Chapter 41: What Goes Around Comes Around

"A monster! There's a monster! Right in my bed!" Chi Jianjun was so terrified that he could barely straighten his tongue. "It's got eight legs! It glows with a green light! Its teeth are longer than my arms! And it's a monster with two extra mouths growing right out of its neck!"

"What?! What on earth are the marines doing?! Why would they let a monster wander into Elder Chi's room?! This is completely ridiculous!" Tang Xiao was furious. Hearing Chi Jianjun's description, it never crossed his mind that there could be any other explanation.

He immediately patched through to Graham, launching straight into a fierce scolding: "What are you people doing?! A monster actually managed to crawl into Elder Chi's room! I'll deal with you later! Right now, deploy the marines to seal off and surround that area immediately! Then kill that monster for me! And conduct a thorough safety inspection to ensure the entire colony is secure!"

"Um... Administrator, let me expl—"

"I don't want to hear any explanations right now! Just do it immediately!" Tang Xiao snapped harshly.

"Weren't you the one who ordered that pelt to be placed there?" Graham, pushed to his limit and abandoning any regard for Tang Xiao's face, roared right back.

"What? A pelt?" Tang Xiao froze. Then he remembered that earlier, when decorating the 'luxury villa,' he had instructed them to hunt the pelt of a fierce beast and place it on the bed.

Perhaps due to the lingering mental inertia from his days on Earth, whenever someone mentioned a fierce beast, Tang Xiao's mind immediately went to tigers, leopards, or black bears—or at the very least, a wolf would do in a pinch.

Who could have guessed it would be something like *this*...

A moment later, Tang Xiao stared speechlessly down at the smooth, hairless hide resting at his feet. It emitted a sickly green glow, possessed four claws, and featured a flattened head and neck, complete with one mouth on the front and two additional mouths flanking its neck—a truly terrifying monster.

"Tell me, I asked you to hunt a fierce beast, so why on earth did you bring back something that drains your sanity to zero the moment you look at it?" Tang Xiao said, pressing a hand to his forehead.

"Reporting to the Administrator! Because this truly is a terrifying beast, living in deep waters. Just a few days ago, it tried to attack our fully enclosed pig farm, and our brave soldiers neutralized it with a stun gun!" The speaker was the captain of the Dawn City Marines, answering with rigid, deadpan formality.

A stun gun? Tang Xiao broke out in a cold sweat. He looked down at the still-twitching monster pelt, waved his hand to dismiss the captain, and then instantly slapped on a beaming smile as he turned to Chi Jianjun. "Professor Chi, we just wanted to find something completely natural to use as your mattress—surely that's much better than artificial leather or anything like that, right? But if you feel it's not quite suitable, I'll have them replace it with a cotton quilt right away. It's no trouble at all, really. Rest assured, having our soldiers come change your quilt in the middle of the night is the least we can do."

"It really is just a pelt?" Chi Jianjun stood far away, eyeing the hide and still too afraid to get close.

"It really is just a pelt!" Tang Xiao gave the pelt's head a kick to prove it.

"Take it away! Take it away! I don't want it! I'd rather sleep under a cotton quilt!" Chi Jianjun declared with absolute firmness.

"Fine, fine, I'll arrange it right away." After much cajoling and persuasion, Tang Xiao finally managed to coax Chi Jianjun back to bed. He then stretched, let out a yawn, and headed back to his own quarters.

However, he had barely been asleep for two hours when a piercing, blood-curdling scream suddenly echoed from the direction of Professor Chi's villa: "Help! Save me~~~~~~!!!"

Tang Xiao was already on high alert. Hearing the sound, he sprang up in a single bound and dashed toward the villa, covering the distance in rapid strides. This time, however, he exercised some caution; instead of ordering Graham to bring in troops to surround the villa, he decided to check out the situation himself first.

Sure enough, he saw Chi Jianjun fleeing frantically in his direction, clutching his clothes and bedding while shouting at the top of his lungs, "Help! Save me! There's... there's another monster!"

"How can there still be a monster? There shouldn't be any left," Tang Xiao muttered, scratching his head.

"There is! Right outside my window!" Chi Jianjun pointed back toward the villa and yelled at the top of his lungs. The elderly man looked as though he had been frightened out of his wits.

"The window... wait, it couldn't be..." Tang Xiao suddenly remembered something. He turned his head toward the villa, and sure enough, he heard a harsh, grating squawk, followed by a great flapping of wings as a large, dark bird took off into the air and soared away toward the forest.

"So that would be the little bird's nest I told them to put outside his window? Birds chirping and flowers fragrant... next time it'll probably be a man-eating plant, won't it?" A single drop of cold sweat trickled down Tang Xiao's temple.

"Huh? What did you say about birds chirping and flowers fragrant?" Chi Jianjun had been frightened completely out of his senses and hadn't caught a word of what Tang Xiao muttered.

"Oh! It's nothing! I'll immediately send people to thoroughly search your room, and this time I'll make sure there are zero issues!" Tang Xiao patted his chest in guarantee.

"You can have people search it slowly. Tell me, where do you sleep at night?" Chi Jianjun suddenly asked.

"Oh, me? I usually just rough it out and make do in the Municipal Hall dormitory," Tang Xiao replied, caught slightly off guard.

Without another word, Chi Jianjun clutched his quilt and bolted straight toward Tang Xiao's quarters.

"Hey, Professor Chi, what are you doing? Your villa is that way!" Tang Xiao hurried over and grabbed hold of him.

"Don't try to stop me! Just let me go rough it out and make do there too!" Chi Jianjun struggled desperately.

"Professor Chi, that villa was built for you with a lot of hard work..." Realizing he couldn't hold the old man back, Tang Xiao simply wrapped his arms around him to restrain him.

"Luxury your grandmother's foot! Let go of me! I, Chi Jianjun, am putting my sixty-seven-year-old bones on the line—if I die today, I'm going to die in your room!!" Summoning a burst of strength from unknown origins, Chi Jianjun forged forward, leaving a firm footprint with every step.

Not daring to use too much force for fear of injuring the old man, Tang Xiao ended up being dragged back into his own room as the two of them tussled.

Chi Jianjun wasted no time. Pointing at the sofa, he announced, "You're the leader, so you sleep on the bed. I'll sleep on the sofa myself." With that, he tossed his quilt onto the sofa, lay down directly, and fell fast asleep.

Tang Xiao pressed a hand to his forehead and sighed. But with the hour already late, he couldn't very well drag the elderly professor back up, so he simply climbed onto his bed and went to sleep.

In the dead of night, Dawn City drifted into a peaceful slumber. Aside from the squads of marines patrolling the streets in shifts, not a soul was stirring outside.

Meanwhile, Tang Xiao lay awake with his eyes wide open, staring blankly at the ceiling. Over by the sofa, Chi Jianjun's snores were rattling the rafters. Speechless, Tang Xiao watched as the water glass on his bedside table sent out ripples with every booming snore, and muttered to himself, "Karma..."

It was well past noon the next day before Tang Xiao finally managed to drag himself out of bed. Rubbing his dark circles, he saw that Professor Chi had also been up for a little while and was leisurely practicing Tai Chi out in the courtyard by the window.

Tang Xiao threw on a jacket and walked over. Before he could even speak, Chi Jianjun cut him off directly: "Don't bother saying it. Starting today, I'm living right here. Whoever wants that luxury villa can go live in it."

"But..."

"Like I said before, I just came here to retire."

"However..."

"Sigh, I'm already a worn-out old man, why do you have to keep torturing me like this?"

"As a matter of fact..."

"I know, you want to talk about natural disasters. Our civilization had already developed to such an extent, yet it was still destroyed by endless catastrophes. The Void Worms, the Contingency, higher-dimensional entities—which of those are easy to deal with? If you ask me, we shouldn't go provoking such existences at all. Maintaining a simple agrarian civilization like this seems pretty good to me. Have you ever seen an agrarian civilization farming the land with starships? So I'd rather just stick to retirement."

Your brain sure works fast when you're being argumentative... Tang Xiao pressed a hand to his forehead, utterly speechless. After a moment of thought, he hooked a finger and had a T-850 wheel over a computer terminal, placing it right in front of Chi Jianjun. He then hit play on the footage of the fierce, brutal space battle fought a week earlier against the three incoming bounty hunters.

Chi Jianjun continued practicing his Tai Chi, but his attention was clearly drawn toward the space battle on screen. His movements grew slower and slower, his expression turned increasingly grim, and finally, his movements ground to a complete halt. He stood before the computer with a dark, brooding look on his face.

After a long silence, he finally raised his head and glared at Tang Xiao. "You're our leader? The Administrator?"

"That's right, I am," Tang Xiao nodded.

"You're a lousy excuse for a leader! You should go be a mass murderer instead—you've got real talent for it." With that scathing remark, Chi Jianjun turned on his heel, stomped back into the room, slammed the door shut, and bolted it from the inside.