‘So next, I only need to focus on dealing with our own nun.’
Lin Nuo still felt a trace of nervousness in his heart; XÄ« was far more shrewd than Yosena.
‘She has served me for so long. If she suddenly felt playful and forced me to serve her in turn—doing her laundry, helping her bathe, or something like that. I would be…!’
‘But in the end, I’d have no choice but to go along.’
After all, washing every nook and cranny of a cute, beautiful girl, making sure she’s spotless and sweet-smelling from head to toe, didn’t seem like such a difficult thing to do.
“Deng, deng, deng, deng……”
“Sister XÄ«, is that you?”
When she heard footsteps outside, Yosena, who had just finished tidying up the Secret Chamber, flicked her mermaid tail and opened the door to welcome the guest in.
Yosena pulled XÄ« by the arm and dragged her into the Secret Chamber, barely able to contain her eagerness to show off.
“Sister, come quickly and look.”
“This time, the hypnosis went exceptionally well. It’s just that the subject still needs a bit more time to regain full mobility after being hypnotized, but he already listens only to you. You can take him away without worry…..”
As she spoke, Yosena seemed to cast some sort of magic.
Murmurs and static flooded into Lin Nuo’s mind, his whole body feeling as if it had been plunged into a basin of icy water.
Realizing that they were trying to wake him, Lin Nuo’s gaze suddenly sharpened.
Feigning ignorance about what had happened to him, he played the part of someone dazed and shocked, breathing rapidly as he looked around.
“Where am I?”
“…XÄ«?”
“What did you two… do to me?”
The test subject’s reaction made Yosena even more assured as she presented him to XÄ«-jie.
“Mm, Yosena, you did well.”
The girl Yosena pulled in stepped lightly up to Lin Nuo, her lovely face wearing her trademark sweet smile.
“Noble Young Master, how do you do.”
“…..?”
Upon hearing XÄ«’s words, Lin Nuo—who was pretending to breathe heavily in extreme terror—suddenly froze for a split second.
He was fully prepared for any kind of reaction from XÄ«.
Even if, after arriving, XÄ« had Yosena leave, stripped him bare for a thorough inspection, and then, in that soft, soul-stirring voice of hers, teasingly declared he was now her personal possession…
Lin Nuo would have believed that was just like her.
But, the girl before him was someone who knew him inside out, who could always find endless topics to talk about with him whenever she wished.
So why was her very first sentence such an awkward greeting?
Even before, when XÄ« came early in the morning to diligently tidy up his room, pouting as she yanked off his covers and causing his love for sleeping nude to be exposed on the spot… not even then would XÄ« ever greet him like this.
“Stay away from me…..”
As if struggling with all his might, yet still unable to muster any strength, Lin Nuo took the opportunity during their exchange to lift his head and closely observe the girl before him.
His nerves tensed instantly.
‘Some sort of extremely realistic Transformation Art?’
‘No… If there was a sign of magic flow, not just me, but even Yosena would notice it…’
‘Could it be, it’s that girl I once saw in the mirror……’
‘The one XÄ« helped dress, who looked exactly like her?’
‘No, definitely not.’
‘If XÄ« had an identical twin sister, or some kind of magical artifact that let her create a second self, she would have shown it to me directly by now…’
A deep suspicion flashed across Lin Nuo’s eyes, only to vanish as he seemed to come to a realization.
Once all other possibilities are eliminated, no matter how improbable the remaining one may seem, it must be the truth…
The person before him spoke again: “Noble Young Master, are you ready to be hypnotized by me?”
Girls have an incredibly sharp sixth sense.
For instance, Yosena just felt that XÄ«-jie seemed, hmm… a little off today in a way she couldn’t quite describe.
But she wasn’t too sure how XÄ«-jie usually interacted with Lin Nuo; for now, the joy from the experiment’s success and her trust in XÄ«-jie suppressed her doubts, so Yosena simply waited quietly to see her jie verify the results of the hypnosis.
But in the very next instant, something happened that she never expected.
Lin Nuo, who appeared to be struggling to move, lifting his hand several times but still unable to act freely, suddenly—
Just as XÄ«’s palm was about to touch his face, exploded into motion, faster than the eye could see—
“Cheng—”
By the time Yosena reacted, she saw Lin Nuo gripping XÄ«’s wrist, his position shifted as he circled behind her, locking her slender neck in a chokehold.
Lin Nuo had clearly been preparing for a long time; even the muscles in his legs had been quietly tensed, allowing him to execute this flawless ambush—catching both the girl with the wrist-blade at her throat and the mermaid Yosena utterly off guard.
“Let her go!”
“She never treated you poorly, what are you trying to do?”
“Splash—”
Within the water sphere where Yosena hovered, she sent a powerful jet—a water magic chain with a sharply pointed end, capable of piercing a person from head to toe.
That attack froze in place, barely a foot in front of Lin Nuo’s pupils.
It was as if, the moment Lin Nuo pressed the wrist-blade into the girl’s neck, that chain would instantly smash his head to pieces.
Yet in Lin Nuo’s eyes, there wasn’t a trace of fear.
He ignored the as-yet-unidentified girl before him—very likely a fake, in Yosena’s eyes—and instead leaned close to her ear and said: “I remember you told me yesterday that your body was very weak.”
With not a hint of expression, XÄ« thought for a moment, then replied coldly: “I did not.”
‘Fake!’
Lin Nuo was immediately certain, and pressed the wrist-blade closer to the neck of this girl who was definitely not XÄ«, making the standoff even more tense.
“Lin Nuo!”
Yosena was utterly shaken by his willingness to risk mutual destruction with XÄ«-jie; though she still glared at him menacingly, she withdrew her magic attack first, lowering her stance to try talking to him.
But, Lin Nuo had no intention of communicating with this clueless mermaid.
Because he could sense magic beginning to circulate around him.
And he could hear, from the girl pinned with his wrist-blade—whose voice was exactly the same as XÄ«’s—
“Noble Young Master, has your nonsense ended?”
“I am certain that I never told you yesterday that my body was in any way weak.”
“That’s right.”
Lin Nuo nodded calmly, sizing up Yosena’s position, hiding himself completely behind the seemingly powerless girl he’d taken hostage.
“But to be honest, even with a face identical to XÄ«’s, your smile is just too ugly. She would never try to get close to me in such an awkward way. You don’t understand her at all.”
“Now tell me—where is the real her?”