"...You're the Leader's butler, right?"
Chunfeng glanced at his pistol, now resting in the old man's hands, and asked.
"That's right. Lady Bai Fanxian is my lady. We met at the command base a few days ago, if I recall."
Huang Zihuan smiled and reminded him pleasantly. He returned the gun — heavier than it looked — to Chunfeng without the slightest concern about whether it was dangerous. Chunfeng shared that assessment. He holstered it, fully aware it would be useless against this man.
...Truly worthy of being Bai Fanxian's butler. To have hidden this level of power from the government's intelligence network so completely.
He had no way of knowing the old man had only received this power a few minutes ago.
As for appearing on the approaching boat out of nowhere: Huang Zihuan had deliberately opened a section of the Border to let the vessel drift inside. Before anyone on board noticed, he had thinned out the life force flowing through that particular stretch of air.
Within this Border, the old man could do almost anything he pleased.
"I apologize for the intrusion. I received an invitation from the Leader to come to the eastern region." Chunfeng stated his purpose quickly, not wanting to be misunderstood. He also made no attempt to speak down to the other man, despite his being a butler.
"...She did mention that."
Huang Zihuan nodded. Bai Fanxian's voice had just drifted into his ear from somewhere across the island. He smiled and turned, gesturing inward to welcome the unexpected guests onto the island.
"In that case... please come in, everyone."
.
.
.
Under Huang Zihuan's guidance, the small white passenger boat pulled up to the pier. The elderly boat captain had gone quiet the moment Huang Zihuan appeared out of nowhere — a man in a butler's uniform materializing on an open stretch of sea. He understood that from this point forward, the usual rules of how things worked no longer applied.
"..."
"...What are you looking at, Chief?"
Li Xinmei had noticed Chunfeng staring at something with a peculiar expression and turned to ask.
"Don't be rude."
"Hmph!"
Li Xinmei let out an irritated sound. Did he really think she had no sense of the situation at all?
"Young man... if you ever need a ride back, call this number."
The captain, having dropped both of them off on the beach, wasted no time excusing himself. He had no interest in getting further tangled up in whatever this was. He pressed a small business card into Chunfeng's hand and turned his boat around.
"What is the Leader doing right now?"
They had barely stepped through the gate when Bai Fanxian walked out with an armful of island blueprints.
"You arrived quickly... perhaps a bit too quickly."
She greeted them and handed the blueprints off to Huang Zihuan. The old man flicked his fingers once, now comfortable with the power at his disposal, and all the papers rose and arranged themselves across a large table.
"I'm about to start renovating parts of this island. I can't deal with your matter just yet."
She said it plainly.
"...In that case, is there anything I can help with?" The question came out of Chunfeng's mouth before he fully thought it through. What Bai Fanxian had said that day was still nagging at something in him. If he could help move her work along faster, he would.
"...You want to help?"
Bai Fanxian raised an eyebrow. Li Xinmei, who had been looking for the right moment, stepped in.
"I'll help too! I still haven't thanked you for what happened."
Her expression was earnest.
"In that case..."
.
.
.
"...You can't be serious."
Li Xinmei stood at the edge of a stretch of forest bordering the beach — the same area where the giant demonic boar had torn through. Its passage had left a trail of fallen trees scattered across the ground.
"That's right. My lady wants this entire section cleared."
Huang Zihuan, who had followed to show them the task, explained as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He pointed toward a rocky area roughly two hundred meters ahead and continued:
"The wildlife has already been driven out of this section. It's just the trees now. I'll leave it to you."
"..."
With that, the old man rose into the air and floated off toward the other side of the island, leaving one chief and one subordinate staring at the forest with expressions they couldn't quite name.
"What do we even do..."
"...We said we'd help, didn't we?"
Chunfeng let out a long sigh. He had offered, and now he had to follow through. He shrugged off his outer jacket — the pistol at his chest visible underneath — folded it and set it aside on the beach, then turned to look at what the elderly butler had left them.
"...An axe."
It was a firewood-splitting axe that had belonged to the old caretakers. Huang Zihuan had found it in the tool shed, figured it was probably the only thing that could cut through a tree trunk, and brought it along.
"Not even a chainsaw?" Li Xinmei muttered under her breath. For Chunfeng, though, he actually felt the axe was more suited to him.
He took hold of the handle with a loose grip. He didn't have close-range weapons like those cultivators. So his choices were rather few.
"Hah."
*THWACK!*
One precise movement. The axe came down one-handed into the center of the nearest trunk. A soft sound came from his arm. With destructive force rivaling a peak Grandmaster's, it crushed straight through the wood. The tree split in two instantly!
Li Xinmei's jaw dropped. She hadn't expected her chief to drop a tree with one arm like that.
Normally, the image of Chunfeng in her mind was a man with a cold demeanor who solved problems mostly through planning. When action was needed, that pistol with its tremendous recoil was enough to handle any criminal.
"...I'll help too."
Even her chief had stopped caring about appearances. So she needed to put in some effort too!
And so it went: Chunfeng hacking steadily through one trunk after another while Li Xinmei dragged away the smaller branches to clear the path.
"...Isn't this a bit much?"
Huang Zihuan was back on the balcony of the house, which Bai Fanxian had converted into a temporary planning space. The entire surface of the large table was covered in blueprints of the island's various sections.
"People need to put in some effort, don't they?"
Bai Fanxian sketched directly onto the blueprints without hesitation, roughing out what she intended to build.
The island needed a complete overhaul. There were large stretches of it that had never been put to any use. She wanted a library at its center, somewhere to house the knowledge accumulated over ten thousand years. A wide training ground. Extensive herb gardens. And a workshop of her own.
"That's true... though I do wonder how long it'll take those two."
Huang Zihuan glanced toward the tree line and smiled quietly. The finish line still looked very far away for those two.
"..."
"Hah... Chief... can we take a break?"
Li Xinmei was not a cultivator, and she didn't have mechanical limbs. After pushing herself for over an hour, she was visibly running out of steam.
"You go ahead..."
Chunfeng didn't look up. He kept swinging. But even with metal arms, he still had a human body underneath. The work was wearing on him too.
*CRACK!*
The axe couldn't take it either. The metal handle snapped clean in two on the latest tree.
"...I think we do need to rest now."
Li Xinmei dropped onto one of the fallen trunks and let out a long breath.
"..."
Even the axe was telling him to stop. Chunfeng tossed down what remained of it and sat on the ground.
"Some water?"
Without either of them hearing footsteps, Huang Zihuan was suddenly just there beside them. His gaze fell briefly on the broken axe. He was holding two glasses of cool, sweet water. He offered one to Chunfeng first, then turned to Li Xinmei, whose eyes lit up.
"Thank you so much!"
The old man watched her take the glass and drink without ceremony, and smiled. She had seemed quite willful at first. But in the end, he thought, she wasn't much different from an ordinary privileged young lady.
"My lady asked me to let you know. You can come back to the beach now."
"Huh?"
"But we're not done yet."
Huang Zihuan just smiled at Li Xinmei's protest. He moved one finger, and the life force that had been thinned in this area flowed back around both of them. Li Xinmei felt it instantly. It was something she could only call the most refreshing sensation she'd ever experienced.
It was as if her body was a sponge. She took a long breath. Her lungs filled completely. All the heat and exhaustion gradually faded away. Just sitting still for a few seconds, she was back to full energy!
Chunfeng was no different. He pressed a hand to his chest. His heart was beating with an ease and fullness that a moment ago seemed impossible.
"My lady seems unable to wait any longer."
Both their bodies floated up and followed the elderly butler back toward the beach. Li Xinmei was nonstop exclaiming the entire way — though her eyes were sparkling a bit too.
*VRRRMMM...*
Chunfeng, still in midair, opened his eyes wide in shock. The entire forest area below suddenly shook violently. All the trees gradually fell one by one. The moment they became debris, as if a disaster had swept through, they saw Bai Fanxian standing on the beach, waving her hand upward lightly.
*BOOM!*
As if the earth had been flipped over, this entire area swallowed all the trees down below. They shifted. Creaking and groaning sounds followed before everything settled. All that remained was an empty clearing, ready for constructing anything!
"..."
Li Xinmei made an expression like she wanted to cry but couldn't. She could only think —
*Then why did they make her chief waste so much effort cutting those trees before?!*