94: Chapter 94 My First Time with Jiang Jiuyou...

The chewing sound stopped.

But it was already too late.

Jiang Jiuyou did not pull back the hand holding her cup; she tilted her head, her ice-blue pupils piercing over the high backrest of the booth, locking precisely onto that direction.

"The person in the back—" She spoke slowly, her words clear.

"Since you've been sitting there for so long, why not come to the front and have a drink?"

The temperature in the tavern seemed to have been turned down by a switch, plummeting several degrees.

Two black-clad vanguards turned simultaneously, raising their muzzles toward the corner booth.

The tall, thin one carrying a sniper case had already dropped to one knee and unlatched the box.

The middle-aged female adjutant took a step back, her left hand reaching for the short blade at her waist.

Five people entered combat mode within three seconds.

The proprietress was halfway through wiping a glass, her tail stiff as a rod.

She didn't look at Chen Chen or Jiang Jiuyou, but simply placed the glass gently back on the shelf, lowering her head to organize the bottles on the bar, pretending to be deaf and dumb.

Behind the load-bearing pillar.

Chen Chen leaned against the pillar, chewing on the unfinished energy bar.

His expression wasn't exactly surprised, but he did take an extra look at Jiang Jiuyou.

There was no public information on what her talent specifically was.

But to be able to detect someone behind the load-bearing pillar based solely on "feeling," without him having activated Absolute Stealth—this level of perception was not ordinary.

Chen Chen casually swiped open the system panel and glanced at the level leaderboard.

First place: Chen Chen (Lv.10).

Second place: Jiang Jiuyou (Lv.9).

Third place: Iron Wall (Lv.8).

She had surpassed Iron Wall.

Climbing from eighth to second within seven days—what she went through in between didn't need to be said.

How many things this woman had killed and how many resources she had devoured in places Chen Chen couldn't see was evident enough from this ranking alone.

"Crackle—"

Chen Chen crumpled the energy bar wrapper into a ball and flicked it into the trash can.

He walked out.

He simply walked out from behind the load-bearing pillar, his grey-black military boots stepping one by one into the light of the bar area.

Jiang Jiuyou's two vanguards were still holding their guns.

But their hands were trembling.

After his constitution broke through the species threshold of carbon-based organisms, Chen Chen's body didn't need to actively release anything; his mere "presence" carried a bio-electric field that made carbon-based organisms instinctively fearful.

Goosebumps erupted on the back of both vanguards' necks simultaneously.

Their fingers were on the triggers, but they couldn't pull them.

Their bodies were sending warnings—the thing in front of them could not be beaten.

Jiang Jiuyou didn't turn back to look at her subordinates' reactions.

She held her cup, tilted her head, and looked up at the man who had stepped out of the shadows.

First piece of information: Height.

She herself was 1.78 meters tall, plus two centimeters with military boots.

When the man in front of her stood by the bar, her gaze swept across horizontally, just reaching his nose.

Estimated height—just over 1.9 meters.

A full half-head taller than her.

Second piece of information: Condition.

A dark grey tactical long-sleeve shirt clung tightly to his upper body, the fabric stretched taut.

Broad shoulders, narrow waist, veins bulging on his forearms but not exaggerated—the muscle mass was immense but compressed against his bones; he looked lean on the outside, but his actual density was ridiculously high.

The most critical part was his complexion.

There were no radiation spots, blemishes, or sallow yellowing caused by malnutrition on his skin.

His bone structure was so defined it looked like it had been polished with sandpaper, and the proportions of his cheekbones and jawline were perfect to the level of an ergonomics textbook.

The tenth day of the apocalypse.

It was absolutely impossible for anyone to maintain this state.

Unless—

Jiang Jiuyou held the rim of the cup to her lips without drinking, three pieces of information flashing rapidly through her ice-blue pupils.

Extraordinary height, terrifying constitution, and possession of top-tier resources.

In District 069, living people who met these three criteria could be counted on one hand.

She put down the cup.

"Put away the guns."

The two vanguards were stunned for a moment, and the adjutant looked back at her: "Miss Jiang—"

"I said put them away."

Her tone didn't change, the volume didn't change, but the two vanguards simultaneously put away their guns and retreated, their movements so decisive that there was no unnecessary hesitation.

Jiang Jiuyou patted the high stool next to her.

"Sit."

Chen Chen glanced at the stool, walked around to the front of the bar, and sat right down.

There was one empty stool between them.

Seeing this, the proprietress quickly pulled out a clean glass, poured half a glass of purple wine, and pushed it over, keeping her head down the whole time and not looking at anyone.

Chen Chen picked it up and took a sip.

Jiang Jiuyou also took a sip.

Neither spoke first.

In the tavern, there was only the crackling sound of the kerosene lamp wick burning.

Ten seconds.

Twenty seconds.

Jiang Jiuyou laughed first.

It wasn't a big laugh, just a slight twitch of the corner of her mouth.

But paired with her highly aggressive, cold face, it unexpectedly gave off a certain indescribable charm.

"The spot you chose is good. The double shielding of the load-bearing pillar and the wine rack covers the blind spot of the entire movement line from the door to the bar."

She swirled her cup.

"If I hadn't brought perception-type equipment, I really wouldn't have been able to detect you."

Chen Chen set his glass on the bar: "What equipment?"

Jiang Jiuyou smiled and extended her right hand.

On her middle finger was a dark silver ring, its surface engraved with micro-patterns, narrower and thinner than Chen Chen's silver-grade storage ring, and the energy patterns were completely different.

"The Lingxi Ring. An A-grade detection accessory. It gives full perspective on biological characteristics within a fifteen-meter range, including heartbeat, respiratory frequency, and muscle micro-currents."

She turned to look at Chen Chen.

"Your heart rate—forty-six beats per minute. Quiet as a machine on standby. The resting heart rate of an ordinary human is between sixty and eighty. This number of yours would only be possible for top-tier marathon runners before the apocalypse."

Chen Chen didn't respond.

"And," Jiang Jiuyou added, "you have a lingering scent on you that I'm very familiar with. The eerie blue residue of nuclear reactor coolant, mixed with the smell of ozone after a high-frequency electromagnetic pulse release."

She turned her cup, the lamplight reflecting in her ice-blue pupils.

"Two hours ago, the whole district saw that mushroom cloud in the east. A nuclear reactor detonation—the only person in the entire District 069 who could create an explosion of that scale and walk away unscathed, I can only think of one name."

She didn't say the name.

But both of them knew it.

Chen Chen swirled his cup: "Since you guessed it, why didn't you run?"

"Run from what?" Jiang Jiuyou retorted, her tone very light.

"If you wanted to kill me, you would have acted when I walked in. You didn't—which means you don't want to cause any complications for now."

Chen Chen clicked his tongue.

This woman's brain worked too fast.

"Besides," Jiang Jiuyou raised her cup to touch her lips, "those things I left in the server-wide channel—you haven't even replied with a punctuation mark yet. Since it's rare to run into you in person, we have to settle the previous debt."

"What debt?"

"Su Xiaoqi."

As the two words fell, the air pressure sank slightly.

Chen Chen turned to look at her.

Jiang Jiuyou didn't evade, meeting his gaze head-on.

"That child's Gluttony Evolution talent was something I spent three days and lost two exploration teams to dig out from the ruins. Including human lives and supplies, the cultivation cost is worth at least one hundred intermediate vehicle cores. You snatched her away with just a piece of grilled meat."

"You couldn't afford to raise her."

The words were direct and brutal.

Jiang Jiuyou's eyelashes trembled, but the arc of her mouth didn't fade.

"I really couldn't afford to raise her."

She was more generous than Chen Chen had expected.

"I've done the math. With the current resource reserves of the Jiang Clan Secret Department, sustaining Su Xiaoqi's full-power talent operation would last at most four days. By the fifth day, she would backfire and treat my people as food. This deal was a loss for me."

She paused for a second.

"But you are different. You can afford to feed her. In fact—you need her more than anyone else."

Chen Chen didn't deny it.

"So I figured it out later," Jiang Jiuyou put down her wine glass, crossing her fingers and resting them on the bar, the Lingxi Ring flashing in the light,

"Su Xiaoqi staying by your side is worth more than staying by mine. But 'worth more' doesn't mean 'free.' You owe me a favor."

"Oh?"

"No rush to pay it back. Favors are the kind of thing where the longer they sit, the higher the interest."

Chen Chen almost laughed.

The way this woman did business was completely different from Shen Wanbing.

Shen Wanbing was a head-on, crushing type of resource strangulation, while this—Jiang Jiuyou's way—was boiling a frog in warm water.

He decided to change the subject.

"How many people do you have on hand now?"

Jiang Jiuyou tapped her fingers on the bar twice and reported a string of numbers:

"Twelve core members of the Jiang Clan Secret Department, thirty-seven peripheral collaborators. Forty talent holders, ten of whom are A-grade or higher. Nineteen vehicles, two of which are B-grade."

She paused and added: "Seven days ago, there were only four people."

Four people seven days ago, nearly fifty people seven days later.

Chen Chen didn't speak, but he went through the numbers in his mind.

This set of numbers meant that Jiang Jiuyou had completed the leap from a wasteland wanderer to the leader of a medium-sized faction in the span of a week.

Methods, efficiency, management ability—everything was in place.

"What is your purpose in telling me this?"

Jiang Jiuyou lifted her chin, and there was something very direct in her ice-blue pupils.

"Very simple—cooperation."

"Not necessary."

Chen Chen's reply was so fast it didn't give her any room to breathe.

Jiang Jiuyou wasn't annoyed.

"You haven't heard the conditions yet."

"No need to hear them."

"I have the coordinates for the entrance to the next map."

Chen Chen's action of holding the cup paused for a beat.

The rag in the proprietress's hand almost dropped.

This piece of intelligence was exactly one of the core commodities she had posted on the stone slab, preparing to sell at a high price.

Jiang Jiuyou just tossed it out casually as a greeting gift—this move was even more ruthless than the proprietress.