Chapter 125

Chapter 125: You Haven’t Pooped in Three Days

Qian Qi’s gaze stayed deep and distant as she looked down at the magic beasts trembling at her feet.

Her mental power skimmed across their skulls, and her mouth twisted with dissatisfaction.

“Too weak.”

She frowned, one arm draped over her raised knee, looking like an emperor who’d just been handed the wrong answer.

“Where’s the dungeon boss?”

Only a dungeon boss deserved to be her first contract beast. Right?

The beasts only shook harder.

“Useless,” she said flatly. “Then die.”

Heads popped.

One after another, the magic beasts collapsed without even managing a full scream.

Qian Qi stared at the scattered corpses with a cool, empty calm. She plucked a blade of grass from the boulder and bit it, letting it sway between her teeth as her eyes drifted to the orange-red sunset beyond the trees.

It was beautiful.

If Child A were here, she thought, it would be better.

He loved magic beasts. He would’ve been thrilled. She could’ve taken him riding a magic panther through the trees, sprinting across open grassland until he laughed so hard he couldn’t breathe.

She would’ve taught him, hand over hand, how to contract a magic beast. He could’ve become a top-tier beast tamer. Bright future. Every dream.

Instead…

He hadn’t even made it into her arms.

She hadn’t even seen his smile clearly.

“System,” she said to the air, voice quiet. “You were right.”

“I shouldn’t have stayed in my comfort zone.”

[Qian Qi…] System had finally tracked her down. Seeing her alive, it let out a breath it hadn’t realized it was holding.

Back then, to stabilize her runaway mental power, it had left behind a trace of “Qian Qi”—a residual consciousness.

It hadn’t expected that residual fragment—nothing but pure killing intent—to slip in when Qian Qi’s emotions collapsed and unleash such terrifying damage.

At least that fragment wanted what System wanted.

“She” wouldn’t hurt Qian Qi.

But “she” was wildly reckless.

What if she turned System’s Qian Qi into someone who only knew how to kill?

The Qian Qi System knew had never slaughtered this many magic beasts.

System shot a furious glare at the invisible presence clinging to Qian Qi and swept it away from above her head like swatting smoke.

Then it said, [Qian Qi, while this power is still here, contract a D-rank magic beast.]

Make use of it.

Forcing a D-rank contract was far harder than with an E-rank, but if that leftover mental power was still around, brute force would do the job.

“Exactly,” Qian Qi said, exhaling. “But I can’t find the dungeon boss.”

Now that her mental power had calmed, it felt… constrained. It wasn’t spreading the way it had before, and she couldn’t pinpoint the boss.

System said, [This dungeon’s boss is a turtle. Are you sure you want it?]

“A turtle?” Qian Qi wrinkled her nose. “No. Too slow.”

She wanted speed.

She wanted to run faster. Faster than last time. Fast enough to save the people she couldn’t save.

As that thought sharpened, a clear cry rang out overhead.

Qian Qi looked up.

A thin, pitch-black bird beast cut across the sky like a falling star. The speed of it—pure, clean, unreal—hit her right in the chest.

“That one.”

She lifted her hand and closed her fingers gently, like grabbing the air.

The D-rank black bird beast jerked mid-flight, then turned and flew straight toward her, yanked by her mental grip.

“Little thing,” Qian Qi said softly. “Contract with me.”

She withdrew her mental power just enough to keep it still and wrapped her hand around its throat, thumb brushing the weak pulse beneath feathers.

Her voice stayed calm—the calm of someone handing down a sentence.

“Don’t struggle. You don’t get to choose death. You only get to contract with me.”

The bird beast thrashed and let out two rough caws.

Qian Qi’s brow furrowed.

“…It’s a crow?”

She didn’t hate crows. But she’d just lost Child A, and seeing a crow-shaped beast right now made something sour crawl up her throat. Unlucky. Like the universe was laughing at her.

The moment the beast sensed her killing intent, its instincts screamed.

This Mo Ya beast had no pride to speak of.

It immediately released its contract mark.

Survival first. Dignity later. Preferably never.

Qian Qi, on the other hand, suddenly didn’t feel like keeping it.

She loosened her fingers, considering whether it would be faster to snap its neck and find something else—

System cut in. [Detected: contracting this Mo Ya beast has an 87% chance of granting a speed-type skill.]

Eighty-seven percent.

That was… a lot.

Qian Qi hesitated, then pressed her hand to the contract mark.

A strange mental link latched onto her mind, connecting her to the beast. Under System’s guidance, she pushed her mental power in, fused it with Mo Ya’s—

The contract mark slid into the center of her forehead and vanished.

A thin thread of connection remained between them.

At the same time, her body felt lighter, like someone had trimmed weight off her bones. She hopped off the boulder and tested her footing.

Fast.

Definitely faster.

[Congratulations to Qian Qi for contracting the D-rank Mo Ya beast and obtaining an E-rank speed skill: Speed Charm. After activation, you will gain a three-minute speed boost.]

“E-rank,” Qian Qi repeated, and the bitter edge slipped into her smile. “Fine. At least it’s a base.”

Maybe later—if she cleared more speed-type dungeons—she could upgrade it.

She flicked her gaze back toward the forest.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s find the dungeon boss.”

She left the boulder behind, stepping over corpses, and disappeared into the last light of sunset.

*

After she killed the boss of the Yan Jiao dungeon, Qian Qi left the dungeon.

The moment she returned to the surface, her mental power snapped back into her body like recoil.

The sudden emptiness hit like a hammer.

Her mind went blank.

She collapsed.

When she woke again, three days had passed.

She was in a hospital bed. Something noisy churned outside the door. Beside her sat Xiang Wen Yun, Little Min, and Little An—eyes red, faces exhausted, like they’d cried themselves hollow.

What… happened?

Why was she in a hospital?

She’d been taking the children to handle enrollment paperwork, and then—

Pain clenched around her heart.

Then she saw it again.

Child A dying.

Was it real?

Or a nightmare her brain refused to let go of?

She summoned System on instinct.

The panel appeared.

System stared back at her blank, searching eyes and hesitated.

Aftereffects?

“System,” Qian Qi said, voice barely there. “Little Jia… he…”

System didn’t answer with words.

It simply nodded.

Qian Qi’s face drained of color. She sank deeper into the bed, like gravity had doubled.

[Qian Qi…]

“I’m fine,” she said automatically, and pulled the blanket up around her like armor. “I just… need to get used to it.”

System went quiet. It knew her. It stayed.

But Qian Qi couldn’t stop replaying the moment—over and over—trying to force her memory past it.

She remembered Child A dying.

And then… nothing.

Everything after was a black wall.

“System…” she said again, lifting her head slightly. “Did I forget something?”

System froze.

Should it tell her she’d been controlled by a soul-fragment that only wanted to slaughter magic creatures?

Should it tell her she’d cleared a D-rank dungeon and gained D-rank defense?

Or that she’d basically grabbed a speed skill, walked away, and left her first contract beast wandering around the dungeon like an abandoned idiot?

Any one of those would detonate in her head right now.

System waited a beat, then chose violence of a different kind.

[Qian Qi… you haven’t pooped in three days.]

Qian Qi stared.

“…What?”