Transformed into a heartthrob's simp, every day is a battleground.

Chapter 332 The Attic

Yan Xun led Levi and Lily back to his second-floor apartment.

Before going upstairs, he took a few extra glances at where the landlady was, and when he found she wasn't there, he immediately told Levi and Lily to hurry upstairs.

When Yan Xun arrived at his dilapidated office, he finally breathed a sigh of relief.

"Please sit wherever you like," Yan Xun said. "There's nothing to eat or drink here."

Don't expect any complimentary drinks.

Levi sat in the chair that visitors often sat in, looking at Yan Xun's worn-out desk and the springs sticking out of the chair. "Your finances seem to be tight."

Yan Xun wasn't sure if he was mocking him or stating the facts—though there was little difference between the two.

“Yes,” Yan Xun readily admitted, sitting in his office chair. “That’s how it is for private investigators who aren’t working.”

He didn't turn on the lights in the room, but simply drew back the curtains.

“You can rest here for a while,” he told Levy.

"I'd like to know where you live?"

He looked at the small door at the back of the office. "There?"

"Haha." Yan Xun chuckled twice and opened the door. "This is the bathroom and toilet."

"I live upstairs, in an attic."

"We need to go up from here."

He pointed to the ceiling as he spoke.

Levi looked up and discovered that there was a movable door above him.

Yan Xun demonstrated how to get up there. "First, open the door from here." He said, finding a long iron hook at the back of the office and opening the door in the ceiling.

Then they brought a ladder from the restroom and placed it over the entrance.

He climbed a few steps up the ladder, "The space at the top is very small."

Levi seemed surprised by the appalling living conditions of Yan Xun. He looked at Lily lying beside him, then at Yan Xun standing on the ladder, and felt a sense of regret, as if he had been tricked.

"You can back out now if you want," Yan Xun said, leaning on the ladder.

“No,” Levy said, standing up and walking to the ladder. “I want to go up and take a look.”

Yan Xun jumped down from the ladder. "Please go ahead."

Levi climbed the ladder to the attic... Just as Yan Xun had said, the space upstairs wasn't large, about the same size as the office downstairs, but the ceiling was very low, so they had to bend over to get there.

He peered into the entrance for a while and saw the mattress Yan Xun had placed on the floor, along with some books and clothes.

Fortunately, there were a few small windows in the attic, and it wasn't as dark, damp, or musty as Levy had imagined.

To be precise, there was no unpleasant smell on it, only a very faint scent that could often be detected when one was close to Yan Xun.

After glancing at it a few times, Levi slowly climbed down the ladder. He looked at Yan Xun and said, "I can accept it."

Yan Xun's eyes widened upon hearing this; he rarely showed such obvious surprise. "Are you sure?"

"Can you accept that?"

"Why not?" Levi asked curiously. "I'm just an ordinary... farmer."

“I’ve been in worse environments, so this isn’t so hard for me to accept.”

Yan Xun looked at Levi for a while, and after realizing that he really thought so, he nodded, "If you insist on this."

"Can Lily sleep downstairs?" Levi asked.

“Of course,” Yan Xun said, indicating that he had no intention of mistreating the small animals.

It seemed the curtains were drawn back, alerting the people in the building across the street. Yan Xun soon heard footsteps on the stairs, followed by several familiar faces appearing outside the office door.

They are Liam's family.

Yan Xun recognized them at a glance.

They seemed to know that Yan Xun was looking for Liam, and immediately looked at Yan Xun expectantly, hoping that he could bring good news.

Yan Xun shook his head, but when he saw his older brother standing behind Liam's mother, he said, "Although we didn't find Liam, I found some clues."

Liam's mother noticed Yan Xun's gaze. "Who does it concern?"

"Him?" Yan Xun said uncertainly, "It could also be all of us."

Liam's older brother was a quiet man. When Yan Xun mentioned him, he looked up somewhat awkwardly, then silently twisted his hands. Yan Xun noticed that his hands were unconsciously covering his lower abdomen.

His mother patted him on the shoulder, making him look directly at Yan Xun.

"Does this concern me?" Liam's older brother asked.

“It concerns all of us,” Yan Xun said, glancing at the remaining three people: Liam’s sister, who was only two years younger than him, and his younger brother and sister whom he had met on the day they left the city. “Could you take them away for a while?” he asked Liam’s sister.

“Okay,” she said to Yan Xun. “Is it something we can’t hear?”

Yan Xun didn't answer directly, but just glanced at the two people who were curiously surrounding Lily.

She immediately understood what Yan Xun meant; what they were about to discuss was not suitable for children.

She nodded and beckoned the two men to leave with her. Although they were somewhat reluctant to part, they still asked Yan Xun for help in finding their brother when they passed by.

Yan Xun nodded, indicating that he understood.

After the three left, Liam's mother smiled weakly, "Don't mind them, they just missed Liam."

Yan Xun's office didn't have enough chairs, so he gestured for Levy to move the chairs out from behind his desk for Liam's older brother. The chairs for visitors were given to Liam's mother, and he himself sat back in his office. Levy, on the other hand, had to stand near the window as punishment.

Yan Xun first explained their discovery near the farm. When Liam's mother and older brother heard that the other party might have brought the elderly couple from the cornfield when they returned, their expressions immediately relaxed.

"So if we can find her daughter, maybe we'll be able to find out what happened that day?"

“This is the best-case scenario,” Yan Xun said. “If her daughter doesn’t see her, or if the other person dies shortly after arriving in the city, our trail will go cold again.”

They all knew that it would be difficult for someone who grew wings to survive to this day.

Seeing that the two men's expressions had turned somber again, Yan Xun hurriedly added, "But since we didn't see her body on the way back to the city, she must have made it to the city safely."

"There haven't been any more reports of people dying in the city these past few days, so she's probably still alive."

“But we haven’t seen any new winged people these past few days,” Liam’s mother said.

She deals with the market regularly and is very well-informed; if a new person with wings were to appear, she would definitely know.

She looked at Yan Xun and said, "The market has the best information network. If a stranger with wings appears, they can't possibly not know."

As she spoke, she became worried again, suspecting that the old woman had died before reaching the city, and that Yan Xun and the others had simply missed finding her body.

“The city’s wealthy have recently established a new sect, recruiting these people who have grown wings and been reborn,” Yan Xun said.

Liam's mother nodded. "He specifically uses one of his houses as the meeting place."

"It was a very large house with a garden and a fountain."

“What if she was sent here immediately after arriving in the city and finding her daughter?” Yan Xun asked. “Most of the people in this church grew wings and survived, so maybe they know some survival techniques.”

"She may have been sent to this church by her own daughter."

As Yan Xun spoke, he suddenly realized that he didn't seem to know the name of the wealthy man's church. "Do you know the name of that church?"

"They say it's called the New Generation."

She then told Yan Xun, "I have indeed heard that some living people with wings are going to his church."

“I heard from my landlady that there seems to be a larger church in the South that predicted the end of the world, and it’s called the Angels’ Guild.”

"What happened to those who joined the new faction?" Yan Xun asked.

Liam's mother glanced at Levi, who was leaning against the window.

“He can be trusted,” Yan Xun said.

“I heard the results weren’t good,” she said. “Someone saw the back door of that house, and someone was secretly transporting body bags.”

"They suspected it was those angels who had come to him and then died."

Yan Xun pondered, "No matter what, we still need to find her daughter first."

“Those people wearing hats can help. Koy went to report this to them first.”

Liam's family knew Koy and breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing this.

As they prepared to say goodbye and leave, Yan Xun spoke up again, "There's one more thing that concerns you."

He said it to Liam's brother.

His brother sat down again, looking somewhat bewildered by what he heard. "What?"

"You're pregnant, aren't you?" Yan Xun suddenly asked.

His expression became visibly flustered, and his mother looked at him in astonishment—this also surprised Yan Xun, who had assumed the other woman's mother knew about it.

"No," he said instinctively, avoiding his mother's gaze.

“I felt something was off a few days ago… Did you talk to Liam about it?” His mother immediately realized.

Seeing that the two were about to argue, Yan Xun quickly made a gesture to calm them down, "This matter is related to the recent pregnancy incident in the city."

“You should know that the landlady’s dog is pregnant too?” he said, looking at Liam’s mother.

“Of course…” she said, “Milo was the first one to tell me about her pregnancy.”

“Koy also told me that there were several pregnant men in that factory.”

"Including an employer I encountered before."

Yan Xun said, "I'm saying this just to express that this has become a common phenomenon in the city."

Perhaps it was his composed demeanor that was so convincing that Liam, who had been extremely wary, finally calmed down and said to Yan Xun, "That's how it is."

“I discovered this last week.”

What symptoms?

"Vomit."

“There are pregnant women in the slaughterhouse too, and their situation is similar to mine,” he told Yan Xun. “A few weeks ago, some workers in the slaughterhouse didn’t come.”

"Their families don't know where they went either."

He told Yan Xun, "I know one of them who told me he has to go south."

I asked him why.

He said the opportunity to make a fortune was right there.

“He told me he would leave the slaughterhouse the next day,” he told Yan Xun. “He didn’t come the next day, and his family didn’t know where he went either.”

“I thought he might have gone to the south. He has a bad relationship with his family, so I didn’t tell anyone about this. He told me to keep it a secret.”

“The workers who left suddenly included both men and women. The factory didn’t care who left. Even if someone fell into the meat grinder, they wouldn’t care. They would just mix them together and make them into canned goods.” He calmly recounted to Yan Xun, his expression somewhat numb. “But because I had a good relationship with him, I knew that he was pregnant before he left.”

“I suspect his desire to go south is also related to his pregnancy,” he told Yan Xun.

"The same may be true for the others who disappeared from the slaughterhouse."

"He mentioned the South to you," Yan Xun said. "Did you have any dreams after you became pregnant?"

"Dreaming?" He looked at Yan Xun with a puzzled expression. "I dream a lot, but I don't think it's the kind you're asking about."

“I’ve heard that pregnant women receive revelations in their dreams,” Yan Xun said. “In their dreams, they are guided to the angelic church in the south.”

Have you ever had a dream like this?

Liam's older brother looked puzzled, seemingly having never dreamed of the scene Yan Xun mentioned.

“No,” he said to Yan Xun.

"My dreams are all very ordinary."

“They live together,” Liam’s mother said. “He and Liam share a bunk bed.”

"So Liam knows a lot of things."

"They communicate better."

Yan Xun understood this; he found it easier to communicate with his brothers than with his parents.

"Is that possible?" Levi, who had been silent all along, suddenly spoke up. "You just forgot that dream after you woke up."

“Then I’d know even less,” said Liam.

"I can't recall things that I can't remember at all."

Yan Xun exchanged a glance with Levi, who was standing by the window—they felt that Liam's older brother must be hiding some information, otherwise he wouldn't have reacted this way when Levi asked him.

"That's a real shame," Yan Xun said.

He didn't continue on that topic, "Just yesterday, we found out that Koy seems to be pregnant too."

His words surprised the two people opposite him. The mother and son exchanged a glance, and Liam's mother muttered something, probably a prayer.

"Does this mean we'll both get pregnant in the future?" she couldn't help but ask Yan Xun.

She looked at her son's lower abdomen again, "What exactly is this..."

Why did they suddenly get pregnant?

"Is it really God's child?" she said, explaining to Yan Xun, "I learned some information from the landlady. They said that a pregnant woman might be a blessing from the new God."

"They will give birth to a completely new human race."

“Perhaps not entirely new humans,” Levi spoke again.

Liam's mother and his older brother looked at Levy with suspicion, not understanding who this strange man was.

“He’s the farmer Liam delivers goods to.” Yan Xun briefly introduced Levi’s identity, but Liam’s expression became extremely unnatural. He looked very nervous and wanted to leave immediately.