"Less thinking, more serious work. I'm giving you this one last chance! You'd better do your best! Don't fool around." Leo's head hurt just thinking of what she had done earlier.

"You listen up, I've already lost three architects, two of whom were exactly like you and tried to off... the mission target. This method has been forbidden right from the start, but my architect took a risk and tried it. It's been proven not to work!" he scoffed. "And what's more, you're not this... target's equal. If you go in thinking of killing him and trigger him... that's basically suicide."

'Triggering' him? Was Leo talking about superpowers? No... Han Yanyan, who had once had superpowers of her own, felt like what Yao Chen had done was closer to Zheng Yao's ability to destroy the world than a superpower.

She hated that right at the critical moment, that tool Leo had somehow managed to control his tongue.

"Don't do it again, you hear me?! Don't be a moron!" Leo didn't have a single happy feeling about this. "The method you used on Ding Yao had some effect. Follow the same route for Yao Chen."

Han Yanyan's eyes widened. "Yao Chen? He's not dead?"

"In your fucking dreams! Do you think he's that easy to kill?" Leo was once again furious. "It's all because you were such a dumbass. Not only have you wasted a ton of time, but I even had to restart the world! I'm telling you, no more fooling around this time!"

Han Yanyan remembered when the bullet had been stopped by an invisible shield, and how time had gone stagnant except for Yao Chen. At the moment when Leo had cut the world short, she had indeed had the premonition of dying.

If Leo had been a little slower, she might have died right then, and the most terrible thing was, Han Yanyan had a faint feeling that this time her 'death' would be different than the 'death' of when she was killed by Zheng Yao.

Zheng Yao might have destroyed the world, but he had never once glanced at her. She had simply vanished with the world.

But this time, Yao Chen had seen her. The intent to exterminate in his eyes hadn't been for the world, but for her. If Leo had been just the tiniest bit slower on the uptake, she might really have died. She might have never woken up, never come back to life.

As her mind was filled with guesses and questions, Leo said, "Mark." Once again, Han Yanyan was marked.

Afterward, he told her, "I won't set you a hard task. Just treat him like Ding Yao and follow your intuition."

"The world is generated."

With this robotic command, Han Yanyan was once again sent into the 'quick transmigration world'. She opened her eyes to see a narrow room. In her hand was a bottle of red wine. She wore a vest, a bow tie and a short skirt, and a dining cart sat in front of her.

Han Yanyan opened his eyes and lifted the napkin beside the ice bucket. A bottle opener lay there quietly instead of a gun. There was no invisible headset in her ear, no mic in her collar.

The door to the prep room suddenly opened. Another waitress came in and said, "Yanyan, I'll send the wine to Room 812."

The preset information activated.

The world had been slightly revised after the restart. Han Yanyan was no longer a policewoman, but an ordinary waitress who worked in the club for money. The waitress who had just come in was the real policewoman.

Han Yanyan knew that she had a gun hidden on her body, a mic in her collar, and an invisible headset in her ear. A team lay in ambush outside the clubhouse, waiting for her to give the signal. They intended to arrest Yao Chen at the scene of the crime, stolen goods in hand.

This policewoman had taken the place of "Policewoman Han Yanyan" from the last round. Obviously, Leo had been afraid that she might fool around again, so he had deprived her of her policewoman identity in a bid to weaken her.

Would that actually work? Han Yanyan wanted to know, too.

"It's fine," she refused. "Room 812's Mr. Yao is very generous. Last time, he gave Xiaomei two thousand yuan in tips."

The policewoman had an easygoing impression of this girl who was working here part-time for money. It wasn't within her expectations that the girl would refuse to budge for the sake of a good tip right at the critical moment. Secretly anxious, she begged, "Come on, Yanyan, I'm short of money recently. Won't you let me do it? When your older sister is doing a little better, I'll pay you back."

In an embarrassed fashion, Han Yanyan said, "Actually, I'm hard-up for cash too. My brother's medical expenses..."

If Han Yanyan had a patient in her family, that would explain why she was working so hard at a part-time job. The policewoman mutely watched her push the cart out. She debated the issue, gritted her teeth, and when Han Yanyan passed by, chopped the back of her neck with a knife hand.

As if the girl had eyes in the back of her head, she suddenly bent down. The policewoman's knife hand hit only air.

Han Yanyan tidied up the dining cart, straightened, opened the door, and called, "Ah Sen, Ah Sen!" A boy came running. "Did you call?"

The policewoman's outstretched hand, ready for a second try, had to be withdrawn.

"There aren't enough wine bottles on this shelf. Will you restock them quick?"

"Oh," said Ah Sen, "That's right, the supervisor said to do that. I was busy and it slipped my mind."

The policewoman watched helplessly as Han Yanyan pushed the dining cart out of the prep room and headed for Room 812.

There were still two bodyguards standing at the door of Room 812, and one of them was still more handsome than the other. This time, Han Yanyan didn't flirt. She pushed the cart to the door. The bodyguard looked it over and opened the door for her.

The two groups in the room had obviously just sealed a business deal and were ordering wine to toast. Everything was exactly the same as the last round except for Han Yanyan, who was no longer a policewoman.

She stopped the cart, pulled out a bottle of red wine from the ice bucket, and unfolded the napkin next to it - this time, the napkin covered a real bottle opener. Han Yanyan opened the bottle expertly and leaned over to pour the wine for the two most important men in the private room.

Yao Chen leaned forward and caught a glimpse of the waitress.

She was very young, with downcast eyes and a beautiful nose. Light, professional makeup made her face soft and charming. She was pleasant to look at and made one feel comfortable to see her.

When Yao Chen's fingers touched the glass, the girl's face was less than 20cm away from him. All of a sudden, she said softly, "There's a waitress here who's a policewoman, and there are policemen lying in ambush outside, ready to arrest you."

Her voice was soft and her speech fast. The others only saw her bending over to pour wine. Only Yao Chen, nearest to her, heard what she said.

His keen, penetrating gaze shot to her face.

frostcrystal

On the whole JJWXC thing

If you're unaware, JJWXC, a Chinese publishing site from which a lot of josei/BL/GL translations originate, is adding crowd-sourced English translations to their currently Chinese-only website. Think of it like MangaDex - anyone can submit a translation and have it uploaded, and receive a small cut of the profits. It's currently limited to only BL and GL novels, but this novel that you all are reading is hosted there, so if they expand it to other genres in the future, that may have implications for this translation.

Spoiler

Because of this move, there are quite a number of fan translators currently locking down or taking their work offline. Simply put, although it sounds nice to have a legal and official way to get your fix, there is good reason for the backlash.

1. Only people with a China/HK/Taiwan ID can submit translations (possibly as a censorship measure), while the vast majority of fan translators are foreigners. So none of us can submit our own work and go legal even if we wanted to. However, I would be simply astonished if someone didn't copy/paste my translations into the system to earn a quick buck.
2. The scummy side effect is that then JJ is incentivized to come after me for 'copying an official translation' (in the case of my translations being reposted), or just in general for 'doing illegal translation for the public'. No one wants to deal with that.
3. Translation is typically best done from your second language into your native language, then proofread and edited by a second native speaker. This takes time. I froth indignantly at the thought of how the system encourages uploading fast, mediocre translations and snitched fan translations from foreigners.

What are you going to do, Crystal?

Nothing, haha! This is not a legal translation to begin with so I've always been in risk of being asked to take it down anyhow. At the moment this new site doesn't affect me, and even if it did I'm confident that no one will put out a better translation. However, I hope that you'll keep reading fan translations on their original translation sites, via NovelUpdates or Discord. The JJ contract terms for authors and translators are not as bad as Qidian/Webnovel, which I actively boycott, but they're also not good, and it's a legitimate worry they'll go down that path. If you would like to support an author, continue buying raws. The author will get more money that way anyhow. In other words, keep doing what you're doing.

I've historically steered clear of paywalls or ads or anything beyond a Kofi, and my translations will remain free and unlocked. This is honestly mostly because I'm one of those hippie open-source buy-nothing pirates. Anyway, my stuff is all over aggregators and image-to-text readers exist. Am I kinda pissed that some rando will probably make a quick buck off of me? Of course I am. But that's what aggregator sites have been doing forever. C'est la vie.

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