Chapter 51: Quest
A new panel unfolded beneath the target’s name, burning gold against the afternoon light.
[New Target Detected]
[Quest: Steal ’Su Chen’s’ close people.]
[Su Chen is a reincarnated Soul Lord who has seized a new body in the Jinguan Sect. He is pretending to be the Su Chen of Jinguan and taking over the connections of this place. Sever them, and his Fortune will collapse into your hands.]
[Subquest 1: Steal ’Maid Xiao Cui’ from Su Chen. Reward: 100 Fortune.]
[Subquest 2: Steal ’Inner Disciple Fatty Wang’ from Su Chen. Reward: 150 Fortune.]
[Subquest 3: Steal ’Fairy Qinglian,’ his sister, from Su Chen. Reward: 600 Fortune.]
[Special Reward: Steal all three and receive a unique aspect of the Chosen One’s cultivation.]
Kian stopped pushing the trolley.
He stared at the golden text until it burned into his retinas, then read it again.
A Soul Lord. Reincarnated? What the hell?
The system had never dropped a target like this—and for fuck sake, his last target was a random cultivator from a sect. What is this progression?
And the rewards: a six hundred point Fortune reward just for the fairy alone.
He let out a slow breath, tasting the dusty street air as if it were wine.
"Jinguan Sect," he muttered, filing the name away.
He didn’t know where that was, but the system would probably not point him at a target he couldn’t reach eventually.
Nodding to himself, Kian walked back home: he had to be there before the sunset, after all.
Soon, Kian reached back home.
Damn, he instantly thought.
The courtyard was unrecognizable. The cracked flagstones had been swept so thoroughly they gleamed like wet slate in the fading sunlight.
The dead garden had been pruned back to its bones, the weeds ripped out and piled in a neat mountain beside the wall.
Even the air smelled different—no longer musty and abandoned, but sharp with the scent of scrubbed wood and something floral that might have been jasmine soap.
Jia stood in the center of it all with her dust rag hanging limp from her hand, staring at her own work with satisfaction.
She turned when she heard the gate, and her expression flickered through three emotions before settling on exasperated pride.
"I told you I am good at chores," she said. "Now you see?"
Kian parked the trolley by the entrance and walked a slow circle around the courtyard, genuinely amazed.
The walls had been wiped down. The storage shed’s door no longer hung crooked on its hinges. Someone had even polished the brass fittings on the front door.
"You did all this?" he asked. "In the time I was gone?"
"Mother helped," Jia admitted, and the word came out with a cough. She gestured toward the house. "She’s inside. Apparently, a cultivator can do in minutes what a mortal’s hands take hours to finish."
She crossed her arms and glared at him, but her eyes were soft. "You know what? You could have done it all even more efficiently with your Qi control."
"Cough, I didn’t think of that."
"Hmph, but it was fun anyway."
"Come on, let’s quickly go to the bathhouse if you are all done."
Kian walked past her with a pat on her shoulder.
Inside, the house smelled of orange juice and something clean, and Hua Feimei sat at the low table with a cup cradled between her palms. She didn’t look tired.
"You have a nice home," she said mildly, and took a sip of her juice.
"Thank you, I guess?"
Mia walked out of the kitchen and began unwrapping things from the cart. "Wow, you splurged."
He had bought a lot of things. Mia even noticed a lot of simple clothes that seemed a perfect fit for her size. "Aww, you knew my size well."
"Happens after you sleep inside my clothes naked."
Mia blushed, bashfully looking away.
Jia snorted from the doorway. "You two are disgusting." But she was already kneeling beside the trolley, pulling out a bundle of cloth that turned out to be a set of soft cotton sleeping robes.
"Oh, these are nice. Did you get me one?"
"Three of them," Kian said. "One for each of you. I figured you’d fight otherwise."
Jiao Yin appeared from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a cloth, and her eyes went wide at the mountain of packages.
"So many things..." She knelt hesitantly beside Jia.
Mia laughed, the sound bright and unguarded. "He bought half the market." She held up a toothbrush still in its paper wrapping and waggled it at Jia. "Don’t mistake yours for mine."
They sorted through the cart with the efficient chaos of pretty ladies who had been deprived of nice things for too long—exclaiming over the soap, arguing about whose blankets were softer, Jiao Yin shyly touching the fabric of a new robe that was clearly meant for her.
Kian leaned against the wall and watched, a faint smile tugging at his mouth.
This was a nice feeling.
Then Jia stood up, brushing dust from her knees, and announced: "Enough. Now that we have nice bath stuff, bathhouse. Now."
Her eyes were bright with something more than impatience. "I have a surprise," she said, her voice dropping to a smug one.
Kian blinked.
"The owner of the bathhouse—old Lady Meng—she came by while you were out. Said she saw how hard we worked on the courtyard and wanted to thank us."
Jia produced a slip of pale blue paper from her sleeve with a flourish.
"Private bathing area. Today only. Hot spring, scented oils, the whole thing. Just for us. So, we won’t have to worry about any crowd."
Mia gasped. Jiao Yin’s mouth fell open. Jia pointed the ticket at Kian like a weapon.
"You can come too, since you paid for the soap."
"Sure, why not?"
They packed good clothes, a bunch of bathing essentials, and left for the bathhouse. Feimei didn’t follow them at first, then, she stood up, following the three.