Chapter 100: A New Mission (Part 4)
“Hey! Where are you going?” the little boy shouted, watching Song Yuqing, Liu Xiaona, and Gaha get hauled away by an invisible force.
“Roar~”
Little Meat Bun turned back and growled softly at Song Yuqing. He was trying to tell her that he knew exactly where to track down the items needed for Master Fu’s tasks.
“Gaha~” Gaha nodded at Song Yuqing, choosing to place her absolute trust in the little panda.
Perfect. Little Meat Bun was the anchor for this dimension, so he definitely had a solid reason for leading the way.
Song Yuqing turned around and threw a hasty wave over her shoulder at the bewildered child. “See you next time, kid, if fortune smiles!”
The boy blinked in confusion. After a few seconds of hesitation, he kicked into a sprint and desperately tried to chase after them.
Completely lost but watching the spectral panda pull them forward while the kid hot-footed it behind them, Liu Xiaona quickly deduced the situation. There is definitely something shifty about that brat!
Wasting no more time, Liu Xiaona quickened her stride, breaking into a full sprint without even needing Little Meat Bun to drag her along.
The quartet crossed a major thoroughfare, ducked into a narrow side alley, and plunged straight into a massive, sprawling bamboo grove inside a nearby public park.
“Hey! Don’t go in there! My mom said that place isn’t safe!” the little boy screamed from about ten meters back, his voice straining.
But between the sheer distance and the ambient traffic noise bleeding in from the main street, Song Yuqing couldn’t make out his warnings at all. Seeing the group completely vanish into the dense thicket of bamboo, the boy skidded to a halt at the edge of the park, staring into the greenery with a troubled frown.
Little Meat Bun guided Song Yuqing and Gaha deftly through the stalks, with Liu Xiaona keeping a tight pace directly behind them. They finally ground to a halt in front of a rustic bamboo cottage.
Phew.
Song Yuqing leaned forward, hands on her knees as she gasped for air, completely wiped out by the sprint.
Liu Xiaona studied the structure. The interior of the cottage was pitch-black and gave off an incredibly eerie vibe, and a sudden, chilly gust of wind brushed against the back of her neck. Shivering, she instinctively shuffled backward to hide behind Gaha’s solid form.
“Gaha…” Gaha stared at the dark entrance, then glanced down at the proud, smug expression on Little Meat Bun’s face, and finally reached out to grip the hem of Song Yuqing’s jacket for reassurance.
“Little Meat Bun… where on earth have you brought us?” Song Yuqing panted, still trying to catch her breath.
The little bear narrowed his eyes into a pleased smile, arching his eyebrows as if to say, Just follow me!
He marched straight through the front door. Left with no other choice, Song Yuqing trailed right behind him, calling out into the dark, “Hey, slow down a bit!”
The ambient light inside the cottage was incredibly dim, with only a solitary candle casting a fragile glow over a single corner of the room. The moment they stepped inside, Little Meat Bun vanished into the shadows, leaving Song Yuqing, Gaha, and Liu Xiaona standing awkwardly in a clearing right in the center of the floorboards.
Song Yuqing pulled out her smartphone, flipped on the flashlight, and began systematically sweeping the beam across the interior to inspect her surroundings.
The cottage was packed to the brim with an absolute mountain of random junk. Stacks of storage shelves, tables, and mismatched chairs lined the perimeter, but every single surface was completely smothered in miscellaneous clutter. The entire place felt like a glorified hoarders’ nest, thick with the heavy scent of stagnant dust.
“Ah-choo!” Gaha let out a massive sneeze, aggressively rubbing her itchy nose.
“Little Meat Bun…?” Song Yuqing called out into the dark, testing the waters.
“Coming, coming! Keep your shirt on!” a voice called back. A figure smoothly emerged from a hidden doorway concealed behind a towering stack of junk.
Startled by the sudden movement, Liu Xiaona hastily raised Song Yuqing’s phone, splashing the beam of the flashlight directly onto the stranger’s face.
Under the bright glare, Song Yuqing got a perfectly clear look at the man’s features: he boasted a mop of messy yellow hair and wore a perpetual, knowing smirk.
“Master Fu!” Song Yuqing blurted out in pure shock.
Hearing the name, Liu Xiaona and Gaha froze, completely stunned. Wait, this is Master Fu? Master Fu lives here?
Right on cue, Little Meat Bun slowly poked his head out from behind the yellow-haired man’s legs, looking entirely pleased with himself.
But this Master Fu was definitively not their Master Fu.
“Oh, wow! It’s you! I totally remember you! You’re the girl who hitched a ride in my car a while back!” the man greeted her enthusiastically. He casually swiped a thick layer of debris off a nearby wooden chair with his sleeve and gestured toward it. “Come on in, make yourselves at home! Take a seat!”
Song Yuqing stared at the prominent yellow stains still marring the wood and politely shook her head. “No, thank you, we’re fine standing.”
Liu Xiaona stepped forward, narrowing her eyes to inspect his face from inches away. “Are you really Master Fu?”
The man instinctively recoiled a step, looking slightly defensive. “Yeah, that’s my name. Who are you supposed to be?”
“I’m Liu Xiaona!”
The man’s mouth twitched. “Never heard of you.”
Liu Xiaona blinked. “Huh?”
Song Yuqing quickly reached out, hauling her employee back by the shoulder. “Xiaona, stop. This isn’t the Master Fu from our store. This is just the local version of him native to this parallel dimension. They just happen to share the exact same name.”
Though she said it aloud to calm her staff, a deep seed of skepticism remained planted in her own mind. The coincidence felt a little too neat.
“Oh,” Liu Xiaona murmured blankly, processing the theory.
“Gaha…” Gaha grunted softly. But the vocal register is practically identical… The gargoyle silently tracked the man’s micro-expressions, analyzing his every movement.
“So, Little Meat Bun was the one who guided you here, eh? You came all this way just to see me?” the local Master Fu asked, falling back into a sharp, rapid-fire business register. “What exactly are you looking to buy? Let me guess—you’re hunting down some incredibly rare, black-market antiquities, right? First things first: let’s be entirely clear. We’ve only crossed paths once before, so we aren’t friends. I don’t do casual discounts. If my giant panda hadn’t been the one leading the vanguard tonight, I wouldn’t even be taking clients right now.”
Listening to his spiel, Song Yuqing raised an eyebrow. She could easily deduce that Little Meat Bun and this man shared an incredibly tight history. Furthermore, this version of Master Fu was clearly no ordinary citizen; he possessed the rare capacity to visually perceive Little Meat Bun, despite the bear existing as an intangible anomaly in this timeline.
Song Yuqing, Liu Xiaona, and Gaha all had the exact same realization at the same moment, snapping their heads down to glare at Little Meat Bun. The panda merely let out a soft, innocent chuckle.
“Allow me to clarify my dynamic with the little guy here,” the man said. He reached into his coat, pulled out a traditional folding fan, snapped it open with a sharp clack, and began idly fluttering it against his chest as he launched into his tale.
In this hyper-modern reality, all beasts possessing supernatural mutations were strictly monitored and regulated by a centralized governmental bureau. Generally speaking, high-tier espers would contract these specialized creatures from birth, subjecting them to grueling, lifelong training regimens to mold them into elite bodyguards.
Two centuries ago, driven by sheer, crushing boredom, this Master Fu had paid a visit to one of the bureau’s holding facilities and officially adopted Little Meat Bun when he was nothing more than a tiny cub. From that day forward, the two had operated strictly as brothers. Even though they communicated across a massive language barrier, their shared eccentricities and mutual love for mischief ensured they remained perfectly aligned.
Across those two hundred years, Little Meat Bun had enjoyed a completely unrestricted, carefree existence, spending his days casually loafing around the metropolitan sectors. Master Fu had never micromanaged his whereabouts; in fact, he actively encouraged the bear to venture out, explore the far reaches of the globe, and return whenever he pleased. After all, Master Fu was a notorious wanderer himself, frequently abandoning the cottage for months at a time to seek out his own entertainment.
As he reached the end of the summary, the man’s playful smirk finally vanished, his expression turning uncharacteristically grave.
“But a few months back… the little guy just completely vanished off the grid. I scoured every single sector looking for his signature but turned up absolutely nothing. I was genuinely starting to worry he had met a terrible end.”
Song Yuqing’s chest tightened with a sudden wave of guilt. “I… I’m incredibly sorry,” she murmured, looking down. “This is entirely my fault.”
It was her store’s dimensional displacement that had shattered his original timeline, rendering the panda an intangible ghost unable to properly reintegrate into his home world.
Master Fu studied her face, silently waiting to see if she would flesh out the rest of the confession. But Song Yuqing clamped her jaw shut, unable to find the words to explain the multiversal mechanics.
Seeing her silence, Master Fu reached down, gently patting the panda’s furry head. “Look, I don’t know what kind of bizarre reality you folks imported him from, but I can tell you aren’t malicious entities. If you were dangerous, my bear never would have guided you to my front door.”
The man was exceptionally perceptive. Little Meat Bun had vanished for months, only to return completely imperceptible to the naked eye, requiring highly specialized sensory contact lenses just to trace his outline. It was obvious a cataclysmic shift had occurred. But since the panda couldn’t articulate the logistics and Song Yuqing clearly had no intention of spilling her trade secrets, Master Fu chose to play dumb, simply attributing the bear’s condition to an upgraded invisibility mutation.
Hearing his rationalization, Song Yuqing let out a breath, a quiet wave of gratitude washing over her.
Little Meat Bun threw her a proud, triumphant look, puffed out his chest as if to boast: See this, Manager? This is the man who raised me! Pretty incredible, right?
Liu Xiaona and Gaha watched the exchange from the sidelines, letting out quiet sighs as they processed the revelation. They truly hadn’t anticipated that their lazy, gluttonous store mascot carried such a deep, rich history.
“Alright, let’s talk shop. What exactly is on your shopping list?” Master Fu coughed, his serious demeanor vanishing as he instantly flipped back to his standard, nonchalant merchant persona.
“We need a diagnostic machine capable of identifying disguised zombies,” Song Yuqing stated clearly. “And we need a cache of crop seeds genetically engineered to flourish within a barren wasteland.”
The man clicked his tongue, his smirk widening. “Well, I can certainly source both of those items for you. But they are astronomically rare. If you want them, it’s going to cost you every single point currently sitting in your store account.”
