Decipher

Li Shutong took the enormous cat and left. All he said was that he would personally teach Qing Chen, but he didn't say what he was going to teach.

But Lin Xiaoxiao, who was well acquainted with his boss, knew that his boss was in an excellent mood right now.

Truly excellent mood.

The Knight's inheritance was almost severed after Li Shutong's generation. Although he had never mentioned it, with his own eyes, Lin Xiaoxiao watched his boss choose a successor time after time, and failed again and again.

Hence, Lin Xiaoxiao knew that his boss was anxious.

That road was too tough to traverse, to the extent where even he and Ye Wan couldn't complete it.

At this moment, Qing Chen's prisoner uniform was drenched, and his hair was dripping with droplets. He couldn't stop gasping for air.

The torment of waterboarding was something that would traumatize a person.

"I'm truly impressed by you," said Lin Xiaoxiao. "I don't even know how you endured being in the small dark room for four days. Anyway, I only endured 36 hours back then. Mother Ye was a little better than me, 47 hours."

"A little better?" Ye Wan glanced at him.

"Better by a notch, is that sufficient?" Lin Xiaoxiao said, annoyed.

Qing Chen slowly stopped gasping. "You were both locked in the dark room, too?"

"Mm." Lin Xiaoxiao nodded. "For an ordinary person, it is a cruel punishment. But for us, it is a type of test, something we must go through. When the boss had us lock you up in the dark room, I knew he wanted to choose you. However, if you couldn't endure it, then he wouldn't mind watching you die either. The boss has seen too many cases of life and death, so his heart has likewise hardened."

Lin Xiaoxiao laughed and continued, "But he can't afford not hardening his heart either. That's how this era works. Don't blame him."

Ye Wan took a soft but thick dark-blue bath towel and handed it to Qing Chen. "Dry yourself. Not many people could be as unyielding as you during waterboarding. It is even normal for regular people to experience urinary and fecal incontinence."

It was as though this wasn't the first time Ye Wan had given somebody the waterboarding treatment.

And right now, he had accepted Qing Chen from the depths of his heart.

At that moment, Lin Xiaoxiao stepped out of the interrogation room and brought a dining tray in. On the tray were a bowl of rice, a plate of scrumptious sweet and sour pork ribs, and a bowl of porridge.

After thinking for a bit, Qing Chen picked up the bowl of porridge. Ye Wan then said to Lin Xiaoxiao, "I won. You owe me $1000."

Qing Chen was surprised. "You two were betting?"

"That's right," Lin Xiaoxiao said in frustration. "Your body is extremely low in blood sugar right now. At the sight of food, it was only right that you would have wanted a bite of something sweet. That was the answer that your body conveyed to your brain, so I bet that you would have a bite of the sweet and sour pork ribs first."

Ye Wan continued, "You have been starved for four days. Any smart person will choose to first have the porridge and suppress your body's instincts. Then, you will ask yourself which is the best choice. I bet that someone who could endure through the dark room and waterboarding wouldn't be that much of a fool to start with pork ribs first."

Qing Chen drank the porridge slowly. He could feel his cold body warming up gradually at that moment.

No matter what kind of suffering he had experienced in the Surface World, it was nothing compared to all he had endured here for the past few days.

His peers were still schooling, dating, and playing games, while he already started a new lease on unknown life.

Even he didn't know where he would be going.

Lin Xiaoxiao suddenly spoke up, "So, you didn't know you were part of the Qing Clan when you came in? That's why you sought the boss for a game of chess? To help yourself out of the situation?"

"Mm." Qing Chen nodded. As the matter stood, there was nothing more to hide.

Lin Xiaoxiao asked again, "So right now, you don't have any relations with the Qing Clan, right? You've never lived with the Qing Clan and didn't have any sense of belonging."

"Mm." Qing Chen nodded again.

Lin Xiaoxiao's eyebrows lifted from glee. "That's not bad. I suppose the boss has thought of this point. That's why he decided to take you in."

Ye Wan said to Qing Chen, "Rest assured that only Lin Xiaoxiao, boss, and I are aware of your Surface World identity. We won't even tell Li Dongze. We are going to help you keep this a secret."

Qing Chen then let out a breath of relief. "Thanks… Who is Li Dongze?"

"Li Dongze of Heng Society." Lin Xiaoxiao laughed. "Heng Society is an organization under Knights. The power of Knights, I'm afraid, is greater than you imagined. It seems you know nothing about the world outside, so the two of us will give you some remedial lessons for the next few days."

Ye Wan spoke up, "Oh, right. That Lu Guangyi of yours is pretty loyal to you. He has suffered much for your sake the past few days and nearly even hit the boss."

"Oh, thanks for the heads-up." Qing Chen nodded.

"Do you know Liu Dezhu and Huang Jixian, or maybe that Jian Sheng who's fond of scolding others?" Lin Xiaoxiao asked.

"I know of Liu Dezhu and Huang Jixian, but we're not acquainted. They're my schoolmates from high school," Qing Chen explained.

"Hold on, you're also a regular high school student in the Surface World?" Lin Xiaoxiao was shocked. Even though he knew a little about the state of affairs in the Surface World, looking at Qing Chen, he thought the latter should be outstanding in that world too.

The abilities and willpower that Qing Chen exhibited weren't things that they would equip a normal student with.

Qing Chen began to explain. "The Surface World is peaceful in comparison. There aren't any surpassers, mechanical limbs, or gang organizations. It's stable and peaceful. It's not that bad being a regular person in that type of era. There won't be any threat to life."

"How envious," Lin Xiaoxiao replied woefully.

Qing Chen asked, "Where is the dialect-speaking person being held?"

"Just a few rooms down from this interrogation room. What's wrong?" Lin Xiaoxiao asked.

"Can I ask him a few questions?" Qing Chen asked.

"Of course you can," Lin Xiaoxiao smiled as he replied, "You're already one of us now. What can't you do? Moving forward, you'll be unimpeded within No. 18 Prison."

Qing Chen thought it through for a while. After that, using the towel used during the waterboarding, he tied it to his face and asked Lin Xiaoxiao to help fetch an e-reader for himself. Only then did he go to the single room used to imprison Jian Sheng.

The alloy door opened and Ye Wan proceeded ahead to place Jian Sheng under control.

This Earthling looked to be about thirty years old.

All of a sudden, Jian Sheng hurled a torrent of verbal abuse, "Your daddy's gonna give you baby…"

Before he finished, Qing Chen silently wrote four words on the e-reader, which then stopped the other party's curses. "Wide and Narrow Alley.*"

Jian Sheng froze for a moment. "You are from Earth?"

"A few questions for you," Qing Chen continued writing. "Aren't you Sichuanese? Why did you transmigrate here? Were you in Luo City?"

"This daddy was in Luo City for some business. Then, I transmigrated to this place unknowingly." Seeing a fellow Earthling, Jian Sheng answered the questions properly.

"What do you work as?" Qing Chen wrote again on the e-reader.

"A ticket scalper," Jian Sheng answered. "Are you a barbarian from Luo City?"

Except Qing Chen had no intention of answering his question. Instead, he turned and left.

It was only until now that Ye Wan let go of Jian Sheng.

Jian Sheng suddenly realized as the alloy door slowly closed that this 'fellow villager' didn't have any intention of saving him. Hence, he immediately began scolding the other party again.

However, Jian Sheng felt something amiss as he thought about it. That young man was an Earthling, so why did it seem like he held a pretty high rank in the Otherworld?!

Lin Xiaoxiao, who had interrogated him, and that tall and muscular man were both cooperating with the young man.

Was there already such an impressive character among the transmigrators?

Outside the door, Lin Xiaoxiao looked at Qing Chen, the towel on his face, and then the e-reader in his hands.

After experiencing the dark room and waterboarding, this young man could still maintain such a cautious habit in the end?!

Footnote:

[1] Wide and Narrow Alley, also known as Kuanzhai Alley, is an actual place that exists in Chengdu, the capital of the Chinese province of Sichuan.