It seemed… she had messed up.
Su Ling stood frozen, staring in the direction where Ji Lingyuan had vanished.
Her expression was filled with trepidation. She had a faint realization of what had happened.
Logically, she should have followed Ji Lingyuan’s lead and given the answer that would satisfy her most.
She should have worn a sweet smile and said something like, “I like you the most~”
But just now, her mind had gone completely blank, and she had ruined everything.
“Waaa, Hajimi, the Boss… she won’t throw me away after this, will she?”
Su Ling hugged Dalian, her small face clouded with misery.
If Ji Lingyuan lost interest in her, how was she supposed to earn more money in the future?
Dalian, on the other hand, rolled his eyes.
‘Seriously, girl, why didn’t you just go for it?’
Anyone could see that Ji Lingyuan was someone starved for affection.
Su Ling had accidentally stumbled upon exactly what the woman wanted most and had long since captured her heart.
If she had just played along, she could have easily risen to the top.
Dalian was a veteran of the world, after all, and he saw right through Ji Lingyuan’s true nature.
He also saw Su Ling for who she was: insecure, sensitive, and too afraid to wish for a better life.
It was a typical commoner’s mindset.
To put it bluntly, Su Ling was holding herself hostage with her own morality.
“Sigh.”
Su Ling let out a long breath and stopped dwelling on it.
She was already prepared for the possibility that Ji Lingyuan might give up on her.
Honestly, if she thought about it carefully, she didn’t have anything particularly special to offer.
‘It’s better to rely on yourself than on others.’
Su Ling knew that the path of relying on someone else wouldn’t last forever.
She had to save herself.
Her relationship with Ji Lingyuan was essentially a transaction, and she was far too clumsy when it came to things like feelings.
Trying to cling to a powerful patron probably wasn’t going to work out anyway.
She checked the time; it was already noon.
It was just in time to head to school in the afternoon.
She had to prepare for the worst-case scenario.
At the very least, she needed to get into a junior college.
With that thought, Su Ling’s fighting spirit reignited.
“Hajimi, it looks like studying is my only path forward.”
She had finally realized it.
She wasn’t the type of person who could successfully get money out of a high-status patron.
Dalian rolled his eyes irritably.
He had been in the underworld for a long time.
In a situation like Su Ling’s, unless she got into the Witch Academy, going anywhere else would be a step down from just giving herself over to Ji Lingyuan.
‘She’s still too young,’ Dalian thought with a sigh.
If he had been in Su Ling’s position back in the day, he would have wrapped Ji Lingyuan around his finger long ago.
Someone like Ji Lingyuan, who looked cold on the outside but was desperately lonely on the inside, was incredibly easy to handle.
Su Ling hugged Dalian and prepared to head back.
However, she hadn’t forgotten the purpose of this trip.
The Superintendent Department was in the Upper City, and there happened to be a place selling cat food on the street right across from it.
But when Su Ling saw the price, she immediately fell silent.
“Ahem, Hajimi, I think leftovers actually taste pretty good, right?”
“…”
Dalian looked at her with a speechless expression.
‘Fine, fine. It tastes good.’
Dalian didn’t really care.
Back when he was surviving in society, he had fought for dog food, let alone leftovers.
This was nothing more than a little bit of hardship.
“Um, can I have one bag?”
To his surprise, Su Ling still walked into the store and bought a small bag.
She stepped back out looking pained after spending 100 Moni on just 300 grams of cat food.
“Oh, 100 Moni. Hajimi, you’d better stay with Miao Miao and keep her company.”
In the end, Su Ling had bought it.
Dalian felt a complicated mix of emotions. ‘Why bother?’
It wasn’t like he didn’t know the state of Su Ling’s home.
As the person who had started it all, he felt a strange, inexplicable sensation for the first time.
‘Bah, what do you mean “the one who started it all”? I was just a moneylender.’
‘If Bai Wei hadn’t come to me for a loan, would Su Ling’s family be in such a miserable state?’
Dalian quickly shook the thought off.
“Sigh, the pets in the Upper City eat better than the people,” Su Ling lamented.
She had bought the cheapest brand available.
If she had looked at any of the premium ones, she would have felt like she was committing a crime.
The desire to bring Miao Miao to the Upper City surged in her heart once again.
Travel between the Upper and Lower Cities relied on old vehicles.
Since Su Ling’s phone didn’t have a Space Teleportation function, she had to rely on navigation and walk to the station.
It took her a full hour to get there.
Once she finally boarded the bus home, Su Ling breathed a sigh of relief.
So many things had happened this morning.
Just going out to buy cat food had been a nerve-wracking experience.
Yet, for some reason, the image of that Zerg corpse flashed through Su Ling’s mind again.
Her reflection in the window looked dazed.
She didn’t understand why she felt this faint sense of sadness.
The bus swayed, and the interior was crowded and noisy.
Amidst the drowsy atmosphere, Su Ling finally arrived at her destination.
Taoliu District — the transfer station between the Lower City and the Upper City.
After getting off the bus, she had to transfer again to get back to Pancheng Street. Su Ling rubbed her eyes, feeling the pangs of hunger in her stomach.
She looked around and spotted a small restaurant across the street, so she decided to grab lunch there.
The place was tiny and dilapidated, with walls covered in stains.
A few tables were set up outside near a roadside drain filled with murky sewage.
Behind the restaurant was a scrap yard. The environment was truly appalling.
As Su Ling approached the restaurant to look at the menu, she suddenly caught sight of a familiar figure standing behind the gate of the scrap yard.
“0.2 Moni per jin. You’ve got about 1,040 kilograms here. Let’s call it a ton. Hmm, how about I give you 350 Moni?”
Green hair, emerald eyes, and those two iconic long strands of hair sticking up.
It was her!
Su Ling recognized her immediately.
It was the beautiful girl who had delivered Hajimi to her this morning and called herself K423.
Originally, Su Ling had thought she was an Automaton, but when she saw the girl cut her arm and leave blood all over the floor this morning, she had dismissed the idea.
Su Ling felt a natural sense of kinship with this girl.
Thinking back to how the girl had handed her those crumpled bills this morning, saying she had earned them by selling scrap, Su Ling’s heart swelled with mixed emotions.
“Ah… is, is that right?”
K423 asked, counting on her fingers.
Her eyes were beginning to swirl like dizzy mosquitoes.
“One times one is one, one times two is three, three times eight is fifty-six…”
The owner was a black-haired little girl with her hair in a bun and an adhesive bandage across the bridge of her nose.
Her face was dirty, but her lively, large eyes were full of craftiness.
“Hehe, how could I lie to you? Your math is so good, you must have calculated it already, right?”
“Ah, I… I…”
K423’s face turned bright red.
“Wait! You calculated it wrong!”
The owner’s smile instantly froze.
K423 shouted with a look of triumph, “It’s clearly 300 Moni! You gave me fifty too much! Hmph, my math is great, don’t try to trick me!”
She lifted her dirty little face, looking like a general who had just won a grand battle.
“Right, right. I miscalculated by fifty,” the little owner said, looking as if she were about to burst out laughing at any moment.
Just as three bills were handed to K423, a fair little hand suddenly swatted the owner’s hand away.
“Eh? Gir… Girl…”
K423 turned her head and saw Su Ling.
She looked instantly excited. Su Ling, however, looked at the girl with a speechless expression.
“Are you an idiot? It’s 0.2 Moni per jin. For 1,040 kilograms, that’s clearly 416 Moni.”
She couldn’t help but flick K423’s forehead.
Was this girl’s math taught by a PE teacher?
She then turned to the dishonest merchant and rolled her eyes.
“Seriously, how did your ’rounding down’ end up cutting out the actual weight? Aren’t you being a bit too unscrupulous?”