dmims Page 19
Page 19
"Boss, three bowls of ramen."
Li Pu lifted the curtain of the old-fashioned noodle stall.
To be honest, he had never eaten Japanese ramen before and didn't know what it tasted like, so he figured he might as well give it a try.
Thinking this, he slumped onto the old wooden chair with a thud, as if a heavy burden had been lifted from his shoulders, and the chair legs immediately creaked in protest.
Behind them, the curtain moved again, and two stunningly beautiful women with completely different styles leisurely slipped in:
Tifa looked around, her brow furrowed slightly; she seemed to be doing a hygiene assessment.
Meanwhile, the blonde, plump, and radiant White Queen slightly covered her nose, clearly not used to the mixed smell of oil fumes and fish cake soup in the air, but also showing some interest in "experiencing the hardships of ordinary people".
Mai Shiranui, who was wiping the desk and laughing and scolding the lazy Euphemia, glanced up when she heard the sound—and in that one glance, her gentle and charming eyes froze instantly.
He forgot to move the rag in his hand, and his gaze swept over the three customers who were clearly out of place at the greasy and noisy noodle stall. The smile on his lips also faded.
She put down the rag, placed her hands on the edge of the table, leaned forward slightly, her large breasts pressing against the board, and her gaze swept over the three faces like a probe. She lowered her voice, her tone carrying seven parts scrutiny and three parts doubt:
"I said, gentlemen..."
"You know this is a black market, right?"
Li Pu smiled slightly upon hearing this.
Right!
Sure enough, there is something fishy!
He leaned slightly forward, his small elbows resting on the greasy countertop, his smile as bright as the sun.
"Of course I know, big sister, we're here to eat noodles."
It almost touched Mai Shiranui's pretty face, which was slightly stiff with surprise.
Tifa's brows furrowed into a deep frown.
The White Queen raised her delicate eyebrows slightly in annoyance as she looked at the young boy's sleeve, which was smeared on the greasy cutting board under Mai Shiranui's chest and still had suspicious sauce on it.
The next second, two fragrant tissues precisely intercepted him.
While wiping Lip's hands, Tifa defiantly slid off her coat over Mai Shiranui's shoulders, revealing her voluptuous 32D breasts.
Mai Shiranui's enormous "I" cup breasts inexplicably aroused her competitive spirit as a martial artist, as well as other feelings that she herself couldn't describe.
"Am I not enough for you? Don't ruin other girls' lives."
The White Queen maintained her aristocratic elegance and disdain, carefully pinching his wrist on his other forearm through a tissue with the tips of her well-maintained, beautifully manicured fingernails.
She even took a moment to glance at the sticky sauce residue, then magically pulled out a wet wipe from her purse. It smelled of minty disinfectant, and she carefully wiped every crevice between Li Pu's fingers, not even missing his fingernails—after all, her little boy's hands had just touched the greasy table!
Mai Shiranui: "..."
“A bowl of noodles costs 30,000 Eagle Capital coins.” After a moment of silence, she uttered a clear and shocking number.
"How much?!" The White Queen's voice suddenly rose an octave, and her azure eyes beneath her golden hair widened instantly!
She had just acquired two extremely rare items that would make even Tier 8 agents scramble for them.
And those two props together only cost this much! Thirty thousand!
This Asian woman in front of me, wearing a greasy apron and with her hair in a high ponytail, is asking for 30,000 yuan for a bowl of noodles?!
"Young lady, if you want to rob me, just say so. Why go through all this trouble setting up a stall, making things smoky and exhausting for everyone?"
At that very moment,
A clear, sweet voice, with a hint of a ruffled animal's fur, suddenly burst from under the cutting board—
"Who said we're robbing you! Don't you dare slander us!"
Yuffie, who had been hiding behind the cutting board with only her bright eyes and half of her pretty face showing, suddenly jumped out like a cat whose tail had been stepped on!
She placed her hands on her slender waist, but unfortunately, she was far too short compared to the White Empress. Her face flushed red as she called out to the graceful and voluptuous White Empress:
"Who's robbing me? Auntie, don't talk nonsense. We're doing a bundled business arrangement, you know that?"
She tiptoed and slapped her small hand against the small, almost ignored door curtain next to the noodle stall, which was stained and blurred with oil.
"There's a precious traditional storytelling performance from Dongzhou, a lost art form, absolutely brilliant! It's fantastic!"
"The performance costs 29,900, and the noodles cost 100. What's so expensive about that?"
"Who knows—" The lively little girl suddenly lowered her voice, a mysterious yet irritating smile on her face, "After you hear our little cat girl's amazing skills, you'll be spotted by the ancient gods of the Eastern Continent!"
"Those two are the gods who love to glance around and join in the fun the most."
Cat girl?
Li Pu astutely captured the key words.
There are catgirls talking...
"So, regarding this 30,000," he paused deliberately, glancing casually at Mai Shiranui and Euphemia, "are you... going to give away extraordinary items?"
When Li Pu said this, Mai Shiranui, Euphemia, and Kiriko were all taken aback.
"How did you know?" X3
Cat girl! Extraordinary props! All ready!
He had to seize the opportunity. He glanced at the still hesitant White Queen and remembered the new scandalous secret.
[Pink Rank D: You spent a night with the White Queen, the "Otherworldly Witch," in her bedroom and obtained a risqué secret—]
The White Queen is in a great mood today because she got your first kiss, so she can grant you any request except for sleeping together.
"I'm hungry, and I'd like to try it too!" Li Pu stared straight at the White Queen with his big, watery eyes.
Eating noodles, and the series of side dishes that came with them, was the only request he made to the White Queen today.
The White Queen wavered under her gaze. After hesitating for a moment, she gritted her teeth and said, "Fine! But we only want one bowl!"
After saying that, she sighed like a parent whose child is begging her to buy an overpriced toy.
Tifa's eyes widened. "Are you crazy?!"
"I just don't want to regret it." The guilt of failing to protect her little mutant twice in a row made her somewhat indulgent towards Li Pu.
Li Pu curled his lips into a smile and turned to Yuffie, saying casually, "Oh, by the way, remember to go in and tell your little cat girl that I'm Chun-Li's new apprentice."
The moment the words fell.
Behind the heavy, greasy curtain, first came a series of "thump-thump-thump" sounds, like a pair of small feet stomping haphazardly on a wooden box, followed by—
A sweet and lively little girl's voice, filled with undisguised surprise and joy, clearly pierced through the curtain:
"Wow! This deal is free!!!"
"Let him in! Let him in quickly! I need to take a good look at him!"
"Clang—!" Wuzi, who was quietly cooking noodles by the stove and trying to be a background figure, almost dropped the soup ladle into the pot because of a tremor in her hand.
Inside the chopping board, Mai Shiranui and Yuffie both froze.
Outside the chopping board, the White Queen and Tifa were shocked and filled with questions.
"What's going on?"
The author says:
Author's Note: Please vote for me, please keep reading, please do everything you can! I'm starving QAQ waaaaaah!
Chapter Eighteen: Cat-Eared Little Loli
Amidst the astonished gazes of Mai Shiranui, the stunned silence of Yuffie, the bewilderment of Kiriko, the helplessness of Tifa, and the subtle surprise of the White Queen—
Li Pu suppressed his smile and walked steadily to the heavy curtains that hung low, seemingly separating two worlds.
This bargain hunt can be considered a basic success.
The method to defuse the neck bomb is currently in our hands!
A huge weight was lifted from my heart, and my hope of surviving in this world increased.
but,
There is no smile on the face of someone who wants to win.
In the face of a crisis, we certainly need absurd "abstractions" to find joy amidst the hardship.
But the closer you get to success, the more you need to stay alert and be cautious.
The intelligence report didn't say it was 100% successful.
Waves are waves,
Keep your thinking clear!
The firm's soft, large bed, the bustling atmosphere of the black market and the noodle stalls.
All of this was just an illusion until the guillotine called the "Ninth-Order Cleaner" trial hanging over their heads fell!
Careless?
Then the fate awaiting him and Tifa will be simple, yet cruel:
Either they perish in the death trap of the trial itself, becoming two lines of cold data that the higher-ups of Eagle City don't even bother to look at;
Alternatively, after escaping the trials or surviving by disarming the bomb, they would face the Eagle City's efficient and ruthless "violent expulsion" procedure.
As the White Queen Emma said, violent expulsion is not just expulsion, but also involves a "waste recycling" process.
Such a bright mind would be considered a rare find, and recyclers would pry open his skull, remove his brain, and soak it in a special life-sustaining solution—creating a "brain in a vat."
To place oneself in the dark depths of a laboratory and think tank matrix, as a pure computational organism, one would be completely deprived of even the power to think "who I am," endlessly calculating and extracting until utterly destroyed into a lump of mush.
As for Tifa?
According to the information on the fighter "recycling" process that the White Queen showed them that morning.
Her body, honed through countless trials and tribulations and possessing astonishing martial prowess, was seen by some in Eagle City as a perfect "specimen":
Her limbs will be severed by precision instruments, and every reaction and tremor in her muscles—the so-called "muscle memory"—will be completely scanned and retrieved.
Her lifelong honing of fighting skills and insights will be treated as a supreme "masterpiece" blueprint, forcibly extracted, stripped, and encapsulated from the depths of her consciousness, replicated into training programs that can be mass-implanted, and flow into the trading market of the powerful, becoming commodities and tools for others to profit from or kill.
Once all the procedures are completed, the fighters, now reduced to human stumps, will be thrown into certain service establishments to continue contributing their value to Eagle City.
Eagle City, this insatiable precision meat grinder, will not let go of any drop of human oil that can be extracted.
Therefore, those homeless people who are physically healthy and have no exploitable value are called "rats" and "waste products".
Thinking of this, he didn't act arrogantly as usual. Instead, he took a deep, deep breath, inhaling the chaotic emotions and the heavy atmosphere around him, and then slowly exhaled.
After passing this hurdle, the next challenge will be the "Ninth-Tier Cleaner" trial.
Tifa and the White Queen didn't see the expected beaming smile or childlike boastfulness on his face. Surprisingly, he spoke to them calmly:
"I'm going in first. Let's have some barbecue to celebrate tonight."
Tifa frowned. "Barbecue? To celebrate?"
The White Queen remained unmoved, gazing at the handsome young man's upright back and the heavy curtains behind him, her delicate blue lips pressed together slightly.
Just as Li Pu was about to touch the edge of the curtain—
She immediately made a decision, "Wait! Since this bowl is free, let's have another one, for the girl next to me! I'll pay for it!"
After saying that, she turned her head slightly to the side very naturally, and said in a very low voice, "Tifa, go and watch over him, make sure nothing happens."
"Clang!"
Suddenly, a flurry of metallic clanging sounds came from behind the curtain!
Then came the little girl's impatient and annoyed urging, almost like she was about to explode, which spilled out impatiently from the gap in the heavy curtain, even cracking in her voice:
"Oh my god—! Free! Free! Everything's free!!! Stop dawdling! Hurry up and let him in."
Tifa nodded slightly to the White Queen, their eyes meeting in understanding, and immediately followed Li Pu.