16: No middlemen taking a cut

The sports sedan stopped steadily beside Xia Weiyu.

The rear window rolled down, and she saw Wang Xiaoting, who was holding a cup of milk tea and sipping it slowly, with a hint of a smug smile at the corners of her eyes.

"We just bumped into each other at the restaurant. Yang Junlong, that lazybones, went to sleep at 3 o'clock and got up to wash up at 12 o'clock. I told you already..."

"Stop talking! If you say another word, I won't acknowledge you as a teammate!"

Having made such a fool of herself on her first mission, she naturally didn't want Su Chen to know.

It was a mistake, her own mistake; she had been too clever for her own good by not asking for the specific time.

To put it bluntly, she was just being stupid.

Of course, standing at the door all night wasn't without its gains.

Knowing that Su Chen wouldn't be late, they had agreed to set off at 1 o'clock, and he had arrived at 12:51...

If she had known this would happen, she should have gone back to sleep with Wang Xiaoting. Standing at the door all night had made her legs go numb.

Standing still was fine, but when she moved, she lost her footing and bumped straight into the front bumper.

"Ouch..."

Su Chen: "..."

This... is this a staged accident?

Even the Rakshasa Empress plays these games?

I have a dashcam in my car, you know.

Seeing that Su Chen intended to get out of the car, Xia Weiyu hurriedly stopped him.

"I'm fine, my legs are just a bit numb."

Enduring the numbness, she slowly moved step by step until she finally reached the passenger door.

At the same time, she remembered another thing: she had forgotten to bring shoe covers.

The car looked expensive. If her beat-up shoes got it dirty, it would probably annoy Su Chen.

Boys really like their cars.

She squatted down, took out a tissue, wiped the soles of her shoes, and then got into the car and sat down.

She sat quietly in the passenger seat, clutching her backpack, afraid that moving around would dirty his car.

"Sorry, because I sometimes have to race when on missions, considering the cost-to-profit ratio, I can only drive this kind of cheap car. I hope you can get used to sitting in it."

A cheap... car?

Su Chen's first sentence after she got in left Xia Weiyu at a loss. Wasn't this car very expensive?

Su Chen said so, but she was still a bit nervous. Looking at the burger handed to her, she shook her head.

She had eaten some bread while waiting by the roadside, so she wasn't hungry now.

Besides, this burger was greasy. If she accidentally dropped oil stains or crumbs in the car while eating, it would dirty it.

"Eat it. Xiaoting just said you woke up late and rushed over without eating.

It's bad for your health not to eat. It's fine to leave a few minutes late, don't starve yourself."

"Eat."

Xia Weiyu shook her head: "No, I'll dirty your car."

"If it gets dirty, I can just clean it up."

Su Chen kept insisting, and she really couldn't refuse. Most importantly, the smell made her a bit hungry.

"Thank you."

'Ding, obtained Xia Weiyu's favorability, lottery ticket +100.'

800 tickets now, two more times and it'll be enough.

Looking at Xia Weiyu's nervous appearance, Su Chen couldn't help but find it amusing.

He hadn't expected that the cold and icy Rakshasa Empress of the future would have this side to her.

If it weren't for the high rewards given by the System, he would really suspect that she just looked somewhat similar to the Rakshasa Empress.

After all, their personalities were too different; he couldn't imagine Xia Weiyu and that Rakshasa Empress as the same person.

You might have had a hard time these past years, but it's okay, I'm here now.

Xia Weiyu took small bites of the burger, and seeing Su Chen staring at her, she pursed her lips and asked:

"Sorry, my eating manners are a bit ugly. Is there something on my Face?"

"Fasten your seatbelt."

"Oh... oh! Sorry. Sorry."

...

The d-rank mission was relatively simple.

Basically, it's the type where clues are easy to find, the target isn't cunning, the danger level is low, and as long as you focus on searching, you can finish it in a month even if you're slow.

It trains judgment and patience.

For beginners like them, only by taking this step well can they take on more Advanced dangerous missions.

The dense population in the city center increased the difficulty of capture.

Su Chen chose a mission near a small county town, a d-rank mission to capture a robber.

A bald man went to a mobile phone store to rob it, and in the end, he left with a pile of mobile phone models.

After discovering they were all fake, and having the shop owner film a video mocking his stupidity,

mocking his mulan head hairstyle, saying it was so shiny, why not wear a hat, was he using it as a light bulb?

It was precisely because of this sentence that the robber was consumed by anger and directly underwent Awakening.

He returned that same day, stalked the shop owner home, broke in through the window in the dead of night, and shaved the hair of their family of three... into a mulan head,

even the two little white rabbits they raised were not spared; the fur on their heads was also shaved off,

and at the same time, a series of operations like polishing and waxing were completed.

After finishing, he took a family photo, posted it to their respective social media feeds, and didn't forget to smash their phones to nip any thoughts of deleting it in the bud.

Letting them experience the feeling of social death on the spot.

The circumstances could be described as quite vile.

Although, regarding the cause, it was the shop owner posting videos online and mocking him that became the fuse, this didn't mean the robber was innocent.

He must be severely punished.

Because the man had undergone Awakening to become an Ability User, it fell under the jurisdiction of the Ability Association.

The shop owner, furious, posted a 100,000 reward, and their mission this time was to bring this wanted criminal to justice.

Surveillance captured the man's criminal process, but the perpetrator was masked the whole time, and they only knew one general physical characteristic: he was bald.

Recent records indicate that he was spotted at a convenience store a few nights, and he was still in the county town.

He probably wanted to escape, but the problem was his funds didn't allow it.

...

Xia Weiyu browsed the mission details and sighed:

"A 100,000 reward... why do we only get 2,000 as compensation?"

Is this the power of middlemen?

Wang Xiaoting comforted her: "Don't think about it. How much do you want to earn from this kind of mission? It's meant for practicing skills, it's impossible to earn that much.

If you want to make ten thousand, that's for capturing wanted criminals; those are all desperate thugs, or it's for dealing with strange beasts. Weiyu, if I let you go, do you have the strength?"

"No."

"So, settle down and finish the three d-rank mission assessments first. Once your strength improves to First Rank or Second Rank, if you want to earn more, you can take risks and accept Advanced missions; no one will stop you."

"Then this reward money..."

Wang Xiaoting opened an attachment, which was a supporting document proving that the shop owner who posted the mission only offered a reward of a little over 2,000, and there was no such thing as 100,000.

"At the time, the shop owner just said that to make his wife and son happy. After all, a woman having her hair shaved into a mulan head, polished and waxed, and then posted on social media—how many can handle that?

Because of this, he lied, thinking about saving Face.

For an ordinary family, if you ask him to take out 100,000 at once, where would he have that kind of financial power?

The actual compensation offered was just over 2,000."

Yang Junlong also added: "Yeah, it's just a small matter. Having hair shaved isn't that serious. If he had stabbed his wife, a 100,000 reward would be understandable."

Wang Xiaoting looked at Yang Junlong angrily: "No, can you be more civilized when you speak?

You, what kind of adjectives are you using!"

"You have no strength day after day, but you sure do meddle in a lot of things. What business is it of yours how I speak?"

"Tell me, what's uncivilized about it?"

Watching the two in the back seat start bickering, Xia Weiyu sat quietly and continued to think about the mission.

Although the reward was low and the mission simple, she didn't dare to be careless.

If it were really simple, other teams wouldn't have gone a month without results and ended up automatically abandoning the mission and accepting punishment.

Compared to murderers, this hair-shaving criminal was still relatively simple, and she understood a bit why Su Chen wanted her to gain experience in real combat.

The chance of dying was indeed very small; she just hoped that if they were captured in return, he wouldn't shave her hair.