Chapter 48: Mai Minghe and Putairang's Probing

In a fraction of a second, lightning-fast and blinding, Mai Minghe knew she could no longer keep up the facade.

Her only option was to play the role through to the end.

"... Jonah?"

A layer of cold sweat coated her back, and the muscles in her face felt heavy as lead. Mai Minghe had no idea whether she had successfully produced an expression of "curiosity"—she could only try her best.

"Is that the Jonah I mentioned when I passed on the message?"

Feigning ignorance of Futailan's gaze, she looked only at Longzhen and asked, "The person whose life is in danger? What happened to him? He's all right, isn't he?"

Before either of them could answer, Mai Minghe made the sign of the cross in front of her chest.

"God preserve us," she murmured. "It surely wasn't because my phone call was delayed that something went wrong, was it? God wouldn't blame me..."

Longzhen glanced at her superior. Futailan frowned, gave a wave of his hand, muttered, "She's religious," and finally shifted his gaze away from Mai Minghe's face.

Mai Minghe let out a silent sigh of relief inwardly.

Of course it was natural for her to react to the name Jonah, considering she had been the one to say it out loud several times...

Seen in this light, she seemed to have bluffed her way through for the moment.

"This doesn't concern you," Longzhen said to Mai Minghe first, not continuing the conversation in front of her. She picked up a pen and paper from the desk, rapidly scribbled a sentence, and handed it to her superior.

A muscle visibly twitched across his face.

"I see."

He surged abruptly to his feet from behind the desk, crumpled the note into a tight ball, and without sparing Mai Minghe another glance, strode toward the office door. Just before stepping out, he flung over his shoulder, "I'll handle it. Get her out of here immediately—take the back way."

What on earth had happened?

Was the message Longzhen delivered earlier not just a test, but news of a genuine crisis?

Full of doubts, Mai Minghe nevertheless grasped one crucial fact: due to the sudden emergency, the attitude of the Morgan household had completely shifted; she was free to leave now.

Whatever the emergency might be, since she was allowed to go, why would she hesitate for even half a second?

She sprang up instantly and hurried after Longzhen. As they left, the path they took was certainly not the one they had come by, though what was happening on the other side of the company headquarters remained entirely a mystery.

Longzhen's mind was consumed with other matters, and she paid no attention to Mai Minghe whatsoever. To any question Mai Minghe asked, she simply replied, "It's none of your business."

Leading Mai Minghe through a hurried couple of turns within the sprawling office floor, Longzhen stopped, jutted her chin toward the corridor ahead, and said, "Go down the stairs that way. Once you reach the bottom, have the security guard open the door for you. Don't wander around; it's not safe. Get out of here right away."

With that, she whirled around and hurried off, moving so fast she was almost running.

A moment later, Mai Minghe was left by herself once more.

The short corridor was dead silent. The soundproofing of the Morgan family's offices was exceptional; straining her ears here, she couldn't catch the faintest echo of whatever commotion was happening up front.

Fine. Whatever was going on, she needed to get out of here.

There didn't appear to be a soul nearby. Only the sound of her own footsteps echoed in waves between the walls of the short corridor—so when a voice dropped into the air, Mai Minghe was startled.

"Big Sister?"

Oh, that wasn't addressed to her; the last time anyone had called her Big Sister, her parents were still alive.

... Mai Minghe took another step forward before it occurred to her that "Big Sister" might actually be aimed at her.

She followed the sound and looked. At the left end of the short corridor, a bright and pristine pantry stood open. The pantry was quite spacious, scattered with a few long tables, chairs, and sofas. Curled up lazily on one of the sofas was a child.

A teenager who looked at most seventeen or eighteen—was that not a child?

The boy looked as though every bone in his body had been removed, draped languidly over the back of the sofa with half his face buried in the crook of his arm.

One of his hands hung down, long slender fingers pinching a rolled cigarette. A thin thread of white smoke wound like silk around his fingers.

The boy's eyelids were half-drooped. When he spoke, his voice was light, soft, and drifting, like a shred of white cloud floating across a high autumn sky that would scatter at the slightest breeze. "... Big Sister, are you good at chemistry?"

Mai Minghe was taken aback. "What?"

"I don't like chemistry," the boy said softly and vaguely, his cloud-like voice edged with a smile. "Will you help me look at my homework?"

Sure enough, schoolwork involving paper and pen lay on the table. But in the critical moment of making her escape, who on earth had the leisure to check homework—what kind of carefree hunter brought their child to work?

"I have an urgent matter to attend to and must be going, I'm so sorry," Mai Minghe said, hurrying past the doorway of the pantry.

After walking a few paces, she turned back and poked her head in.

"Um... do you happen to know where the stairs are?" Mai Minghe asked in a small voice, feeling rather embarrassed. "The people from the company clearly told me to take the stairs from this side..."

During the few minutes she had spent searching for the stairs, the boy seemed not to have moved at all. Only now did he slowly raise his head, revealing a dazed and hazy face. Through the mist, his lips were moist, bright, and ruddy, resembling a sunset mirrored in the surface of a lake.

Even having lived through a long lifetime, one did not often encounter a child of such striking beauty.

In a momentary daze, Mai Minghe caught a faint yet heavy scent lingering in the room. Glancing at the cigarette between his fingers, she suddenly understood. "Wait, is that—"

"What? It's not illegal." The boy said lazily, taking another deep drag. He exhaled a plume of white smoke that hung in the air, blurring the edges of reality.

It was legal now?

When Mai Minghe was in her twenties, it had been the height of the hippie culture, a sight she was thoroughly accustomed to, yet she was still taken aback.

However, her priority right now was to escape the Morgan estate as fast as possible.

"Well... if it's the stairs, I'll take you."

Seeming to sense her desperate urgency to leave, the boy stood up from the sofa and drew closer. His movements were as silent as a cat, as though his body were made only of smoke or cloud. "My name is Xiao Tai. What's yours?"

"... Mai Minghe."

Facing the boy, she felt no need to use a fake name; whether real or false, it was a name unknown to anyone in this world anyway.

The boy's eyes were flushed pink. If not for the cigarette in his hand, Mai Minghe might have thought he had been crying. Remembering that she hadn't even helped him with his homework, yet he was still willing to guide her, a renewed sense of embarrassment welled up in her. "Thank you," she said. "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone else."

"Oh? This?" The boy seemed to have just remembered the cigarette between his fingers, glanced at it, and flashed her a smile. "It doesn't matter. Nobody monitors me."

How many girls' hearts would this child break when he grew up, Mai Minghe thought to herself. He merely glanced at the cigarette, yet it inexplicably made one feel that the cigarette's existence had been worthwhile just for that moment.

"Then let's go," she said, anxious to leave early. "I'm in a hurry."

"Why? Are you going on a date?"

Did children nowadays all speak in this style?

"I have business at home," Mai Minghe evasively replied. "Which direction are the stairs?"

The boy tilted his head with a hazy gaze, revealing a tiny red mole on his neck. He watched Mai Minghe for a few seconds, pondering something unknown, until her impatience flared—then he suddenly smiled.

"Ah, almost forgot. There's plenty of food in the pantry, and alcohol too, you know?"

"How about you just point out where the stairs are, and I'll go by myself."

Mai Minghe knew that getting impatient with someone in this state was useless; their reactions were always a beat behind. "I really am in a rush."

"Don't be in such a hurry to cast me aside," the boy laughed, quite familiarly taking her by the wrist. "Come on, the stairs are that way. You walked past them. Are you really not going to look at my homework for me?"

"I truly don't have time," Mai Minghe said.

"Everyone else says they don't have time either," the boy pouted slightly. "Because Jonah just came back from the nest with a Resident, and it caused chaos right here in the company."

Before Mai Minghe could process his words and stop herself, she slammed to a dead stop, her face freezing in shock.

The mystery from moments before suddenly snapped into sharp, blinding focus, finally resolved.

A Resident had entered? No wonder Longzhen had been in such a panic and refused to let her stay. Bringing that giant bug in, Jonah—

No, wait.

This boy...

As she turned her head, she happened to catch the boy offering her another light, gentle smile.

It was still a hazy, airy smile, but as Mai Minghe looked at him, a prickling wave of cold sweat broke out across her back.

Even time itself seemed poured with liquid mercury, slowly suffocating between the two of them.

Perhaps because he saw her appearing inside the Morgan household, he had assumed she was also a hunter, which was why he had spoken without restraint...

"I'm sorry, Big Sister."

The boy lowered his head, one hand still holding her wrist while the other raised the cigarette for a drag. "I'm a terrible liar. Girls never seem to like that about me."

Mai Minghe felt as though she were watching a car crash unfold; powerless to stop it, she could only stare in paralyzed dread.

"Jonah didn't come back, you see," he said, almost as if comforting her. "I haven't even been to the nest yet, so nobody brought him back—how could he have fallen into the company? Don't be afraid, there are no Residents here."

Mai Minghe fancied she heard the faint sound of footsteps coming from just around the corner of the corridor in the distance.

Were they coming for her?

"Big Sister, you aren't a vagrant either. You certainly put in a lot of effort trying to pass for one... I saw you when you first came in, and I thought to myself that I probably wouldn't get much out of you anyway."

His voice was vague and soft, hovering close to a murmur.

"Why didn't you just tell us you're a hunter?"

The boy paused, letting out a small, quiet laugh.

"My guess is, either you were inextricably tied to Jonah's perilous encounter and feared the Morgan family holding you accountable, or you were tangled up in whatever Jonah was pursuing at the time, and you walked right into a trap."

Mai Minghe experienced a sensory hallucination: as if the "Serpent's Belt" had already left her, she felt the skin-stripping agony of its departure.

His fingers closed gently around her wrist, seemingly easy to pull away with a single yank.

But what would happen once she pulled away?

Inside the Morgan company headquarters, swarming with hunters, where could she possibly go? What should she do?

Mai Minghe's voice turned hoarse. "You are..."

"Don't be upset that I didn't tell you my real name earlier."

The boy's eyelids remained half-drooped, wearing an expression as if he were half-awakened from a dream. "My surname is Fu... My name is Futailan. The head hunter of the Morgan family."