The walk back to his quarters was, for Kenji, the longest, most inefficient journey of his two lives. Every step was a protest, a reminder of his own body's rebellion. His muscles, assets that now refused to obey his mind's directives, were billing him with a currency of sharp, stabbing pain. Bruises bloomed across his torso and arms like strange, dark flowers, each a testament to his humiliating defeat at the hands of the very person he himself had optimized.
The hot bath had been a marginally successful damage mitigation protocol; the steam eased the surface tension of his skin, but the deep pain, the one residing in the very fiber of his being, persisted. Upon reaching his courtyard, the place's order and silence, which would normally have seemed like an optimal operating environment, today felt like a mockery of his own internal chaos. He ignored the scrolls on his worktable, the stacks of data waiting to be analyzed, the map of Zian's corruption crying out for his attention.
For the first time, the impulse to optimize, to plan, to work, was completely supplanted by a more fundamental and overwhelming biological need: exhaustion. His body, his deplorable, treacherous, and fragile hardware, demanded a system shutdown. He headed for his bed, a simple futon on a wooden platform, and every movement was a small hell. The simple act of sitting down tore a choked grunt from him.
He was tired. This wasn't the mental fatigue of an eighteen-hour negotiation or the stress of a hostile takeover. It was a deeper, more fundamental exhaustion; the weariness of a brilliant spirit trapped in a cage of flesh and bone that refused to keep pace.
Just as he lay back with a sigh that was half relief and half surrender, ready to embrace the blessed unconsciousness of sleep, a strange sensation washed over him. It wasn't the sharp instinct of a warrior or the Qi perception of a cultivator. It was something more primitive, a premonition, like the silence that precedes a falling stone or the stillness in the air before a predator leaps. Someone was approaching.
In his current state, bruised and with a reaction speed that would rival a dying snail's, he knew any defense was futile. If it was an assassin sent by Zian, his project would end here, on a note of irony so perfect it was almost a work of art. With a resignation that bordered on peace, he accepted what was to come. He closed his eyes, not to sleep, but to wait for the end.
His room's door slid open, not with the violence of an attack, but with the stealth of a thief. A whisper of cloth, a movement so silent he almost mistook it for the wind. He held his breath.
The figure that slipped inside was not a shadow assassin or a resentful guard. It was Xiao Yue.
And in the instant his eyes fell upon her, Kenji Tanaka's operating system, the supercomputer forged in the most hostile boardrooms on Earth, experienced the equivalent of a total short circuit.
She leaned against the closed door and exhaled the air she'd been holding, like a thief who has just completed a successful heist. Unlike her usual practice robes or her simple daily dresses, this time she was in her pajamas. And her pajamas, as Kenji discovered with a clarity that stopped his heart, were not the attire of a disciple, but of a goddess aware of her own power.
It was a two-piece set made of a silk so fine and pale it seemed woven from moonlight. The fabric, clinging to her body, hid nothing; on the contrary, it accentuated every curve, every line of her figure with a brutal and beautiful honesty. Kenji, whose mind used to categorize her as a "high-potential biological asset," for the first time saw her simply as a woman.
The short, thin-strapped top clung to her bust, revealing a size he had never noticed under her robes. They were perfectly round, firm, two irrefutable arguments against the law of gravity. Her waist was narrow, a delicate bridge that widened into the perfect curves of her hips, a silhouette any artist from his former world would have killed to capture. Her long legs, toned by countless hours of training, were hinted at beneath shorts that ended mid-thigh.
Every part of her, from her delicately exposed collarbone to the radiant skin that seemed to glow with its own light, evoked a seduction that was not deliberate, but innate, a natural consequence of her existence. Her red hair, damp and loose, fell in a cascade of fire over her shoulders, framing a face where her golden eyes shone with a mix of mischief and tenderness. Apparently, she had also just bathed. The light scent of jasmine and orchids emanating from her filled the room, displacing the smell of wood and ink.
She was, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman Kenji had seen in his two lives.
On Earth, she would have been a supermodel, an actress, one of those presences that stop traffic and cause sighs. Her beauty was on the level of Xiu Mei's, that feline and wild perfection. But while Xiu Mei's beauty was a wildfire, a chaotic and dangerous force of nature, Xiao Yue's was like a rising sun: warm, undeniable, and full of a promise that made you want to draw closer, even if you knew you might get burned. When faced with the question, "Who is the most beautiful?" his brain, for the first time, didn't resort to a comparative analysis. It simply offered a fundamental truth: her.
And the most disconcerting thing of all was her attitude. Despite wearing an outfit that would leave any man breathless, there was no shame in her gaze. She didn't cover herself, didn't shrink under the scrutiny of his eyes. On the contrary, when she noticed him looking, she seemed to accentuate her posture, straightening up slightly, an unconscious gesture that made the fabric of her pajamas tighten even more, as if she were proud of the work of art that was her body.
In her hands, she carried a small, light jade container holding a pearly white cream.
"Are you just going to lie there staring all night, CEO, or are you going to let your business partner patch you up?" she said, her voice an amused whisper, as if entering a man's room late at night, dressed like that, were the most normal thing in the world.
Kenji, for the first time, found himself without a protocol to execute. Words, his tool of control, abandoned him.
"You... what are you doing here?" he managed to articulate, his voice hoarser than usual. The words sounded strange, devoid of his usual corporate jargon. They sounded... human.
"I came to treat your wounds, of course," she replied, approaching the bed with a grace that contrasted with her stealthy entrance. "The doctor said you needed rest and ointments. And since I know your definition of 'rest' is 'plotting world domination in a horizontal position,' I decided to take matters into my own hands. Now, take off your shirt."
The command was direct, leaving no room for argument. Kenji, still stunned, tried to obey. He raised his arms to remove the simple tunic he was wearing, but a sharp, stabbing pain in his back and shoulder muscles tore a choked groan from him. The simple action was torture.
Xiao Yue let out a soft, amused laugh. "You're a mess, Kenji. A genius at conquering the world and completely useless at dressing yourself. Stay still."
She knelt on the edge of the bed, and Kenji's world shrank to the scent of her hair and the warmth of her closeness. With a delicacy he would never have associated with the strength that had just taken him down, she took the edges of his tunic and, with slow, careful movements, lifted it over his head.
For an instant, her fingers brushed against the skin of his torso. Kenji shuddered, not from pain, but from the contact. His skin, accustomed to the touch of cheap fabrics, reacted to the softness of her fingertips like parched earth to the first drops of rain.
With his shirt off, Xiao Yue surveyed the canvas of her work. Kenji's torso was not that of a warrior. He had no large muscles or battle scars. It was the slender, pale body of a scholar, someone who spent more time with books than with swords. A common boy who would go unnoticed in a crowd. But that pale canvas was now dotted with ugly, dark purple bruises—the maps of his defeat.
"Hmm, I left you a few souvenirs," she murmured, a touch of remorse in her voice.
She opened the jade container. A fresh scent of mint and snow lotus filled the air. She took a little of the cream on her fingertips.
"This is going to hurt a bit at first, but then you'll feel relief," she warned.
Kenji braced himself for the pain. What he didn't expect was the tenderness.
Her hands, the same ones that could wield a sword with deadly precision, settled on his skin with the softness of a feather. With slow, deliberate massages, filled with a care that transcended any protocol, she began to apply the cool cream to his bruises. Her fingers worked the knots in his muscles, undoing the tension with a skill that came not from any cultivation technique, but from a protective instinct.
As her hands worked, she watched him and thought. He was the only man who hadn't looked at her with pity or disdain; the only one who had seen her potential beneath layers of failure; the only one who had worked day and night, not for himself, but to help her find her own strength. He had no conventional beauty, no great muscles, no exceptional cultivation talent. And yet, between an attractive and talented prince like her brothers and this clumsy, exasperatingly logical genius—her Kenji... she would choose him a thousand times without hesitation.
"I know you must feel humiliated," she said softly, breaking the silence, her voice a balm almost as effective as the cream. "Defeated by a woman, and your own student, no less. I know these things can bruise a man's ego."
Kenji, who had kept his eyes closed, opened them. He looked at her, and his expression held none of the disappointment she expected.
"Humiliated?" he replied, and his voice, for the first time, didn't sound like a CEO's, but like a friend's. "No, Xiao Yue. I'm not humiliated. Or disappointed."
She looked at him, confused. "You're not?"
"No. Today, in the courtyard, I didn't see my student. I saw my opponent. And my opponent was strong. Fast. Relentless. Every move I made, you anticipated. Every calculation, you surpassed. Today's match gave me the clearest sample of how strong you've become. It gave me... firsthand data. And the data doesn't lie. So no, I'm not humiliated. I'm..." he paused, as if the word were foreign in his mouth, "...proud. Proud of your progress. Of your strength. Of your confidence."
The answer left her breathless. It wasn't what she expected. It wasn't the cold logic of a performance analysis. It was the genuine pride of a teacher, a partner, a... friend. The warmth that spread through her chest was more intense than any Qi advancement.
Moved, overwhelmed by a feeling she couldn't name, she acted on pure impulse. She leaned in quickly and gave him a kiss on the cheek, a swift, sound-filled contact. And then, before he could react, another on the other cheek.
"That's your reward for being the best consultant in the world," she whispered, her breath warm against his skin.
This time, Kenji didn't pull away. He didn't freeze. He simply received the kisses, closing his eyes for an instant. The soft brush of her lips on his skin was something that made him feel at peace. With her. With himself. The feeling of failure dissipated, replaced by a calm he didn't understand but accepted.
Because of the pain in his shoulders, he didn't bother putting his shirt back on. Instead, he shifted slightly to one side on the futon, leaving an empty space, a silent invitation.
She understood. With the naturalness of someone arriving at their own home, Xiao Yue lay down beside him, on her back, looking up at the dark wooden ceiling. Other men in that situation, with such a stunning and lightly clad woman beside them, would be consumed by lust. But Kenji didn't see a body. He saw Xiao Yue. Not an attractive girl, but his partner, his pillar in this chaotic world.
And they talked. For two hours, they talked. There were no technicalities, no corporate jargon. There were no risk analyses or optimization plans. Just a conversation. A pleasant conversation, the first they'd had that didn't revolve around a strategic objective.
It was Xiao Yue who broke the ice of vulnerability.
"I'm scared, Kenji," she confessed, her voice barely a whisper in the quiet of the night.
He turned to look at her, his face a silent question.
"Today... when I found out that Xiu Mei could help you cultivate, that she could give you the chance to have your own power... I felt..." she bit her lip, ashamed of her own emotion. "I felt a little jealous. Jealous that I couldn't be the one to help you in the way you need. But beyond that, I felt scared. So scared."
Tears began to well in her eyes, silent and treacherous. "I'm scared that once you learn to cultivate, once you become an expert cultivator and no longer depend on my strength to protect you... you'll decide to take another path. Scared that you won't need me to be your shield anymore. Then what would my role be? I know it's selfish. I know I should be happy for you, and I am, I really am... but a part of me feels like a hypocrite. Wanting to always have you by my side, wishing you would never stop depending on me... it felt like that was my purpose."
Kenji listened in silence. For the first time facing an emotional crisis, he felt no need to search his mind for a protocol. For the first time, he knew exactly what to do.
"Xiao Yue," he said, his voice soft but firm. "I'm a businessman, not a warrior. My goal in this world is to create the greatest company that has ever existed, not to be the most powerful man. Cultivating, for me, is just a tool to scale, to mitigate the physical risks of my environment. But my protection, my safety... that will always depend on you. Because I trust you more than any system I could ever design."
He propped himself up slightly on an elbow to look her in the eyes. "Besides, if there's one thing I learned in my past life, it's that reaching the top with no one to share it with is an empty, cold summit. A worthless victory. And if I had to choose one person, a single person in this universe to share the empire I want to build with... I would choose you. Without hesitation. I can't imagine my days, in this world or any other, without you by my side."
He paused, and what he said next was the biggest confession of his life, a truth that redefined his own value system.
"If, to achieve my dream of building the world's greatest company, I had to leave you, or abandon our relationship..." his black eyes locked onto hers with an absolute and terrifying honesty, "I would abandon the dream without a second thought. Because there are assets that can't be bought, Xiao Yue. And to me, you are worth more than all the empires in this world."
Xiao Yue stared at him, completely stunned. She understood the weight of his words. She knew Kenji was not a man of lies or empty flattery. His currency was logic and truth. And he had just declared her the most valuable asset in his existence.
Her tears of anguish transformed into tears of a happiness so overwhelming it stole her breath. In a fluid motion, she turned toward him and rested her body against his. She didn't care that he could feel every curve, every beat of her heart through the thin fabric. She just wanted his warmth, his solidity, the tangible proof of his promise.
Happy, ecstatic over his answer, she decided to change the subject to something that sparked an infinite curiosity in her.
"Tell me about your world, Kenji," she whispered against his chest. "About your past life. What was it all like? Were you happy? I want to know everything."
And so began the strangest, most wonderful part of the night. Like an excited child listening to a fairytale, she bombarded him with questions. And he, for the first time, spoke naturally, like a patient teacher explaining the wonders of a lost world to his most enthusiastic student.
"Vehicles? Imagine metal chariots that move without spirit beasts, powered by controlled explosions of a thick, black liquid." "Cell phones? Small magic mirrors you hold in your hand that let you talk to and see people on the other side of the world." "Computers? Boxes that hold the sum of all human knowledge, capable of performing calculations in a second that would take a team of scholars a hundred years."
He even told her, with a touch of irony, about the reincarnation cliché in his world's "anime." "In my world's fiction, when someone is reincarnated, they often get help. Some receive a 'System,' an interface in their vision that gives them quests and rewards, like in a game. Others are greeted by a goddess in a very revealing outfit who grants them abilities. Some are reborn as the story's villain, and others are summoned as heroes to save the world."
"And you?" she asked, fascinated. "What did you get?"
Kenji smiled, a genuine and slightly bitter smile. "I didn't get a System. I am the System."
The night went on like that, between stories of a world of steel and light, and the wonder of a girl who knew only swords and Qi. It was very late when the last question faded. Xiao Yue, reluctant, stood up. She didn't want to leave, but she didn't want to impose on him any longer.
"It's late," she said, her voice a whisper. "You should rest."
Just as she was about to leave, she felt a hand take hers. She turned to look at Kenji, and what she saw in his eyes made her blush to the roots of her hair.
With the rawness of his words, which lacked any poetic adornment but were loaded with a brutal sincerity, Kenji told her: "There's room for two. Stay. Don't go."
Xiao Yue felt her heart leap. Thrilled, needing no further encouragement, she blew out the candle she had brought and slipped under the same sheet as him. She didn't bother with space. All she wanted was to lean against his body, to know she was with him. She hugged him like a koala, not caring about the propriety or distance a lady would keep, pressing her body completely against his.
Kenji, instead of tensing, wrapped his left arm around her and began to slowly stroke her red hair. His other hand found the curve of her waist, and his fingers traced soft circles on the silk. It was soft to the touch.
He didn't notice, but in the darkness, Xiao Yue's golden eyes began to glow like a predator's. A gleam of obsession, as if she had reached a new, albeit slightly deviant, enlightenment in her cultivation. He was hers. Her genius. Her pillar. Her golem. And she would never, ever let him go.
Kenji, oblivious to this new and dangerous enlightenment, knew only one thing: Xiao Yue smelled good. It was the most exquisite scent he had ever smelled in his life. He felt the urge to bury his face in her hair, and so he did.
And so, they fell asleep. Cuddled together, without a care for tomorrow or yesterday. For the first time in their two lives, both of them, the CEO and the Phoenix, felt absolute peace and happiness.