Do you remember now

Su Qi didn’t spare them another glance, instead watching with interest as the stall owner lit the charcoal.

The owner, a cheerful middle-aged man, deftly laid out the skewers on the grill. "Handsome, eating all this by yourself?"

"Hungry," Su Qi replied curtly.

Sizzle—

Drops of fat dripped onto the coals, sending up a fragrant, smoky haze.

The owner expertly flipped the skewers, sprinkling them with cumin and chili powder. The rich aroma instantly filled the air.

Su Qi leaned back in his chair, waiting quietly.

……

Inside 'Dream Paris.'

A stark contrast to the quiet alley outside.

The air was thick with the mingling scents of perfume, alcohol, and hormones.

Deafening music pounded like the heartbeat of a giant, reverberating through everyone’s eardrums.

Under the dim lighting, well-dressed men and women clinked glasses, their bodies swaying and brushing against each other to the rhythm.

Those who could enter here were either wealthy or influential.

Less a den of indulgence, more an elite social circle—just one where interactions were far more primal and direct.

The middle-aged man led Yuanjing Shenwu through the dense, sticky crowd in the dance floor like two fish gliding through water.

Along the way, the man tilted his head slightly and murmured, almost inaudibly, "Want to pick someone to play with? My treat."

Yuanjing Shenwu’s inhuman, slit-like pupils swept over the women around them—each with flawless makeup and alluring figures—before shaking his head without hesitation. "No. Too ugly."

The middle-aged man’s eyebrow twitched imperceptibly.

These women could cause a stir anywhere else. Among them were popular streamers and minor celebrities.

This was a true "face-check party," catering to the whims of the pickiest elites. And yet, his standards were this high?

He quickly dismissed the thought. Aesthetic preferences between species were probably an insurmountable gap.

This establishment had taken the organization immense effort to cultivate.

After all, when did men ever lose their appetite for beauty? Only when they were six feet under.

Many business tycoons, even figures who straddled the line between legal and illegal, were regulars here. With enough money, you could find someone to discuss philosophy with—or indulge in far stranger tastes, like hiring a girl who looked underage to solemnly teach her advanced calculus.

For this reason, security here was top-tier.

Countless "umbrellas" shielded the place from above. Any hint of trouble would be sniffed out in advance, often crushed before it could even sprout.

The two bypassed the noisy crowd, arriving at an unremarkable staff door behind the bar.

The middle-aged man led Yuanjing Shenwu into a cramped bartender’s break room.

He locked the door behind them, then approached a seemingly ordinary wall and tapped it in a deliberate rhythm.

Three long, one short.

A pause.

Two short, two long.

Faint footsteps echoed from behind the wall, growing closer before stopping on the other side.

"Who?" A wary voice called out.

"Me," the man replied, slightly louder.

There was no fixed passcode between them—his voice was the only key needed.

With a soft click, the wall slid inward silently, revealing a brightly lit passageway. A hidden world lay beyond.

Yuanjing Shenwu followed the man inside, scanning the layout.

A few burly men, looking drowsy, sat in front of monitors displaying various surveillance feeds.

Inwardly, it scoffed: "Amateurs."

But not a trace of disdain showed on its face, which remained fixed in an expression of greed.

The middle-aged man murmured a few instructions to one of his subordinates before turning back. "Follow me."

They moved through the passage and descended a staircase.

A larger storage room awaited them.

Piled high with miscellaneous items, the man rummaged through a massive shelving unit for a long while before pulling out an assortment of peculiar objects.

Yellowed animal-skin scrolls, tattered thread-bound books, even a few jade slips glowing faintly.

All shared one trait: dense text inscribed in various scripts.

"Here. The cultivation methods you wanted. Consider it the down payment."

He stepped aside, gesturing to the pile.

"Pick one. Inspect it as you like. Once you’re satisfied, we’ll proceed with the deal."

"Relax." Yuanjing Shenwu patted its chest, tone light. "A little girl with that level of skill? I could catch her blindfolded."

It crouched, casually picking up one of the animal-skin scrolls. The moment it flipped it open, its inhuman pupils flickered with unconcealed envy.

"How fortunate…" it muttered to itself. "This species can extend their lives through sheer effort, resisting time’s decay… Yet somehow, they’ve fallen so low."

To it, these seemingly humble manuals were priceless treasures.

Bringing even one back to its kind could alter their entire race’s destiny, securing true immortality.

"Ten times the reward upon completion," the man added, pulling a cigarette from his pocket and lighting it. He took a deep drag. "Remember—we want her alive and unharmed. Any damage complicates negotiations later."

Ah… So they enjoy infighting.

Yuanjing Shenwu understood now, carefully tucking the scroll away—this one had diagrams, the parts it could decipher most easily.

……

"Handsome, your skewers are ready."

The night stall owner’s booming voice snapped Su Qi’s attention back. A large plate of steaming skewers sat before him, aroma irresistible.

Su Qi ate leisurely, finishing every last bite before draining the final soda with satisfaction. He let out a contented sigh.

"Boss, the bill."

After paying, he even complimented the owner’s authentic skills. Then he stood, wiped his mouth, and ambled toward the seductively lit 'Dream Paris.'

……

Meanwhile, at the entrance of 'Dream Paris.'

A burly doorman yawned, rubbing his sore shoulders to ward off the late-night chill.

When he looked up, he noticed the heavy stone door had been left slightly ajar, letting in a draft.

Frowning, he grumbled to his companion inside:

"Lao Wang, stop napping. Why didn’t you shut the door properly when they came in earlier?"

From within came the sound of footsteps—Yuanjing Shenwu and the middle-aged man, their deal concluded, preparing to leave.

Between the two doormen, one couldn’t shake the feeling that, just for an instant, something had blocked the light.

He blamed his partner again.

The one called Lao Wang wasn’t taking the fall. "You saw it too—why didn’t you close it?"

"Got a mouth but no hands?"

……

Just then, the heavy iron door to the basement creaked softly.

The sound wasn’t out of place in the cluttered storage room, but it was enough to startle the two already tense figures, making them whirl around in unison.

The door had been pushed open a crack—no one knew when.

"Who's there?" the middle-aged man barked sharply, his hand already subtly reaching toward his waist, his gaze as sharp as an eagle’s.

Silence answered from beyond the door.

Only the muffled thump of music from the bar upstairs seeped through the layers of walls, distant and rhythmic, like a faraway heartbeat.

"Probably just some drunk customer who took a wrong turn," the Origin Creature muttered, licking its lips dismissively.

Places like this always had a few drunks who couldn’t control their own legs.

But the middle-aged man frowned. Something felt off. He had personally overseen the security here—no outsider should’ve been able to wander into this passage.

He stood up, signaling the Origin Creature to stay quiet, then cautiously approached the door and yanked it open.

The hallway was empty.

Only a dim wall lamp cast flickering shadows, stretching his silhouette long and thin against the wall.

He exhaled in relief. Maybe he really was just being paranoid.

Just as he was about to close the door, his peripheral vision caught a figure descending the stairs from the upper floor—leisurely, unhurried.

It was that young man who’d been eating late-night snacks outside earlier.

The middle-aged man’s pupils constricted violently.

Him?

A coincidence?

Impossible. The world didn’t have that many coincidences.

"Who are you?" he demanded, his voice harsh, as energy surged within him. An invisible shield composed of countless shimmering starlight particles silently enveloped his body—his proudest defense, the "Stellar Ward."

Su Qi didn’t answer. He just kept walking down, his footsteps unnervingly clear in the quiet stairwell. Each step seemed to land on the drumbeat of their hearts, neither too heavy nor too light, yet oppressive enough to make their chests tighten.

"Stop right there! This is a private area. If you’re looking for women, go somewhere else. Take one more step, and I won’t hold back!"

The middle-aged man’s voice was fierce, but a trace of panic—unnoticed even by himself—had crept in.

Su Qi finally halted three steps away, his expression still lazily indifferent, as if he were drowsy after a meal and might doze off any second.

"I’m here to take something," he said flatly, like he was asking a neighbor to borrow a clove of garlic.

His gaze slid past the tense middle-aged man, landing on the document clutched tightly in the Origin Creature’s grip.

"You’re dead!"

The Origin Creature snarled—it had none of the man’s reservations.

In its eyes, any human who discovered their kind had only one fate. Its grayish-white arm muscles bulged grotesquely, fingers elongating into razor-sharp bone claws that tore through the air, reeking of rot and blood, aiming straight for Su Qi’s throat.

The middle-aged man’s heart sank. He wanted to stop it, but it was too late.

He could already picture the scene—this reckless young man torn to shreds in a spray of blood.

Fine.

Killing was killing.

Plenty of people went missing in Demon City every day.

Someone would cover it up.

But the expected carnage never came.

The bone claw stopped abruptly, less than an inch from Su Qi’s neck—as if it had slammed into an invisible, intangible, yet indestructible wall.

The gust from its motion merely stirred a few strands of Su Qi’s hair. Nothing more.

For the first time, sheer terror twisted the Origin Creature’s face. It could feel it—an overwhelming, incomprehensible force, vast as the heavens themselves, pinning it in place from claw to toe. Not a single finger could twitch.

"Give me what’s in your hand."

Su Qi’s voice remained indifferent. He didn’t even bother looking at the claw hovering near his throat, treating it like an annoying fly.

He reached out slowly, so slowly the middle-aged man could track every movement of his fingers.

Yet this very slowness paralyzed him with fear, nailing him to the spot as if with spikes of dread.

Then Su Qi turned his gaze to the man.

His finger casually tapped the air where the man’s prized "Stellar Ward" shimmered.

No violent collision of energy. No earth-shaking explosion.

The shield simply dissolved like frost under sunlight—shattering, dispersing into harmless starlight before vanishing entirely into nothingness.

The middle-aged man’s face drained of color. Cold sweat drenched his back in an instant. He staggered backward like a man seeing a ghost, until his spine hit the cold wall with a thud. Nowhere left to retreat.

"You—" His voice trembled with sheer terror, teeth chattering.

His proudest "Stellar Ward" had been as fragile as paper before this young man.

"A gift for a gift," Su Qi said cryptically, ignoring the Origin Creature frozen mid-attack, now utterly stupefied.

He plucked the document from its stiff fingers with effortless ease.

Flipping it open, he skimmed the contents.

The attachment contained Liu Yuan’s entire life history, documented with terrifying thoroughness.

Exactly what he’d seen earlier on his phone.

Su Qi closed the file and looked up.

His perpetually drowsy eyes were now pools of unfathomable calm—so calm it was unnerving.

"Where is your ‘Leader’?"

"I—I don’t know," the man stammered, nearly biting his tongue. "We’re just outer enforcers, messengers. We’ve never even met the ‘Leader’—"

"Is that so."

Su Qi flicked his wrist.

The Origin Creature’s body crumpled as if crushed by an invisible fist.

Crack—squelch.

No scream—just the sickening crunch of bones and the wet pop of bursting flesh.

In an instant, the towering creature was reduced to an unrecognizable pulp of meat, shattered bone, and viscera splattered across the floor. The stench of blood flooded the room.

The beast-skin manual it had been holding clattered to the ground at Su Qi’s feet.

He didn’t spare it a glance.

His gaze returned to the middle-aged man, now collapsed in a trembling heap.

"Now," Su Qi said softly. "Does your memory improve?"