Chapter 195: A Blind Eye to the Street Prowler (Patreon)

"Brother Saito, do you know her?"

"How could I? It's my first time in Lungmen."

While the two of them were still baffled, the white-haired woman who had been waving at them had already reached them and sidled up with the ease of an old friend.

"Have you eaten?"

"Uh, we just finished breakfast."

"No worries, it's nearly noon anyway. Want to go grab something together?"

Even Chen Qianyu, who considered herself plenty outgoing, looked a little uncomfortable now. Saito wasn't doing much better, though at least part of his attention had landed on something else.

This girl was clearly no ordinary person. She had racial traits similar to Little Chen's, and an air that set her apart from everyone else. But most important of all, Saito caught a very familiar smell on her.

"That fragrance..."

"Tumorbeast tallow, Sichuan peppercorns, chili bean paste... and a lethal dose of chili peppers..."

The white-haired girl seemed to have heard Saito's murmuring. In the next moment their eyes met, and each saw in the other exactly what they'd hoped to find.

"We're new in town. Why don't you pick the place?"

"Sure. There's a shop nearby I go to all the time."

"???"

Now it was Little Chen's turn to be lost. She stared at the two of them, who had somehow reached an agreement without her, and shot Saito a pleading look.

"Little Chen, with all the exercise you get, you must not have had enough this morning, right?"

"Uh, I don't think now's the time to ask that..."

Before Little Chen could even finish, she saw Saito watching her with an expression close to begging.

"Yes."

"Good. Everything else can wait. Let's go top up first."

…

…

"Boss, same broth as usual! Make it a big one this time, and throw in two more jin of tumorbeast meat!"

The white-haired girl spoke in a thoroughly authentic Shangshu dialect as she led Saito and Chen Qianyu, swaggering, into the shop. She picked an empty table on the second floor and sat down.

Smelling that familiar fragrance in the air, Saito nearly drooled, tears and all. After several years stuck in that godforsaken Ursus, his mouth had gone so bland it felt ready to die.

Of the two packets of hotpot base Little Chen had brought last time, he'd only used half of one before the Administrator caught him. Over this business of cooking on the side and eating alone, the Administrator had even had a fight with him, and then, naturally, mooched meals off him for several days.

He still hadn't gotten his fill. Besides, that hotpot base had been a bit too mild. Back before he transmigrated, Saito had been among the top spice-eaters even in Chongqing, and he often did side-kitchen hotpot sessions with a few classmates from Hunan and Jiangxi.

And in that brief moment of crossing paths on the street, he had understood that this white-haired girl was a kindred spirit!

"The boss here is from Shangshu too. Otherwise, getting a bite of proper Shangshu hotpot in Lungmen wouldn't be easy."

The white-haired girl introduced the place cheerfully.

"I could smell that."

Saito, a fellow glutton, gave her a thumbs-up. But gradually, the smile on his face faded a little.

Seeing that he'd put away the small talk, the white-haired girl across from him set down the dipping bowl she'd just mixed.

"I'm Saito, and this is my companion Chen Qianyu. And what should we call you, miss?"

Saito kept the introduction simple, but the moment he finished, her expression turned strange.

"Wait. You don't know who I am?"

A slender, vermilion finger pointed at a face that could topple a kingdom. Surprise was written all over it, but Saito and Chen Qianyu were clearly even more bewildered than she was.

"Should we... know you?"

All three people at the table were now lost in confusion. The white-haired girl shook her head, then rubbed her temples hard, as if trying to work something out.

After a moment she asked them again:

"You two aren't from the Sui Observatory?"

"Of course not."

They weren't even from Great Yan, though Little Chen could count as half.

"Then you came from Dahuang?"

"Not that either."

"That's weird. Then why do you smell like Sister Shu?"

As if to prove she hadn't gotten it wrong, the white-haired girl dragged her stool over beside Saito and sniffed at him left and right like a puppy.

Saito tried to get away, but the white-haired girl caught his wrist.

He tried to pull free, but her strength was frighteningly great, and if he pushed any harder, something terrible might happen. All he could do was send a plea for help toward Chen Qianyu beside him.

'Brother Saito, I'm coming to save you!'

Chen Qianyu understood what he meant and was about to step in and haul off this white-haired hoodlum girl. Before she could even speak, though, the girl let go of Saito's wrist, and the confusion on her face only deepened.

"This is really weird. It's not just Sister Shu's scent. There's other people's too."

The white-haired girl muttered a few words, and the curiosity in her eyes grew even stronger.

And at that moment, Saito noticed something was off.

The name this girl had just said sounded rather familiar.

Shu.

Wasn't that the name of the target they'd come to find, the one ranked sixth among the Sui siblings's fragments?

He turned back to look at the girl in front of him...

White hair, a red arm, a free-spirited temperament, calling Shu "sister," and on top of that the Shangshu dialect and the love of spicy food. It all seemed to match one of the Sui proxies in the records.

"You're... Nian?"

"I knew it! You do know me."

Nian put on a look that said these two weren't being honest with her.

Still, it really wasn't Saito's fault that he hadn't recognized Nian right away. The goals of this trip were Dahuang on one hand and Yumen on the other, and he had only skimmed the information on the other Sui proxies. Going by those few lines of description alone, it was hard for Saito to believe that this person with a total slacker look on her face was a Feranmut Proxy!

Of course, it might also have something to do with Hongshan's materials having been touched up a little.

"But we truly have nothing to do with the Sui Observatory or Great Yan. In fact, we only entered Great Yan yesterday. Before that we were building things up in Ursus."

"Ursus?"

Nian didn't care much about international affairs, but she knew a thing or two about the neighbors next door. Still, Saito's answer clearly hadn't resolved her doubt.

"So why do you two carry our scent?"

Only now did Nian's expression turn properly serious. The air on the second floor began to heat up, because she sensed not only the scent of her own brothers and sisters on them, but even traces that were tied to herself.

But she was one hundred percent sure she'd never met these two, and neither of them carried any of her creations.

"I think I get what you're talking about."

Saito had gradually understood everything. Under Nian's gaze, he calmly untied the gourd at his waist and set it on the table.

"What's that?"