After saying goodbye to Chen San and the others, it was already early morning by the time she returned to the Star of Art. Tang Xin turned on the lights in the security room, and dust swirled through the air.
The girl's face was flushed red from the cold. She breathed out a light puff of air and looked around the room.
"I've only been away for a few days, but it feels like such a long time has passed. Everything feels so different."
"No one's lived here for days; it really needs a good cleaning."
"Yuzu, do you want to shower first, or should I?"
Tang Xin's voice brought Xu Xiaoyou back from her thoughts. She gave the girl a slight smile. "You go first."
Watching the girl's back, Xu Xiaoyou thought to herself that letting a flower in a greenhouse experience some rain was indeed necessary. Tang Xin's character had grown a lot during this trial; at least she wouldn't be so weak and indecisive when facing a crisis anymore.
The experience would subtly influence her personality. In future social interactions, she would likely appear more confident.
But Xu Xiaoyou also noticed a problem. Just like Anya, Tang Xin was becoming a bit too dependent on her and lacked her own initiative.
If Chen San hadn't saved the day at the last moment, the Little Blue Bird might have truly stopped singing.
Xu Xiaoyou shrugged.
This kind of nurturing had to be done slowly. Turning an imperfect beautiful girl into a perfect one, making the insecure confident and the weak strong—this was the process of letting the wolf grow and the flower bloom.
If she drew a perfect character from the start who didn't need her to worry about anything, then what would be the point of nurturing them?
The sound of rushing water came from the bathroom. Outside the window, heavy snow was falling. She sat on the sofa, planning to take stock of her gains.
As soon as the curtain connected to the network, she was hit with a bombardment of information. Various messages, celebrity gossip, and marketing content flooded in, giving Xu Xiaoyou a bit of a headache.
She scanned through them briefly. During the three days she was out on the commission, nothing particularly noteworthy had happened in the city. It was mostly the usual hype and public opinion manipulation by various media companies to promote their stars.
Suddenly, she caught sight of an inconspicuous news item in the corner of the curtain.
[The Gloomy Girls Band's second performance was held successfully. The fan signing event for the girl idol Ai will take place tomorrow at 3:00 PM.]
She followed the index for the Gloomy Girls Band back through the past few days and found that their first performance had also gone as scheduled and was well-received.
She chuckled softly. Tang Xin had been too kind back then; in the end, she couldn't bring herself to let that girl named Ai go on stage with a swollen face.
With only four days left until the prelims of the Starry Art Competition, given Tang Xin's current state, making the cut was a guaranteed certainty.
Xu Xiaoyou wanted more than just a pass, though. She wanted Tang Xin to stun everyone the moment she appeared, to become the most radiant star that would make every other contestant under the same sky pale in comparison. She needed to capture enough traffic to feed back into her Dream-Chaser Media.
To make a name for Dream-Chaser Media, she needed to make good use of the Little Blue Bird.
There were too many glamorous things at the Star of Art. Simply being beautiful under the sun wasn't eye-catching enough and wouldn't create a large enough traffic gap to attract the majority of people's attention.
Something occurred to Xu Xiaoyou, and the corners of her mouth curled up slightly.
Just then, she received a new email. It was from Universal Heavy Industries' Strategic Talent Resource Department.
[S-rank specialist Xu Xiaoyou, your commission has been completed.]
[Due to your outstanding performance and contribution, we hope you can participate in the company's internal S-rank specialist mutual exchange meeting to get to know other S-rank specialists. This will help to...]
Xu Xiaoyou didn't even bother reading the rest. She deleted the email and blocked the sender in one smooth motion.
She had developed a sickness where she felt nauseous the moment she saw 'the company.' After they had used each other to get what they needed, she had absolutely no desire for further contact with Universal Heavy Industries.
The intelligence for this commission had been severely flawed, causing them to repeatedly suffer and fall into passive positions against the two puppet brothers. When the truth finally came out, the company hadn't even offered an apology, and the final commission reward showed no sincerity whatsoever.
In that regard, they were worse than Diamond 9. At least that guy knew that to win someone over, you had to give them some benefits. The Strategic Talent Resource Department simply treated people like cheap labor.
Thinking of Diamond 9, Xu Xiaoyou's heart stirred. The hundred-section bone whip appeared in her hand, trailing from her leg all the way to the floor with a crisp sound.
Each section of the long whip was made from the vertebrae of an unknown creature. The bone texture was fine, reminiscent of bone artifacts in an antique market. Both ends of each section were incredibly sharp, featuring barb-like bone spurs. A light rub could slice human skin, channeling blood into a groove at the very center. Following the blood groove toward the handle, Xu Xiaoyou noticed a slot.
Mysterious runes were engraved around the slot, with an ancient aura flowing through them. Looking at the size of the slot, Xu Xiaoyou became thoughtful.
She turned her palm up, and the hundred-faced die appeared in her hand. When she tried to bring the hundred-faced die close to that slot,
something amazing happened.
After repelling each other for a moment like two magnets, they suddenly erupted with a powerful psychic wave and attraction, snapping firmly together.
Upon closer inspection, the form of the hundred-faced die had changed. It had shifted from a hundred faces to four, becoming a steel-gray tetrahedron. The blue mist-like numbers had also disappeared, replaced by pale numbers floating on each of the four faces, corresponding to one through four.
She lightly turned the tetrahedron with her fingertip. As the faces shifted, the side corresponding to the number '1' lit up.
Xu Xiaoyou nodded and stood up. She swung the long whip forward. As the sections of the whip collided, a burst of power traveled from her wrist to the tip of the whip, letting out a loud crack!
The void resonated with the vibrations. The space in front of her was actually sliced open. Like a shattered mirror, cracks spread rapidly.
A rift appeared out of thin air before her. Behind the rift, a man sitting in a bathtub was stark naked, covering his chest and staring at her in a daze.
The man and the little yellow duck on his bathtub were both stunned!
He had been enjoying a bubble bath, soothing his tired body and mind after a long day.
"Pervert!" the man screamed in a mix of indignation and bashfulness.
The rift closed, and the man along with his little yellow duck disappeared from Xu Xiaoyou's sight.
Xu Xiaoyou covered her face, which was now filled with lines of black, deeply questioning her life choices.
What was that just now?
After briefly gathering her thoughts, Xu Xiaoyou tried swinging it again. This time, it didn't trigger any spatial fluctuations. The crisp sound of the whip vanished into the dark night outside the window.
She judged that the Hundred-Bone Whip could indeed cut through space. When activated, it could slash open a spatial rift. The existence of the rift itself had a time limit, and the spatial cutting ability also had a cooldown.
Judging by the layout of the bathroom, it looked like an ordinary apartment in Queen's District. It was in a residential area, and the straight-line distance from her Dream of the Black Swan apartment probably didn't exceed three kilometers.
"I just don't know what the maximum distance for the spatial rift is," Xu Xiaoyou pondered.
If she could open a spatial rift to another hive city, then even if she didn't have a ticket, she would have a way to travel elsewhere.
She decided to wait for the cooldown to end before continuing her research into the spatial ability. Before that, she wanted to try the other abilities of the Hundred-Bone Whip.
After turning the four-sided die to the number '2', she tried swinging the whip again. Something that terrified Xu Xiaoyou happened. With a loud boom, the entire marble coffee table in front of her was sliced in two. The cut was incredibly clean, as if done by a precision machine.
But that wasn't what terrified her. It was the piglet alarm clock lying on the floor, which had also been sliced in half.
That piglet alarm clock had seemingly been with Tang Xin for a long time...
Rate on N.U.
