Chapter 360: Beneath the Truth (2)

Boss Rat recalled the day Hu San was rescued. He had gone to find Xiong Er.

"Pops, this Happy Water is no small matter."

Xiong Er's face was smeared with blood, his pupils red as dyed glass marbles. Wearing a ferocious expression, he smiled. "The fewer people who know about it, the better."

"I know what you meant by having us investigate the case. See? I'm much better than Hu San."

"I didn't expect you to be so ruthless," Boss Rat had said softly.

"I didn't want to kill him. I just wanted him out of the picture."

Xiong Er flashed a cruel smile. "Now, only you and I know about this, Pops. From now on, you can just sit back and let me handle things."

"I never said I was passing Plague down to you."

"What do you mean?!"

Xiong Er's expression changed instantly.

"You went too far with Hu San, Number Two. You can't be the heir." Papa Rat's face was calm.

"Are you joking with me?!" Xiong Er practically roared. "You keep saying you won't let us touch the Happy Water business, yet you manufacture this dangerous Happy Water yourself!"

"You said you'd judge our performance to decide the candidates, but my performance is clearly so much better than theirs!"

"Hu San is too soft, and Mao Si is just a kid! Why not choose me?! Why!!!"

"..." Boss Rat pursed his lips. "Xiong Er, you aren't suited for a leadership position."

"Then who is?!!"

Xiong Er bellowed. At that moment, the largest and smallest figures occupied the same space.

In the end, Xiong Er finally lost his reason and attacked.

So Boss Rat attacked as well.

Xiong Er's attack was almost inevitable, because he had previously tasted a mouthful of the Tianji Edition Happy Water.

He had assumed the dose was small and wouldn't be a major issue.

But he never expected that Tianji was behind that Happy Water, nor that Tianji could trigger its effects.

It was an accidental tragedy.

Boss Rat sat in a daze on the sofa for a long time. Finally, he hopped down, walked into the study, and jumped onto the handle of a desk drawer, using his Information Component to scan it open.

Inside lay a stack of photographs.

He took out a group photo showing a rat sitting on the head of a small bear, turning it over and gazing at it for a very, very long time.

...

...

Walking down the street, Yan Jing tossed the item Boss Rat had just thrown into his arms up into the air. He caught it, tossed it again, and repeated the cycle.

He remembered what Zeng Qing had told him earlier:

"Before his suspension, Zhao Jiucheng came to me. He said he had something to reveal and wanted to see if it could save his position."

"He said an unknown account had once sent the investigation data on the Tianji Edition Happy Water to his email."

"Except the data was locked with a special encryption. It would only open when a specific Information Component account ceased to exist."

"...So the data opened automatically later on?"

He had asked this in his identity as Mao Si.

"No, it didn't open automatically. Zhao Jiucheng gets so many emails that he just glanced at it initially and didn't take it seriously. It was only after everything blew up that he found the email again and spent quite some effort decrypting it."

"But I'd already provided the information inside it, so it was useless by then."

"The only thing worth noting was its claim that the mastermind behind this Happy Water was the leader of Plague."

"Looking at it now, they must have gotten it wrong."

"Yeah, probably."

...

"Probably..."

Yan Jing muttered, reaching out once again to catch the falling object.

The data hadn't opened automatically, which meant Xiong Er wasn't dead.

Papa Rat had held back in the end.

This role-play was the slowest he had ever raised his Favorability.

It was because he didn't really know how to play the role of a son.

Nor did he know how to make his 'father' happy.

Recently, aside from daily business meetings, he had spent all his time at Papa Rat's house cramming TV shows and movies about father-son relationships.

Afterward, he came to a conclusion:

Fathers were very difficult roles to satisfy.

The vast majority of shows were similar: if a son wanted his father to be satisfied or offer words of encouragement, he had to give it his absolute all.

And even then, it was rarely successful.

Having seen through it all, he simply gave up on his Favorability strategy for Papa Rat.

Anyway, as long as he fulfilled Mao Si's dying wish, he could begin drawing his next character.

Once he let that go, his interactions with Papa Rat entered a state of complete freedom.

He no longer tried his hardest to perform perfectly in front of Papa Rat, instead just saying whatever was on his mind.

Just like he had a moment ago.

In truth, he had already prepared himself for Papa Rat's Favorability to drop; to his surprise, it had actually gone up.

"Fathers are beings that are hard to understand, aren't they?"

Yan Jing murmured.

He had seen the things Papa Rat just said countless times in TV shows and movies, but he never expected someone like Papa Rat to say those exact words.

Then, he caught the peach falling from the air and took a bite.

"Pretty sweet."

...

...

Three days later.

Perhaps Yan Jing was clearing Dungeons a bit too quickly. For the first time ever, three whole days had passed without him receiving a new Dungeon task or even an announcement of the next Dungeon's opening time.

Moreover, the Inner World was completely calm and peaceful.

During the multiparty council elections two days prior, the two elected councilors from the Reconciliation Faction were Xu Chao, who had been locked in early on, and another councilor named Ji Qian. Both were Yan Jing's people.

The two councilors from the Peace Faction were figures Zeng Qing had always managed, which essentially made them Yan Jing's people as well.

What surprised Yan Jing was that within the Reform Faction, aside from a candidate named Qian Dadan who was supported by Papa Rat, the remaining seat didn't go to Song Haozhe's subordinate.

It didn't go to Council Member Li, who had previously dined with the group, but rather to Councilor Liu, whom Papa Rat had supported before.

In other words, the councilor who backed Hu San.

Meanwhile, Song Haozhe seemed to have suddenly vanished without a trace. Even when Zeng Qing tried to contact him, she couldn't get through.

But this was clearly the calm before the storm.

After all, Zeng Qing had already passed on the Rabbit Woman's message from Nuochen Biotech. So naturally, things on Song Haozhe's end couldn't be going well either.

However, adhering to the principle of countering soldiers with generals and water with earth, our Young Master Yan was currently enjoying a leisurely afternoon:

Watching TV on the sofa with Shen Youran.

A news broadcast was playing on the screen.

It reported that the second bout between the Fourth Tier exchange representative of Beast Lord and the Fourth Tier exchange representative of Yueyin had ended in yet another draw, with no victor decided.

Over the past few days, the three Domains of Beast Lord, Yueyin, and Tianzi had begun conducting mutual exchanges and sparring matches.

They were divided into three brackets: Second Tier, Fourth Tier, and Sixth Tier.

The other brackets had decided their victors very quickly.

Only the Fourth Tier group remained deadlocked.

After defeating Tianzi's exchange representative, the representatives from Yueyin and Beast Lord had been sparring continuously without a clear winner.

And in half an hour, they would hold their third match.

Normally, a draw should have ended things.

It was, after all, just an exchange match in name.

But there was an underlying issue: the current representative for Beast Lord had been temporarily drafted from within the Beast Lord Domain.

Because the previous one had died in Yueyin.