My Romance Game Updated – Chapter 88
by Little PandaNight Exploration of the Fan Family
The moment her sleeve was carefully tugged, Ren Chenxi pressed her lips together, but in the end only lowered her gaze and said nothing, leading Mu Ning down the stairs with her. She gently opened the front door. Outside, everything was already quiet darkness—even the light bulbs tied to the trees and wooden posts had all gone out.
In such a dark environment, conditions were favorable for Ren Chenxi and Mu Ning’s operation. Actually, hadn’t it been fine even without the Invisibility Card from the start? Ren Chenxi felt a twinge of regret, but quickly thought it through.
No matter how dark the surroundings, once they reached the wider roads outside, the moonlight spilling down from the sky would still illuminate a little. Besides, on such a quiet main road, having just two people running at night—if someone happened to be awake and looking at the night scenery, she and Mu Ning running without invisibility would be truly suspicious! If they were reported to Qi Sheng as ill-intentioned intruders, that would be troublesome!
Thinking about it that way, running at night while invisible was safer and more reassuring. But… since they were running at night, wasn’t their speed a bit slow?
Aware that their running speed was too slow, and that having her sleeve tugged by Mu Ning while running made the atmosphere rather strange, Ren Chenxi immediately and unhesitatingly applied an SR-rank Acceleration Card to both herself and Mu Ning. She had 27 SR Acceleration Cards and two SSR Acceleration Cards anyway! No fear of using them up1.
After applying the Acceleration Cards, their running speed in the night increased even more. From the Villa Area to the Fan family territory, it took only about five minutes. The base had two very sturdy gates—one defending the entire base’s security, and another being the high wall and iron gate the Fan family had built for their own territory.
The Fan family gate also had a guard post set up in proper fashion, but the three people on duty inside were already half-awake, dozing off. In the apocalypse, the entire base was short on electricity. Even though the Fan family kept a 4th-order lightning-system esper, they couldn’t afford to run pre-apocalypse high-tech defense facilities. Of course, they might not have been able to obtain such equipment anyway.
Like the base’s main security measures, the Fan family relied primarily on human patrols. So even though the three people at the entrance guard post seemed unreliable, if you climbed over the iron gate into the Fan family territory, there were patrol after patrol of guards everywhere. These patrol guards included both espers and ordinary people, with about five or six per squad. Each person wore a high-frequency whistle around their neck—if any enemy intruded, they would absolutely blow it loud enough for everyone in the Fan family territory to hear. Perhaps even other survivors outside the Fan family territory could hear it.
However, these patrol guards were fucking useless2 against Ren Chenxi and Mu Ning. After climbing over the large iron gate together and intruding into Fan family territory, Ren Chenxi had already encountered the third patrol squad. No matter how alert these patrol guards were, and even though some looked like professional mercenaries, they still couldn’t detect Ren Chenxi and Mu Ning walking right past them.
The Fan family territory was large, but limited by various construction materials, there was only one relatively large luxury villa. As for the other empty spaces, Ren Chenxi swept a quick glance—most were used for planting. As for what they were planting… heh.
The luxury villa had four floors in total. The first-floor entrance was tightly locked, but for Mu Ning, a wood-system esper, that wasn’t an issue at all—because they had no intention of going through the first floor.
The second-floor balconies had no anti-theft measures whatsoever. Ren Chenxi borrowed Mu Ning’s vines and easily climbed to the second-floor balcony. Their movements were very light, not waking the people in the bedrooms connected to the balconies at all. Calling them bedrooms, but they were more like dormitories. One room contained ten beds. As Ren Chenxi carefully made her way past these beds, she discovered that everyone sleeping in this room was an esper—but their levels were basically 2nd-order and 3rd-order, and beside every esper’s health bar was a drug addiction debuff.
Sure enough, the Fan family was using Fan Juntian’s poison smoke ability to control most of the espers, wasn’t it?
From the mini-map’s indications, most of these espers were red dots, but there were also two or three yellow dots. However, whether these people were voluntarily controlled by Fan Juntian or not, Ren Chenxi didn’t have the time to worry about them right now.
According to the mini-map’s indications, Ren Chenxi knew that this large villa appeared to have four floors, but there was actually a basement level below. Ren Chenxi guessed that this basement might be used to imprison certain important people, and—given the Fan family’s arrogance and caution—they themselves probably lived on the highest floor, which was also the safest floor.
Chen Gu had explained earlier that the Fan family’s main authority figure was Fan Juntian’s father, and above Fan Juntian were two older brothers—the eldest Fan Haotian, the second Fan Zhaotian. Although there were various other uncles and cousins, the power in this Fan family territory was entirely concentrated in the hands of the three Fan brothers and their father.
Before coming, Ren Chenxi had discussed with Mu Ning that their main goal tonight was to meet the Fan family’s leaders. Mu Ning shared her view that these power-holders were definitely on the fourth floor, so after leaving the room with ten sleeping espers, they headed straight for the fourth floor.
Upon reaching the fourth-floor stairwell, Ren Chenxi became even more certain of her guess. The entire fourth floor showed basically all red dots, meaning these people were all enemies! Of course, there were occasionally a few yellow dots, but these yellow dots were basically in the same rooms as red dots—Ren Chenxi didn’t understand what kind of people they were.
Walking expressionlessly past several bedrooms, Ren Chenxi felt somewhat awkward.
These Fan family people, really… it was so late, and most people in the base were already asleep, yet these people were still so energetic! She was just walking past the room doors, but those lewd sounds and filthy words kept coming out without interruption.
If she were alone, it wouldn’t have mattered. But the problem was, right now she was holding hands with Mu Ning! (Well, holding her sleeve counted as holding hands.) What was worse, the only one feeling awkward seemed to be herself! Because Mu Ning not only continued tugging her sleeve as if nothing was wrong, she even asked quietly, “With so many rooms, which one is Fan Haotian’s?”
Why was she asking her?! Her mini-map only showed red dots, yellow dots, and green dots—it didn’t show names!
Ren Chenxi irritably tugged at the sleeve Mu Ning was gripping rather tightly, and whispered, “Forget it, let’s check the middle room first!”
The villa had stairs on both the left and right sides. Ren Chenxi figured that if she went by the C position3 that celebrities fought over in her original world, the person in the center room probably had the highest status.
As it turned out, Ren Chenxi’s guess was correct.
After listening to all kinds of messy lewd sounds along the way, when Ren Chenxi and Mu Ning reached the middle room’s door, their ears finally found peace. In the villa’s layout, rooms connected to balconies were on both sides—the middle rooms were single rooms.
No balcony meant no way to climb in from a balcony. Ren Chenxi tried turning the door handle—sure enough, it was locked from inside. So how to open the door without alerting the people inside?
“Let me try.”
Just as Ren Chenxi was pondering, Mu Ning lightly scratched Ren Chenxi’s wrist through the thin fabric and whispered.
“…” Just speak properly—why scratch me!
Ren Chenxi uncomfortably tugged at her sleeve, but since Mu Ning was holding it tightly and she couldn’t pull free, she had to let her continue holding it. Then she watched as a thin vine emerged from mid-air and slipped under the door.
Seeing the vine slip through the crack beneath the door, Ren Chenxi understood how Mu Ning planned to open it. The bedroom doors in this era still used old-fashioned locks—even wealthy people like the Fan family only used ordinary spherical door locks. As long as the vine wrapped around the entire handle and turned, the lock would naturally unlock from inside. Given Mu Ning’s fine control over her vines, Ren Chenxi naturally assumed unlocking would be no problem.
Sure enough, after waiting just a short while, a soft “click” came from the lock. The sound wasn’t loud, but in this especially quiet bedroom doorway, it still seemed somewhat loud. Mu Ning quickly retracted her vine, and the two stood at the door for a while. Seeing that no sound came from inside, they tentatively pushed open the door.
There were two people on the bed, both sleeping. The mini-map showed one as a red dot, the other as yellow. Unlike the pitch-black corridor, the room—though still dim—at least had some light.
You had to hand it to the Fan family—sleeping with the bedside lamp on, how extravagant. Of course, you could also call this Fan family caution, guarding against intruders attacking in the darkness.
However, this bedside lamp couldn’t defend against anything when it came to Ren Chenxi and Mu Ning in their invisible state. Silently closing the door, Ren Chenxi and Mu Ning slowly walked to the bedside. Ren Chenxi glanced at the old man on the bed and the young, beautiful woman lying beside him, her brows furrowing deeply.
The reason Ren Chenxi frowned wasn’t that this old man was old and disrespectful4, sleeping with a woman young enough to be his granddaughter at his age—but rather, the old man didn’t have a drug addiction debuff, yet the young woman beside him did!
So the Fan family not only used poison to control espers, but also targeted ordinary people?
Looking at the young but haggard face of the sleeping woman, Ren Chenxi inexplicably thought of what Zhang Tongqi had mentioned before… in the base, there was a lot of darkness that people living relatively normal lives like them didn’t know about.
“This old man is Fan Qian, the Fan family’s leader, and also Fan Haotian’s father!”
A warm breath suddenly brushed against her ear, startling Ren Chenxi. Fortunately, she quickly realized it was Mu Ning and didn’t reflexively slap at her. This person, really—even though they needed to speak quietly, did she have to get this close?! And even though she couldn’t see herself, she could still find her ear so precisely.
But from another perspective, it was a good thing she only found her ear.
Mu Ning didn’t know Ren Chenxi’s attention had wandered elsewhere, and continued whispering, “Don’t let this old man’s withered appearance5 fool you—his methods are even more sinister and vicious than Fan Haotian and Fan Juntian. Before the apocalypse, he was already the Fan family patriarch. After the apocalypse, he brought the remaining Fan family members to this base, using every despicable and brutal method6 to recruit espers and seize power from Qi Sheng. The Fan family’s current position, able to stand on equal footing with the base leader Qi Sheng, was all won by this old man.”
“Despicable methods—including instigating Fan Juntian to use his poison smoke ability to control anyone he could use, right?”
“Yes! Even if this old man didn’t directly instigate it, judging by his methods of seizing power, and his allowing Fan Juntian to plant various drugs on Fan family territory, Fan Juntian’s actions are still connected to him. The Fan family tried to recruit me back then too—at first with various crystal cores and supplies as temptation, then they started using threats and inducements. Fan Juntian came to find me several times, and even tried to secretly release poison smoke at me. But his poison smoke ability was too obvious—the first few times we dispersed it. The last time… Sun Jia was affected. Actually, Fan Juntian didn’t just try to release poison smoke at us openly; he also secretly tried to climb onto our villa roof to poison us several times, but was discovered by the alert Tantan. Those times, Chen Gu and the others beat Fan Juntian half to death—he couldn’t get out of bed for a while. After that, he didn’t dare try any more nighttime sneak attacks on me.”
Thinking of Sun Jia’s drug addiction, and hearing about Fan Juntian’s nighttime poison attacks, Ren Chenxi’s gaze at the old man on the bed grew increasingly dark. It was precisely because of concerns about the Fan family behind Fan Juntian that back at S University, she didn’t dare to act rashly against Fan Juntian. Now in the apocalypse at this base, she was still concerned about the Fan family, and didn’t dare to offend them at first.
If this old man was gone, if the Fan family collapsed, could that second-generation ancestor7 Fan Juntian still be so arrogant and domineering8 in the base?
The author has something to say:
Xixi: Luckily, she only pressed her mouth to my ear~
Mutou: What a pity, after searching for so long, she only found the ear position!!!
Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, this return-of-south-wind weather9 is killing me! Let’s not even talk about the walls—the floor is so wet, you really have to be careful about slipping…
Footnotes
- A Northern Chinese dialect word (huòhuo) meaning to squander, ruin, or use something up in a wasteful, destructive manner.
- A Chinese internet slang term (méi shénme luǎn yòng) meaning 'fucking useless.'
- Chinese internet slang (C wèi) for 'center position,' referring to the most prominent or important spot, originally from gaming and entertainment contexts.
- A Chinese phrase (wéi lǎo bù zūn) describing an older person who behaves inappropriately or fails to act with the dignity expected of their age.
- A Chinese descriptive term (gān bā bā) meaning dried up, withered, or shriveled; often used to describe someone looking old and weathered.
- A Chinese term (xiàzuò) meaning despicable, low-down, or vile.
- A derogatory term (èr shì zǔ) for a spoiled rich heir who lives off family wealth and contributes nothing.
- A Chinese idiom (xiāozhāng báhù) describing someone who is arrogant, overbearing, and acts without restraint.
- A Chinese weather phenomenon (huínántiān) referring to extreme humidity in southern China when warm, moist air from the south meets cold surfaces, causing severe condensation on walls and floors.
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