Chapter 75: Half a Human Skull

Chapter 75: Half a Human Skull

Gu Qiutang and Shiqing had once told me that elite people neither died nor fell ill.

But what I was seeing now told a different story.

This old woman was clearly ill—seriously so.

“You’re sick?” I asked her. “With what? Weren’t elite people supposed not to get sick?”

The old woman froze. Her eyes locked onto me, and only after a long silence did she speak.

“So you really aren’t an elite person. Did you stow away here? Careful—the Sky Eyes are everywhere. I don’t want to be implicated. You can leave now.”

Was she really trying to chase me off? And after I’d just saved her, no less.

Hearing her speak so rudely, I felt a little unhappy too. I had been thinking of helping her, even sponsoring her—but that killed the impulse on the spot.

Still, when I reached the window, I found I couldn’t quite bring myself to leave. Wei Liuqing and I had, after all, crossed paths once, and I dreaded the thought of Zhang Zirui dying inside the system.

Fine. A small favor, then.

I flew to the family’s robot nanny, tapped at it with my beak, and transferred twenty achievement points into the machine, marking the payment as a storage fee to keep Zhang Zirui’s consciousness alive in the system.

I had no idea how much the family owed. But if I covered part of it now, then even if Wei Liuqing’s release was delayed, Zhang Zirui’s consciousness body at least would not be cleared by the system immediately.

Just as I was about to fly off from the windowsill, the robot nanny called after me.

“The old lady isn’t sick,” it said. “She once helped a stowaway. The patrol team found out, and this is the bodily punishment they gave her.”

Ah. So that was it.

If they’d told me sooner, I might have donated more. Telling me now, though—no extra donation was forthcoming.

Truthfully, when I’d first heard the old woman recount her family’s misfortune, I’d meant to give a hundred points. But after she drove me off, the mood for generosity had simply evaporated.

Like a sulking child, I flew away.

Even so, I felt no guilt. We barely knew each other, and I owed her family nothing.

Helping her was a kindness. Not helping was well within my rights.

I wasn’t the stowaway she’d helped, after all—the one who owed her family a debt was that stowaway, not me. Besides, I’d already given twenty points. That was equivalent to an elite person’s annual research funding.

By the time I left Wei Liuqing’s mother’s home, night had fallen deep, so I flew to a church to roost. Pigeons crowded the eaves there, and blending in among them felt safer.

I tucked myself into a small window of the bell tower and slept soundly—until, deep in the night, my same-frequency sensing alerted me: two consciousnesses were speaking.

I opened my eyes slowly, trying to tell whether they belonged to human bodies or pigeon bodies.

The dark was too thick for my eyes alone, so I activated my penetrating-wave ability as well. Only then did I make out, at the far end of the church, some hundred meters off, two people in pigeon bodies conversing through consciousness.

Cautious as their exchange was, my same-frequency sensing had a tuning ability, so I could still hear the consciousness conversation between them.

Pigeon A said, “It’s already the second half of the night. Shouldn’t we move now?”

Pigeon B glanced up at the sky. “Wait a little longer. Miss Pu wants this to go off without a single flaw. We’ve tracked and scouted for nearly a year—what’s a little more time? In a bit, we’ll fly to Building No. 3 first, confirm what’s happening inside, and once we’re sure it’s safe, report back to Miss Pu and the others.”

The name Miss Pu snapped me fully alert.

What action? What was Building No. 3?

I gave my body a shake, eyes fixed on the two of them. Sure enough, about an hour later, they took off with a flurry of wings, heading northwest.

I didn’t dare follow too closely—if they’d spent a year tracking their target, they were clearly careful people, and I…