The Lou family research institute, lively for only a brief while, had gone quiet again. The atavist families had all left.

All except Jing Pei.

By the time Jing Pei remembered the first shot in Xiang Huagong’s never-defeated legendary career, Ying Qian had already sent her an email.

It contained only two words:

Thank you.

Those two words carried more feeling than a page of gratitude ever could.

Back then, after years of abuse and the death of her child, Ying Qian had suffered a breakdown and killed her husband. She had tried to buy from Jing Pei a disposal site where the body would never be found. Jing Pei had refused—and instead sent her Xiang Huagong’s contact information.

She had reached out to Xiang Huagong only because she had run out of options. Truth be told, she hadn’t believed much would come of it.

But Ying Qian had been acquitted in open court.

When the jury’s decision came in and the judge brought down the gavel, she could hardly believe it. Tears streamed down her face.

She walked out of the courtroom into the sunlight and felt as if she had been given a second life.

She would go on living upright, openly, without shame and without darkness over her head. She owed that to Xiang Huagong—and even more to Jing Pei.

The case set off heated discussion across Qingniao Prefecture’s internet. The trial footage drew huge viewership and had already climbed onto the national trending charts, still rising. The trial itself had simply been too gripping, too dramatic, almost like a television drama.

But the part that moved people most was still Xiang Huagong’s speech about women’s human rights after marriage. That was the stretch that brought thunderous applause from the courtroom and moved both the jury and the judge, leading to that almost miraculous verdict.

Jing Pei was just about to click on it and watch when something off to the side stole her attention first: the angel was holding one of her shoes and trying to sniff it.

“Lou Ting?” Jing Pei stared at him. “What are you doing?”

The angel was crouched on the floor. If not for the way he was acting like a large dog, his silver hair, silver eyes, and that beautiful, inhuman face would have looked noble, cold, and beyond reach.

“Research,” he said, making no move to put the shoe down. “Your scent is strange.”

“It stinks?” Jing Pei blinked.

“No.”

Jing Pei nodded. “Then go ahead.”

A dog-type angel, then. One who liked gathering information through scent. She had accepted the setup by now.

After watching for a while, she asked curiously, “Well? Learned any profound truths through your nose?”

“I think you may be something like my destined mate,” the angel said.

Jing Pei: “…And what makes you say that?”

“I can’t judge you. That means I can’t see through you. According to human literature, that is how a fated romance begins—because you are special to me. And your scent draws me in.” The angel looked utterly serious, as if discussing an academic topic, with nothing romantic in his expression at all. “Do you like my scent too? The way I like yours?”

As if indulging a child, Jing Pei leaned in and gave his cheek a careful sniff. “Mm. You smell nice. But probably not in the same way you mean.”

“Huh. That’s not reasonable,” the angel said, touching one ear.

“It’s perfectly reasonable. I like cats more than dogs.”

“I’m not a dog. I’m an angel. If I have to be compared to an animal, it should be a bird.”

Jing Pei laughed. “But I hate pointy-beaked animals.”

The angel froze in visible shock. “I do not have a beak!”

Jing Pei was starting to think he was almost too cute. Teasing him was unexpectedly fun. At first, his abrupt change in characterization had thrown her badly, but she had accepted it now.

Because of the agreement she had made with Lou Ting—the agreement that he would be allowed to “research” her—Jing Pei stayed for dinner before leaving. Before she went, she visited Zhang Simiao.

The cage was so large that even Zhang Simiao looked small inside it. She had a suite of her own and was happily rearranging the room, moving the sofa and tables and chairs into the layout she liked best.

She looked genuinely happy. For now, she couldn’t stay with Wen Yuxian all the time, but her very existence had always placed a crushing burden on him. Now they were both safe.

The moment she saw Jing Pei, she ran over like a gorilla and wrapped her in a fierce hug, rubbing against her over and over.

“All right, all right. I’m leaving now. I’ll come see you another day.” Jing Pei patted her on the head.

After she went back down, the old lady kept her for another cup of tea.

She was Lou Ting’s grandmother, and from the moment Jing Pei arrived, she had looked delighted to see her.

“Ever since the day he was born, there have been countless people who feared him, and countless others who wanted to use his power to get rid of their enemies. But this is the first time anyone has wanted to use his power to protect someone else. I’m truly happy. Thank you.” The old woman smiled, but both her smile and her eyes held far too much to be easily named.

“His power was meant to help people in the first place,” Jing Pei said. “A Judgment Angel exists to punish evil and uphold justice, doesn’t it?”

“In principle, yes. But the fact that he can add rules of his own means that what counts as justice may come down to nothing more than a word from him.”

Just like the rule he had added for Zhang Simiao. Others had also wanted him to add all sorts of strange rules and then bring certain people into contact with them. Lou Ting was, in effect, a large-scale area-kill weapon—one that could also screen huge groups of people at once. A weapon like that was all too useful.

“Luckily, his power is passive. It triggers the moment you come within fifty meters, which makes friendly fire far too easy. That makes him hard to control.” The old woman sounded relieved. Her sharp eyes rested on Jing Pei, as if searching for something.

“True.” Jing Pei nodded, looking perfectly normal.

The old woman’s shoulders relaxed, just a little.

“He made a rather willful request of you. If it causes you trouble, you don’t need to indulge him. I’ll talk to him properly.” Her expression was conflicted—as though she wanted Jing Pei to nod, and wanted her to shake her head.

“It’s all right. I’d only be coming over now and then. By airship it’s about an hour. It’s no trouble.”

A Lou family airship took Jing Pei home. On the way, she received a text from Tao Ze.

Jing Pei thought it over. The timing was about right.

So she replied with two words:

[You may.]

…

Bohai Prefecture.

Mo Weiwei sat inside the cage wearing an oversized old T-shirt that had once belonged to a grown man—one of the castoffs his father had thrown at him.

The day he rang the doorbell, they had first been terrified.

Then they had looked delighted.

Heaven knew how miserable their lives had become after losing the income their son provided. Miserable enough that they regretted not squeezing more out of this monster while they had the chance—more money, more things, enough that even after losing him they would never have had to worry about food or the future again.

And still, they had never called the police. They were afraid that if they did, their long years of imprisoning their own son would come to light and get them arrested. Besides, the money Mo Weiwei had somehow obtained for them over the years was its own hidden danger.

So they wanted no attention at all.

They thought he had picked the lock and escaped that day, so they prepared a sturdier cage with a lock that was harder to force open. His food and water were rationed by the day. Even the number of times he was allowed to use the toilet was fixed. If they were busy gaming or asleep, then whether he was hungry, thirsty, or desperate to go, he had to hold it.

He had lived that way for as long as he could remember, so in the past he had never found it that hard to bear. When Jing Pei fired him, he had gone back there full of rage and resentment, never thinking that returning to this so-called home would affect him much.

But now, as soon as mealtime came around, he began to feel hungry. His mind filled on its own with steaming dishes and warm soup.

When he lay on the thin, ragged blanket, he found himself missing a soft bed and a quilt tucked so tightly around him that not a draft could get in.

When they looked at him with that mix of fear, disgust, and greed, he found himself missing another pair of eyes—helpless and mild, not tempted in the least by the profit his ability could bring.

“Huh? You’re not crying, are you, monster?” His father opened the door, saw his face, and looked almost theatrically astonished. It was such a strange sight to him. In his memory, this creature did not cry. Had he ever cried, even once, since birth? The man could no longer remember.

Mo Weiwei started, then touched his cheek.

Dry.

He wasn’t crying.

So why had his father thought he was?

His mother came over as well. “What is there to cry about? We didn’t hit you, we didn’t yell at you, we even let you use a computer. You don’t have to go to school like other kids either. You’ve got it easy. What’s there to cry over? If you’d run away for that many days from any other parents and then come back, they’d have broken your legs.”

“No, no, I saw wrong. Fine, hurry up and make money.” The man shoved the computer inside and urged him to get to work, not caring in the least why he had mistaken his expression.

Mo Weiwei stared at them. His big black eyes in that child’s face looked eerie enough to make them both take a step back.

The next instant, the man of the house flew into shamefaced rage and kicked the cage. “How many times have I told you? If you keep looking at us like that, you’ll regret it. You asking for a beating?”

Mo Weiwei lowered his eyes and turned on the computer.

When night fell, he stepped out of the cage and went to their room with a knife in his hand. He stood beside the bed and looked down at them in the dark.

I could endure the darkness, if I had never seen the light.

He hated the boss for sending Tao Ze to take him away, only to send him back.

He hated Tao Ze for taming him and then throwing him aside.

He tightened his grip on the knife and raised his hand.

Then he drove it down toward his father’s throat.

His hand stopped.

He had heard the door open.

Footsteps were coming.

Those familiar footsteps made his eyes widen. The calm in his chest shattered, and suddenly his heart was pounding hard.

He turned and went out.

There was a figure standing in the living room, all in shadow.

He knew that silhouette at once.

In an instant, all the murderous fury in Mo Weiwei’s heart toward his parents vanished. What remained was grievance, and a little resentment. His eyes reddened.

The figure sighed and held out a hand.

Mo Weiwei did not move.

So Tao Ze walked over, took the knife from his hand, and clasped his cold little fingers.

Mo Weiwei let himself be led two steps, then gripped Tao Ze’s warm hand tight.

“From now on, do your work properly. You can’t act like before,” Tao Ze said. In truth, he had never gone very far these past few days. He had kept lingering nearby. When he saw the husband and wife selling off the clothes and shoes he had bought for Mo Weiwei, he knew Mo Weiwei had gone back into the cage.

In the end, he still couldn’t let it go.

He couldn’t just stand by.

“…I know.” Mo Weiwei’s voice broke. Embarrassed, he scrubbed furiously at his tears.

He knew he had been wrong.

The truth was, he had regretted it long ago. He just hadn’t wanted to admit it. When something was already lost, it hurt less to resent someone else than to resent yourself. But Tao Ze had come back. He hadn’t truly lost him yet.

And if that was the case, then he could admit it.

He had learned his lesson. If you didn’t want to lose something, then you had to learn how to cherish it and protect it.

He would never deliberately go against the boss again.

…

The Tribunal Division headquarters was swamped that night.

They tried to locate the Atavist Serum Organization’s base by interrogating the traitors. They even brought in an atavist whose ability let him pry into other people’s memories.

What they hadn’t expected was that this atavist was one of the organization’s people too. He erased every memory those traitors had of the Atavist Serum Organization—and the backlash left him a drooling who could only grin like an idiot.

That single move ruined everything.

The members of the atavist families were furious and seized the chance to curse out the Tribunal Division for good measure.

“If they’ve got guts, they can say that to the Director’s face,” the assistant muttered in annoyance.

“Doesn’t that information broker know everything? Why not just buy the intel from him?” Mei Yanlan said.

The assistant darted a glance toward Qiu Fa’s office and lowered his voice. “Whatever you do, don’t bring that information broker up in front of the Director.”

“Why not?”

“He’ll be furious.”

“?” Mei Yanlan looked surprised. “That can stir that much emotion in him? What, is it envy because the guy’s rich?” She had known Qiu Fa for years. The man was like stagnant water. Even a gale could hardly raise a ripple.

The assistant gave her a look full of meaning.

Who could say there wasn’t at least a trace of that in it?

But more than that, Qiu Fa simply disliked people who operated in the gray. Like someone who watched violence happen and said nothing—even if that wasn’t a crime or an obligation—people with a strong sense of justice and responsibility still found that sort of person hard to like.

“So is this information broker a man or a woman?”

“A man, probably.”

“Oh.”

Then there was no chance. Qiu Fa wasn’t into men.

A moment later the assistant asked, “Why did you suddenly decide to take day shifts and non-capital work?”

Qiu Fa had invited Mei Yanlan into the Tribunal Division Special Forces ten years ago. All that time she had kept her name hidden. Even her teammates didn’t know what Number One was called or what she looked like. And yet now she had suddenly shown herself, and she hadn’t done it quietly.

“Guess,” Mei Yanlan said, shooting him a flirtatious glance. “Win, and there’s a prize.”

“!” The assistant recoiled in alarm. “I-I-I’m married!”

Don’t use succubus-level charm on me. My wife will kill me.

“Oh, right. I’m married too. It’s late—I should get home.” It was as if Mei Yanlan had only just remembered. She straightened up. “I’m off.”

But when she reached the door, she paused, turned back, and said, “By the way, give me that information broker’s contact.”

…

Xiao Cheng had lost count of how many times he had checked the time.

It was already eleven, and Mei Yanlan still wasn’t home.

Xiao Cheng began to get suspicious. Did she really have some kind of “back-to-the-roots” job to do? How convenient that she found work right after he got pregnant—why didn’t she have any before? Was it because he was pregnant and we couldn’t do “that sort of thing” anymore, so she was just making up an excuse to go out and have fun? Did she only love his body?

No, no. Mei Yanlan wasn’t that kind of person.

He thought back to the background they had dug up on her. After graduating from university, she had spent years teaching elementary school, dressing all that time like one of those old-maid characters in TV dramas—plain, dated, the kind of woman men never noticed. She had always seemed like an honest, slightly clumsy sort of person, the type who got pushed around without complaint.

This time, it was only because she had fallen in love with him at first sight and feared he wouldn’t marry her that she had hidden the fact that she was an atavist. That was why she hadn’t seemed quite so harmless.

Thinking of that only made Xiao Cheng feel more stifled and angry.

His phone rang.

It was a friend.

“I asked around for you. There’s no staff member called Mei Yanlan in the Tribunal Division. If she really is an atavist, then she’s probably one of those minor, off-the-books hires—someone they only call in when they’re short-handed to deal with support work. Using her ability to repair roads and that sort of thing. So she probably isn’t very strong. That’s why she only does it part-time.”

Xiao Cheng nodded. That made sense. So even if she was an atavist, she was still a nobody. For some reason, that steadied the unease in his chest.

“So what kind of atavist is Mei Yanlan, exactly? Come on, tell me.”

“It’s not important.”

“The last time you asked me about seahorse atavists… could it be—”

“No!” Xiao Cheng denied it at once.

But he answered too fast, which only made his friend more interested. As an ordinary human male, though, he still couldn’t imagine that Mei Yanlan might be the kind of atavist who could get a man pregnant.

“Mei Yanlan used to be in our class too, right? There’s a high school reunion tomorrow night, isn’t there? Bring her with you.”

He had met Mei Yanlan at the wedding before, but he had paid no attention then. He’d only known she was the stepping stone in Xiao Cheng and Fang Bihe’s love story, so now he couldn’t even remember what she looked like.

Who would have guessed she was a seahorse atavist? He wondered whether he might get to see her atavist form.

“Don’t tell anyone about this,” Xiao Cheng said at last.

While he was still on the phone, another text came in from Fang Bihe. She had been crying on and off for days and had even refused to continue her physical rehab at the hospital. Fang Bihe was the white moonlight of his youth, the one he had pined after since he was a boy. How could he bear not to care?

With no choice, Xiao Cheng hemmed and hawed his way through telling her about the pregnancy. It made her smile through her tears, though she didn’t notice that Xiao Cheng had never actually said who was pregnant. Naturally, it never occurred to her that the pregnant one might not be Mei Yanlan.

[I went to rehab today. I can stand for five seconds while holding on now. By the time Mei Yanlan gives birth, I’m sure I’ll be able to walk already, so I can play with the baby together with you. I spent today thinking of you too.]

Again, in the text, Fang Bihe hinted that once the child was born, Xiao Cheng should divorce Mei Yanlan.

But for some reason, certain words in that message struck him as glaring and unpleasant.

Then he heard the front door open and knew Mei Yanlan was back. He put his phone away at once.

Mei Yanlan changed her shoes in the entryway and, seeing him still in the living room, asked, “Why are you still up? Didn’t I tell you a pregnant husband should go to bed early?”

Pregnant husband…

Xiao Cheng had heard the phrase several times already, and he still couldn’t stomach it.

“Stop saying that word!”

“Hm? Still can’t accept it?” Mei Yanlan said. “Then have you decided whether you want to keep the baby? I’ll be busy from here on out, so if you need me to go with you to the hospital, you should decide sooner rather than later.” After all, she wasn’t some deadbeat man. She couldn’t very well let her pregnant partner go get an abortion alone.

“What kind of attitude is that? What do you mean by that? You don’t want this child, do you? You’d love it if I got rid of it, wouldn’t you?!” Xiao Cheng exploded on the spot. He already hated this and could barely accept the fact that he, a grown man, was pregnant—but hearing Mei Yanlan sound so casual only made him even angrier.

“I’m respecting your choice.”

“Does that look like respect to you?!”

One look told Mei Yanlan that he was about to start making a scene again. As usual, she hauled him back into the bedroom, pressed him onto the bed, and wrapped him up in the quilt. “All right, all right. Sleep.”

“You’re going to sleep in the guest room again?!”

“Fine. I’ll stay with you.”

“What kind of perfunctory attitude is that? Was I forcing you?”

“…”

Xiao Cheng lay there fuming for ages and still couldn’t sleep. When he turned his head, Mei Yanlan was already out cold, sleeping like nothing in the world was wrong. His eyes went red with anger.

Tomorrow, I’m absolutely not taking you to the reunion!

He tossed and turned for two hours before finally falling asleep. Early the next morning, he vaguely sensed the person beside him get out of bed. He cracked one eye open and saw Mei Yanlan dressed all in black.

It wasn’t the cheap, old-fashioned black women’s suit she used to wear to school. She had dressed with care this time, and she looked beautiful.

But she also gave off another impression:

as though she were going to a funeral.

Must be his imagination.

He was too sleepy. Xiao Cheng drifted off again.

There was still mist in the cemetery at dawn.

Mei Yanlan stopped in front of a gravestone. The photograph on it showed a boy with a clear, sunlit face.

“The ten-year promise is up. I didn’t go back on my word.” She paused, then added, “And yes, I made sure to enjoy life while I could.”