Since he had activated his “super hearing” in the Chinese restaurant and coincidentally heard the dialogue between the two new Destroyers, Yu Hua had known that this date would also fall through.

He hadn’t thought that there was anything unusual about it. After all, choosing a towel at two out of eight odds, You Zhengping could choose the foot towel. On his first blind date, he had met Yu Hua. He was a Protector, and his husband was the Protectors’ mortal enemy. Xiao You’s luck had always been bad. It was inevitable for a date to turn into a major battle in the end. 

Yu Hua, already used to this, had looked upon the new Destroyers as though they had been condemned to death. But unexpectedly he had received the Destroyers’ blessing. 

As he walked out of the escape room shoulder to shoulder with You Zhengping, wrapped in pink hearts, wearing an undershirt, his expression was vague. 

No matter what the new Destroyers’ goal was, the final outcome was that they hadn’t spoiled their date. Instead, they had provided a better scene for the date. 

In the escape room’s rest area, Yu Hua sat in a chair, right hand slightly curled, forefinger against his chin, deep in thought. 

Next to him, You Zhengping, sitting in a sprawl, also had his thoughts far away. 

You Zhengping held his phone in his hand. The phone had a signal now. He could now report to the organization that he had encountered new Destroyers. That was his duty; he couldn’t not report. 

But…

The pink hearts released by the mechanical skeleton seemed to still be fluttering in front of his eyes. You Zhengping’s brow furrowed tightly. What were Destroyers like, after all? 

Since he was little, everything he had been taught said that Destroyers were bad people. They would bring incalculable damage upon society. Countless Protectors and ordinary people had died at the hands of the Destroyers. 

Zhen Li was too weak. He had been captured by You Zhengping entirely without resistance. But the wounds like cigarette burns on his hand had verified the ruthlessness of the Destroyers. Yuan Luori and Destroyer 192 had used practical actions to tell You Zhengping that Destroyers were in fact bad people. They didn’t care about human lives. 

If not for the fact that other Destroyers would come, if not for the existence of the black-cloaked man, if not for the fact that the Protection Organization needed to use Yuan Luori, Yuan Luori would likely have been secretly executed already. 

The current strange situation had only evolved in order to deal with possible future enemies. 

Even though he had developed some positive feelings towards the cooperative Zhen Li and Yuan Luori, You Zhengping had still been full of enmity towards the Destroyers. 

But that mechanical skeleton…

As the melancholy husbands were pondering, two people, one beautiful and one tall, walked past in front of them. 

You Zhengping automatically raised his head, his gaze falling on the tall man. He thought that he didn’t know this person, but he also thought that he should know him. 

The phoenix-eyed man next to the tall man was playing with a couple of one yuan coins. He was constantly tossing the coins in the air and catching them in his hand when they fell. 

While passing by You Zhengping and Yu Hua, the phoenix-eyed man dropped the coins. The pair of two yuan coins fell perfectly, one on You Zhengping’s leg, one on Yu Hua’s leg. 

The moment the coin fell on his leg, You Zhengping’s mind became blurred. He suddenly found that he couldn’t look directly at the tall and beautiful pair. The mechanical skeleton in the labyrinth, which he was just thinking about, slowly turned into an ancient tomb and an ordinary employee. 

Some things could be forgotten, but some things couldn’t be. 

The first time Huan Zixu had changed You Zhengping’s “impression,” You Zhengping had been entirely off his guard. He had casually taken the gum and been brainwashed by Huan Zixu’s ability. 

This time, You Zhengping had just gone through the labyrinth. He was on the alert, full of wariness towards everyone around him. Though Huan Zixu had dropped the coin on him, You Zhengping was still struggling desperately to refuse to have his “impression” changed. 

Huan Zixu was very confident in his ability. It was impossible that his power couldn’t change the thoughts of two “ordinary” people. After dropping the coins, he walked on straight ahead without looking back. He didn’t see You Zhengping holding his forehead and struggling desperately. 

The illusion of the false ancient tomb and the images of the true labyrinth flickered in his mind. You Zhengping reached out a hand towards the coin. His instincts told him there was something wrong with this coin. He had to pick up the coin and throw it…throw it…

You Zhengping’s hand trembled faintly. He bit his lip. His line of sight gradually blurred. But his fingertips couldn’t touch the coin. It was just a little bit more…

While You Zhengping was distracted, a hand fell on his leg and removed the coin before his “impression” could change. The pressure on You Zhengping’s mind lightened abruptly. He kept both the original “impression” and the false “impression” that Huan Zixu had used the coin to “exchange,” and he could clearly distinguish which was true. 

“When did we get coins on our legs?” Yu Hua looked “curiously” at the two coins, then picked them up to toy with them. “Two yuan is just enough to catch a doll. Get a doll for me, Xiao You.” 

You Zhengping met Yu Hua’s eyes and asked, “What did we do in the escape room?” 

Yu Hua’s fingertips hesitated as they held the coin. He avoided You Zhengping’s gaze and went to the doll machine. He casually said, “The escape room…was pretty interesting.” 

Had it been the high-tech labyrinth or the gloomy ancient tomb? Had the employee been a mechanical skeleton or a corpse from the ancient tomb? When the words reached You Zhengping’s lips, he swallowed them. He didn’t ask. 

It was as though something was blocking his throat. He couldn’t get the questions out. 

You Zhengping looked at his watch. It had taken him about a dozen seconds to use his willpower to struggle with the false impression. An ordinary person would be brainwashed instantly and quickly wake up. Yu Hua’s answer would probably have been the gloomy ancient tomb and the corpse, but…why hadn’t he asked? 

Instinct stopped You Zhengping’s throat, keeping him from talking. Instead, he followed Yu Hua to the doll machine, cast around a few times, and caught a little husky toy. 

You Zhengping’s doll catching level had always been high, a one-hundred percent success rate. He didn’t rely on his special ability. It was pure technique. 

He handed Yu Hua the little husky doll. Yu Hua looked at the husky doll’s stupid face with a flicker of barely detectable detestation. 

You Zhengping thought that there was something fishy here. This person’s power was something like Luo Huai’s, but more frightening than his. He thought he should have kept the two coins, the coins had already gone into the doll machine and couldn’t be gotten back. 

He can change people’s “impressions” unnoticed. Did I have my “impressions” changed before he got his eyes on me? You Zhengping considered inwardly. He started recalling everything that had happened today since leaving the house. His memory had always been good. After going through it as carefully as though watching a movie, he found where something was wrong. 

He had no impression of having bought that bottle of gum, not today, and not yesterday, either. 

Also, where was the gum? 

You Zhengping felt in his pockets. A bottle of gum that large had vanished. He asked Yu Hua, “Have you seen the gum I bought?” 

Yu Hua’s hand stopped in the middle of squeezing the husky’s face. He laughed lightly towards You Zhengping. “I can’t find it, either. Did we leave it at the restaurant?” 

You Zhengping blinked. He put away his phone and temporarily didn’t report this business to the organization. He pinched Yu Hua’s undershirt and said, “There’s still some time before dinner. Let’s go buy some clothes. You can’t go into a Western restaurant wearing an undershirt, can you?” 

“All right.” Detecting You Zhengping’s hesitation, Yu Hua’s mood was very cheerful. 

He had known that the action of taking the coin would definitely attract Xiao You’s suspicions, but how could he have watched You Zhengping struggling painfully because he was resisting the Destroyer’s power? 

Truthfully, when the coin had fallen on Yu Hua’s leg, even he had had a moment of confusion, and this was a situation in which Huan Zixu had underestimated the two of them and hadn’t used all of his power. This Destroyer’s ability was truly very strong. Feng Kui, who had allowed his teammate to develop to this stage, was also unusually tough. 

It had been a long time since Yu Hua had seen such interesting levelers. He hadn’t thought that such a pure relationship could exist under the System’s high pressure and incitement of disharmony. 

He rather wanted to draw back, but he had to sound them out again. 

You Zhengping’s original plan for the afternoon had in fact been to shop for clothes. Though there had been an intervening incident and they had circled around, in the end the two of them still went shopping. 

Yu Hua chose a white shirt with ink designs that gave him a refined air when he put it on. To fit the form-sitting shirt, he finally took off the elderly undershirt, changing back to an upright and dashing appearance. 

You Zhengping, on the other hand, didn’t buy any new clothes. He was wearing Yu Hua’s original shirt. The collar was loose. This bad boy style attracted quite a few looks. 

Before someone could strike up a conversation to get close to You Zhengping, Yu Hua stood in front of his husband and intimately put his arms around Xiao You’s waist. The person wanting to strike up a conversation saw that he was spoken for, pursed their lips, and left. 

After buying a shirt, Yu Hua put the undershirt he had changed out of and Xiao You’s torn half-sleeved shirt into a bag. Dinner time came. 

First, Yu Hua accompanied You Zhengping as he ate a high-energy malatang. Then You Zhengping, having eaten his fill, accompanied Yu Hua to a French restaurant to listen to the violin. This time, the preoccupied You Zhengping finally defeated the hypnosis of classical music and didn’t fall asleep, spending a peaceful dinner with Yu Hua. 

At 8 PM, the melancholy husbands returned home. Inside was the romantic scene that You Zhengping had had someone arrange. The two of them fell embracing on the rose petals. Before kissing, Yu Hua suddenly virtuously said, “This shirt is new, I can’t let it get stained by the roses. I’m going to put it away first.” 

He turned on the lights and hung up the new shirt in the wardrobe. While closing the wardrobe door, the suitcase at the top of the wardrobe moved. Yu Hua quickly held up the suitcase and snuck a look at You Zhengping, a trace of unease flashing through his eyes. 

You Zhengping, who usually understood his husband, swept his gaze over the suitcase without pause. 

According to plan, the two of them passed a harmonious night. The roses You Zhengping had ordered were crushed. Tomorrow Yu Hua would probably have to work hard to clean the stained bedding. 

At two in the morning, Yu Hua was sleeping soundly. You Zhengping quietly sat up, brushed the rose petals off of himself, and looked up at the suitcase on top of the wardrobe. He didn’t attempt to open the suitcase. 

He went to the bathroom to shower, washing away the crushed flower petals, then stealthily went into the second bedroom, picked out a set of clothes at random and put it on, then wrote on a piece of notepaper, “Urgent assignment, I’ll send you a message when I’m coming home.” 

While putting the note paper on the pillow, You Zhengping looked at Yu Hua’s sleeping countenance. He bent his head and kissed his face through the rose petals, then turned and left. 

Not long after You Zhengping left, Yu Hua opened his eyes and looked in disappointment at the suitcase on top of the wardrobe. He recalled everything that had happened that day and sighed lengthily. 

Between his assignment and staying with him on the date, Xiao You had in the end chosen Yu Hua, only returning the base to report about the new Destroyers in the middle of the night. This made Yu Hua happy but also made him feel a twinge of guilt about holding the Protectors back; he wasn’t being a suitable family member for a Protector. 

Then there was the suitcase. Did Xiao You suspect his identity? Why wouldn’t he look in the suitcase? Yu Hua was very doubtful. 

He had always planned fully, but he couldn’t read You Zhengping. If it had been another person, Yu Hua would have been able to predict that You Zhengping would have become suspicious by now, but with You Zhengping, anything unexpected could happen. 

“Ah…” In the long, pitch-black night, Yu Hua, alone in the empty bed, heaved a long, long sigh. 

You Zhengping returned to the base that night through a secret passage. The base received the news and immediately gathered all the Protectors who were outside. Director Xiao also got up in the middle of the night and went to the base. 

At four in the morning, You Zhengping reported to the organization what had happened during the day. There was no concrete evidence for the business with the gum. He had no “impression” and couldn’t report it. You Zhengping only talked about what had happened in the escape room. 

Lian Yufan quickly pulled up the surveillance network near the business, searching for the two people’s figures. After searching, Lian Yufan said, “None of the surveillance cameras saw any people resembling the ones you described, but all of these cameras experienced some degree of disruption or blackout yesterday, then were generally restored a few minutes later.” 

According to the blackout times and the positions of the blacked out cameras, Lian Yufan drew on the enlarged map, quickly drawing out a route. “You’re right. The locations and times of the disruption of surveillance coincide to a high degree with your route. When you were in the movie theater, the surveillance camera outside the camera theater experienced a two-minute thirty-four second blackout. When you were in the Chinese restaurant, the traffic cameras and commercial surveillance cameras along the route from the movie theater to the restaurant all became unresponsive. And the entire surveillance record of your time in the escape room has vanished.” 

“You didn’t notice two such eye-catching people at the movie theater?” Cen Xiao asked. 

“That’s what frightens me.” You Zhengping briefly described the business with the coins. “Up to now, I still can’t be sure whether what I experienced in the escape room was the ancient tomb or the labyrinth.” 

“Yu Hua was in the escape room with you. Does he remember?” Lian Yufan asked. 

This time, there was no suspicion in Lian Yufan’s voice. After a period of working together, Lian Yufan was amply certain that Yu Hua definitely wasn’t a Destroyer. The reason was very simple. In Lian Yufan’s words, if Yu Hua had yet to ascend to the heavens, it was definitely because his powers were limited. He wasn’t a Destroyer, and the people in the studio were already this badly off. If he had been a Destroyer, half of the Xuyang District would be slaves making money for him. 

Though this wasn’t at all nice, it still expressed Lian Yufan’s views. His ideas had changed. 

But You Zhengping, who had in the beginning had been determined to trust his husband, hesitated when faced with Lian Yufan’s question. He remembered his own feeling of lightness when Yu Hua had taken the coin, remember Yu Hua’s panic when the suitcase had shaken, remembered the dream the night before that had left him dripping with sweat…

You Zhengping clenched his fist, then loosened it, as though letting go of some obsessive thought. He answered, “Yu Hua only remembers the ancient tomb and corpses version of the escape room. His memories have been tampered with.” 

In reality, You Zhengping hadn’t forcefully questioned Yu Hua, and he hadn’t gotten a precise answer, but this was what he told the Protection Organization. 

You Zhengping wasn’t sure why he was doing this. It was all intuition. Intuition told him that this would be for everyone’s good. You Zhengping had always trusted his intuition. 

“I’ll take a look,” Luo Huai, who had been silent all along, suddenly said. “Relax, I won’t erase your memories, I’ll only use my power to investigate. ‘Memories’ and ‘impressions’ belong to particular energies of the brain. The average Protector wouldn’t be able to investigate this type of energy, but I can.” 

You Zhengping nervously licked his lips. He was worried that while investigating, Luo Huai would accidentally “see” his suspicions of Yu Hua. He was rather resistant. 

Luo Huai put his hand on the center of You Zhengping’s brow. He closed his eyes and sensed for a moment, then opened his eyes. His eyes were full of puzzlement. “There are in fact two types of particular energy in your brain. One changed your ‘impression,’ covering up the surface of your brain cortex. It won’t do you any harm. It only changed your ‘impression’ of a certain event by means of revising electrical information. There’s another energy that’s isolated by a very powerful mental force. It’s protecting your memories. This mental force is very powerful. I see that it will be able to drive out the second energy very soon. Soon it may even drive out the first energy.” 

“In other words, You Zhengping’s mental force is powerful enough to resist this person’s mental attack?” asked Director Xiao, who had been silent all along. 

“I’m not certain.” Luo Huai shook his head. “This person’s energy is different from mine. I absorb memory signals from the brain by means of removing them, entirely removing a segment of signal. Of course, this process is reversible. I can preserve the memory signal in the form of an energy star and return it in the future. 

“His power remains in the brain, revising the target’s ‘impression.’ When the energy entirely fuses with the brain cortex, the false ‘impression’ becomes the ‘truth’ in the brain. What’s more frightening even than ‘forgetting’ is when your own memories aren’t true. 

“In reality, if this powerful mental force in You Zhengping’s brain wasn’t protecting him, by the time he got to the base, that particular energy would have fused entirely with his brain cortex, and I wouldn’t have been able to sense it.” 

…A powerful mental force protecting him? You Zhengping rubbed the center of his brow, remembering how Yu Hua had taken the coin from his knee. 

“False reports will lead one astray,” Director Xiao whispered. “Fortunately your mental force is powerful and your willpower is staunch, and your ‘impression’ wasn’t changed. Otherwise, we wouldn’t even know for sure whether these two existed.” 

After consolidating everyone’s intelligence, Lian Yufan reported: “Two new Destroyers. One is 195 cm tall. Altering the structure of the escape room, causing the surveillance cameras not to work, and the more than two meter tall mechanical skeleton may be his abilities, metal or mechanical type abilities. The other is 181 cm tall. He can control people’s thoughts, change their ‘impressions.’ His ability is very frightening. Both their abilities are very frightening.” 

“The strange thing is that they set up such a large battle, but in the labyrinth, they didn’t harm me or Yu Hua,” You Zhengping said. “Director, I think these two Destroyers are different from before. We can try to sit down and discuss with them.” 

Faced with You Zhengping’s recommendation, Director Xiao said, “Perhaps there are some Destroyers who have goodwill towards the world. Zhen Li, for example. We do hope that not every Destroyer is as unbridled as 192. Perhaps we can sit down and discuss with these two Destroyer, but how can you be sure they aren’t being held back from making too much of a fuss because of the black-cloaked man’s warning? Perhaps they were only willing to leave you two alive because they didn’t want to attract the black-cloaked man’s extreme measures by killing people?

“There’s good and bad in everything. We’re willing to consider the good side, but if I negotiate with these two Destroyers face to face, then it must be under the condition that they have been brought under control by us, like Zhen Li and Yuan Luori!

“Above all, remember, the safety of the people, the safety of the nation, the safety of the world cannot be left up to luck!” 

“Yes, sir!” all the Protectors, including You Zhengping, said in unison. 

Director Xiao sighed. “According to You Zhengping’s description, their target is Yu Hua. Since Yu Hua became a member of Zhen Li’s studio, I guessed that this development would come. Sooner or later, someone would get their eyes on him.” 

The reason Director Xiao hadn’t forced Yu Hua to leave the studio was that he was a Protector’s relative. If anything happened, the Protection Organization would notice it at once. If it had been someone else, the Protection Organization many not necessarily have been as highly efficient as today. 

“We don’t know what the new Destroyers’ next step will be. At present, it appears that it will have to involve Yu Hua and Zhen Li’s studio.” Director Xiao ordered, “Our next operation is to protect Yu Hua. We can’t let the Destroyers take action against him again!” 

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Author's Note

Yu Hua: I’m getting a little hard of hearing in my old age. You said you’re going to protect…whom?