“Whew… From the moment I found out the man using Second Brother’s name was inside Wings That Shroud the Sky, I pretty much guessed it would come to this. Second Brother, whatever you decide, Fourth Brother and I back you unconditionally.”

“Oh! Second Brother, the human heart is a fragile thing. That adorable boy who calls himself the Son of Heaven has committed an unforgivable sin, it’s true, but as a merciful man I would still like Second Brother to pardon the poor child, who doesn’t know any better… Only disband his Wings That Shroud the Sky, and turn all these years of his heart’s blood into nothing… and then put him back in the level-zero gear he started in… That will do. Oh, and one thing — when the time comes, be sure not to let him drop every single piece. Do leave him a little pair of underpants to cover himself with.” Murong Qiushui laid it all out in the posture of a man forgiving the world out of pity for it, and when he had finished, one more line came out of his mouth. “Nice weather today.”

Zuo Pojun badly wanted to give him the finger… Your mother — and that’s what he calls mercy? You want to try being a bit more vicious?!

“Mm. We’ll do it Qiushui’s way, then. Be merciful.” Ye Tianxie said it perfectly seriously.

Zuo Pojun: “…”

Ye Tianxie took several scrolls out of his backpack and pushed one into each of their hands. “Town Portal Scrolls for the City of Heaven’s Sun. Go have fun.”

“Heh!” Zuo Pojun took his quickly, delighted. “That makes us the first players ever to set foot in the City of Heaven’s Sun… By any normal reckoning it’d be at least six months before players got down there. Hey, Second Brother, what level are the lowest monsters there?”

“Twenty,” Ye Tianxie answered. The monsters around a main city are generally low-level and not much interested in attacking anyone. Once you leave the belt around it, though, monster strength shoots up. The City of Heaven’s Sun is not a starting city the way the City of Stars is, after all, and the country down there decides that its monsters will be stronger and more savage.

“Mm, that’s exactly the right level for us to grind on… And leveling down there means nobody at all fighting us over the spawns.” Zuo Pojun was thoroughly pleased with himself.

“That’s true enough,” Ye Tianxie said, and added a line in his own head — provided you can stand the weather down there… Then, aloud, “All right, go and enjoy yourselves. I have things to do.”

“Right! We’re off, then. Fourth Brother, come on!!” Zuo Pojun plainly could not wait another moment. He gave Murong Qiushui a tug, crushed his scroll, and was gone to the City of Heaven’s Sun.

“Second Brother, I’ll miss you.” Murong Qiushui gave Ye Tianxie one long, tender look, and only then left.

“Big Brother Xietian, you’re back!” Shattered Star-Heart came running in from the back garden, and the delight on her face when she saw him was past hiding. She had not seen him for two days, and the whole time some part of her had been somewhere else, as if she had lost something important. She had no idea at all why she should feel that way.

“Mm… Where’s Feifei? She’s not home?” Ye Tianxie asked. If Su Feifei had been in the house she would have come running out long before this.

“Sister Feifei went out with her friends. She said before she left that they were going west to kill Little Raccoons.” Shattered Star-Heart thought back carefully before she explained.

“With her friends?” Ye Tianxie blinked, and then let it go. In the real world Su Feifei almost never went out, because of what safety meant to her, but she was nineteen after all, and a girl who has grown up that far is bound to have friends she is close to. In this world she had no danger to worry about; she could get together with them and go and play.

“Big Brother Xietian, sit down a moment. I’ll go and make you some tea.”

“Mm.”

Ye Tianxie sat down in the main hall, took out the strange gourd he had picked up underground in the Phantom Beast Ruins, and put the Eye of the Evil Dragon on it for everything it was worth. He got nothing useful out of it. What it showed was what it had shown before: the gourd Red Goat lost.

Lost by Red Goat, and with seven stars on it — dull in color, but still perfectly easy to make out. This had to be the Seven-Star Gourd the City Lord of Heaven’s Sun said belonged to Red Goat. There was no doubt about it.

The only question was how the thing opened.

Ye Tianxie turned it over and over — this gourd that was 99.9% certain to have the Seven-Star Lotus inside it — and after a good long while of fiddling with it he had not found any way to open it.

Could it be that the way to open it was on Red Goat?

Ye Tianxie felt a fresh headache coming on. He went through the odd items he had taken off Grey Goat, pulled out the frying pan, and brought it down on the Seven-Star Gourd with a clang.

Nothing happened, naturally. It would have been strange if anything had.

So he would have to catch Red Goat after all… Mm. If he caught Red Goat, that might open the Seven-Star Gourd — and the City Lord of Heaven’s Sun could give up any hope of catching it himself, which meant he would not be getting Grey Goat’s hide back for a very long time, which meant the Seven-Colored Dusk…

That was it. The best of both worlds.

And the way to catch Red Goat could be exactly the way he had caught Grey Goat. Grey Goat had had no guard up at all around Xiaobei, and Red Goat should not either. Say what you like — with a shape like Xiaobei’s, which makes everyone who sees it want to pick it up and hold it, nobody is going to feel wary the first time around… Anyone who has seen what it looks like in a fight is another matter.

The problem was where to find Red Goat… By the City Lord’s account, ever since Red Goat first appeared, the experts and the experts’ experts who had wanted to catch it were beyond counting, and after all these years it was still hopping around the Lost Continent. Never mind catching it — very few people had even laid eyes on it. Ye Tianxie had killed Grey Goat, and the City Lord had called that an enormous event.

Come to that, with the attributes Red Goat had, “looking” was not going to find it. Running into it was a matter of luck and of chance — the way he had blundered into Grey Goat.

City Lord of Heaven’s Sun, bless your miserable hide, may you never find Red Goat as long as you live, and may Red Goat come knocking at my door of its own accord. Ye Tianxie muttered it over to himself.

The hall door was pushed open, and Shattered Star-Heart came in carrying a tray heaped with every kind of fruit, freshly picked. Over the days she had been here, Guoguo’s Cottage had come to be fully furnished — everything it ought to have, it now had. She was a careful girl and a conscientious one, as Ye Tianxie knew, and every day she put that enormous place in order, spotless and neatly arranged, with hardly a corner of it left cluttered or out of keeping.

Strictly speaking, Shattered Star-Heart seemed to think of herself as something like a handmaid. At the same time, she was in earnest about treating the place as a home. It was luxurious, it was quiet, it was easy on the heart. There was no danger in it, and nothing filthy here that she would rather not have touched. Set beside her situation in the real world, this place was heaven, and there was no question about it. She had wanted all along to bring her little sister here too… but her sister’s body would not allow it.

At the sight of her, a small light went on in the head of the man studying the Seven-Star Gourd. Ye Tianxie looked up. “Chenxin, would you run an Identification on this gourd for me?”

Identification… An item that would not show its true attributes was exactly the thing to identify.

Shattered Star-Heart set the tray down, took the Seven-Star Gourd with a puzzled look, turned it over once or twice, and cautiously used Identification.

White light spilled down over the Seven-Star Gourd, covered it, and vanished without a trace. Shattered Star-Heart hesitated, then used Identification three more times in a row, and shook her head with a little disappointment. “Big Brother Xietian… this gourd must be something very precious. I can’t identify it.”

“Mm. It doesn’t matter.” Ye Tianxie took the gourd back and said, offhand, “Chenxin, have you been—”

“Ah… Big Brother Xietian, I… something’s come up, I have to log off. I’ll come back later.” Ye Tianxie was only halfway through the sentence. A look of pure panic had come over Shattered Star-Heart’s face. While he was still staring, she got a hurried goodbye out, turned into a ball of white light, and went offline.

Ye Tianxie looked at the place where she had been standing and said nothing for a while. Come to that, he had never known much about her. He knew she must have a past she could not stand to look back on, and that she must be in a very hard place now, but he had never asked her about it. He had said once himself that however hopeless the past had been, a person should learn to forget it and face tomorrow with hope in their heart… So he would not ask, because asking would very likely mean tearing the scab off a wound she had begun to forget.

The hurry just now, and the alarm on her face, said plainly enough… that she was in serious trouble.

Keep yourself safe. Ye Tianxie thought it, and said nothing.

He got up, meaning to make a trip to the identification shop. Before he had taken a step, his communicator gave him a voice that turns every man’s body and soul to water.

“Little Brother Tianxie, are you back?” Liu Qiyue murmured it, soft, with something coaxing running under the softness. Here was a beauty without equal in her age, one no ordinary man could reach up and pluck, and her voice, like that immortal’s face of hers, set a man’s heart swaying. Ye Tianxie had been listening to that voice for years and still found it hard to take. His heart moved with it whether he wanted it to or not.

A woman’s looks, they say, run in inverse proportion to what she achieves. Set that next to Liu Qiyue and it does not hold at all. The weight of her calculation, the force of her nerve and her ability, were enough that Ye Tianxie called her Big Sister and meant it — and not only because she was older than he was.

“Big Sister. I just got back.” He answered her, and then did not know what to say next. Liu Qiyue was far too clever, and she had always understood his temperament right through; she never called him when there was nothing to call about.

“Mm… That’s good, then. Little Brother Tianxie, there’s a piece of news you’ll want to listen to carefully… That little sister Chenxin of yours is in trouble.” Liu Qiyue said it slowly, with a chiding little laugh hidden somewhere in the voice.

“Chenxin…” He thought of how flustered she had been a few minutes before, and he was not surprised — only puzzled. “Big Sister, how do you know Chenxin is in trouble?”

“Hee. Never mind about that for now. There’s nothing in this world your big sister wants to know and can’t find out… Little Brother Tianxie, are you going to go and help that little sister Chenxin of yours? Where she lives is out of the way, but it isn’t especially far… Under two hours by car.”

What Liu Qiyue said puzzled him, and what lay under it puzzled him more… She had plainly been keeping track of Shattered Star-Heart’s movements in the real world all along. And without some particular reason, why would she be watching the girl that closely, and why take the trouble to tell him at this exact moment? He kept his voice very flat. “Is that… necessary? There’s no reason for me to get into her life.”

Liu Qiyue laughed lightly at the other end. “How heartless. Little sister Chenxin is your very own private handmaid, whatever else she is, and such a pretty, sweet-natured thing…”

Ye Tianxie: “…”

“And there’s this.” Liu Qiyue’s voice slowed and eased. “Her surname… is Ran.”

Ye Tianxie: “!?”

“…Ah, the poor child. Both her parents have passed away. Her dead father’s name was — if your big sister remembers it correctly — it seems to have been… Ran Qingsheng. Little Brother Tianxie, are you really not going to go to that little sister Chenxin of yours, who is in very serious trouble?”

Ran Qingsheng?

Ran Qingsheng?!

The name went through his nerves like a shock, and Ye Tianxie’s whole body jerked hard. He snatched the communicator up and got the words out fast. “Big Sister, tell me! Where is Chenxin living now?!”

(End of Chapter 268)