Shi Rui bent down, put on some gloves and opened the nightstand drawer, unlocking a secret compartment and pulling out a pitch-black stone. It was fingernail sized, as dark as the everlasting night, and it seemed to suck in all light.
After that, he put the stone into a special box and left.
Dragon-form Shi An perched on the bed, curiously looking at Shi Rui’s crazy actions—standing there dazedly for five minutes, then marching jerkily out of the room.
So, people in a trance looked like this on the outside.
After Shi Rui left, the door slammed behind him.
Shi Rui startled and rubbed his temples, not knowing why he suddenly felt woozy.
The footsteps gradually faded.
Inside the room.
The black fog floated down to Shi An, saying, “My liege, this alleged brother of yours seems to harbor ill intentions towards you.”
The demon insect harrumphed, “That’s been established, next.”
Shi An wagged his tail, saying, “So, what did you see?”
The black fog conveyed the illusion it conjured for Shi Rui.
“Nightstand drawer? Secret compartment?”
“Yes, that’s right!” The black fog replied courageously.
Shi An tried to walk towards the dresser in one jump, but he estimated the distance wrong and fell on his face, splaying his awkward limbs all over the bed. It took him a while to get back up.
Shi An: “…”
Damnit!
The demon insect looked up, the black fog looked down, and they both pretended to not have seen anything embarrassing.
Shi An was so mad that he curled up on the bed.
He commanded, “You guys go get it.”
“Yes sir!” The insect and fog leapt to action, as if they were afraid a seconds’ delay would cause them to be scorched by flames.
Very quickly, they opened the secret compartment and placed the stone in front of Shi An.
Shi An startled, patting the stone with his wings. His hardened scales tinged against the surface of the stone: “This…”
“Sir, you know what it is?” the black fog swooped in to ask curiously.
Shi An nodded.
He didn’t just know what it was. It couldn’t be more familiar to him— it was a material from the abyss, although not a treasure, still pure in composition and powerful in aura. Shi An had had several large pieces of it in his hoard as decoration. The abyssal eura emitted by these stones were deadly to humans, but to him, it was very beneficial.
Insect: “… So this is accidentally doing something good with bad intentions?”
Shi An tightly clutched the stone with his claws, shoving it under his belly to try and power his transformation magic.
Sorry, he wouldn’t ever think that the humans were weak again. They were still better than this.
At this time, the black smoke thought of something, “Oh yeah, just now, I dug through the brain of that human.”
Shi An raised his head and asked, “What did you find out?”
“That is, it seems…” the fog trailed off, “if you didn’t wake up today, people from the Bureau would take you away…”
Shi An: “Oh…”
He suddenly realized something, whipping his head around to look at his palm-sized body with wide eyes, “Wait? What? NOW?”
But…but he couldn’t change back yet!!!
*
Mu Heng walked into the lab with blood all over his body.
Zhuo Fu, long accustomed to sudden visits from the other party, greeted lazily, "Yo, you’re here?"
He rubbed his eyes, which had been suffering from eyebags for a while, threw a thick stack of research reports on the table in front of the other party, and then started chattering,
"Your sword is finally a little bit more visible. It does seem to be able to sense some kind of magic power related to dragons, something like resonance, and I did a little test during this time—"
Mu Heng reached out to pick up one of the folders, casually flipped through it, and interrupted him, "Alright, I can read the reports myself."
Zhuo Fu pouted a little unwillingly and said, "…I finally have some success, can't I show off?"
Mu Heng threw the folder back into the pile and asked quietly, "Where is Shi An?"
Zhuo Fu seemed to remember this matter. He hurriedly took a look at his phone and shook his head, "There isn’t any notification from Shi manor, so he probably didn't wake up, why? Should I send someone to pick him up?"
Mu Heng: "No need."
His face was cold and indifferent, and he turned to walk out, "My mission has just ended, and this happens to be on the way."
"Okay!" Zhuo Fu Fu nodded and turned back to the research in front of him.
After about ten minutes, he seemed to suddenly realize something. His hands stopped moving, his whole experiment paused, and he slowly raised his head with a confused look on his face.
…How was this on the way? What was it on the way to?
