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Chapter 43 - Chapter 42: Damage Analysis and Asset Re-evaluation

The echo of the slam of the pavilion doors seemed to take an eternity to fade, leaving behind a dense, heavy silence. The adrenaline from the confrontation, which had kept Xiao Yue in a state of icy fury, vanished all at once, leaving in its place the tremor in her hands and her ragged breath. She had done it. She had protected Kenji. She had humiliated her brother. And now, the fear of the consequences began to seep like a cold poison into her veins.

"Well," a musical voice, full of a wild joy, broke the silence. "That was far more entertaining than watching my herbs grow!"

Xiu Mei was leaning against the doorframe, her arms crossed and a predatory smile on her lips. Her amber eyes shone with a mixture of amusement and a new, deep respect.

"Girl, you don't just have the power of a phoenix, you've got the claws! The way you snuffed out his arrogant little fire! It was a symphony of humiliation!"

Just then, a shadow materialized beside her. Matriarch Feng had arrived without a sound, her presence chilling the air around her. She didn't look at Xiu Mei or Kenji. Her hawklike eyes were fixed on Xiao Yue, and for the first time, they held not evaluation, but a hard, cold approval.

"The wager has paid off," she declared, her voice a judgment. "But now you have kicked the hornet's nest. The war will no longer be fought in the shadows. Be prepared."

With that, she turned and vanished as silently as she had arrived, making it clear that while her support was absolute, the coming battle would be theirs to fight.

Kenji, who had remained in an analytical silence, finally moved. Completely ignoring the emotional tension, he took out his notation tablet and a piece of charcoal. The soft scratching of charcoal on wood was the only sound.

"Mission report," he said, his voice as flat as ever. "Field test of the Disruptive Pulse against a high-level hostile asset: 100% success. Containment of the direct threat to the CEO: successful. Execution of defensive protocol by the COO…" —he looked up, meeting Xiao Yue's eyes directly— "flawless."

The praise, wrapped in his corporate jargon, was so impersonal and yet so deeply sincere that it touched Xiao Yue's soul. It was Kenji's way of saying, "You did it perfectly."

"Flawless is an understatement!" Xiu Mei exclaimed, approaching Xiao Yue and examining her as if she were her most prized creation. "It was art! This Golem's logic and your phoenix heart! Do you realize what we can create together? We can write new laws for this world!"

The energy in the pavilion was electric. The alliance had been forged in the fire of confrontation. Xiao Yue looked at her two strange partners: the otherworldly genius who had given her the tools, and the genius of this world who would teach her the magic. For the first time, she didn't feel the emptiness of her solitude, but the overwhelming strength of her team.

The path back to the main pavilions was deserted. Xiao Jin strode along, his Qi churning around him in waves of fury and humiliation. Every few steps, he touched his wrist, as if he could still feel the phantom numbness, the terrifying sensation of his own power abandoning him.

"Black magic!" he growled, punching a tree and sending leaves showering down. "It has to be a forbidden talisman! A demonic art! Nobody can do that! Nobody!"

Xiao Hong walked beside him in a cold, analytical silence. His face, normally a mask of polite condescension, was tense, his sharp eyes processing every detail of the catastrophe they had just witnessed.

"Shut up, Jin," he finally ordered, his voice so sharp it cut through his brother's tantrum. "Stop thinking with your muscles for a moment and use your brain, if it's still working. It wasn't a talisman. It wasn't luck. It was worse."

Jin stopped and turned to him. "Worse? She humiliated me! That useless…!"

"Precisely," Hong interrupted him. "The 'useless' girl neutralized you without breaking a sweat. Did you notice her speed? It wasn't the speed of a cultivator at her level. It was instantaneous. And the technique? It didn't block your power. It turned it off. Dismantled it. Like a watchmaker taking apart a mechanism. We're not facing our sister, Jin. We're facing a monster wearing her face."

Hong's cold, logical analysis was more terrifying than any outburst of fury. A chill ran down Jin's spine.

"And that fox woman…" Hong continued, more to himself. "That beauty… her presence is that of an ancient, wild power. She's not a servant. She's not a simple cultivator. They are two variables that were not in any of our equations. Two monsters."

"I'll go with my men!" Jin bellowed, violence always being his only solution. "We'll burn that pavilion to the ground!"

"And then what?" Hong retorted with disdain. "So the whole clan can see you had to bring a dozen men to get revenge on a little girl and her… pet? To prove your weakness even further? No. This is no longer a matter of pride. It's a matter of intelligence."

Hong stopped and looked at his brother, his expression grim and deadly.

"We're going to see Zian. And we're not going to whine like children. We are going to present an intelligence report on a new strategic threat. A threat that could affect his position… and ours."

Zian's private courtyard was an insult of opulence. The air smelled of expensive incense and undisputed power. When Jin and Hong arrived, they found him reclining on his silk divan, an expression of supreme boredom on his face.

"Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in," Zian said, not bothering to sit up. "Finished playing with our little sister already? I hope your little visit was productive."

Jin, still trembling with rage, recounted the events. He told of the humiliation in front of the Matriarch, Xiao Yue's transformation, the attack, his defeat. He told it all with the clumsiness of fury, making it sound like the tantrum of a loser.

Zian, at first, smirked cruelly. Then, he let out a laugh.

"Defeated by Xiao Yue? Jin, for heaven's sake, you're an embarrassment! A little girl with a lucky break brings you to your knees? Perhaps I should send you to do the laundry!"

But Hong intervened, his calm, precise voice cutting through the air.

"It wasn't luck, elder brother."

He recounted the same story, but not from emotion, but from analysis. He described the impossible speed, the strange technique that seemed to use no force, the way Jin's Qi had turned against itself. He described Xiao Yue's absolute control in reversing the effect.

"She didn't beat him, Zian," Hong concluded, his gaze locked on his elder brother's. "She dismantled him. She turned him on and off as if he were a lantern. She possesses an ability that none of us understand, and therefore, one that none of us can reliably counter. She has become an unacceptable risk."

As Hong spoke, Zian's smirk vanished. His bored expression was replaced by one of intense concentration, and then, as he grasped the implications, his face became a mask of pure fury.

CRACK!

Zian's Qi, dense and violent, erupted without control. The exquisite jade table next to his divan, worth a small fortune, disintegrated into a cloud of white dust. The servant girls screamed and scrambled back in terror.

"A risk?" Zian hissed, leaping to his feet. The air around him crackled with power. "It's an insurgency! A humiliation! My own subordinate, defeated by trash! My own sister, displaying techniques that defy the knowledge of our clan!"

He paced back and forth like a caged tiger. His plan to have a disciple "accidentally injure" her in the tournament now seemed like a joke, a childish idiocy.

"That bitch!" he roared, his control finally shattering. "She thinks because she learned one trick she can defy the natural order! She thinks she can stain our bloodline!"

He stopped abruptly and looked at his brothers, his eyes gleaming with a murderous light.

"The plan changes," he declared, his voice now a deadly whisper more terrifying than his shouts. "Forget 'accidents.' In the annual tournament, I will deal with her myself. I won't defeat her. I will destroy her. I will cripple her in front of the entire clan, in front of the Elders, in front of our father if he decides to crawl out of his tomb. I will make such a brutal example of her that no one, ever again, will dare to forget their place."

The threat was absolute. The war for the future of the Silver Cloud Clan had been declared.

In a nearby pavilion, which Xiu Mei was already turning into a chaotic and fragrant laboratory, the war was being planned with a different strategy.

"He's a brute with a powerful engine but a shoddy chassis," Xiu Mei said after examining the scroll Kenji had brought her. It contained the analysis of Zian's alchemy records. "The Guild stuffs him with Dragon's Fury Pills. Garbage! Fuel for brutes! They boost power in the short term, but they leave the meridians rigid and the Qi… predictable. Like a lion's roar: loud, but always the same tone."

Kenji processed the information. "Can you create an antidote?"

Xiu Mei let out a laugh.

"An antidote is a defense, Golem! Boring! Inefficient!" she exclaimed, winking at him. "No, we won't create a shield. We'll create an echo."

Her expression turned feverish, that of a genius in the throes of creation.

"We're not going to give Xiao Yue a pill to make her stronger. We'll give her a 'Resonance Catalyst.' A unique, custom-designed pill. It won't increase her power; it will attune her Qi. It will make the frequency of her energy the perfect harmonic opposite to Zian's."

Kenji looked at her, his brain running at top speed.

"A personalized system vulnerability," he murmured, the idea gleaming with lethal logic.

"Exactly!" Xiu Mei exclaimed, delighted that he understood her, even if it was in his robotic terms. "When their energies clash, hers won't overpower his; it will make his vibrate until it shatters. His own power will become his poison. We won't defeat him with strength. We'll make him explode with his own arrogance. It's more poetic… and far more efficient."

The plan of attack was set. It wasn't a battle of power, but an operation of biological sabotage.

That night, the full moon bathed Kenji's courtyard in silvery light. Xiao Yue found him standing still, watching the sky, which was unusual for him. Normally, at this hour, he would be immersed in some scroll.

She sat beside him in silence, offering him a cup of tea she had prepared. The scent of jasmine filled the air.

"Are you okay?" she asked softly, not as his COO, but as his friend.

Kenji looked away from the moon and at her.

"I am processing… anomalous data," he said, his voice softer than usual. He then paused, as if the next words took a superhuman effort. "Your intervention today was… timely. You diverted a direct threat with a one-hundred-percent probability of success. Thank you, Xiao Yue."

The "thank you" was so unexpected, such a rare admission of his own vulnerability, that Xiao Yue's heart skipped a beat. It was a monumental step for him.

"All good work should be rewarded, shouldn't it, Kenji?" she said, a warm smile in her voice, recalling her own words when he had given her a similar compliment.

He looked at her, processing the sentence. His analytical mind seemed to find a logical conclusion.

"A reward system is a valid tool for increasing morale and operational loyalty."

And then, before Xiao Yue could even process his response, he moved.

The gesture was stiff, almost clumsy, like a robot executing a new, unverified protocol. He leaned toward her with analytical precision, and with an unexpected softness and speed, his lips brushed against her cheek.

It was a fleeting contact, barely a second long. A clumsy, almost clinical gesture, yet loaded with an intention that left Xiao Yue breathless.

Kenji pulled back, his face a neutral mask, as if he had just completed a task on a list.

"Reward delivered," he declared, as if closing an item on a meeting agenda.

Xiao Yue was frozen. She raised a hand to her cheek, which burned with a heat that had nothing to do with her Qi. Her mind, normally so clear and sharp, was a blank whirlwind. Her heart hammered against her ribs, and a blush as intense as her hair spread across her face.

"I… uh… you…" she stammered, unable to form a coherent sentence.

The Golem had learned. He had analyzed, processed, and applied a new and devastating protocol. And the result had been a total short-circuit in his partner's system.

For the first time, she was the one left speechless, without a plan, completely and delightfully disarmed. The alliance had just entered a new and much more dangerous territory: that of unquantifiable feelings. And in the silence of the night, under the gaze of the moon, the CEO from another world had just made his first and most successful investment in the human heart.

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