CHAPTER 169 ♦ SEEKING SHELTER II
last edited on ZLT: 19.07.22
This translation is hosted at ZHANLANN.COM
After lunch, Xuan Mo’s mother spoke to them before she returned to her room to sleep. This left the three of them sitting in silence in the living room. Xuan Mo waited for a while before enveloping the room in a soundproof barrier. She turned to Ling Yun: “Alright, no one’s gonna hear, you can talk now.”
Holding a cup of hot tea in his hands, Ling Yun started recounting.
After witnessing what had happened behind the hill, he naturally didn’t think of making a police report. His first instinct however was to go online, enter the Astrology Forum that was globally recognised and posted what he’d seen. He’d even uploaded images to prove his point. The pictures were taken with the astrology telescope, so they were very sharp.
Of course he still left some aces up his sleeve, there were still some pictures that he didn’t upload; the ones he shared were mostly those taken behind the hill, where the red light alien transformed from a human into a ball of light and escaped, leaving a pile of clothes in his wake. Motivated by his own agenda, he’d deleted all the pictures with Xuan Mo in them.
He’d not expected anyone to believe him, because he’d seen more strange occurrences being posted on the forum before. He just wanted to try to figure out exactly it was that happened, and maybe gain some following on his account, hence as to why he actually shared this experience on the forum. Another reason was also because after so many years, he’d roughly figured that people in general usually didn’t believe things like that, so probably nothing was going to come out of this even if he shared it.
However, not long after he posted it, his nightmare began.
The second day, his post was deleted.
Alarm bells immediately started ringing in his head. He didn’t raise the issue to the administrator, rather, he tightly followed the situation on the forum. When he realised that there was no discussion about the content that he had posted, he slowly let his guard go down. It was until one day when he woke up at home — his house was in the capital — and noticed that his room had been rummaged through.
“They must be quite professional, I suspect that they took pictures of my room before going through it, and reverted everything to its original location. But what they don’t know is that I had adjusted the robot at my bedside table to move exactly one step every hour. By seven in the morning, my robot would have made it to my alarm clock, took out its gun and pressed the alarm.” Ling Yun said gleefully and self-deprecatingly. “But that morning, my robot only made it to the 4am spot, my calculations and automated robot have never gone wrong before, and so I checked through my room and am very sure that someone has gone through the space before.”
His earlier delight for his own devices turned into a bitter smile: “I literally went cold, and even hated myself for realising it so quickly. Thank goodness they were only here to probe around, imagine if they were here to kill me… I might drag my parents down too. I don’t ever leave anything important lying around in the open, they won’t be able to find anything, and they can’t do anything to me either, but at the same time, I have no idea what they want, who they are, in fact, I’m suspecting that the aliens have somehow tracked me down and realised what I’ve witnessed…” He looked at Xuan Mo, and again at Ai Er Ge. Ai Er Ge bit into a piece of fried prawn, and rolled his eyes in disdain.
“After that, someone in the forum contacted me directly, they told me that they wanted the other pictures, but I knew I made a huge mistake. I only sent the pictures of the wounded alien, and not the person that attacked the alien, but the pictures they want are the pictures of the person that attacked the alien. In fact, they told me that they knew who I was, and knew where this was, they have been watching me, if I try to pull anything funny, they will…”
“This is why you didn’t dare to go anywhere on your own?”
“Yeah…” Ling Yun sighed softly. After observing for a few days, he realised that his school had really tight security; the patrolling police cars, officers and teachers were not just for show. So far, these had been largely able to fend off his external threat and create a safe space for him; at the same time, he wouldn’t need to drag his parents into this too.
Despite this, he was still worried, and such magnified anxiety had him feeling as though he was constantly under surveillance, or being targeted. This was before he came into contact with Xuan Mo; he literally had no idea who to suspect. It felt very helpless being sandwiched between a mysterious organisation and the aliens, he’d even thought about ending his life at some point in time.
“Afterwards, I noticed that you became friends with Ai Er Ge. Don’t blame me for being overly sensitive, after all, a red light alien disappeared but a mysterious red-haired guy appeared by your side. Even if I am an idiot, I’d be able to figure it out, so I contacted you… It was then did I realise, the only threat that I am under is from the mysterious organisation outside school that didn’t dare intrude into the campus space. I didn’t tell you because I ‘d thought I was safe back then, so there was no need to bother you about all this.”
Xuan Mo understood: “Pity that it’s winter break now.”
“Enh… it’s winter break now…” Ling Yun’s bitter smile deepened, “I’ve applied for accommodations to stay in school, but someone tried to break into my dorm on the second night, so I escaped. I didn’t dare to go home and had nowhere to go. I’ve literally been going around three cities, I really have no other options, so I could only come here. I saw your info before in the records.”
“Are you holding on to anything?” Xuan Mo remained unperturbed, “pictures of me?”
“I don’t know why they are so persistent about the photo, but look at the extent they are going to just to get my photos, if they were to figure out that it was you, things may get pretty bad for you.” Ling Yun scratched his head. “It’s not that I’m sacrificing myself to protect you, rather it’s more like since I’ve already exposed myself… it doesn’t make sense to drag you into all this, because no matter what, I think… they won’t let me go so easily.”
After listening to the situation, Xuan Mo could verify that the organisation behind all this was not Zone Seven, they didn’t do things like these, neither was it some National Security Bureau. The organsation behind this was probably the same people that Ai Er Ge mentioned earlier about the golden stone being stolen. It must be a foreign organisation.
Recently, Ling Yun had thoroughly understood what it meant by “you know too much” and its consequences. When he saw Xuan Mo and Ai Er Ge pondering over the situation, he was not a single bit curious about it. Rather, he fell backwards onto the sofa carelessly: “Whatever the situation is, tonight I’m staying here, I’m a weak human, you guys need to protect me!”
“The heck!” Ai Er Ge kicked him, “and I’m a living situation of a stranded E.T.! Are you gonna find me a spaceship back?!”
“Hehe.” Despite Ling Yun’s aloof appearance, there was nothing cool about his current demeanour even after being kicked. He hugged the cushion on the sofa and refused to get up. After successfully locating stronger and powerful people that can protect him, and spilling all the beans, he was in a very relaxed state. Even Xuan Mo’s chilly expression seemed comforting and familiar.
“I think I’ll receive a call soon…” Immediately after she said that, her phone rang. It was a call from Zhao Jing Lei.
“Hello, Xuan Mo, Happy Chinese New Year.” Though Zhao Jing Lei gave his greetings, his tone was nothing as cheerful as his words, “so sorry to be disturbing you on a CNY eve.”
“Speak, what is it?”
“The golden stone was stolen… and we only received news about this recently. Things are not really working in your favour.”
“You think I stole it?”
“Oh, ‘course not, I know you’re very sensitive to the fluctuations of the golden stone, can you feel where it is now?” Zhao Jing Lei signed, “those assholes took advantage of CNY, now we have no clue where the stone went; obviously the people that stole the stone came prepared.”
“Don’t find excuses for your own inability. Also, I can’t sense the stone, I can only feel the special type of energy that it releases after the stone absorbs human blood, but I haven’t felt anything recently.” Xuan Mo and Ai Er Ge’s mental powers hailed from different systems; she felt the fluctuations last time because she was nearby, but she didn’t feel the most recent one that Ai Er Ge mentioned earlier. Evidently only the Elge and those from the Coalition that were equipped with specialised devices would be able to detect the fluctuations. However, Ai Er Ge had not attracted the attention of Zhao Jing Lei yet, and so, there was no reason to throw him under the bus and into the limelight.
“We’ve made some insightful discoveries lately, even though some of the materials uncovered seemed quite foreign, we discovered a new smelting method and material ratio, and it was enough to create a new material that was lighter, stronger and more heat-resistant than titanium alloy. This was really quite a breakthrough, but…” Zhao Jing Lei was very distressed, “we’ve finally managed to prove ourselves, but now we’re back to square one, Yi Fei’s not eaten for a few days now because of all this!”
Xuan Mo remained unmoved. She’d only seen Yi Fei a handful of times; that youth was incredibly passionate about the golden stone, but the extent of his passion was making her feel threatened. So honestly, whether or not he starved to death really didn’t matter to her.
“Alright Xuan Mo, I won’t force you, but if you sense anything, you need to update us immediately… aye, looks like we can’t celebrate Chinese New Year in peace…” Zhao Jing Lei hung up.
Xuan Mo looked at Ai Er Ge. Ai Er Ge shrugged: “I’m not very sensitive to things like these, but I roughly did a quick calculation, it’s probably on some island in the pacific ocean right now, do you have a boat? Or a plane?”
Xuan Mo watched the CCTV New Year’s Gala expressionlessly: “Firstly, you keep your nose out of this. Second, if you want to go, swim your way over, I don’t plan to help you.”
Ai Er Ge felt very helpless and crestfallen. He shuffled over to Xuan Mo’s side, pressed his palms together and blinked his glinting eyes at her: “You don’t let me to touch it, but you let the blue planet beings touch it; you heard what he said too, it’s probably more dangerous for blue planet beings to touch something like that! Even if I do come into contact with the galaxy door, I won’t be able to find anyone to help me activate it, but this won’t be the case for these blue planet beings!”
Silent, Xuan Mo squinted her eyes.
“…” Ling Yun was already asleep on the side.
Lu Yu Chen was welcomed with the following sight after entering — a cool-looking guy sprawled across the sofa hugging a cushion deep asleep, while Xuan Mo and Ai Er Ge were sitting together on the long sofa, she was watching and the TV while he was watching her; it was an incredibly harmonious scene indeed.
Whoosh! A volcano of anger instantly erupted in his head, Lu Yu Chen switched into attack mode, pulled Ai Er Ge away and growled at him: “why are you here?!”
“Shh! Aunt Xuan is sleeping!” Both Ai Er Ge and Xuan Mo heard Lu Yu Chen walking in, but both of them were too lazy to move. None of them expected him to kick up such a fuss the moment he came in. At the situation, Ai Er Ge instinctively slipped into the filial-daughter mode as per his memories and reminded him about the asleep parent.
Lu Yu Chen boiled in fury. He berated himself mentally for being so careless and overlooking that and annoyed that this chap noticed it before he did; at the same time, he glared at the guy in front of him, before he came to a shocking realisation, he’d already met Mo Mo’s mother?! And they seemed to have gotten along pretty well?! And who the hell was that other handsome guy sleeping on the sofa!? Who was that?! Who?!
What the hell was going on exactly!?
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