I Am Your Natural Enemy

The sun was up, and Wen Yan had been busy all day—he was feeling a bit wiped, so he decided to head home and get some rest.

Honestly, he still had some other things he wanted to do, but judging from Feng Yao’s tone, it sounded like things inside the Scorching Sun Department weren’t exactly running smoothly either.

Wen Yan was starting to miss Heizi a bit.

Even though Cai Heizi was kind of a shady bastard, always making people want to spit in his face, when it came to real work, Heizi was actually able to stand up under all the pressure and quietly smooth out all the behind-the-scenes stuff that Wen Yan didn’t see.

Whenever it was business time, the guy just made sure everyone got to focus on what they were good at. No muss, no fuss.

Spitting in his face—well, that could always come later.

Feng Yao still wasn’t quite there, not black-hearted enough, not enough seniority, not like Heizi, who would open fire right in the middle of a video conference with HQ.

Heizi had been taken away for days now, the new minister for Nanwu County never showed, and from the looks of it, they really weren’t planning to appoint another minister.

And from the way Feng Yao was talking, Wen Yan figured the Health and Sanitation Office probably really dug up something a touch more sensitive than all the previous rumors.

Wen Yan was about to go home and rest, but then he looked at the Demonic Corpse, wearing his tattered clothes, zipper yanked all the way up, and with all that killing intent gone plus those empty eye sockets, he just looked downright pitiful.

The guy hadn’t died, hadn’t hurt anyone, and now he’d been forced into this mess of a situation.

No way Wen Yan could just say, ”Hey, let me send you off to the Virtue City Funeral House, full one-stop enhanced luxury furnace service included.”

Feng Yao, that damn dog, hadn’t even bothered to ask.

If he’d just asked, Wen Yan could have just passed off the Demonic Corpse as a key witness and let him take him away.

The Demonic Corpse was looking all sheepish and miserable; Wen Yan couldn’t harden his heart against him.

”Whatever, just come with me for now. We’ll deal with the rest later.”

Wen Yan tore off a piece of his own T-shirt, folded it up, and handed it to the Demonic Corpse.

”Cover your eyes with this, tie your hair up, and I’ll take a picture of you. Then I’ll get you set up with a new identity.”

The Demonic Corpse took the cloth, wrapped it around his eyes, then mustered up the courage to say,

”Can we not take a picture?”

”I’m trying to get you registered with the Scorching Sun Department, get you a formal identity. It’ll make it easier for you to do stuff.”

”I look too ugly right now...” the Demonic Corpse muttered quietly.

”...”

Wen Yan hesitated, then said nothing. He just opened his phone and filled out a form.

”Better not use your original name. Think up a new one.”

”I don’t know...” The Demonic Corpse looked totally lost.

Wen Yan thought for a second. ”How about the surname Mo? That’s a big family name here, plenty of people have it. And for the given name... how about Shishi? So, Mo Shishi.”

”Oh, all right, I’ll do what you say.”

”I’m not great with names, but the registration really does need one, so I’ll fill something in for now—you can always change it later if you come up with something you like.”

Mo Shishi didn’t have any opinion on it, so Wen Yan just keyed it in himself.

With that done, Wen Yan took everyone back home to rest.

He crashed and slept like the dead, while Mo Shishi, seeing that there wasn’t a single normal living soul in Wen Yan’s place, actually relaxed a bit.

Plus, seeing the Little Zombie gave her a sense of kinship, like she’d found her own kind.

The Little Zombie even took her to the first-floor bathroom for a shower and somehow found her a change of clothes.

Wen Yan snored away, naturally entering the dream.

He felt like he was back on the Beheading Dragon Platform, looking at Boss Tao bound to the execution altar, watching Boss Tao’s face twist in shock just as he shouted that sentence—

”So it was you! Heav—”

Wen Yan slapped him hard across the face.

”Heaven what? Say the whole thing before you die, will you!”

”You asked me the other day where I learned the Tiger Subduing Three Styles. Did you know something?”

”You definitely met that senior, right?”

”C’mon, say it! Just say it before you die!”

Wen Yan smacked him again. Boss Tao just kept repeating that sentence, never finishing it.

Eventually Wen Yan got fed up, swung his blade and chopped him down, reciting his lines by rote.

With Wen Yan’s words, a stone stele appeared in front of him.

As he chanted the words, each one condensed into weighty characters and slammed into the stele with booming sounds, carving out a line of text.

”In the Year of Guimao, a martial artist, wielding the Azure Dragon’s Scale Knife, beheaded a Glutton at the West River bank.”

Wen Yan looked at the inscription, feeling hit by a wave of ancient melancholy.

Staring at the words, he thought he should’ve added a little more self-promotion back then. Too bad—he couldn’t change it now.

He never heard Boss Tao finish that last sentence, but his guess? Most likely it was ”Natural Enemy.”

He figured, maybe the Glutton really had met that old senior, and actually knew way more than the Mountain Lord did.

Wen Yan carefully recalled Boss Tao’s face at death, the shock and whatever hidden meaning was in there.

He figured it was best not to let anyone know his profession was Natural Enemy. Best not to bring up those two words at all.

Now he thought, bad as it sounds, maybe ”Natural Enemy” really was enemy-of-the-whole-damn-world.

If he wanted to hide that identity, thinking it through, the simplest way was to just put on another vest.

Scorching Sun worked pretty well for that. The Thirteenth Ancestor had pissed off a ton of people back in the day. As the modern Scorching Sun, Wen Yan himself had ticked off plenty as well. Seemed normal.

If anyone wanted to mess with him because of Scorching Sun, well, that would at least make some sense.

All in all, those who knew he was Scorching Sun weren’t a small number—thinking it over, it was at least a few dozen people.