"Tell me honestly… you are the spirits themselves, right?"
The question did drop like a bomb but it didn't seem accusatory.
Han Chen finally looked up. "Why do you need to know that?"
"I'm not trying to confirm anything," Yue Lan replied. "I already know. I just wanted to hear it said."
Hye Won glanced briefly at Han Chen, then back to Yue Lan. "Considering you gave us such a nice meal… yeah. It was us." She reached for her glass, then added, "I just wanted to do something exciting for once. No harm in that. And in essence… we were helping you."
Yue Lan didn't say anything. Just gazed her which seemed to press for more.
Hye Won sighed. "Okay. Full disclosure?" She leaned forward a little, elbows on the table. "Originally, he wanted to do everything in secret. Quietly, no involvement, clean lines helping you and everything..."
She paused, then offered a half-smile. "I was the one who suggested otherwise. That we get involved directly. Stir things a little. So… yeah. Sorry about the chaos."
Yue turned to Han Chen. "You have some abilities, right? If you can, make this area soundproof ~ like you did at the hospital. I'd rather we talk and eat normally. Speaking through the mind feels like blurting things out, and I don't feel comfortable being that casual..My people outside won't butt in the middle, I told them not too."
Han Chen gave a small nod and a smile. His spirit will quietly swept out, sealing the space ~ letting sound in, but not out.
"Thanks for saying that, Hye Won. Honestly, the whole thing ~ revealing future knowledge, trusting you both; It all happened fast. I was still processing, trying to analyze it properly. It's just how I am. Sorry. And I was a little down when you stopped talking to me for months. Sorry about that too."
Hye Won gave a slight shrug, pushing her hair behind one ear. "Ah, don't worry about it. That was my bad call anyway. And... well, a lot happened after that."
She glanced at Han Chen, who was methodically working through his wagyu beef with single-minded focus. Yue Lan's fingers tightened around her wineglass. "I need to say this - forgive me if it crosses a line." She took a steadying breath. "After our last meeting, from what you'd said... I assumed it was your mother who'd be hospitalized. That he would be orphaned." Her gaze flicked to Hye Won reading the confirmation in her expression before continuing. "So I... looked into things."
The yacht's ambient lighting cast shifting patterns across the table as she spoke. "Han Chen, you appeared in academic rankings and famous for other things, but your digital footprint in social media reveals you started following me goes back to when I was in high school.Pretty much unknown back then." She leaned forward slightly. "I knew you know something about me. But then..."
"These recent events across the nation. The attack on your family. The way your parents emerged unharmed from what should have been certain death - being themselves young martial masters." Her voice dropped. "Then some Han Family members started disappearing. That's when I understood - the tragedy you described was your past and you took some revenge. It was the future you changed."
The air Han Chen didn't seem bothered but shifted his gaze to her.
" It wasn't difficult to obtain hospital records of your mother since I was actively looking for it. Your mother was admitted for late-stage cancer. You pulled her out for home care just days later. That bothered me. If you knew in advance, why wait until the end to help her?" She shook her head showing a confusing expression. "Then came that leaked footage online."
Her knuckles whitened on the glass. "Those blurry silhouettes tearing through an assassination agency… and overpowering those insects and powerful scenes one of them looked like you. Or maybe it was just something in the way you moved. The way you carry yourself now."
Her gaze shifted to Hye Won. "And you were there too." She finally set the glass down.
"I understand now. Why you, Hye Won feel different. Why you've both changed. So… thank you. For dragging that darkness into the light."
Then Hye Won spoke, almost with relief. "God, finally. You know, I was so done keeping my mouth shut and just talking to him all the time. Now that you know ~ I'm just gonna say it. I need to let it out. I've killed people."
A pause. She looked at them, half-expecting judgment, maybe even a dramatic reaction.
Han Chen cut in dryly.
"Thank you for your honesty. That must've taken real courage."
She ignored him completely, turning toward Yue Lan with a new kind of openness. "I was holding all of this in for so long. But yeah, everything you guessed ~ right on the mark. We're exactly who you think we are."
She began to talk—about her mother's sudden recovery, her own kidnapping, the kind of violence she'd seen and done, what it felt like to move through shadows no one else even knew existed. Han Chen quietly willed a glass of water toward her. It floated across the table and landed gently in front of her.
"Here. That was a dense thirty minutes. I could've done it in five."
Hye Won rolled her eyes but drank anyway. Yue Lan was silent for a while.
" Then I will also say about what I had done all these while knowing what you told me where likely true. I planed meticulously from day one.."
Another half-hour passed as Yue Lan laid it all out—how, from the moment Han Chen had spoken of the future, she had begun building a different one.
She had started with her wealth. High-end financial lawyers—ones with no ties to her family—had discreetly moved a significant portion of her liquid assets into offshore accounts and irrevocable trusts, all under carefully chosen pseudonyms. Her real estate, patents, and stocks were funneled into anonymous shell companies in secure jurisdictions, placing them beyond reach of any future family disputes.
Then came the legal defenses. Behind closed doors, she had rewritten her will, ensuring that only those she trusted would inherit—not her family. Her mother's medical directives were quietly altered, stripping anyone else of the ability to interfere with her care.
But protecting her assets wasn't enough. Yue Lan turned her focus to personal security.
An armored vehicle became her standard transport, driven by an ex-special forces operative trained in evasive maneuvers.
A security team—handpicked men and women, many with military backgrounds—shadowed her at all times for any travel related to bussiness. They conducted routine sweeps of her residences and offices for surveillance threats. Meanwhile, she personally oversaw the installation of encrypted communications, using burner phones, secure laptops, and routine digital audits to eliminate any potential leaks.
Her public persona shifted as well.
Without drawing too much attention, she rebranded herself. Through carefully placed statements and selective interviews, she built a reputation as a leader who was formidable yet untouchable—one who was always two steps ahead. She avoided flamboyance, instead cultivating an aura of quiet strength, sending a clear message: she was in control of her destiny.
Her mother's medical records were scrubbed clean of any past diagnoses that could be weaponized against them. For herself, she fabricated harmless medical conditions—minor allergies, controlled weaknesses that could serve as convenient alibis, misdirecting anyone who might try to claim she was unstable.
Beyond that, Yue Lan expanded her influence.
She built alliances with key figures in media and politics—people who, in time, would owe her favors. Carefully placed rumors kept her personal life shrouded in uncertainty, making it impossible for anyone to manipulate her into an arranged marriage or social entanglement.
And then there was the hidden world.
She knew about it now.
She hired bodyguards for her private life with martial arts backgrounds, quietly vetted through anything remotely not related to her family channels. She carried small trinkets—qi-disrupting charms from martial artist's black market that seemed like simple curiosities but could neutralize certain threats. More than that, she had begun looking into the edges of science that blurred into something else—the kind of enhancement technologies that could one day challenge the dominance of traditional cultivation.
Even as she built these external defenses, she strengthened herself from within.
She sought out covert resilience training, ensuring that if someone tried to gaslight or manipulate her, she would recognize it. And she cultivated a handful of strategic "weaknesses"—small, carefully chosen fears and habits that would give her enemies the illusion of knowing how to break her, all while leading them in the wrong direction.
By the end of the few months, she had become a ghost in the system. Her assets were secured. Her personal safety was fortified. Her influence had expanded beyond what her family could control. She taken more control over the Horizon groups researching direction as an independent head.
She had not only sidestepped the fate Han Chen had warned her about, but rewritten it.
A second glass of water drifted to her. Yue Lan took it without a word, drinking as Hye Won watched her with something like admiration—eyes lit up, shaken by the sheer efforts of a woman who had seized control without any supernatural powers or overwhelming strength. Just grit, precision, and cold resolve to fight against the fate.
Even Han Chen seemed thoughtful, until—
"Well," he said, after a beat. "Since everyone's laying out secrets… I guess I'll share one too."
There was a pause. Both women where eagerly looking forward to it too. He looked as though he might back out of it. Then:
"I've had… sexual relationship with more than five thousand women. One way or another. Hye Won, this might be shocking to you... I'm sorry if this bothers you, but I promise you, that's all in the past now."
Silence.
Yue Lan blinked. Somewhere in the background, the metaphorical sound of shattering glass could be heard.
Hye Won stood up and slapped him on the head—not out of anger, but like someone swatting a dumb cat. Han Chen just took it, eyes closed, like he knew he deserved it.
He muttered, "Okay, okay. Fair. That wasn't the time."
"I swear to God," Hye Won muttered, sitting back down.
Yue Lan looked at him, her voice dry. "I did a quick calculation. Assuming you're, say, twenty-one years old… you'd have to start by age seven to hit those numbers at one per day. Which is not just improbable—it's criminal, biologically disturbing, and mathematically insulting."
She set her glass down, sighing. "But fine. We'll let it pass. Atmosphere's probably better with a dumb joke than without."
Han Chen let out a relieved breath and stayed quiet, wisely choosing not to push further. Hye Won just kept grumbling. And somewhere, deep in his ancient mind, he was thinking:
How am I ever supposed to explain that my consciousness is over a million years old? That technically, I really wasn't joking? But he said nothing.
Plates were half-finished, glasses slowly drained. No one felt the need to rush the moment or fill the silence.