But first
— tonight.
"Hawk," she said.
"Yes?"
"Pull up the messages from Senior Sister Xuanxuan."
A soft chime.
Then a voice note, tinny through the small speaker but unmistakable — warm and sharp and slightly terrifying, the way Ghost Empress Xuanxuan always was:
"Little Jiao. You've been quiet for five years and now you're suddenly active again. I don't know what's happening with you but knowing you it's probably insane. Check in when you can. Also Dummy Head keeps asking about you and I'm tired of looking at his face. Call him. — Oh and if you're in trouble, I'll be there in six hours. Don't be a hero. You're my junior, not my replacement."
Yun Jiao stood in the garden with the afternoon sun on her face and felt something warm move through her chest.
Smiles...Ridiculous woman.
She loved her so much.....Ahhh what to do?
"Tell her I'm fine,"
she smiled softly.
"Tell her I'll check in soon."
"And Dummy Head?"
"Tell him I said he's still a dummy."
"He'll be so relieved to hear from you,"
Hawk said dryly.
She laughed.
Small and quiet and real.
Then she pocketed Hawk, straightened her jacket, and went inside to get ready for her evening walk.
—The east road outside the residential gate was quiet at eight PM.
Streetlights.
Parked cars.
A convenience store two hundred meters down with its fluorescent sign buzzing softly in the dark.
Yun Jiao walked at a completely unhurried pace, a small reusable bag in one hand, a strawberry lollipop in her mouth, looking for all the world like a teenage girl going to buy snacks.
She heard them before she saw them.
Four men.
Stepping out from between two parked cars. Big.
Casual in the way that people were casual when they'd done this before and didn't think much of it.
The one in front looked at her with a smelling leering face smiled.
"Hey, little girl. You lost?"
Yun Jiao took the lollipop out of her mouth.
Looked at him.
Looked at the other three.
Looked back at him and smiled sweetly with her doe eyes "No," she said pleasantly.
"Are you?"
He laughed.
Looked back at his friends discussing "she's such a pretty little girl, I haven't tasted this type in a long while"
The Fattie among them laughed: "Brother long, pls don't play her to death, we still have to have a taste of her too"
" Ofcourse, the employer said to keep her alive".
They discussed and laughed amongst themselves like she was just a lost puppy waiting to be chopped with obviously no threat in her.
That was their first mistake.
This face and body of hers, so beautiful yet easily underestimated.
She moved.
—Fourteen seconds.
That was how long it took.
The first man with still that leering look on his face went down as soon as she moved, she picked him up with her hands around his neck like she's picking a kitty, smiled sweetly and introduced his face to the hood of the nearest parked car.
Not hard enough to do permanent damage. Just enough to make him lie there with half of his life gone.
Shocked
The rest of the men retreated backwards slightly scared while looking at Brother long.
But soon got over it, thinking it was a trick by him to get her later.
The second came from the left wanting to grab her bosom and take liberties with her.
A cold glint passed through her eyes.
She ducked, caught his wrist, twisted, heard the pop of a joint relocating somewhere it wasn't supposed to be, " Arghhhh..." frightened stepped back with blood dripping down while he was still processing the pain.
The third tried to grab her from behind.
She let him get close.
Then her elbow went back, turning slightly her foot came down on his third leg enough to make him impotent and when he doubled forward she was already stepping aside and he hit the ground on his own screaming like a pig that's being slaughtered.
The fourth — the smart one, the one who'd stopped moving when the first three went down frightened and trembling— looked at her.
She looked at him.
She still had the lollipop in her other hand.
She put it back in her mouth."Your employer," she smiled sweetly but dangerously with bright eyes "sent four people for one seventeen-year-old girl."
She tilted her head and snorted
"That's either an insult or a compliment. I can't decide which."
The fourth man took a step back.
She smiled at him.
It was, objectively, a very beautiful smile.
It was also one of the most frightening things he had ever seen, he thought she's like a little devil.
—
From the shadow of a doorway thirty meters away, a man watched.
Tall.
Dark jacket.
The kind of face that made people look twice in broad daylight and forget what they were doing — clean sharp features, cold dark eyes that caught the light like obsidian, the sort of stillness that didn't come from being calm but from being so completely in control that calm was just the surface.
Si Xi.
His subordinate Lin Feng stood slightly behind him, watching the girl dispatch four grown men in fourteen seconds with an expression of pure disbelief.
Si Xi watched with no expression at all.
Just those eyes.
Moving.
Quiet.
Taking in every detail — the precision of her movements, the economy of them, the fact that she was smiling while she did it, the lollipop, the small shopping bag still hanging from her wrist, completely unbothered throughout.
When it was over and the girl was crouching in front of the four men and saying something to them in a low, pleasant voice,
Lin Feng leaned slightly toward his boss.
"Young Master," he said quietly.
"Should we—"
"No."
Lin Feng looked at him.
Si Xi's gaze hadn't moved from the girl.
That glint.
There and gone.
Like light catching the edge of something sharp.
Then he turned and walked away.
Lin Feng followed, glancing back once.
The girl was standing now, straightening her jacket, fixing her hair with one hand, lollipop back in her mouth, as the four men stumbled to their feet around her.
She looked like she'd been on a pleasant evening stroll.
"Young Master,"
Lin Feng tried again as they walked.
"That girl was—"
"Mn," Si Xi said.
Lin Feng waited.
Nothing else came.
He looked at his boss's profile.
Completely unreadable.
Completely composed.
But Lin Feng had worked for Si Xi for six years.
He knew what that glint meant.
He decided not to say anything else.