Life at the Lo & He Law Firm had fundamentally changed.
Our cramped, one-room office in the red-light district was now the legal headquarters for an Abyssal Hellhound. Mr. Wiggles took up exactly seventy percent of our floor space. He spent his days sleeping peacefully on the pine boards, acting as a massive, acid-drooling heated blanket for the cross-eyed goat, who slept directly on top of the hound's middle head.
Whenever a potential client peeked through our beaded curtain, the left head would growl, the right head would sneeze a fireball, and the client would immediately agree to our premium consultation fees.
It was the ultimate business model.
I was sitting behind the wine barrel, drafting a cease-and-desist letter for a local noodle vendor who was aggressively plagiarizing a rival's soup recipe, when the beaded curtain rattled.
The air in the office instantly dropped twenty degrees. Frost formed on the rim of my inkwell.
I looked up.
Senior Sister Ho Li-Fan stood in the doorway. But she wasn't wearing her imposing, icy-blue Law Enforcement uniform. She wasn't wearing her silver hair needles.
She was wearing civilian clothes. A stunning, form-fitting dress made of midnight-blue silk, her dark hair cascading freely down her back. She looked breathtaking. She looked like a Jade Beauty stepping straight out of a painting.
My Earth-realm survival instincts immediately triggered a four-alarm panic.
Plainclothes. She was operating out of uniform. This wasn't a friendly visit. This was a black-bag operation. The Sect IRS had finally built a case against us, and she was here to quietly disappear me to a black site.
"Senior Sister Ho," I swallowed hard, slowly moving my hands away from the forged tax documents on my desk. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Pack your bags, He Lu," she said, her voice trying to sound casual, but a faint, nervous tremor betrayed her. "There is a massive, multi-sect jurisdictional dispute in the Royal Capital. The Jade Water Sect requires outside legal counsel. We leave in ten minutes."
"The Capital?" I squeaked. "That's a two-week carriage ride!"
"Exactly," Ho Li-Fan said. A faint, vibrant pink flush crept up her neck. She quickly looked away, clearing her throat. "Just the two of us. In a private carriage. For fourteen days."
"Boss!" I yelled, spinning around to look at Lo Yu. "I'm invoking my right to legal counsel! They're extraordinarily rendering me! Don't let the Feds take me across state lines!"
Lo Yu didn't even look up from his abacus. He just reached out, grabbed the heavy pouch of retainer spirit stones Ho Li-Fan had placed on his desk, and smiled his missing-tooth smile.
"Have a wonderful honeymoon, Junior Associate," Lo Yu rasped happily. "Try not to bill the client for room service. Take the goat with you. It needs to network."
"You're selling me out for rocks?!" I shrieked.
"Fifty high-grade rocks," Lo Yu corrected. "Now get out of my office. Mr. Wiggles needs his organic tofu."
Ten minutes later, I was walking out of the alleyway behind Ho Li-Fan, carrying my cheap wooden sword and my legal pad. The goat trotted beside me. Parked on the main street was an impossibly luxurious, spirit-beast-drawn carriage.
But before we could get in, a loud, raspy voice echoed from the street corner.
"Fairy! Please! Just a single drop of your foundation!"
I paused, looking over the carriage roof.
Standing next to a steaming tea cart was Grandmaster Pill-Cauldron. The disgraced alchemist looked completely unhinged. He was blocking the path of the Milk Tea Crone, staring directly at her waist-length, gravity-defying assets with manic desperation.
"Erm, what the sigma?" the Crone snapped, stirring her vat of tea with a massive wooden ladle. "Touch grass, you absolute NPC."
A cold sweat broke out on the back of my neck. I had suspected it ever since she hit me with "Sir... this is a Wendy's" back in our first week. She was a reincarnator. A fellow Earthling whose mind had been so thoroughly, violently shattered by the sheer trauma of the cultivation world that nothing remained but pure, unfiltered internet brain-rot. She was a walking, talking cautionary tale of my own future.
"I don't want your tea!" Pill-Cauldron pleaded, dropping to one knee and placing a hand over his heart. "Are you a Class-Two Elixir? Because your localized friction is causing an uprising in my Dantian! Your Yin-sacks possess a gravitational pull that rivals the moon! Let us synthesize a new Dao!"
The Crone blinked. She hit a flawless mewing streak for exactly two seconds. Then, she raised the dripping wooden ladle and cracked it squarely over his head.
THWACK.
"L rizz!" the Crone yelled as the alchemist crumpled. "On skibidi, you ain't got the V-bucks for this Level Ten Gyatt! Get out of my lobby, beta!"
Pill-Cauldron collapsed into the dirt, groaning, but he still weakly reached a hand toward her hemline. "Just... a single swab... for science..."
I stared at the scene in absolute, soul-crushing horror. I was looking at the Ghost of Christmas Future.
Ho Li-Fan cleared her throat, her face flushed red, and quickly opened the carriage door.
"We should go," she muttered, ushering me inside.
I scrambled into the carriage. It was larger than my apartment back on Earth, featuring velvet cushions, glowing ambient crystals, and a small mahogany table. The goat curled up under my seat, completely unbothered.
The carriage lurched forward, leaving the disgraced alchemist and the broken reincarnator behind.
"Well," I said, rubbing my temples as the carriage rolled down the mountain path, desperately trying to shake the existential dread. "That was a textbook Class-Three Harassment suit waiting to happen. He's begging for a restraining order."
Ho Li-Fan sat across from me, smoothing her blue silk dress over her knees. She looked at me through her eyelashes, completely misinterpreting the entire interaction.
"It was... a very aggressive approach," she murmured softly. "But I suppose when a cultivator recognizes a unique biological signature, they become desperate. And the Crone's use of the Ancient Skibidi Dialect was flawless. It is a deeply primal tongue used to ward off unwanted dual-cultivation."
I choked on my own spit. "The Ancient what dialect?"
"Skibidi," she whispered, leaning forward slightly, resting her chin on her hand. Her icy blue eyes locked onto mine. "It speaks to the core of the Dao. Some men appreciate a woman with... a Level Ten Gyatt. A heavy burden to bear. The pull of gravity can be quite intoxicating."
My brain screeched to a halt.
She was trying to use a broken Earthling's brain rot to flirt with me about massive boobs. The Ice Beauty of the Jade Water Sect was actively trying to rizz me up using TikTok slang, thinking it was profound martial arts lore.
"Assets are a liability if they aren't properly insured," I stated firmly, desperately trying to steer the conversation back to maritime law and away from the mental asylum. "Do you know how much a chiropractor costs in this district? If you don't have proper lumbar support, your spine is going to snap by the time you hit the Nascent Soul stage. Gravity isn't romantic, Officer Ho. It's a structural hazard."
Ho Li-Fan blinked. The heavy, romantic tension she had just tried to build hit a brick wall.
She sighed, a frustrated wisp of steam curling from her collar. She reached under her seat and produced an intricately carved jade bottle and two crystal glasses.
"Thousand-Year Peach Blossom Wine," she murmured softly, uncorking the bottle. A sweet, intoxicating aroma filled the carriage. She poured a glass and slid it across the mahogany table toward me. "It relaxes the meridians. It loosens the tongue. Drink with me, He Lu."
I stared at the glowing pink liquid.
Truth serum. She was trying to drug me. The flirting was just a distraction. She wanted to get me relaxed, lower my inhibitions, and trick me into confessing to illegal dual-cultivation doping and tax fraud.
"I don't drink on the job, Officer," I said, crossing my arms defensively and pressing myself flat against the velvet cushions.
"We are not on the job yet," she replied, her voice tight. "We are simply... two adults. Sharing a long, private journey. I thought we could finally speak freely."
"I have nothing to say that isn't already on my filed tax returns," I stated firmly.
She gritted her teeth. She leaned further forward. The neckline of her silk dress dipped, revealing the flawless, porcelain skin of her collarbone.
"You are so guarded," she whispered, a sudden, unfamiliar hunger in her eyes. "I saw what you did in the arena, He Lu. The power you generated from your lower Dantian. The sheer, overwhelming hydrostatic pressure. You don't have to hide it from me."
My heart hammered against my ribs. She was closing in on the Cowper's Meridian. The interrogation was escalating.
"Am I being detained?!" I blurted out.
Ho Li-Fan stopped, her crystal glass hovering near her lips. "What?"
"If I am not under arrest, I am free to go!" I said loudly, quoting a sovereign citizen compilation video I had watched at 3 AM back on Earth. "I do not consent to searches and seizures of my bodily fluids! I am an independent contractor traveling upon the land, not a commercial entity subject to your maritime Sect laws!"
Ho Li-Fan stared at me in absolute, utter bewilderment.
The heavy, romantic tension she had spent three days meticulously planning evaporated into thin air. I had successfully deployed the ultimate anti-rizz defense mechanism: aggressive, nonsensical legal paranoia.
"You..." Ho Li-Fan started, her voice trembling between profound confusion and rising anger. "You think I brought you on a two-week romantic carriage ride to... audit you under maritime law?"
"I know a honey-trap when I see one!" I pointed an accusing finger at her. "You're not getting my caulk, Fed!"
Ho Li-Fan slowly set her wine glass down. The air in the carriage plummeted to absolute zero. Frost instantly covered the windows. The Ice Beauty had returned.
"Fine," she said, her voice sharp enough to cut glass. "If you wish to act like a paranoid lunatic for the next fourteen days, we will sit in silence. Do not speak to me unless it pertains to the case."
She turned her head, staring out the frozen window, her cheeks burning bright red with embarrassment and fury.
I let out a massive sigh of relief. I had survived the interrogation. The firm's secrets were safe for another day.
Meanwhile, in the muddy, rain-soaked valleys of the Velvet Hoof Beast-Taming Sect, a different kind of journey was beginning.
Senior Brother Bai was ankle-deep in pig manure.
He was holding a wooden pitchfork, his back aching, sweat pouring down his face. His pristine silver silks had been completely ruined days ago, replaced by a coarse, itchy burlap sack.
"Hey, Raging River trash!" a voice called out.
Bai didn't look up. Three Velvet Hoof Outer Disciples stood by the fence, sneering at him.
"Miss your silver spoon?" the lead disciple laughed. "Miss your fancy sword? I hear you like feeding your weapons to farm animals! Why don't you show us your special techniques?!"
The three disciples burst into cruel laughter.
It was the classic Shounen bullying scene. This was the moment where the broken protagonist was supposed to snap, reveal his hidden power, and slap their faces.
But Bai just kept shoveling manure.
Let them laugh, Bai thought, his eyes burning with a dark, gritty resolve. The mud is the foundation of the Golden Core. Their mockery is the hammer that will forge my new Dao.
He looked over his shoulder. Standing a few feet away, actively chewing on a rusted tin can, was his newly assigned partner: a scruffy, one-eared brown goat with a severe overbite.
The goat chewed the metal with a loud, crunching sound, completely unbothered by the rain or the bullies.
Bai stared at the tin can. His cultivation brain, deeply broken by recent events, began to wildly misinterpret reality.
Look at its jaw strength, Bai marveled internally. It consumes the iron to strengthen its own internal Qi. It is tempering its stomach lining for the blade. The profound iron-tempering Dao is right in front of me.
The goat burped, spitting out a jagged piece of rusted metal, and looked at Bai with lazy, unfocused eyes.
"Yes, partner," Bai whispered, dropping his pitchfork and clenching his fist. A single tear of dramatic, Shounen determination rolled down his cheek, mixing with the rain. "I understand. We must suffer the rust to appreciate the steel. We will train harder."
The bullies by the fence stopped laughing, exchanging weirded-out glances.
"Is he... crying at that goat?" one of them muttered.
"Don't make eye contact," the lead disciple whispered, backing away. "The Raging River guys are freaks."
Bai didn't notice them leaving. He just looked up at the stormy sky, the tragic underdog music swelling in his own mind.
He was going to become the greatest Goat-Lover the Heavens had ever seen. And nobody could stop him.