Chapter 400: You Absolute Creep
This particular nervousness wasn't the love-at-first-sight kind — more like the unsettling sense of being seen straight through, every secret laid bare in an instant. Xiao Yan struggled to even put a name to the feeling.
The stranger didn't look particularly old, and he wasn't radiating any obvious aura of overwhelming strength either — just a faint, understated presence.
And yet that faint presence alone was enough to make his chest tighten, like someone had dropped a brick straight onto his heart.
Honestly, he'd been in the Dou Qi Continent eleven years now, living his whole life in Wutan City for that entire stretch.
And he'd swear on everything he had that he had absolutely no idea who this black-haired young man in front of him — eighteen, nineteen at most — actually was.
Worse, the man's clothing looked almost identical to what people wore back on his old Earth.
Add in the plastic bag dangling from his hand, and whatever candy-like thing he had clenched between his teeth —
Every detail sent a wave of questions crashing through Xiao Yan's head.
Who was this guy?
Why was he dressed like someone from Earth?
Was that actually a lollipop in his mouth?
Was that a plastic bag in his hand?
Could this person be a transmigrator too, just like him?
Or was this all just some bizarre coincidence?
The questions piled up faster than he could process them, leaving Xiao Yan momentarily frozen.
By the time he snapped back to himself, his heart nearly leapt out of his chest.
Because Ryū had already closed the distance — barely two meters away now.
Eleven-year-old Xiao Yan's height, naturally, was nowhere close to matching "eighteen"-year-old Ryū's — he practically had to tilt his head back just to get a clear look at the man's face.
Handsome enough to spark a flicker of genuine envy in him.
No — wait, what was he even thinking right now, that wasn't remotely the point!
The point was: who was this man?!
Just then, Ryū pulled the mostly-dissolved lollipop from his mouth, holding it by its little plastic stick.
His eyes carried a calm, faintly amused glint as he studied Xiao Yan and finally spoke. "So this is the famous Xiao Yan of the Xiao clan. Bit on the short side, huh."
Xiao Yan badly wanted to point out he was only eleven years old, thank you very much — how tall was he supposed to be at that age? But some inexplicable, overwhelming nervousness stopped him cold.
Whatever comeback he'd meant to give came out instead as a strange, oddly formal-sounding line: "Odd terms stay, even terms flip?"
Even Xiao Yan himself had no idea why on earth those particular words had come out of his mouth.
Greeting a total stranger with a memorized trigonometry mnemonic — what was even wrong with his brain right now?
Just as he was fighting the urge to physically slam his head into a wall, the stranger's reply made his eyes go wide.
"Signs follow the quadrant."
Ryū answered clearly, without missing a beat — and those five words alone were enough to nearly crash Xiao Yan's entire mental processing.
Under any normal circumstance, nobody on the Dou Qi Continent should have had the slightest clue about "odd terms stay, even terms flip, signs follow the quadrant" — a piece of memorized classroom trivia if there ever was one.
And yet this black-haired stranger had just fired back the exact, correct completion, word-perfect. Which meant... there was a very real chance this man was a transmigrator too — one from Earth, no less, just like him!
Snapping out of his momentary shutdown, Xiao Yan genuinely had no idea how to react.
He'd always believed he was the only transmigrator on the entire Dou Qi Continent — eleven years, and never once had he encountered a second one.
And here, today, this mysterious stranger had just shattered that entire assumption.
Xiao Yan was already about eighty percent convinced this man was, in fact, a transmigrator — and, like himself, one specifically from Earth.
Before he could get another word out, Ryū spoke again. "You're not wrong. I'm from Earth too, originally — Chinese, in fact. As you've probably guessed, I'm... a transmigrator too, I suppose?"
"You... you're really a transmigrator? This... this is just too much to take in."
Xiao Yan stood there, genuinely dumbstruck, feeling the sheer shock of learning Ryū's identity hit him harder, somehow, than his own transmigration ever had.
A whole tangle of conflicting emotions rose up all at once. If not for the lingering sting on his tongue, he might genuinely have believed he was dreaming.
How to put it, exactly? Learning he wasn't the Dou Qi Continent's sole transmigrator left him with a faint pang of disappointment — some sense of his own uniqueness quietly slipping away.
But there was also a small, undeniable flicker of relief in there too — relief at not being entirely alone, after all.
All in all, a genuinely complicated, strange, oddly bittersweet feeling.
"I... I don't even know what to say. How long ago did you get here?"
Xiao Yan wanted to keep the conversation going but had no idea what to actually ask, so he blurted out a question he immediately regretted for how dumb it sounded.
What he genuinely hadn't expected was his "countryman's" answer: "Just now, really. Maybe ten, fifteen minutes ago?"
Xiao Yan: "..."
Ten... ten-something minutes ago?
If he'd said ten-something years ago, sure, he'd have believed that without blinking.
But minutes?
That couldn't possibly be right.
"Not years — really just minutes. I'm not lying to you. I generally don't lie."
Ryū's answer came across genuinely earnest — he figured a person ought to just tell the truth as a general policy.
Unfortunately for him, Xiao Yan — a lifelong resident transmigrator himself — simply didn't buy it for a second.
He truly couldn't wrap his head around someone crossing over just minutes ago. It defied everything he understood about how transmigration worked.
Wait.
Hold on.
Something was off. He hadn't actually said any of that out loud — it had all just been running through his own head. So how had this "countryman" of his known exactly what he was thinking?
Psychology? Mind-reading?
Beside him, Xiao Xun'er blinked, utterly lost, glancing between Xiao Yan and this unfamiliar stranger. Same as him, her brain simply wasn't keeping up.
She had no idea what had just happened, no idea what the two of them had even been talking about — every last word of it sat squarely outside anything she understood.
Puzzled, she tugged at the hem of her own robe and asked, curious, "Xiao Yan-oniichan, do you know this big brother?"
Xiao Yan blinked and answered on pure reflex, shaking his head. "No, I don't."
Xiao Xun'er: "...???"
Talking that much with someone you don't even know?
Was this just how men's minds worked?
Genuinely baffling to her.
Meanwhile, Ryū's attention had shifted to Xiao Xun'er, and he rubbed his chin, muttering to himself. "This kid's what, ten? And here you are, mentally decades older, still hanging around a little girl like an overgrown uncle. Not exactly a good look."
Xiao Yan: "..."
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