Chapter 421

Chapter 421: Xu Jiali and His Psychic Attendant

Xuan Che kept his face steady, giving no sign of surprise.

He drew his divine sense back in, then spread it again—carefully sweeping the entire City Lord’s residence, then the receiving room, then the air near the doorway.

There really were only two of them here: him and Mo Ran.

No third mind hid nearby. No foreign technique twisted the space. No illusion hung in the air.

Mo Ran looked completely normal. Her aura was stable. Her mind showed no abnormalities.

And yet she clearly believed she had brought Elder Dao Heng here—believed he stood beside her at this very moment.

Xuan Che’s expression did not change. He gave a light nod and didn’t stop her from leaving.

Mo Ran showed no suspicion either. She bowed slightly and exited the room.

Silence settled.

Xuan Che stood by the window, divine sense still extended, facing the stillness. His face remained calm, but his mind was not.

For the briefest instant, a ridiculous thought flashed through him—what if Elder Dao Heng really was here, and the problem was his perception? What if he was the one who couldn’t see?

He crushed the doubt immediately.

He heightened his guard against heart demons, then calmly took out a spirit-link mirror and began contacting people in different places.

—

On the surface of Garrison-3, the engineering crew led by Engineer Sun dug through thick layers of soil under Yu Sheng’s guidance. The heavy equipment temporarily brought over from the Black Forest was brutally efficient. It doubled the size of Foxy’s impact pit in short order and then pushed straight down.

Around the main pit, several smaller collection points had been marked out.

Engineer Sun had found spots where the crystal clusters rose close to the surface—places where it was easier to recover samples. In the cracks between rock and soil, the inert crystal branches lay wedged and lifeless. By sheer luck, Foxy’s impact hadn’t ground them completely to dust. The shallow crystal material still held together, intact and unpolluted.

The workers in heavy yellow engineering armor carefully widened the cracks with small digging arms, peeled away chunks of crystal as whole as possible, and delivered them to a temporary stacking platform at the edge of the site.

A recovery team from the Special Operations Bureau stood around that platform—hazard-materials experts trained to handle strange substances. They wore white protective armor marked with the Bureau’s insignia and worked in teams of three: two handled the sample while the third watched their mental state.

A leader with red patterns on their armor stood nearby, commanding and verifying that every trio stayed normal.

And near them, several heavily armored deep divers stood guard, fully armed, with walking tactical robots behind them. Every one of them looked tense, as if they were waiting for a nightmare to crawl out of the ground.

There was a familiar face among them.

Xu Jiali unlatched the outer metal plating of his helmet, revealing his broad, stubbled face behind the clear visor. Among all the deep divers, he looked the most relaxed. He even wandered out of formation to chat with Yu Sheng, without a trace of urgency—despite the fact they were recovering “suspected angel material.”

“All rookies,” Xu Jiali said, glancing back at the team he’d brought. “The moment they heard the samples might be linked to the dark angels, they got nervous enough to shake themselves apart.”

Then he looked back at Yu Sheng. “And you… I haven’t seen you in ages, and the first time we meet again, you’re stirring up something huge?”

“That makes it sound like I did it on purpose,” Yu Sheng said, spreading his hands. “How was I supposed to know something like that was buried under the ground?”

Xu Jiali tugged at the corner of his mouth and swept his gaze over the devastated battlefield. Awe slipped into his voice. “If you hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t believe it. This was done by that fox miss? It looks like someone fired an Atlas nova cannon into the crater. Good thing she’s on our side.”

“She told me she still had a big move left,” Yu Sheng said, half laughing, half groaning. “I just didn’t expect it to be that big.”

Then his gaze shifted past Xu Jiali. “And who’s this young lady following you around?”

Behind Xu Jiali stood an unremarkable figure—a petite girl, barely over one and a half meters tall. Next to Xu Jiali’s two-meter frame, she looked almost child-sized. She wore protective clothing similar to powered armor, but far thinner than a deep diver’s gear, and she carried no weapon.

Instead, she held a strange sphere—etched with mechanical patterns and laced with blue crystal lattices. It wasn’t immediately clear what it was for.

Wherever Xu Jiali went, the girl followed.

And Yu Sheng noticed something else: every deep diver on site had a similar figure behind them—men and women, tall and short. All wore light armor and carried the same kind of sphere.

“Oh, that’s my psychic attendant,” Xu Jiali said, tapping the side of his helmet. “Forgot to introduce her. Her name’s Lingdang.”

He paused, then added, “You remember me mentioning it before, right? A deep diver’s full-strength field setup includes a fire-support shuttle, two walking tactical robots, a swarm of light drones, and a psychic attendant. So technically, every deep diver in the field is a fully equipped tactical squad. What you’re seeing now is our expedition state—though we didn’t have time to bring the shuttle this time.”

Yu Sheng listened through the explanation, a little dazed. After a few seconds, he realized it did sound familiar.

He looked at Lingdang. She glanced up at him and asked bluntly, “You and boss… friends?”

“Friends,” Xu Jiali said cheerfully. “His name’s Yu Sheng. He’s the borderland’s angel combat expert. A real ace.”

“Oh.” Lingdang nodded. Still holding the sphere with one hand, she extended the other. “Hello.”

Yu Sheng shook her hand—and noticed something odd. Her pupils were vertical, like a cat’s.

Xu Jiali explained before he could ask. “Lingdang is Ji Pu Luo. Most psychic attendants are Ji Pu Luo.

“The Special Operations Bureau has a long-term cooperation agreement with their race. They provide us with their most gifted psychics, and we supply them with the strongest catnip in the universe.”

Yu Sheng stared at him. “…Huh?”

Only then did he realize the two pointed structures on Lingdang’s helmet weren’t decorations.

“Ji Pu Luo are a Terra race,” Xu Jiali continued, still talking like this was the most ordinary thing in the world. “You’ve heard of Terra, right? The academy’s up there. It’s also home to the Forest Folk. Ji Pu Luo have some feline traits, and they’re extremely sharp—especially with psychic abilities.

“We deep divers are good at fighting, but we’re not great with magic-type stuff. A psychic attendant fills that gap. And if something tries to hit your mind, the attendant is your first barrier.”

He gave a casual shrug. “Of course, that’s for expedition combat outside. When we do otherworld dives in the borderland, it’s a different process. The umbilical cord can replace some of the attendant’s role…”

Yu Sheng listened with genuine interest. This was the kind of knowledge he’d heard in fragments but never fully understood.

Throughout it, Lingdang stood quietly behind Xu Jiali, occasionally fiddling with the sphere as if she didn’t care about anything happening around her.

Then Yu Sheng’s phone rang.

He took it out. The caller image was a fox head squinting and grinning, teeth bared in a perfect picture of menace and joy.

He answered. Foxy’s delighted voice burst through the speaker.

“Benefactor! I’m full now! Open the door—I’m coming back!”

—

Borderland City, the Special Operations Bureau building.

Li Lin had just finished his task leave and returned to work. On his first day back, meal card in hand, he stood frozen at the entrance to Employee Cafeteria No. 2.

The door was locked tight. An electronic screen beside it scrolled a message:

“Due to special circumstances, Cafeteria No. 2 is not open today. Employees with dining needs, please go to the main cafeteria on the third floor.”

Li Lin blinked. Since he’d started working at the Special Operations Bureau, this was the first time he’d ever seen anything like it.

Curious, he leaned in to peer through the glass—but the inside looked clean and completely empty.

A few Bureau agents walked past behind him in the hallway, their voices drifting over.

“What’s going on? Why’d they suddenly close it?”

“No idea. It was open when I came in this morning.”

“I heard it got hit by a fox…”

“…Huh?”

“They said it was the Hotel’s fox. I don’t even know what that means.”

Li Lin listened in silence. He looked down at his meal card, then back at the locked cafeteria door, and felt tears threatening.

“…Then who’s going to make up for the discounted chicken drumstick I missed?”