Chapter 68 Wandering "I want to stay with him for a while."

Shu Qing hung up the call and stared at the phone screen, her eyes unfocused and unfocused.

After a while, she went out, found Qi Yun, tugged at her, and pulled her into the conference room.

Qi Yun was busy grappling with the second of life's three great dilemmas—what to eat for lunch—when Shu Qing glanced at her and pulled her away, inexplicably sitting down opposite her. She didn't forget to greet her, "Hey, I saw a new hot pot restaurant opened across the street. Want to go eat hot pot together later... What's wrong? Why do you look like that?"

Shu Qing hesitated for a moment, then smiled with a complicated expression, "Okay, let's go now."

She was afraid that after she finished speaking, Qi Yun wouldn't be able to eat anything and might get sick from hunger.

After leaving the hot pot restaurant, Shu Qing described the second warning to Qi Yun, and Qi Yun's face, which was originally flushed, quickly lost its color.

"Is there any hope that this problem can be solved?" she asked Shuqing, clinging to a sliver of hope.

With someone sharing the burden, Shu Qing felt much less stressed. She shook her head and said helplessly, "I also hope it can be resolved. But... I'm afraid it won't be easy. If this only happens once, maybe people will think it's just a coincidence, but if it happens a few more times, people will be 'averse' to monsters, which is the least of their worries. I'm afraid..."

She swallowed back some of her worst thoughts and said, "Unless we get through this second warning safely and there are no more incidents of supernatural beings going out of control, then it would be best if everything just ended there."

Qi Yun looked at her expectantly, as if to say: Is this best-case scenario possible?

Shu Qing met the last glimmer of light in her eyes, feeling a pang of pity, but she had to be honest and say, "The consensus of the Super Management Bureau is that it's probably not that optimistic."

Qi Yun's face turned ashen. She turned on her phone. More than an hour had passed, and social media remained completely silent.

The fire at Beijing Capital International Airport remains the top trending topic, with people still concerned about the condition of the injured and the truth behind the loss of control. There has been no word from Beijing yet.

While no news is good news, the wait for the other shoe to drop is long and agonizing.

Throughout the afternoon, Qi Yun was unable to concentrate on her work, closely monitoring news from City B on various platforms. The slightest disturbance would make her heart skip a beat, and she even managed to find a bottle of nitroglycerin pills. Shu Qing contacted the Super Management Bureau to inquire whether the little monsters currently at Youling Studio could be temporarily sent back to the Super Management Bureau for foster care.

After reaching an agreement with the caregivers from the Supermarket Management Bureau, she sat back down next to Qi Yun and gave him an inquiring look.

Qi Yun shook his head, meaning: I didn't find anything.

The two stared at each other for a moment, and a faint, untimely hope rose in Shu Qing's heart. She carefully opened her phone; Jiu Su hadn't replied, and no one from the Supermarket Management Bureau had contacted her.

Her heart clenched again, which meant that the Super Management Bureau was still busy and the outcome was unknown. If they had already dealt with the out-of-control monster, Jiu Su would definitely find time to tell her so she could rest assured; even if Jiu Su was busy and unable to do so, he would have Jin Wanli say something.

The lack of news means he has no free time at all. Does this mean they are still in a state of combat?

Shu Qing let out a long breath. Waiting for fate to arrive was the most agonizing thing, and she couldn't hold on any longer. She lay down with Qi Yun, staring at the ceiling. The elaborate decorations and chandeliers hanging above their heads seemed like a mountain that would eventually collapse.

More than an hour later, Shu Qing's phone finally rang. Jin Wanli told her in a curt tone, "It's nothing."

Shu Qing breathed a sigh of relief, but then became anxious again. She asked anxiously, "How is Xiao Hong?" She didn't forget to turn her phone screen to share the news with Qi Yun.

“He won’t die,” Jin Wanli said with a “you all owe me eight million” attitude. Just by reading his words, you could feel how vicious he was. “He’ll just run out of demonic power, turn back into his original form, and be thrown into the treatment room. That’s fine, anyway, no matter what happens in the future, he can’t do anything about it and won’t do anything reckless again.”

After reading just a few lines, Shu Qing's temples throbbed. "What exactly happened? What did Xiao Hong do? Can you explain in more detail?"

There was a silence of more than ten seconds on Jin Wanli's end, as if he was struggling with himself, before he finally dialed her number.

He was quick-witted, and in a bad mood at the moment, he needed to vent. He rattled off a string of words like a machine gun, explaining the whole story to Shu Qing:

At first, Jiu Su and Director Yang were deadlocked and could not find a solution that satisfied both sides, partly because the B City Supermarket Management Bureau was not well-equipped with manpower and equipment, and lacked complete intelligence.

When they arrived at the location, several well-trained human and monster scouts took their positions and, equipped with advanced detection equipment, explored the area and obtained more detailed information.

The bad news is that this is a level 8.1 superhuman creature. If it gets out of control, not only the city center, but the entire City B might be doomed. Moreover, it's questionable whether the modern version of the ultimate killing formation that Minister Chen created will be effective.

The good news is that this superhuman's five senses are somewhat dulled, unlike the sharp eyes and ears of a normal Level 8 superhuman. It's unclear whether this is innate or caused by some old injury.

However, the reason is not important; what matters is the weakness itself—although it may not be a fatal weakness, such as the fear of light by evil spirits, it is still a exploitable point of attack.

Director Yang made a decisive move, organizing people to quietly evacuate the crowd. Jiu Su put on a suit of armor that concealed her presence, refused to be followed by anyone, minimized her own presence, and quietly sneaked into the city center.

His movements were as nimble and stealthy as a snake. Without making a sound, he patiently laid out layer upon layer of dense array lines around him using his array techniques. The array lines were hidden in the air, almost imperceptible, leaving only a drop or two of out-of-season dew on a few inconspicuous flowers and leaves.

On Director Yang's side, both normal and extraordinary methods were used to quickly evacuate all the people in the building at the center of the formation. It sounded like an auxiliary task, but the difficulty was no less than fighting a powerful monster alone. This building was a mixed commercial building, and even during working hours, there were hundreds of people inside, all of whom were untrained passersby.

It's unclear what methods they used, but these hundreds of bewildered people quietly disappeared from the battle scene like a flowing river. The Supermarket Management Bureau used a smokescreen, and only after the last person stepped out of the commercial building did the sudden silence finally disturb the great demon at the center of the formation, which let out a frenzied roar.

The piercing roar collided with the dense fog, but was contained by the invisible white mist, preventing even a fraction of the powerful sound waves from leaking out.

The water vapor floated and gently spun into a net, then transformed into a cocoon, silently pursuing the out-of-control monster at the center of the formation.

The battle between the two great demons was contained within the towering skyscraper, and apart from layers of condensation on the glass, it was almost completely silent.

As Qi Yun listened to Jin Wanli describe the scene, she switched her social media address to City B. A flood of related information immediately appeared: some posted photos of themselves in the downtown commercial building that day, recounting what had happened; some asked what had occurred; and some made wild, unfounded guesses.

In short, everyone had a "the more the merrier" mentality, and no one knew that they had actually walked on the edge of life and death today.

Shu Qing had no interest in browsing the news like she did. Based on Jin Wanli's description, she imagined the scene and felt a chill run down her spine—common sense dictates that a battle between two high-level monsters would leave a scene of utter devastation, just like when Jiu Su went to kill Chen Minghui, the scene looked like it had been bulldozed, with frozen ground everywhere you looked.

But now, the battlefield can be controlled within a building, with almost no impact outside the building. This means that all the destruction in the battle has to be absorbed by Jiu Su, which is completely different from a normal one-on-one fight.

Adding in the costs of the battle itself and controlling the out-of-control demon, all things considered, the fact that it only resulted in "exhaustion of demonic power and reverting to its original form" is quite remarkable.

For the first time, Shu Qing shared her thoughts with Jin Wanli and felt that it was quite good that Jiu Su could lie still in the treatment room, which was less of a worry.

"Are you still in City B?" she asked. "I want to see him. Is visitation allowed?"

Jin Wanli snorted, "You'd better not come. We're about to return to the capital... This place's treatment room, tsk."

"Then I can go to the capital too—"

“Don’t come,” Jin Wanli sighed. “Don’t you know? He doesn’t want you to come.”

Shu Qing remained silent.

"Hey, that's not what I meant." Jin Wanli's annoyed, head-scratching voice came from the other end of the phone. "Let me put it this way, you are his regulator. At the same time, right now, you are just a partner of the Supermarket Management Bureau. Although the cooperation is close, the Supermarket Management Bureau can't really control you. Even if Director Yang and Xiao Xie want to win you over, you are still a free man, you understand?"

Shu Qing frowned slightly, exchanged a glance with Qi Yun, and asked, "You mean, if I go, I won't be able to maintain my status as a free person?"

“That’s right. The Supermarket Management Bureau is already in wartime. It’s better if you don’t show up. Once you do, what will your identity be? How will they treat you? These are unavoidable questions,” Jin Wanli said. “In short, he wants you to stay out of it. No one but you can hold him back. As long as you don’t get involved, both of you still have a choice, understand?”

Shu Qing fell silent again.

She understood, of course, that Jiu Su was afraid they would fall into the same predicament as in their previous lives, and once again find themselves powerless to do anything about their positions.

But how long can this situation last? Didn't Ashu and Jiusu also want to stay out of the battle? In the end, whether it was voluntary or due to moral coercion, they eventually returned to their respective positions?

All of this was none of Jin Wanli's business, so Shu Qing temporarily compromised, saying, "Fine, I won't go. But you have to tell me exactly how he is, right? Is it because you can't use your cell phones in your treatment room, or is he unconscious and unable to talk to me?"

"There aren't many rules in the treatment room; he's asleep."

"Then could you please turn on his phone's voice recorder for me?" Shu Qing said softly. "I want to stay with him for a while... even if it's just from a distance."