"And the results?"
Following the System's instructions, Adrian had grimly scrawled the name of the targets onto the ancient parchment. The moment the ink dried, the artifact spontaneously combusted without a breath of wind, instantly turning into a pile of fine, silver ash on his mahogany desk.
He had waited for a full hour, his tactical mind fully alert for a dimensional anomaly. But nothing happened. Instead, an overwhelming, unnatural wave of fatigue washed over him, making his eyelids feel as heavy as lead. Looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows, the first faint light of dawn was already bleeding across the Shanghai skyline. He had been awake all night wrestling with a parasitic system and a political ambush.
Though his physical conditioning was vastly superior to that of an ordinary civilian, the sheer cognitive drain of reality-warping mechanics left him completely exhausted. He collapsed onto the mattress. Regardless of whether the dog System had handed him a trap or a genuine cheat, he desperately needed to sleep.
"Young Master! Young Master, please wake up!"
Through a thick, groggy daze, Adrian's hyper-vigilant instincts registered a muted voice calling out to him.
'Wait... I live completely alone. How the hell did someone breach my perimeter?'
The thought snapped his eyes wide open. Instantly channeling the reflexes of the Sword Saint, Adrian performed a flawless, airborne somersault out of the sheets, landing in a defensive combat crouch on the hardwood floor.
"Oh my, Young Master! You're finally awake!"
Staring at his sudden, violent leap from the bed, Madam Wang—the housekeeper in charge of cleaning the estate—asked in startled surprise, clutching a dust rag to her chest.
"Madam Wang... why on earth did you wake me?" Adrian exhaled slowly, rising from his stance, his voice a mix of cold irritation and slight bewilderment.
He recognized her immediately. She was the professional nanny his late parents had hired to manage the villa and prepare his three daily meals. Given the original owner's reclusive, agoraphobic lifestyle, this place would have turned into a literal pigsty months ago without her silent maintenance.
Under normal circumstances, the old Adrian never interacted with her. Madam Wang's strict operational protocol was to quietly clean the house and leave food on the counter if she noticed the shut-in was awake. She would never dare to actively wake him from his slumber. Reclusive gamers possessed notoriously volatile, chaotic sleep schedules, and a high-end, professional domestic servant knew better than to intentionally displease the master of the house.
"Young Master, the Elder Master is arriving in Shanghai," Madam Wang explained frantically, her hands trembling slightly with profound reverence. "His chief secretary just patched a high-priority call through to my line. He stated that the Elder Master has exactly twenty minutes of unallocated time at eight o'clock tonight, and he explicitly wishes to meet with you!"
"What master? What eight o'clock? Madam Wang, what kind of ridiculous nonsense are you spouting?" Adrian frowned, his mind briefly misfiring. In this localized reality, hadn't his parents officially perished, leaving him a wealthy orphan?
"Young Master, I know it is completely inappropriate for a servant to interfere in the private affairs of the bloodline," Madam Wang pleaded, her voice thick with earnest devotion. "But the Elder Master has spent the last decade quietly trying to ease the political tension between himself and your late father. Besides... you are the Elder Master's only surviving paternal grandson! For the sake of the family, you must at least go and receive him!"
As Madam Wang continued to ramble on, the puzzle pieces in Adrian's mind violently snapped into place.
The parchment had literally rewritten the fabric of history. It was a classic, melodramatic tale of high-society bloodlines: Adrian's biological father had actually been the illegitimate, hidden son of an untouchable political titan. Decades ago, in order to secure his political ascension and buy the absolute backing of his legal wife's aristocratic family, the titan had ruthlessly abandoned the woman and child he loved, embarking on the path of a cold-blooded, powerful defector.
Decades had bled away. The grandfather who had bartered his soul for power had successfully ascended to a supreme, terrifying throne—attaining a level of absolute authority that was entirely unimaginable to ordinary citizens. But the heavens are transactional; he had lost his only legitimate son along the way.
Over the years, his legal wife had only managed to bear him a single daughter. In his ambitious middle age, the titan hadn't cared. But now, sitting at the absolute pinnacle of state power, looking back at his fading mortality, the old king realized the one thing he desperately craved was a true, paternal grandson to inherit his legacy.
However, Adrian's father had harbored a deep, burning resentment for the old man, completely severing ties and ensuring Adrian grew up without ever meeting the monster who ruled from the capital.
'My grandfather...' Adrian mused, a slow, predatory smirk spreading across his face.
No wonder the parchment had remained silent last night. It hadn't generated a weapon; it had retroactively altered the entire national hierarchy, grafting Adrian's identity directly onto the ultimate political lineage of the nation.
"Young Master, the armored convoy is already waiting in the private courtyard downstairs," Madam Wang urged anxiously. "Shouldn't you quickly bathe and change into a proper tailored suit?"
"Why waste the effort on cosmetic theatrics? Let us go exactly like this," Adrian commanded, casually splashing a handful of cold water onto his pale face. He strode out of the master suite wearing nothing but his silk pajamas.
He harbored absolutely zero respect for this cheap, estranged grandfather. Furthermore, reading between the lines of Madam Wang's frantic explanation, he knew the strategic reality: the old man was the one begging for a relationship, not him.
Admittedly, given the titan's supreme status, countless corporate magnates and regional governors would happily crawl through broken glass just to be his servants. But none of those parasites possessed the absolute, mathematical leverage of a legitimate blood heir. If the ruler of the capital only possessed one single grandson in the entire world, did that not mean Adrian could walk sideways through the entire country without a single consequence?
Over the next thirty minutes, Adrian conducted his official meeting with his nominal grandfather inside a heavily guarded, bulletproof luxury van parked in a secure zone.
The entire interaction lasted fewer than fifty sentences. Both predators were profoundly awkward. Adrian wasn't the type of submissive dog who would tearfully call a stranger "Grandfather," and while the old man was clearly desperate to make amends for a lifetime of cold-blooded choices, his supreme political status meant there were certain vulnerabilities he could never openly voice, even to his own flesh and blood.
"How about you packing your belongings and returning to Beijing with me?" the old titan asked after a long, heavy silence, his sharp eyes evaluating Adrian's relaxed posture. "I can immediately pull strings to place you into the Central Party School for elite executive training."
"No. I am entirely satisfied with my operations in Shanghai," Adrian refused without a fraction of hesitation. "I have absolutely zero intention of relocating to the capital."
If he accepted the offer and marched into Beijing, his grandfather's absolute power could easily fast-track him through the bureaucracy, transforming him into a regional governor within two decades. But what the hell did a long-term political career mean to an inter-dimensional hunter?
His primary directive was absolute: conquer the targets on the System's hit list within a strict, one-year calendar deadline. As for the tedious game of bureaucratic politics? Anyone who wanted to waste their lives playing civilian chess could go right ahead.
Seeing his grandson's resolute, unyielding defiance, the old man fell silent, a flicker of genuine approval flashing in his aged eyes. They hadn't spoken in decades; the mere fact that his blood heir had deigned to meet him was already a massive victory. If the boy's ambitions lay in private luxury rather than the meat grinder of politics, so be it. It made him safer.
"I am departing for an official state visit to Europe tomorrow morning," the titan stated, checking his watch as the twenty-minute window snapped shut. He pointed a finger toward a calm, sharp-eyed middle-aged man standing rigidly by the door. "If you encounter any operational difficulties or friction in the city, contact Xiao Xu directly. He will be stationed permanently in Shanghai as my personal proxy."
"Hello, Mr. Li," the middle-aged man stepped forward, his face instantly shifting into a perfectly warm, respectful, yet authoritative smile. "My name is Xu Guangxi. I am a few years your senior, so please, feel entirely free to call me Brother Xu."
"Hello, Brother Xu," Adrian smiled smoothly, offering a firm, calculated handshake. "I look forward to your valuable guidance in the future. Please, just call me Adrian."
Adrian had no idea what official rank this 'Secretary Xu' held in the grand hierarchy, but the fact that his grandfather had personally designated him as his local liaison meant the man possessed absolute, crushing authority over the municipal courts and police precincts of Shanghai. He was the ultimate, untouchable shield Adrian needed to roam freely through the city.
Seeing that the supreme leader's only grandson wasn't a lawless, arrogant, and brain-dead princeling, Xu Guangxi let out a silent, massive sigh of relief. If the boy had been a reckless psycho, managing his disasters in the city would have given him an incurable ulcer. But Adrian appeared perfectly calm, sensible, and aristocratic. This assignment was going to be an absolute breeze.
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