This feeling was strange but also refreshing.
Looking out from the pool, both inside and outside the villa's walls were lush and tranquil. The azure sky and vast sea seemed just beyond the pool, like an endless expanse of freedom was within her reach. Outside the walls, on the estate's roads, and in other villas... perhaps danger lurked around every corner. However, at this moment, Lin Sanjiu felt that the ever-turning wheel of time, constantly grinding the world, had receded far away, leaving only her and Ji Shanqing, one in the water and the other on the shore.
Everything feels different with the grand prize around.
Indeed, they don't know where danger awaits them behind each corner. But Ji Shanqing is different from all her other friends. Only when he is about to turn a certain unknown corner would Lin Sanjiu ask him to look at the wallpaper's patterns and inquire, "Doesn't this look like a face?"
She still remembered that for several weeks after she first told him that human faces could be found in patterns, the grand prize would move closer to the patterns whenever they saw them, and within a few seconds, he'd exclaim, "Ah, I see it again!"
Now that he had become one of the Veda, he naturally understood what that meant. But as Lin Sanjiu extended her hand from the water towards him, the same expression from back then appeared on his little face—full of surprise, curiosity, and a bit of caution.
"You're not afraid of getting wet now, right?" she asked with a smile.
"But... what's fun about water?"
Ji Shanqing had been pacing around the pool's edge for several rounds as if Lin Sanjiu was asking him to walk through a ring of fire instead of getting in the water. Apparently, his past experience of falling into the water had left a considerable impact on him. After being urged several times, he finally hesitated for a long while before reaching out one hand and gently skimming the water's surface with his fingertips.
"Don't pull me! Let me take it slow—"
With a splash, Lin Sanjiu firmly grabbed his wrist, completely pulling him into the pool and sending up a spray of white water that rose high into the air, mixed with the grand prize's half-scream.
However, she didn't get off easily either: the grand prize clung tightly to her neck, making it difficult to catch her breath. They both ended up soaked, with her carrying a huge wet monkey on her back as they plunged into the water. Lin Sanjiu wasn't good at swimming, and after coughing a few times, she managed to resurface, suppressing the burning sensation in her nostrils, and shouted, "It's shallow here; you can stand up; come down quickly!"
Ji Shanqing kept his eyes shut tightly, refusing to let go. Even though his feet were already touching the bottom, he dared not let her go. Helplessly, Lin Sanjiu dragged the wet monkey on her back and slowly made two laps in the pool, whispering, "Look, it's fine. It's fun, right?"
It wasn't until he felt the gentle waves of water hitting up and flooding away one at a time that the tightly wrinkled little face finally slowly loosened.
He stretched his neck from Lin Sanjiu's shoulder and warily surveyed the pool. If he could negotiate with water, Lin Sanjiu was sure he would.
"It's really okay, isn't it?" she asked.
"Um... it seems so, but don't let go!" The latter half of the grand prize's sentence suddenly rose, stopping her actions. "Keep carrying me like this and walk slowly... yeah, that's it."
On land, it was a horse carrying someone. In the water, it was a seahorse?
"Carrying you like this, I feel like a creature—" Lin Sanjiu started, but the grand prize interrupted her, "Sis, we're not in the sea."
'The Veda have no sense of fun at all.'
"Do you want to go into the sea?" she said. "It's even more fun there."
Holding her neck, the grand prize took two strokes in the water. "Why?" he asked with great interest.
"We can pick seashells, bury our feet in the sand, and look for fish in the seaweed..."
"But we don't know what dangers await us outside," the grand prize said, sighing a little regretfully.
Come to think of it, they didn't even know if there were dangers inside the villa. But the villa remained quiet until both had had their fun—Ji Shanqing even let go and swam a few laps—and nothing happened.
Hakain is probably having a headache somewhere, right? Posthumans who are so relaxed like her are probably a rare, and I might not encounter such people more than once a year.
As Lin Sanjiu thought about it, she put on dry clothes. Clean towels were prepared by the pool, and she used one to dry her hair before walking into the house with the grand prize. She asked, "What else do you want to do?"
"Drink fruit juice." Ji Shanqing's long hair was still dripping wet, and he wrapped a large towel around his neck. He had already relaxed quite a bit as if he were home. He said, "There are fruits in the kitchen."
The villa's kitchen was about the size of a typical apartment, with two kitchen islands. One of the islands had a large bowl of blue fruit.
"Kevin is in charge."
When the two entered the kitchen, Lin Sanjiu heard Ji Shanqing say.
"What?" She turned around, a little surprised.
Ji Shanqing was even more astonished. "What?" He looked around, asking, "Sis, what did you say about Kevin being in charge?"
"I? I didn't say anything." Lin Sanjiu frowned, asking, "Didn't you say it?"
The two stood still for a few seconds in silence, their gazes scanning the kitchen in circles. The tropical plant leaves outside the floor-to-ceiling glass walls were motionless, and there was no sound inside the house either.
She didn't mishear, but Lin Sanjiu couldn't figure out what the four words 'Kevin is in charge' meant. Her body tensed up, and she gestured for the grand prize to stay by her side, watching the kitchen as she slowly backed away. Unexpectedly, just as she took the second step, the wooden floor suddenly broke like a piece of crisp biscuit, causing her heel to twist, and she sank into the cracked floor; it seemed that the floor had been hollowed out long ago, swallowing her ankles.
"Be careful!" Lin Sanjiu called out to the grand prize and quickly reached out to support the kitchen door frame, steadying herself in time. However, at the same time, the broken wooden board closed around her ankles, neatly sealing her inside the floor.
"What's going on?" Lin Sanjiu looked down and found that the floor was intact again. It looked as if a human leg was deliberately added when laying the floor.
Metal gauntlets quickly enveloped her right hand. She took a deep breath, swung her fist, and struck the wooden floor heavily. Just as she bent down, something suddenly whizzed past her back, hitting Ji Shanqing's chest and sending him flying into the kitchen.
"Robber No. 2's life reduced by 1," a flat female voice said.
Lin Sanjiu straightened her waist and didn't even have time to pull her foot back when the shadow in front of her swung back like a pendulum, attacking her with the wind. Luckily, she was prepared. The metal gauntlet suddenly flew out to meet it, and her fist struck the shadow—finally revealing what that thing was.
Several household dumbbell plates had been tied together with ropes and hung from the railing on the second floor above her head. Each dumbbell weighed about twenty kilograms, and when they were dropped from a height in a parabolic trajectory, their momentum was incredibly heavy, which explained why the grand prize was immediately knocked away.
However, the force of Lin Sanjiu's punch was almost as strong as a locomotive, and it instantly shattered all the dumbbell plates. Upon receiving this blow, the remaining dumbbell pieces, still hanging on the rope, swung out again. She crouched down, pulled her right foot out of the floor, and ran towards Ji Shanqing, who had fallen in front of the floor-to-ceiling glass. She asked, "Are you okay?"
"Trap... trap..." The grand prize's face turned blue. Half lying on the floor, he clutched his chest and said, "It's not a trap in the pocket dimension; it's a posthuman's ability... someone is using their ability to set traps against us."
Fortunately, the grand prize's body didn't contain bones or internal organs; otherwise, his sternum would have been crushed. Lin Sanjiu quickly entered her hypersensory state and kept an eye on her surroundings while helping him. "I know now. I remember what 'Kevin is in charge' means... can you move?"
"I can." Ji Shanqing breathed a sigh of relief and asked, "What does it mean?"
"It's a movie I watched when I was a child, about a child who was home alone, and robbers came to his house." She helped the grand prize up, and her gaze swept over the kitchen repeatedly. Every facility and utensil now seemed shrouded in a shadow of suspicion. "If I'm not mistaken, we should have become Robber No. 1 and Robber No. 2 now... The whole house is a trap for us."
Robber No. 2 groaned softly in her arms. "Hakain didn't set traps in the swimming pool?"
"She probably didn't expect someone to be so relaxed, entering the house and going out to play in the water again," Lin Sanjiu chuckled wryly. Abilities like the hypersensory state would probably be of little use within this range of abilities because there would be no signs of traps before they were triggered.
"What happened to the robbers in the movie?"
"They got quite messed up," Lin Sanjiu answered honestly, and with a flick of her hand, she summoned the [Tornado Whip]. "Later, they were arrested by the police."
"How much life do I have? It just reduced by one?" the grand prize murmured to himself, not daring to move his feet. Neither of them knew which action might trigger the house's traps again.
To be honest, it was their luck that Hakain used 'Kevin is in charge' as the movie reference instead of 'Harry Potter.' Lin Sanjiu held the whip and tried to find a safe path to retreat outside the villa with the grand prize. She scanned the spotless kitchen but felt that danger was everywhere. Besides, going out through the kitchen door meant passing through a row of knives and pots hanging on the wall.
"Did you hear any sounds, sis?" The grand prize raised an eyebrow slightly.
She did hear it—the sound didn't exist just now, but now it was faintly entering her ears: tick-tock, tick-tock, like the sound of a second hand amplified. She couldn't tell where it was coming from.
Lin Sanjiu glanced at the rose bushes outside the glass wall, swaying slightly in the wind.
She glanced again.
A flash of red light in the branches and leaves.
"Get down!"
When Lin Sanjiu abruptly threw herself towards the grand prize, a soaring burst of flames instantly shattered the glass wall behind her. Countless shards of glass were swept into the house by the air current and rained down on the two people on the floor.
"Robber No. 1's life reduced by 2."