The study on the first floor was very spacious. The entire south wall had been knocked through and replaced with one-way floor-to-ceiling glass doors. Pushing the doors open revealed a wide backyard, where the rattan swing Jiang Lijin had ordered when she first moved in still stood on the lawn.
Inside, two large black walnut desks were arranged in an L-shape. Chiron was sitting at the desk by the window, a pair of gold-rimmed glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, his slender fingers typing away on a virtual keyboard.
Hearing the door open, he stopped what he was doing and looked up.
Jiang Lijin walked in and recounted her conversation with Tianyan in the hallway word for word.
"The black market's intelligence network is indeed impressive." Chiron took off his glasses and rubbed the space between his eyebrows, his tone steady. "Since they took the initiative to lay their cards on the table, it means they want something at this stage, and they harbor no hostility. It's a free gift delivered right to our door; it would be a waste not to use it."
"That's what I thought too." Jiang Lijin walked over to the other empty desk and sat down. She fished the silver chip out of her pocket and inserted it into the optical computer's reading slot.
The data decryption took a few seconds. Chiron walked over holding a cup of freshly brewed black coffee and stopped just behind and to the side of her chair.
"Mind if I take a look with you?" he asked. His voice came from right above her head, carrying the faint, bitter aroma of the coffee.
Jiang Lijin didn't say anything. She simply rolled her office chair slightly to the side, clearing the view directly in front of the screen.
Chiron leaned one hand against the edge of the desk and bent down slightly. As the distance between them closed, Jiang Lijin could clearly smell the clean scent on him.
A long, dense string of files popped up on the screen.
It started with a brief biography of the Second Prince, Graven. Born to one of the old emperor's most favored beast husbands, he had received an elite education since childhood and possessed a dazzling resume.
Jiang Lijin stared at the words "old emperor" and "beast husband" on the screen, stunned for a full three seconds.
"Wait." She pointed at the screen and turned to look at Chiron. "The current emperor of the Empire... is a female?"
"Of course." Chiron kept his eyes fixed on the screen, speaking matter-of-factly. "In the imperial power system, a female taking the throne is the optimal solution. Because her beast husbands inherently form the most stable alliance of interests and military backing. There have been quite a few males who ascended the throne in history, but they relatively easily triggered internal strife."
Jiang Lijin digested this setting for a moment, recalling Tianyan's sarcastic remarks from that morning.
"Then how do the females of the royal family usually choose their beast husbands?"
"They basically pick from the top aristocratic circles." Chiron straightened up and took a sip of his coffee. "And for the sake of so-called 'pure bloodlines,' they usually choose biological brothers from the same family."
There was that phrase again.
Jiang Lijin twitched her lips. This bunch in the royal family really had studied breeding to the extreme.
"Since females have the advantage, didn't the old emperor have any daughters?"
"No." Chiron shook his head. "The emperor only had three sons in her lifetime. The First Prince is a good-for-nothing; his father is..."
Chiron paused for a moment.
"When the First Prince was born, a genetic defect caused delayed intellectual development, and he has been kept confined in a side palace year-round. The Third Prince was born in her later years, but the emperor had a difficult labor when giving birth to him, damaging her constitution, and she has been bedridden ever since. The Third Prince is not even ten years old yet, and his spiritual power hasn't even differentiated."
Jiang Lijin understood.
The old were old, the young were young, and the disabled were disabled. If the Second Prince, Graven, didn't take the throne, who would? No wonder he was in such a hurry to win her over, the only 3S-grade female in the entire star system. He wanted to give himself double insurance before ascending the throne.
As she scrolled further down the file, the tone took a sharp turn for the worse.
As glamorous as the beginning was, the latter part was equally rotten. Graven secretly controlled several underground casinos and smuggling routes. But these were nothing; what truly caught their attention was the final section.
Tianyan's intelligence network had tracked down that a massive amount of rare metals and medical supplies from the industries under Graven's name flowed to unknown destinations every year. These supplies didn't enter the national treasury, didn't go to the military, and didn't circulate in the black market; instead, they completely evaporated.
Following this lead, the black market's people uncovered a secret laboratory.
Coordinates: Barren Star X-1100.
Jiang Lijin suddenly sat up straight.
"X-1100..." She clicked open the imperial reward document Baal had sent her last night and compared the two. "The fiefdom the imperial family plans to allocate to me is X-1104. These two planets are in the same star system, so close that a spatial jump isn't even necessary."
Throwing her a broken rock with no developmental value as a fiefdom, while right next door was the lair where he conducted his secret experiments?
The intelligence report concluded with an attached personnel list. The black market informant had only managed to photograph the side profile of one of the researchers, but through skeletal comparison, his identity was restored.
"Holman," Chiron read the name aloud, his voice extremely low.
Jiang Lijin turned to look at him. Chiron pressed his lips tightly together, extremely dangerous emotions surging in his gray eyes.
"Who is he?"
"The former chief of the toxicology team at the Imperial Academy of Sciences." Chiron stood up straight, though his gaze remained fixed on the photo on the screen. "Six years ago, he was expelled from the Academy due to an illegal experiment."
Jiang Lijin swiveled her chair around to face him.
"Holman is a madman. He was obsessed with researching Zerg toxins, believing that if the Zerg's neurotoxin was purified, it could be used to stimulate the spiritual power potential of males, and even allow someone to break through their class barriers."
"To prove this theory, he secretly kidnapped over thirty C-grade and D-grade males, locking them in a basement to conduct live experiments on them."
"By the time they were discovered, those males could no longer be called 'human.' The toxin had destroyed their nerve centers, turning them into monsters that only knew how to bite and eat. Yet, Holman still considered them successful test subjects."
Chiron paused for a moment and frowned.
"I personally led the team to raid his lab and sent him to the Imperial Security Bureau's maximum-security prison. He was sentenced to life imprisonment."
A mad scientist who was supposed to spend the rest of his life in a maximum-security prison was now appearing in the Second Prince Graven's secret base?
What exactly was Graven planning to do?
At the very end of the chip's data, there were only a few short lines of text.
The black market squad responsible for investigating this lab lost all contact after transmitting this list back. Only the wreckage melted by high-energy weapons was left at the scene. Tianyan had written a note in the annotations: [The water is too deep. Extremely dangerous. Sealed.]
Chiron's fingers unconsciously tapped on the desktop twice.
"What exactly is Graven researching that requires someone like Horace?" Chiron muttered softly as if talking to himself, then looked at Jiang Lijin. "Your current situation is very precarious. Him inviting you to the royal palace is definitely not as simple as just trying to win you over."
"When have I ever been safe?" Jiang Lijin leaned back against her chair, her tone relaxing instead.
"However, now that we've locked onto the enemy, it's better than getting stabbed in the back by someone hiding in the dark. These two brothers, Tianyan and Tianque, not only have an omnipotent intelligence network but can even dig up the royal family's deepest secrets. Their status in the black market is definitely not low."
Jiang Lijin stood up, walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows, and looked out at the swing swaying in the wind.
"Rather than sitting and waiting for him to make a move, we might as well take the initiative. The royal banquet in three days is the perfect opportunity to meet this Second Prince."
Chiron looked at her.
Sunlight pierced through the glass and fell upon her. She was no longer the submissive C-grade female from the files, nor was she the defensive hedgehog he had met for the first time.
Standing there, she no longer concealed her ambition and edge.
Chiron let out a low chuckle, striding over with his long legs to stop in front of her. He didn't step forward to block her sunlight; instead, he stood in her shadow.
Lowering his head, he took her right hand with a natural and elegant motion.
Jiang Lijin didn't pull away.
Chiron bowed slightly, his lips brushing lightly against the back of her hand. It was clearly a standard hand-kissing greeting, yet the way his eyes remained fixed on hers imbued it with a deep sense of lingering affection.
"Happy to be of service," Chiron said softly. "My precious wife."
The sensation on the back of her hand was fleeting. Chiron quickly straightened up and took a half-step back, returning to his usual restrained and ascetic demeanor. But Jiang Lijin felt the temperature of the skin he had touched rising uncontrollably.
This man had an impeccable sense of boundaries.
"I'm going to take a trip to the Academy of Sciences." Chiron glanced at his optical computer. "Since Horace was smuggled out, the Security Bureau must have a forged death certificate or transfer record. I'll go check it out."
"Go ahead," Jiang Lijin said, pulling out the chip and putting it away safely. "Be careful."
Chiron nodded, turned, and left the study.
For the better part of the day, Jiang Lijin had an exceptionally leisurely time. Tianyan and Tianque seemed to have gone out to run some errands and were nowhere to be seen. Tinia, on the other hand, sent dozens of star-messages complaining about how boring his meetings were, casually attaching a bunch of pictures of local specialties from the Deep Sea Galaxy, asking her which ones she wanted to eat so he could airfreight them back.
Jiang Lijin picked out a few that looked appetizing, replied to him, and then lay down on the swing in the backyard to bask in the sun.
[Wake up, Host! Baal is back!]
Hearing Xiao Yi calling her, Jiang Lijin woke up groggily to find it was already evening.
She stretched lazily and walked into the house. Just as she pushed open the living room door, she saw a figure sitting on the sofa.
