41. Lin Mo arrived to find nothing.

On the very day Ning Xuan was taken to the City of Extreme Cold by Chen Nan, Lin Mo arrived at planet D618 via starship.

"General, we have arrived!" Hu Xia looked out at the barren planet. He had been here once before when he and the General escorted Miss Ning back.

"Indeed," Lin Mo replied. Thoughts of the black-haired, dark-eyed girl, as delicate and beautiful as a flower, filled his heart with an involuntary flutter of excitement and anticipation.

"We are not in the military now; do not call me General."

"Understood, Young Master!" Hu Xia cleverly corrected himself. As a servant of the Lin family who had followed Lin Mo since childhood, he was only here because the family had been uneasy about Lin Mo traveling alone, and Lin Mo had eventually relented.

Lin Mo straightened his clothes, ensured everything was in order, and stepped off the starship onto the soil of D618.

When Lin Mo first received the matching notification from the Mainframe, his mutation level had been dangerously high. Fearing he might pose a threat to Ning Xuan, he had temporarily masked his information and returned to Wufeng City. It took three doses of specialized genetic mutation inhibitors to finally bring his levels down. By the time he was stable, two months had passed since the notification. During that time, Ning Xuan’s psionic value had skyrocketed from 56 to 875 in less than a month—a nearly twenty-fold increase. Seeing this, Lin Mo could not sit still for another minute. Had he arrived before she reached B-rank, he could have excused his delay by citing urgent matters—after all, it was common for contractors to be occupied—but if he waited until she reached B-rank, his hidden status would be exposed, and that would be difficult to explain.

Relying on his memory from his previous visit, Lin Mo found Ning Xuan’s home. The house-sitting robot informed him that the master was out. He then checked her personal records and headed to her school. Just as he arrived, he saw her profile update: her psionic value had climbed from 875 to 999. Since 1,000 was the threshold for B-rank, she could break through at any moment. Panic surged through him; he immediately deactivated his high-level Spirit Controller protection and proactively opened his personal information to her.

He waited at the school, expecting her to return for classes, but an hour passed with no sign of her. Unable to wait, he took a shuttle to the information center, only to be told she had left an hour earlier. He checked her home, then returned to the school to speak with Dean Wang, who revealed that Ning Xuan had just sent a message requesting a month of leave.

Lin Mo felt a growing sense of unease. Why would she suddenly request leave without explanation? He immediately initiated a search. Having dropped his high-level protection and established a contractual bond, he could authorize the local investigative bureau to track her. The investigation revealed that after leaving the testing center, Ning Xuan and her other contractor had driven into an uncharted, uninhabited region beyond the reach of the Starnet and had not returned.

"An uninhabited region? Beyond that lies the Land of Mists. How could Chen Nan take her to such a dangerous place during her awakening phase?" Lin Mo felt a complicated pang in his chest. He hadn't realized she already had another contractor. Though he could only see the name of the other party, he recognized Chen Nan as an officer in the First Legion. While not a genius, Chen Nan was no nobody; they had crossed paths during inter-legion competitions.

The fact that Chen Nan was her contractor and had been by her side all along felt like a thorn in Lin Mo’s heart. As a high-ranking officer, Chen Nan would have no reason to cross paths with someone on D618 unless, like him, it was a result of the Mainframe’s match, implying a genetic compatibility of over 90%.

He had met her first. He had rescued her from the B-rank Land of Mists and brought her home. How could he have let Chen Nan get ahead? Lin Mo was filled with regret. Why had he hidden his information? Even if his condition wasn't ideal, he could have at least made her acquaintance. During his two months of treatment, he had constantly thought of the girl he found among the vines. He realized he had fallen for her at first sight; what did her rank matter when their compatibility was so perfect?

Lin Mo had arrived as quickly as he could, only to find his contractor snatched away. At first, he assumed Chen Nan, a dual S-rank, would be safe in the wilderness, but after two days of silence, he began to suspect something was wrong. He returned to the investigative bureau to look into recent events. He discovered that a killer from the Slaughter Pavilion had been sent to assassinate Ning Xuan. The assassin’s psionic body had withered, but the man himself was alive—though driven insane by torture, constantly screaming for Ning Xuan to save him, claiming she was the only one who could repair his damaged psionic core.

If Ning Xuan were there, she would have been shocked. The acupuncture technique she had used on him was meant to stimulate dormant potential to sustain life; it should have only granted him a few days of vitality before his life force was exhausted. Yet, this assassin had survived for over twenty days.

In the dark cells of the bureau, Lin Mo finally came face-to-face with the deranged killer.