"Then let's go head-on, would you like to have dinner with me today?" I asked the consultant girl, removing my hand from the stone.
"Maybe you'll try again?" She smirked, handing me back my card. What kind of strange girl is this?
"Yes, no, if you don't want to, you should have just said so, I'll keep the money for myself," I shrugged, I don't need such a hassle. I like beautiful girls, but if they annoy me like this, then I'm out.
"Why are you like this right away, huh?" The girl pouted, crossing her arms over her chest.
"And what? If you don't want to eat for free, it's not my problem," I shrugged again, putting the card in my pocket, next to my notebook, which I cherish like the apple of my eye.
"Okay, wait half an hour and I'll be free," She sharply changed her tone of communication after my words.
"No, sorry, but I still need to find a room, to spend the night," I said, turning around and getting ready to leave.
"Wait, a second!" The girl almost shouted.
"Zhao Yu, cover for me, please. Okay, thank you," She said quickly, grabbed her bag, and walked out from behind the counter towards me.
"Well, where are we going?" She smiled broadly.
"And don't you still have half an hour to work?" I asked, raising my eyebrows.
"Don't worry, nothing terrible will happen," She said confidently.
"Your name is Jiaxing Yun? What a cool name."
"And isn't it you who was playing hard to get a minute ago?" I asked, raising my eyebrows even higher.
"Yes, come on, what's the difference?" She asked, pulling me towards the exit.
"What's your benefit from me treating you to dinner?" I asked, following her.
"And what's my benefit? I absolutely don't want to start a relationship with you."
"Yes, come on, what girl doesn't want to be courted?" She asked, making puppy eyes and pressing her chest against my arm.
"I repeat, what's my benefit?" I repeated my question. At this moment, we were walking on the first floor, having descended by elevator from the fourth.
"I'll let you stay at my place for the night. And maybe you won't forget this night," She smiled playfully at me, winking.
"I'm not going to entertain you at night. I'm not the kind of person who jumps into bed with the first stranger," I answered confidently, gently pushing her away.
"What's your name anyway?"
"Zhang Rou, so are you agreed to court me in exchange for lodging?" She asked, pressing herself even closer to me.
"I still don't understand what's your benefit from this?" I repeated my question again.
"Grumpy, let's drop this topic, better tell me where we're going?" Zhang Rou deflected my question as if it hadn't been asked. All this is terribly suspicious, but if so, then I don't mind taking a risk, it looks interesting, and I'm also interested in what she's willing to do to lure me into her apartment.
"Let's go, there's a small restaurant not far from here, I wanted to try the local food," I replied, as if nothing had happened, and when we went outside, I leaned down and asked her in a whisper.
"Will you dance a striptease for me?"
"Get out of here!" She pushed me away.
"Well, then goodbye, what's your name, Zhang Rou?" I said, turning around and walking in the other direction.
"Wait, okay," She said shyly, stopping me. Now I'm absolutely sure something is not right. But I'm curious, who needs me so much that this girl is willing to do this, huh?
"Then let's go to the restaurant! Only I'll go into the artifact shop, it's on the way, I want to buy an artifact with the money I earned," I said, putting my arm around her waist. Damn, this is my most difficult game ever! If it weren't for the experience of walking with Lin Yun'er like this, I would have given myself away from nervousness and excitement. I went to the artifact shop alone, asking her to wait outside. She shouldn't know what I wanted to buy. Entering the shop, I put on glasses with ordinary lenses inserted, I bought them as a joke. I was more or less sure about this shop and its seller's connection to the black market. Why, you ask? It's simple, while I was waiting for my turn in the league, I asked where I could buy semi-prohibited goods, like these seals. Why do I need them? Who knows, they might come in handy, and all these things were incredibly interesting to me.
"Hello," I approached the seller.
"Can I exchange two disposable soul vessels for a servant here for one cursed seal?"
"Yes, but why do you need it? With it, you can at most kill a low-level servant on contact," The seller replied. A cursed seal is an artifact that contains some kind of curse, usually they are not used, but many sellers trade them. Such seals are also used for silent assassinations.
"I know, I need one with partial mind destruction, a weaker one is fine," I replied, taking out the soul vessels.
"Why do you need such a seal? Do you know about the prohibition of their use on people? And also about the prohibition of selling such seals?" The seller asked me.
"Yes, of course, that's why I'm offering two excellent vessels in exchange for one low-quality seal," I replied, placing the vessels on the table.
"One minute, but I have a very weak seal and I agree to three," The seller said, leaning down to me.
"Excellent," I replied, placing another vessel on the counter.
A minute later, I was already heading to the restaurant, hugging Zhang Rou with one arm. On the way, we talked, discussing her work and mine, as well as various events like the tragedy in Bo City and how ordinary people find it hard to survive in such cases. By the way, she is an ordinary person, it is very unlikely that a twenty-year-old girl works as a consultant in the league who can hide all traces of magic from a mid-level mage.
In the restaurant, we continued our conversation, trying local seafood and rice dishes. After the restaurant, we took a taxi and quickly reached her home, where a wonderful sight awaited me, ending with attempts to drag me into bed, which failed miserably. I already said that I don't trust her enough to sleep with her, if she's not a criminal who kills lonely hunters and takes their money, then she's definitely crazy. And I don't want to sleep with either of them.
As a result, I was given a place to sleep in the living room on the sofa, after drinking tea until about midnight, we went to bed. Only instead of falling asleep, I started cultivating the space element, although it was unusual to do so while lying down. Also, in my hand was my dagger and next to it lay a cursed seal. One touch of it to the victim and she would die, or at least lose part of her memories and sanity.
After a couple of hours, through cultivation, I heard the creak of a door. It wasn't for nothing that I cultivated in the jungle for two months, knowing that an attack could happen at any moment. Immediately after that, I came out of my inner world and started listening to my senses. Soon, I felt someone standing over me, and then this someone reached out a hand towards the tooth lying on my chest. I went to sleep in my pants, without a shirt.
At the moment before this someone took my tooth in their hands, I grabbed their hand and with a jerk swapped places with them, knocking them onto the sofa, and I myself stood on the floor. This someone turned out to be Zhang Rou, it remained only to find out why she was doing this.
"Well, hello, dear," I smiled at her.
"And why do you need my ornament?"
"And why do you think I'll tell you?" She asked in response, with clear aggression.
"Maybe to save your life?" I said, bringing my alligator tooth dagger to her neck.
"This little knife can kill a high-level servant monster, do you think it can kill a person?"
"Ha! Go ahead! Then the police will catch you and hand you over to the magical court! Do you think no one saw that I left with you? Sat in a restaurant with you? Came home with you?" She asked, smiling back at me.
"Firstly, I am a mage, and ordinary police do not interfere in the affairs of mages. Secondly, no one will think that a mage killed you, as the wound will be from a knife. Thirdly, didn't you notice that I left the store wearing glasses and didn't take them off?" I asked her, also smiling.
"So what?" Zhang Rou asked, calming down a little.
"Well, at the league, I was seen without glasses and the camera filmed me in good lighting. And I was in glasses at the restaurant, and this is a special feature, especially for someone like me, who has no special features. Yes, there are millions of people like me! And the guy who escorted you home was wearing glasses, it's very noticeable. Plus, I don't necessarily have to kill you for you to forget about me," I said, taking out a cursed seal.
"So why do you need my ornament?"
"Damn! It's not yours, it belongs to a group of mages who call themselves 'Guardians,' at least that's what they said," Zhang Rou said, with the last word in broken Russian, which was interesting.
"And what do they want from me, and why is it my thing of theirs?" I asked, also in broken Russian, which I had tried not to forget all these years. By the way, all the information in my notebook is written in Russian.
"I don't know, I was just given a hundred thousand and told if Jiaxing Yun comes, to lure him home and take away the beast fang talisman while he's sleeping. After that, I was supposed to call them and hand it over," she said, starting to panic.
"Don't hurt me, please! I was promised a million yuan if I could pull this off within a year."
"What do you know about the 'Guardians'?" I asked another question.
"Nothing, only that they are Russian, if you judge by the organization's name," she replied, constantly glancing at the dagger and the seal.
"I was just asked to take this fang."
"Did they say anything about the fang?" I asked the next question.
"No, nothing, that was a week and a half ago," Zhang Rou replied, starting to cry.
"Wait, I remember, they said someone stole it from them, nothing more, honestly!"
"I see. Then forget me and don't tell anyone you saw me," I said, moving the dagger away from her neck.
"Okay, th-thanks..." She didn't finish before I pressed a cursed seal to her forehead and tried to twist it so that it would erase the last few hours. Of course, it also helped that the seal itself was very weak, it's not even certain it could kill someone.
After that, I carried her to bed, cleaned up all traces of my presence in the apartment, and left, sitting by the entrance. A couple of hours later, Zhang Rou came out, walking unsteadily, as if after a heavy drinking binge, almost ready to throw up right there.
"Are you alright? Where are you going in this state?" I asked, approaching her. Honestly, I hadn't expected her to come out on her own. The plan was to wait until nine in the morning and knock on her door pretending to be a lost person, but everything happened much more fortunately.
"To work, I really need to. Only I don't remember what happened yesterday, and I feel so dizzy as if I drank a lot," she said, holding her head.
"Maybe I should take a day off after all?"
"I don't know about that, it's up to you. Good luck," I said, heading towards the train station. We had tickets to Xiamen for ten o'clock.
The lead about my tooth fell into my hands. This is a very fortunate turn of events. It's just that these Guardians, who are they and what level of magic do they possess? Most likely, the people from this group were asking about me, and they are Russian! This is another reason to go to Russia, but for now, I am too weak for all this. I need to cultivate harder and also be extremely careful. Most likely, I am being hunted by this group of people. I probably won't leave the city on my own; after all, it's harder to kill a mage in the city than outside the safety border.