There is research that shows that the most suitable temperature range for humans to sleep in is sixteen to twenty degrees. Slightly cold interior surroundings accompanied by a comfortable and warm quilt will result in high quality sleep. 

You Zhengping didn’t know how accurate this was. He only thought that it was quite pleasant to sleep in a room with the air-conditioning at sixteen degrees. 

He had been troubled for days by certain things. He had been having trouble sleeping. Today he had finally gotten an explanation. While there was still a long distance to go until he had a full answer, it was already enough. 

He only needed to know whether the black-cloaked man would harm the Protection Organization. All he needed was a negative answer. 

As for the rest, when the black-cloaked man was willing to tell the Protection Organization, then they would discuss it. 

You Zhengping looked at the time. It was already 2 PM. After eating breakfast made by Yu Hua at seven, he had been pushed into the bedroom to experience the feeling of a lightless world. 

Pulling the curtains shut to block out the hateful sun when in a bad mood, pulling the curtains shut to welcome in the joyful darkness when in a good mood—fine, that was very Yu Hua. You Zhengping felt that he understood Yu Hua better and better. 

He got up, holding his waist, recalling how many years it had been since he had felt weakness there. 

When he had been training before he was fully grown, he would always get exhausted from inadequate power. Since his space had developed to the point that it could hold an adult, he hadn’t had a sore waist. 

It seemed that Yu Hua had actually been restraining himself before, You Zhengping thought inwardly. 

He felt hungry and went to the table. He saw that Yu Hua had put the food into a heat-preserving box and stuck a note on top of the box: I’ve gone to work, this is lunch. I hope you can eat it before three. 

Three? He was an hour ahead of Yu Hua’s estimate. Did that mean that he was stronger than Yu Hua guessed? You Zhengping was pleased. He opened the box and smelled the aroma of meat.  

Cola chicken, handmade meatballs, Kung Pao chicken, and sweet and sour pineapple pork. Yu Hua really understood him. He knew he liked to eat meat. 

The food was still warm. You Zhengping served himself a bowl of perfectly cooked white rice.  Top quality rice combined with a suitable amount of water and cooked for the right time, the rice neither soft nor hard, sweet to the taste—You Zhengping could have eaten a whole pot in one sitting. 

This was rice. He had made some kind of crap yesterday.  

While he ate the tasty rice, You Zhengping couldn’t help remembering the ham and eggs fried rice that Yu Hua had treated like a treasure at breakfast. 

In the morning, when Yu Hua heard that You Zhengping was hungry, he had gone to make pancakes at once. What he gave You Zhengping to eat were beef pancakes with crisp outsides fresh from the pan, while he himself took out yesterday’s half-cooked rice and made fried rice with it. 

You Zhengping had smelled ham and had felt that someone else’s meal might be tastier than his own. He had asked Yu Hua for a taste of the fried rice. He hadn’t expected Yu Hua to refuse. 

This was the first time Yu Hua had refused him on the subject of food. Naturally You Zhengping was unwilling. He seduced Yu Hua into letting him snatch a mouthful of the fried rice. The instant he put it in his mouth, he nearly spat it out. 

What kind of rice was this? It was hard. And raw, almost impossible to chew, almost indigestible. It was a total waste of ham sausage and eggs personally cooked by Yu Hua. It was a waste of the bounty of nature. 

You Zhengping only then belatedly realized that this was probably the rice he had made yesterday. Last night, Cen Xiao had been in charge of the seafood feast. Cen Xiao had helped him keep an eye on cooking times and watched every step of the process, so nothing major had gone wrong. But cooking rice was too simple. It was the only food item that Cen Xiao hadn’t overseen. And that was where something had gone wrong. 

You Zhengping forced himself to swallow the fried rice and saw that Yu Hua looked unhappy, actually angry that he had snatched a mouthful of rice. 

There was absolutely nothing fake about Yu Hua’s expression. He really thought that the fried rice tasted good. You Zhengping stared blankly for a few seconds, then asked, “Do you…have no sense of taste?” 

“It’s not that I don’t have a sense of taste. I can distinguish taste, or else I wouldn’t be able to cook.” Yu Hua put down his chopsticks and pointed to his head. “This is where the problem is.” 

You Zhengping didn’t understand what he meant. How could he think the fried rice tasted good if he had a sense of taste? That wasn’t how loving everything connected to a person worked. 

Yu Hua explained, “I often wonder whether the human body and mind actually have the same interests. Much of the time, the body and brain work together in harmony, but in an emergency situation, the brain and body will have completely different reactions. 

“For example, when pain reaches a certain threshold, a person won’t feel it anymore. It’s not that it stops hurting, it’s that the brain chooses to protect itself and gives up on bodily sensations. When it doesn’t have enough energy, the brain will often abandon all the organs, including the heart, setting its own existence above them. At the same time, the movements of the limbs aren’t directly controlled by the brain, but by the central nervous system. So it may happen that the brain dies, but the body is still alive, because the central nervous system is still functioning. 

“When an ordinary person eats, taste is transmitted to the brain by nerves, and the brain distinguishes the taste and produces a happy or disgusted sensation. That passage is broken for me.

“Look at the pancake I cooked. I can taste the flavor of the meat. I can tell that this is a nourishing, good-tasting thing. I also know there’s no problem with my own cooking. It isn’t burned or undercooked. But if I chew a food like this, my brain won’t produce the sensations of happiness or satisfaction.” 

Only the fried rice with the idea attached to it that “You Zhengping personally made this” would make his brain produce the sensation of happiness in advance, voluntarily linking with the sense of taste, letting him taste the sweetness. 

“You…don’t even trust the sensations of your own body?” From among all that discourse, You Zhengping grasped the point that Yu Hua was trying to convey. 

Yu Hua hadn’t expected You Zhengping to unerringly guess the truth. He paused, then nodded. “I don’t dare to.” 

What tasted like crisp and tender food might in fact be a fatal parasite. If he gave himself up to appetite, he would swallow such bugs and turn into a monster. If he wanted to survive, he had to maintain absolute reason, force down his appetite. He couldn’t trust what his eyes saw, couldn’t trust what his ears heard, couldn’t trust what his tongue tasted, couldn’t trust what his fingers touched… All he could trust were deductions made after painstaking investigation. 

“I thought before that since I couldn’t taste the food, I should at least eat in graceful surroundings. While I didn’t feel that they were very refined, at least they were clean,” Yu Hua said with a light laugh. “Now it’s different. When I see you happy with your food, I feel that it’s very tasty.” 

He liked personally making food for You Zhengping to eat. When he saw his husband enjoying it, his brain would produce the sensation of happiness. It would tell his sense of taste that the food that You Zhengping liked was an exquisite delicacy. 

You Zhengping bent his head and stuffed a whole pancake into his mouth and chewed desperately, covering up the heartache on his face with his ravenous eating. 

Huan Zixu’s words echoed in his ears once more: “A person who has passed 3,841 worlds—do you think he’s an ordinary person? Can he understand an ordinary person’s life?” 

He really couldn’t live the life of an ordinary person, but it was very different from what Huan Zixu imagined. 

“Why are you in such a rush to eat?” Yu Hua passed him a bowl of egg drop soup, keeping You Zhengping from choking. 

The egg drop soup Yu Hua made was thickened with starch. The threads were delicate, smooth to eat. You Zhengping gulped it down in one go and finally swallowed the food stuck in his throat. 

Though he had swallowed it, the feeling of having a fishbone caught in his throat was still pressing on You Zhengping’s heart. 

“What is there to be sad about?” Yu Hua didn’t say anything else. He only gently patted You Zhengping’s head. 

He quietly got up and cleaned the kitchen. When it was clean, he carried You Zhengping, who had just finished brushing his teeth, into the master bedroom. 

You Zhengping had sensed that Yu Hua was delighted, delighted that You Zhengping would feel sorry on his account. 

You Zhengping bit into a piece of pineapple pork and quietly said, “It’s delicious.” 

How could Yu Hua stand to leave behind such good food and go to work? It would have been better if he had stayed to eat lunch with him, You Zhengping thought, feeling lonely. 

Yu Hua also didn’t want to go to work, but he didn’t want to see You Zhengping looking sad again. 

The past was past. He had started again in this world and wanted to forget the past, live here in peace. Xiao You felt for him, and that made him happy, but that was enough. There was no need to talk about things from the past to make Xiao You feel bad. 

So while You Zhengping had been asleep, Yu Hua had quietly made lunch and gone to work. He was going to oppress the studio’s employees to vent his feelings. 

Everything was happy today. He didn’t need to vent. Right… Yu Hua considered it. He thought that because Xiao You was sad, he was sad, too, so he had started wanting to go to the studio to vent. 

When he came in the door, he saw Zhen Li practicing a split. Everyone else wasn’t there. Yu Hua asked, “Where are the others?”

“Yuan Luori went with the group after filming the daily life video.” Zhen Li quickly stood up and explained. “Lian Yufan went with Huan Zixu to look at the new apartment, and Director Ha is with Junjun.” 

“Junjun?” Yu Hua asked, frowning. 

Only You Zhengping, Cen Xiao, and Luo Huai had seen Junjun during the business at the park. Among the others, even Lian Yufan hadn’t seen him. The studio people’s only impression of Liu Junjun was of a little boy from the nearby estate who liked dogs. 

“Can that dog play with ordinary people?” Yu Hua asked doubtfully. 

Zhen Li scratched his head. He knew Director Ha’s identity and at first hadn’t agreed to let an ordinary child take care of Director Ha for them. He had been worried that Junjun would get hurt. But this morning’s events had perplexed him. 

In the morning, he had unknowingly eaten all of the breakfast Junjun had bought. Due to some unknown goal, Huan Zixu hadn’t warned him, and had even divided up the soup dumplings with him. 

When Junjun had been standing next to them silently shedding tears, Zhen Li hadn’t realized why the child would be crying, until Director Ha had charged over and wildly torn at the empty bag the breakfast had been in. It had also let out a growl like a wolf’s towards Zhen and Huan. That was when Zhen Li had belatedly discovered that the breakfast had been someone else’s. He had quickly gone out of the estate to a breakfast restaurant to buy exactly the same thing. Then he had apologized to Junjun. 

The whole time, Director Ha had been biting Zhen Li’s pant leg and had only stopped when Junjun wasn’t crying anymore. 

Huan Zixu had stood aside as though this had nothing to do with him, hands in his pockets. “Whose dog is this, anyway? It doesn’t protect its owner at all.” 

Looking at his unconcerned appearance, it was just as though he hadn’t shared the breakfast. 

Zhen Li had also been pretty curious about Director Ha sticking up for Junjun. He didn’t understand why a Destroyer would care so much about Junjun. 

When Lian Yufan had found out, he had also been frustrated. He had been the one to pay out of his own pocket to buy high quality dog food and get treatment for Director Ha’s parvovirus, and he had been responsible for training Director Ha. Why did this dog’s loyalties lie elsewhere? 

Though in the end, Director Ha was only a dog. It couldn’t cause any harm. Zhen Li had let it go. Junjun liked dogs, and they didn’t have the patience for walking a dog. The estate was close to the studio. It was pretty good to have someone responsible for taking care of Director Ha, who was getting more and more energetic by the day and starting to wreck furniture. 

Zhen Li also told Yu Hua that he had become a Protector and that in a few days his apartment would be ready. 

Zhen Li quietly told him about the source project. Yu Hua had expected this. His expression didn’t show a sliver of surprise. 

“Will this project harm you or the System?” Zhen Li asked in concern. 

Yu Hua laughed coldly and said, “Only the power of a single world. It’s far from sufficient.” 

Zhen Li stared dumbly. When he had heard of the source project, he had been worried but expectant. The worry was that the Protection Organization would use the source project to hurt Yu Hua, and the expectation had been that the source project could destroy the System.

“I thought it could help a bit,” Zhen Li said falteringly. 

“It will, a bit,” Yu Hua said. “Often what decides the outcome of a war is one last straw. But…” 

He didn’t continue. He seemed not to want to explain anything to Zhen Li. Instead, he said, “So Director Ha has been ingratiating itself with someone else. A real traitor. I’ll go bring it back.” 

Yu Hua still needed someone to vent his feelings on. Zhen Li had just become a Protector. There really was no reason to get mad at him over something so good. So he would go find the dog. 

Yu Hua walked to the estate like the wind and saw far off a little boy playing a sled pulling game with Director Ha. The child was big-hearted. He had tied the dog’s leash to his scooter. He was sitting on the scooter and letting the dog run along dragging it, not afraid of any accident. 

Huskies were sled dogs. Their energy was very vigorous. If a husky didn’t get ten kilometers of walking daily, it would attack household objects and or even people. Before, Director Ha had contracted parvovirus. It had been all drooping. It hadn’t seemed lively at all. When it had healed completely under Director Lian’s meticulous treatment, its instinct to destroy things had started to increase daily. But the studio contained a demon like Yu Hua, and at night while Yuan Luori memorized law, Director Ha didn’t dare to make a sound louder than fifty decibels. Its energy had been severely repressed. Today, Junjun had for once taken it out to play, so Director Ha had finally been able to let it out. 

The cars and people were separate in Junjun’s estate, there were few pedestrians in the estate on a summer afternoon, and the speed of Junjun’s scooter matched the husky’s. Director Ha sprinted happily. Running wildly now, it felt happier than it had when it had been a leveler detonating bombs. 

This was a husky’s nature. When Director Ha felt mournful, it still couldn’t resist this happiness originating in instinct. 

In the midst of his pain and happiness, Director Ha’s fear of Yu Hua was currently even deeper. No wonder this mission target was a thorn in the System’s eye. Not only strong, he was also vicious. He was using this method to torment it, making it struggle between the awareness of its soul and the instincts of its body. It was malicious. 

As it thought this, the great demon king appeared in front of it in person. Director Ha braked instantly and bumped into Yu Hua’s leg. Its braking was too abrupt. Junjun’s scooter didn’t stop; it kept going forward from inertia, only stopping when Yu Hua blocked it. 

“Thank you, uncle,” Junjun said politely, not blaming Yu Hua for suddenly appearing and blocking his way. 

Yu Hua stared at Junjun’s head. He hadn’t awakened his “truth seeing eyes” yet and couldn’t tell what was going on with Junjun. But an uneven distribution of mental energy told Yu Hua that Junjun had lost a portion of his memory. 

Yu Hua remembered that among the four Protectors who had arrested Feng Kui and Huan Zixu, there had been one who could remove memories. His name was Luo Huai. 

What had made it necessary for Luo Huai to step in and take the child’s memory? Yu Hua glanced at Director Ha out of the corner of his eye and saw the dog crowding between himself and Junjun, its tail between its legs, looking like it was protecting Junjun. 

Zhen Li had also said that Director Ha was unusually protective of Junjun. 

“I’m Yu Hua, Yuan Luori’s supervisor,” Yu Hua said coldly. “I’ll take this dog.”  

“Oh, so you’re Xiao Ha’s real owner,” Junjun said quickly. “Sorry, I shouldn’t take Xiao Ha to run around like this, it’s dangerous. I was wrong. But can I play with Xiao Ha again another time?” 

The boy’s limpid eyes were watching Yu Hua, but Yu Hua asked unfeelingly, “On the day before Xuyang District Central Park’s renovations started, did you go to the park?” 

“Huh? I don’t remember,” Junjun said. 

But Yu Hua hadn’t really been asking Junjun. He looked down at Director Ha and indeed saw the dog’s head hanging down. It didn’t dare to look at Junjun. 

“I understand. If the dog will play with you, then I don’t object,” Yu Hua said. 

Then he led Director Ha away from the estate. On the way, Yu Hua asked, “You used Junjun as a hostage before, right? You like taking children as hostages that much?” 

“Awoo…” Director Ha called quietly. 

Yu Hua stopped and looked down at Director Ha. “Do you know the relationship between the initial item and the origin ability?” 

When Yu Hua said this, it was as if the air around them had thickened. Time came to a standstill. Even the leaves gently blowing in the wind behind them stopped fluttering. 

“Awoo?” Director Ha didn’t understand why Yu Hua would suddenly say this. 

Yu Hua said, “Have you noticed that the reason Protectors don’t have initial items is that the origin ability is a power inherent in the body, while the initial item is a manifestation of the soul? They ought to be one and the same. But the System tears levelers’ origin abilities apart, letting it control and collect them. The Protectors, meanwhile, don’t have that difficulty. Their abilities are a combination of their initial item and origin ability, purer than the levelers’, and more stable. Only a leveler who grasps both kinds of power at the same time has a chance to ascend to the highest grade, like Feng Kui's mechanical skeleton and metal ability, Huan Zixu’s ‘Sales Champion’ and mental type ‘false exchange,’ Yuan Luori’s ‘vision link’ cage and ‘truth seeing eyes,’ Zhen Li’s world-crossing carry on wardrobe and alternate dimension stomach—they’re all abilities of the same type. What about you?” 

Director Ha was struck dumb. Its neckbands could move souls, but its origin ability was the “bomb game.” These two didn’t have anything to do with each other. 

“Apart from you, for the other four levelers who came here, the System randomly fabricated an identity no one would know. The Protection Organization has investigated it. Zhen Li’s university records, apartment rental records, and even his landlady’s faint impressions of him are false. Yuan Luori was a vagabond in the park, with no background at all. Only you took over the body of someone who was already dead.” Unfeelingly, Yu Hua said, “The answer is that they chose the correct origin abilities, equipping the power belonging to them within the first ten worlds, while you lost your body and your origin ability long ago. You were truly fortunate to encounter the System while it was weak, or else the System would have absorbed your soul for power before your one-hundred fiftieth level.” 

Director Ha was thunderstruck. It wouldn’t accept these facts. It had always looked down on Yuan Luori and Zhen Li, but they had more potential than it did? It was the truly useless one? 

“A soul without a vessel will be worn down and invaded sooner or later. If your treatment of Junjun the result of a guilty conscience, or the instinct of a dog? My guess is that it’s both.” Yu Hua bent down and put his hand on the dog’s head. With a bit of force, he could have crushed the delicate skull. “I won’t oppose you coming in contact with Junjun. If you like him, then you can play with him. But… Never mind, do as you like. After all, the soul can’t resist the instincts of the body, right?” 

He let go, releasing Director Ha. 

“Bark?” Director Ha was all at sea. A husky’s mental capacity wasn’t enough to allow it to analyze Yu Hua’s speech, and anyway there was no connection between the first part and the second. There was no explanation. 

But there was one thing it had understood. Yu Hua had agreed to let it play with Junjun. 

When it thought of this, Director Ha wagged its tail in spite of itself. 

---

Author's Note

Yu Hua: I want Xiao You to feel bad for me, but I don’t want to make him said. What a problem. Sigh. 

Yu Hua: Xiao You is unhappy, so I’ll go take it out on the dog. 

Director Ha: Bark?