Chapter 194: Talulah: Wei Yanwu... Hah. (Patreon)

Under the dusk of the Northlands, Saito and Talulah sat together by the bridge of the OMV Bifang, with some food and wine laid out beside them. A faint flush colored the red-dragon girl's cheeks.

She'd lived in Ursus for a long time, yet Talulah didn't normally drink. Today, though, she just really wanted some.

"I've never seen my father, not for as long as I've had memories. Uncle Ch'en was the one who raised me and Hui-chieh."

Saito sat quietly beside her. He made a decent listener, all things considered.

"Uncle Ch'en?"

"Mm. Uncle Ch'en is Hui-chieh's father and my stepfather. For certain reasons, Mother remarried him after Father died."

Talulah's tone was perfectly calm. She'd been too young then to see through the tangled dealings between the adults, and now so much time had passed that she'd long since made her peace with most of it.

At this moment she seemed to be simply recounting the past, but Saito still caught the loneliness in the depths of her eyes.

"After Father died, Mother was never happy again. Uncle Ch'en was a gentle man at heart. Even though Mother kept giving him the cold shoulder and people kept gossiping about him, he still took on the responsibility of looking after me and Hui-chieh…"

Too much time had passed. Talulah's impression of Uncle Ch'en was hazy at best, but she could still vaguely remember that he was the only adult in those years who had tried to be kind to her and her sister.

If she ever got the chance, she'd like to thank that man in person.

"As for Wei Yenwu… heh."

Every opinion Talulah held of that man melted into that one scornful snort. If the person she'd once hated most was Koschei, then the runner-up was surely that self-important, sanctimonious hypocrite.

Now that she had pieced the truth of those years together and thought it over again, she knew Wei Yenwu was not blameless in what had destroyed her family.

But these days her gaze had long since moved past old grudges. What mattered most right now was the Syndicate's and Endfield's work in Ursus.

"It's just that there are two things I wanted to ask you to do for me…

…

…

Saito laid a bouquet before each of the two graves. Neither of the people buried there had ever done a single day's duty as a parent, but Talulah had come into this world because of them, and these two bouquets were her way of settling things with herself.

"Haah."

With a long sigh, Saito left the flowers and turned away. The first of the favors Talulah had asked of him was done.

A few minutes later, a blue-haired figure appeared at the end of the gravel path and came to the same two graves. She carried nothing in her hands, but when she saw the two bouquets before the headstones, the blue-haired girl fell into a long silence.

…

…

"Boss, your scale dumplings are ready. Takeout or eat here?"

"Wrap them up for me."

Carrying the packed breakfast, Saito returned to the neighborhood near their lodgings. By this hour Little Chen had been awake for a while and was finishing her daily morning workout in the park nearby.

Only now, a whole ring of people lay sprawled around her, men and women, young and old. Judging by their clothes, they were probably Lungmen locals who'd come out early to exercise.

"I know this scene well."

Saito looked at the people lying on the ground, red-faced and gasping for breath. It was exactly the same as when Yelena and the others had trained with Little Chen. That girl's workload was nothing ordinary people could endure. Even superhumans of Terra like Talulah and her crew had trouble keeping up.

He walked over to Little Chen with the bag of scale dumplings and waved a hand in front of her eyes.

"Almost done?"

"I just finished warming up."

Little Chen was as full of energy as ever, so she really did seem to have only just warmed up.

"Ahem. Let's call it a day. It's better to keep a low profile on someone else's turf."

Seeing the crowd around them gradually growing livelier, Saito gave Chen Qianyu a quiet reminder. Little Chen glanced left and right, caught on, and nodded rapidly.

"We'll go back, wash up, and have breakfast. Today let's see if we can get a meeting with that Rat King. If there's no chance, we'll go wander around the slums."

"You got it!"

Little Chen nodded, bursting with spirit, and swiped a bowl of scale dumplings out of Saito's hands while she was at it.

One hour later.

Dressed in casual clothes, Chen Qianyu and Saito stood on the streets of Lungmen. Their destination was clear, and they set off straight for the slums of the outer ring.

"Isn't Ivan coming with us?"

"He's gone to meet the Rat King through 'proper' channels. The main point of our trip is really just to look around the slums. Whether we meet the Rat King is a bonus."

If you wanted to understand a leader, you went and saw the place they governed with your own eyes. That was exactly what Saito meant to do.

And once they actually descended into the slums, Saito became convinced that the Rat King, Lin Kojuii, really was working hard for the people who lived here.

Compared with the misery he'd seen in the slums of Chernobog, the scene before him earned his grudging respect.

The houses were intact and the streets orderly. There were no dying vagrants by the roadside, and shops and vendors lined both sides of the road. Next to Chernobog, which was basically a giant garbage dump, this place at least had some sign of life.

Through his Originium sight, Saito could also tell that quite a few of the people around them were Infected, and that their infection levels were all within a controllable range.

That was no small feat.

Of course, praise was one thing, but it didn't mean this was a good place by any stretch.

Ragged, grimy poor folk were still everywhere, and most of them watched the two with wariness and fear. In the shadows among the crowd, quite a few eyes were fixed on them.

"Those must be local gangs. As long as they don't make a move on us, we can ignore them for now."

Saito murmured the words to Little Chen beside him. He wasn't worried about her safety. It was the safety of those guys he worried about. On someone else's turf, it was best not to stir up any big trouble.

Little Chen gave a slight nod. She knew the stakes. Right now she didn't even have her swords with her, only two twigs she'd snapped off in passing from a hedge and hidden under her clothes.

From her years of experience walking Talos II, she knew that if you didn't hide who you were like this, someone would always come looking for trouble.

And those troublemakers weren't necessarily all fools. More often it was locals testing the outsiders.

And just as she'd expected, trouble found them soon enough.

Only this trouble seemed a little… different from what she'd first imagined?

"You there! Yes, you two, I'm talking to you."

A somewhat flippant woman's voice rang out not far away. The two turned around and saw a scantily dressed white-haired woman with tattooed arms waving at them.