawn near! Come on, come on, Tong Hua, show him how tough you are. Speak those words to the formidable enemy about to arrive. Strike first with fate’s poisoned blade, make him feel that old pain and despair. Today, I’ll show you the power of a dark past!
“I didn’t spend my whole life struggling, fighting and competing with everyone[3]...”
Ding!
The instant the elevator doors opened, the girl, her resolve fully realized, shot up from the sofa, “drew her sword,” and with every bit of strength in her body, shouted at the top of her lungs, “Good evening, Mr. Ji!”
Ji Jue, who hadn’t even steadied himself yet, was hit head-on by a deafening scream. The woman who suddenly dropped into a squat clutched her head, still shouting, “Mr. Ji, good job! Mr. Ji, please have a seat!!!”
“Huh? Uh…” Startled out of his wits, Ji Jue nearly plopped straight onto the ground, staring at her in shock.
Isn’t she a bit too polite?
He hesitated, then cautiously ventured, “G-good… evening?”
“Mr. Ji, good job!!!” Clearly not having recovered from her previously precarious mental state and charging straight in at full force, the girl still wore an expression of heroic sacrifice. “Mr. Ji, please have a seat!”
Shit. This woman has completely lost it!
Ji Jue didn’t dare move. He broke out in a cold sweat, unable to figure out why every time something new popped up, it was just to mess with him. Also, how was she managing to say such warm, enthusiastic words with that fierce, almost cute expression?
She is welcoming me… right?
In the awkward silence that followed, An Ran quit his game and shouted helplessly toward the back, “Ms. Wen, come quickly! Ms. Hua’s acting up again!”
Again? The company culture here seems a little complicated, doesn’t it?
“Uh…” Ji Jue tried to speak several times, only to stop himself. “Did I come at a bad time?”
Familiar footsteps sounded from the end of the hallway. The office door was shoved open roughly as Wen Wen strode out and said to Ji Jue, “No, you came at just the right time!”
Ji Jue’s eyes widened. “Huh?!”
Something about that line felt off. For a moment, he was genuinely afraid that Wen Wen would break into a radiant smile, pull Tong Hua into her arms, and then beckon him over too. Should he hesitate a little to appear reserved?
Sadly, none of that happened. Wen Wen hadn’t even bothered tidying herself up.
Her familiar short hair was a mess, her eyes were bloodshot, and cigarette ash still clung to her sleeves. She carried the near-death aura of an office worker who’d been working through weeks of nonstop overtime. Wen Wen rolled up her sleeves, casually grabbed the bawling Tong Hua who had lunged at her and tossed her back onto the sofa, then seized Ji Jue by the shoulders.
Her grip was like a steel vise, and her smile was ice cold.
“You finally decided to show up, Ji Jue.” She raised the freshly printed document in her other hand and shoved it right into his face. “Go on, explain this to me, what exactly is going on with this rift realm exploration report my subordinate turned in?”
“What the hell? How is this suddenly my… I…”
Ji Jue blinked in confusion, but as he looked down at the paper, he was mindblown.
Mr. Ji said I picked all of this up.
Mr. Ji said we didn’t deal the killing blow, so if they died, it’s not on me.
Mr. Ji said if it comes to it, just go all in and do the damn thing, so we made our move.
Mr. Ji also said, “What’s the point of risking your life for a few hundred a month? If something goes wrong, run, don’t be stubborn.”
Mr. Ji can fix air conditioners and refrigerators. He’s really amazing.
Mr. Ji can drive really fast, even faster than Ms. Wen on her motorcycle.
Mr. Ji said that hag Mercury isn’t a good person…
A rift realm exploration report, written in complete disarray, utterly illogical, impossible to make sense of, had somehow turned into a full-blown Ji Jue observation report. And one with an eight-hundred-meter-thick fan filter on top of it, the kind where Mr. Ji was extremely hardworking and absurdly talented.
Wen Wen, already so furious she felt like her hair could fall out, leaned in with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Mr. Ji, care to share your thoughts on this… personal scripture of yours?”
Ji Jue waved his hands frantically, on the verge of tears. “I didn’t tell him to do it! It wasn’t me! Don’t go making things up!”
Wen Wen snorted coldly. “I hope you’ll remember what you said later!”
He had barely walked in before being treated to a full-blown lunatic performance, and now, just like that, a massive blame had been slammed onto his head. Ji Jue was completely numb.
Looking at An Ran’s innocent face, he no longer knew what to say. He couldn’t decide whether to resent this silly kid for writing absolutely everything into his report, or to be grateful that he hadn’t included that line where Ji Jue had called Ms. Wen thick-headed.
Oh, wait, he hadn’t said that out loud. He’d only thought about it. Alright then, no problem!
Ji Jue let out a sigh of relief.
“Keep this kind of nonsense report to yourself. If you actually hand it in, that old director might laugh himself straight into the ICU over at the Spring City ruins.” Wen Wen shoved the report into Ji Jue’s hands and warned him sternly, “An Ran is hopeless, but don’t think you can escape. I don’t care if you make it up or write the truth, just get me a proper report I can submit. Got it?”
“Uh, got it.” Ji Jue nodded rapidly like a pecking chicken, going along with it without resistance. Seeing how exhausted Wen Wen looked, he couldn’t help but feel uneasy. “Was this rift realm exploration that troublesome?”
“No, it wasn’t troublesome at all. It was a complete nightmare.”
After dumping An Ran’s report problem onto Ji Jue, Wen Wen grabbed a bottle from the rack and chugged it down with a conflicted look. “Inside the rift realm, people just explore and dig things up. At worst, you'll fight to death. But outside the rift? That’s where all the real trouble is. Do you have any idea how big this mess is?
“Those bastards from the Dragonrite Society are one thing, but even Nirvana got involved. While you were inside the rift, White Owl and Formless both showed up, then disappeared in thin air. The entire Security Bureau’s Chosen Ones turned Haizhou upside down and didn’t find a single trace of them. Then, a few days later, White Owl popped up again in the Empire, and even killed a prince!”
“And that damn Formless? Still hasn’t been found! Now the entire Haizhou Security Bureau is writing self-reflection reports, and I’m stuck working overtime because of it. Some geniuses are even saying, ‘Could those two have run into the rift realm?’ I swear, I’m really impressed.” She looked over, her gaze probing. “Got any leads?”
“No clue, no idea, never heard of them!”
Ji Jue shook his head decisively, blinking with a face full of pure, innocent confusion, radiating the unmistakable charm of someone going, I’m illiterate, I’m ignorant, I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.
That massive rift realm just blew up out of nowhere. We were completely dumbfounded too, okay? You’re not seriously thinking I had anything to do with it, yeah? No way, right? No way anyone would think a level-zero newbie could go play demolition king in a rift realm, right? That’s like pointing at a fish head and telling it to go take out a monkey.
Who was White Owl? He’d never seen them. As for Formless, Ji Jue didn’t even need to think to know that he was definitely dead! Charging headfirst like an idiot straight into a sage’s tomb, he basically delivered himself as a fresh blood pack, almost completely drained by that corpse corrupted by Mercury.
Even if he somehow escaped by the skin of his teeth, there was not a single trace of him in the workshop’s teleportation records. The whole rift had already blown up, anyway. It wasn’t like he could claim he was some ultimate lifeform floating in the void outside reality and still hanging on, right?
“Good. That’s the reaction I wanted. Keep it up.” Wen Wen nodded in satisfaction and patted his shoulder. “That’s exactly how this incident went. Things that shouldn’t exist, don’t exist. Things you shouldn't see, you didn’t see.”
She had probably heard plenty of explosive details from An Ran in private, but she didn’t mention a single one now. There was already enough trouble, no need to go looking for more. As for that Shepherd nonsense, she was sure that they had never heard of him, never learned about him, never seen him.
My silly kid just dragged along an informant, wandered into the rift realm in a daze, played a few days of wilderness survival, and then somehow came out. That’s the story. Don’t dig any deeper. Just muddle through. Life goes on.
These past few days in Cliff City had been full of hidden tension and chaos. They could barely keep their own little patch under control, so who had the energy to worry about trouble happening far away?
And so, after an overly dramatic welcome ceremony and pleasantries, Ji Jue finally got to the main point of his visit. Gritting his teeth, he hauled two large boxes onto the table with effort.
Time to split the loot!
1. “Unshaken in patience, like the earth; serene in deep contemplation, like a hidden treasury.” This line comes from the Sutra of the Ten Wheels of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva in the Great Assembly of Mahayana, and it describes the spiritual state of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva.
It means that Kṣitigarbha can, like the earth, tolerate and bear everything without being moved; at the same time, his meditative wisdom is deeply concealed, like a secret treasury beyond measure, symbolizing extraordinary perfection in patience and vast, profound wisdom.
2. “Clay chickens and pottery dogs” refers to figures made of mud and clay, used as a metaphor for things that look impressive but are actually hollow and unable to withstand a single blow. “Dry bones in a grave” refers to lifeless remains, symbolizing people who have no vitality, are simply waiting for death, or are completely incapable of action.
I decided to translate this literally since there’s no English equivalent and I would like to preserve the Chinese elements here. Hope this explanation helps!
3. This is referring to Ji Jue’s famous quote, “I didn’t spend my whole life struggling, fighting and competing with everyone to become some monster like you.”
