"You are my hero. You are supposed to take care of me!"

Ji’an stared at her.

She looked at the girl’s teary eyes.

She looked at the genuine, albeit incredibly annoying, desperation in her posture.

And slowly, the heavy, suffocating existential dread that had been crushing Ji’an’s chest for the last hour began to dissipate.

The sheer, mundane absurdity of dealing with a sulking, entitled teenager was exactly the kind of distraction she desperately needed.

It was a problem she could actually solve without questioning the laws of the multiverse or dealing with psychopathic love interests.

Ji’an let out a long, heavy, incredibly weary sigh.

She released the girl’s shoulders, running a hand through her own messy hair.

"Alright," Ji’an muttered, her posture relaxing as the tension drained from her muscles. "Fine. You win. Cease the waterworks. If you ruin my inner tunic with your snot, I am throwing you out the window."

The girl’s tears vanished instantly, replaced by a brilliant, victorious, incredibly manipulative smile. "I knew you wouldn’t be mad at me! You are the best, Hero!"

"Do not call me Hero. My name is Lin Ji’an," Ji’an grumbled, walking over to the carved wooden table in the center of the room.

She sank into a padded chair, gesturing lazily toward the seat across from her. "Sit down and stop hovering over my neck at every chance. If you are going to break into my room and hijack my sleeping schedule, you are going to earn your keep by answering some questions."

The girl happily skipped over to the table, pulled up a chair, and sat down, resting her chin in her hands, staring at Ji’an with a profound, starry-eyed expression of adoration.

Ji’an ignored the hero-worship.

She reached into her spatial ring, channeling a tiny fraction of Qi.

With a soft chime, she pulled out a small, exquisite jade box.

She opened it, revealing a dozen perfectly glazed, bright red candied hawthorns on bamboo skewers, a sweet, nostalgic street snack she had meticulously prepared in the Drunken Peak kitchens weeks ago.

She slid one of the skewers across the table.

The girl’s eyes lit up like fireworks.

She snatched the skewer with zero aristocratic grace and bit a hawthorn right off the stick, chewing happily, a sticky red glaze smearing her cheek.

"Now," Ji’an said, leaning back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest, adopting the interrogative tone of a tired older sibling.

"We have spent three days in a carriage together, and I have saved you from a subterranean torture chamber. Yet, I do not know your name. I do not know your clan. And I do not know why a girl wearing imperial-grade silk was wandering the provincial borderlands without a guard detail."

The girl paused mid-chew.

A flicker of something sharp, calculating, and entirely un-childlike passed behind her doe eyes before she quickly masked it with a bright, innocent smile.

"My name is Su Yin," the girl announced proudly, swallowing the candied fruit.

"Su Yin," Ji’an repeated, raising an eyebrow.

The surname ’Su’ was incredibly common, offering absolutely zero clues to her lineage. "Just Su Yin? No noble title? No clan affiliation? The silk you were wearing in that dungeon cost more than a small farming village makes in a decade. Do not lie to the person holding the snacks, kid."

Su Yin pouted, crossing her arms defensively. "It was a gift! My family is... we are merchants. Yes, very wealthy merchants from the southern provinces! We trade in rare silks and pearls. Our caravan was ambushed on the highway. The bad men killed all the guards and dragged me into the dark."

Her voice trembled perfectly on the last sentence, squeezing out a single tear.

Ji’an stared at her.

As a transmigrator who had survived a toxic noble household, a brutal sect exam, and the daily psychological warfare of interacting with Xiao Yichen, Ji’an’s lie-detector was practically a supernatural artifact.

The girl was lying through her teeth.

The posture was too perfect.

The skin was too flawless.

And the way she had casually demanded a Sovereign Elder to act as her personal beast of burden in the dungeon spoke of an entitlement that went far beyond mere merchant wealth.

This girl was high-born.

Incredibly high-born.

’She’s hiding from someone,’ Ji’an deduced, tapping her finger against the wooden table. ’Maybe a political marriage? Maybe a rival faction in the court? Or maybe she’s just a runaway noble who got in over her head.’

"Merchants," Ji’an repeated flatly, her tone dripping with absolute skepticism. "Right. Okay, ’Su Yin’, the merchant’s daughter. Let’s pretend I believe that. What were you doing out of your cage? When I found you, the dungeon doors had been open for twenty minutes. The other captives were gone. You were running back toward the mess hall."

Su Yin’s eyes widened slightly, clearly not expecting Ji’an to remember the tactical details of her rescue.

"I... I was confused!" Su Yin stammered, recovering quickly, leaning forward earnestly. "It was dark! I took a wrong turn in the tunnels. I heard the explosions, and I thought the bad men were coming back to kill us. And then... then I saw you."

She reached across the table, her small, delicate hand gently touching Ji’an’s wrist, right next to the Frost-Silk Pulse Guard.

"You looked like a god of war stepping out of the shadows," Su Yin whispered, her adoration entirely genuine this time. "You were so fierce. You didn’t even care about the blood. You just started breaking the locks. I knew that if I followed you, I would be safe. I knew you wouldn’t let anything hurt me."

Ji’an looked down at the small hand resting near her wrist.

The blatant manipulation was obvious, but the underlying terror in the girl’s voice was real.

Whoever she was, whatever she was running from, the Blood-Iron Syndicate had genuinely traumatized her.

She had latched onto Ji’an not just as a savior, but as a psychological anchor.