After regaining his original body, Huo Li no longer displayed the adorable, Q-version appeal he once had as a figurine. Instead, he exuded an oppressive aura that was impossible to ignore. He looked nothing like the downtrodden figure his subordinates had imagined. Dressed impeccably in a tailored black suit with a crisp white shirt, his collar and cuffs were meticulously buttoned. His hair was neatly styled, as if groomed by a personal assistant in a private dressing room before attending an international conference.

Huo Li frowned slightly, his long and narrow eyes emitting a stern and piercing gaze as they swept over each person in the room. "Is this how you all conduct yourselves when I’m not around? And holding a meeting—openly discussing how to… rescue me? Hmm?"

The final "hmm" was drawn out with a subtle, ambiguous lift in tone, sending a visible shudder through the gathered group.

“B-Boss! You…”

“We didn’t… we wouldn’t dare…”

The group was utterly terrified by this unexpected reprimand. To their horror, they realized that they had been caught blatantly disobeying their boss' orders. Their attempts at clumsy excuses faltered under Huo Li's razor-sharp gaze, and they could only lower their heads in silence, too afraid to continue.

Even Aliena, usually composed and decisive, now displayed a rare look of panic. Under the weight of fear, she trembled like a pitiful silver-haired girl. In the oppressive silence, it was Liu Mo, the boldest of the group, who finally mustered enough courage to stammer out a relatively complete sentence.

“Boss, a-are you okay? We thought you were… So we…”
 
Huo Li's electric gaze abruptly shot toward Liu Mo, making him instinctively shrink back. “Oh?” Huo Li's voice dripped with mockery. “So, in the eyes of my most loyal subordinates, I should be hiding in the farthest corner of the galaxy and picking up garbage all day long?”

The group hastily shook their heads. “No! Absolutely not!”

“So, I—a ‘down-and-out’ boss—require my brilliant and resourceful subordinates to defy my orders to rescue me?” Huo Li’s icy voice echoed in the conference room, devoid of discernible emotion. To his subordinates, however, this flat tone was far more alarming—a sign of his fury pushed to the extreme. “What did I tell you before I left for Happy Planet?” Huo Li suddenly raised his voice.

This question cracked through the room like thunder, jolting the already tense saviors. Even the stray vines of the wood-type ability user inadvertently attached themselves to the dark-haired youth and trembled with the shock. The youth glanced sideways at Huo Li’s stern profile and domineering glare, his thoughts racing. (My adorable little figurine—just like that, gone! In the blink of an eye, he became a big devil pretending to be a king…….…)

Aliena knew that she had to resist the pressure and speak out to clarify. If she didn’t, the punishment for collective insubordination might end up worse than that of Lewis. She discreetly wiped her reddened eyes and broke the silence after mustering her courage.

“Boss! It’s not what it looks like. We won’t dare disobey your orders. We are using this meeting as a pretense to deal with a spy attempting to infiltrate our team and extract information. The so-called rescue plan was just a decoy.”

Huo Li raised an eyebrow, “So you were planning to kill your sister-in-law in the name of rescuing me?”

Liu Mo felt a cold sweat break out all over his body. Staring in shock at the dark-haired youth, he blurted out, “You-you're really the new recruit zz2d14—ah no, wait, our sister-in-law?!”

The black-haired youth found everyone's astonished gazes focused on him. Casually, he reached up and removed the steel-like vines hanging in his body, which he easily snapped into several pieces and arranged neatly on the conference table. He smoothed out the wrinkles in his shirt, adjusted his collar, and gave a faint smile.

“I told you from the very beginning, didn’t I? So, why did you just try to kill me now?”

The group nervously scrambled to explain themselves, their voices overlapping.

“No, no! We thought you were an impostor!”

“We’d never dare lay a finger on our sister-in-law!”

The black-haired youth said, “Okay, Liu Mo, you don't have to wink at me. This isn’t about whether I tell Huo Li or not. When you grabbed me by the neck and declared you wanted to support me, Your Boss was watching right next to me.

And when you dramatically recounted Huo Li’s punishment of Lewis, he was also right beside me. This isn’t a matter of me intentionally exposing anything.

In fact, your Boss has a special stealth ability that allows him to avoid everyone's eyes and ears across the world. Ever since the Interstellar Federation put a bounty on him, he’s been with me. From the moment I arrived on this planet and met you, Huo Li has always been by our side. You just didn’t notice.”

The youth felt that he had already tried his best to embellish Huo Li’s image, painting their Boss as a wise and powerful man to counterbalance the fact that he had been reduced to a figurine. Hopefully, this should be able to make up for the psychological shadow when he almost died from being slapped by a tablet computer, right?

Huo Li’s cold and stern face softened instantly. A gentle expression flickered across his features as he looked at his ‘little boyfriend’ who was lavishing him with praise. However, when Huo Li turned back to his subordinates, that tenderness vanished like a fleeting shadow. His gaze was once again icy, sharp enough to pierce through bone.

“Aliena, what did you just tell me? That you weren’t planning to disobey orders? When Xiao Li suggested not going to the Interstellar Federation to protest, I was right there. Ha! A few months without me, and you’ve all learned to lie?” Huo Li’s gaze moved from the pale silver-haired girl towards Liu Mo's direction.

Huo Li's gaze was filled with danger: “As for you ……”

The dangerous look in his eyes made Liu Mo’s legs buckle. With a thud, he fainted outright, falling from his chair to the floor. The loud crash echoed in the conference room, but no one dared to help him up.

“You actually thought it would be wise to protest to the Interstellar Federation! Have you all lost your minds? Then, as if that wasn’t enough, you mistook your sister-in-law as a spy and tried to take him out?” Huo Li’s piercing gaze swept over the trembling group. “If I hadn’t shown up in time, were you planning to kill the only person truly on my side and then defect to the Interstellar Federation—the very organization that has spent more than a decade trying to destroy me?”

“W-What?” The group was totally stunned by how wrong they had been. They almost made a huge mistake! The truth of the Interstellar Alliance being their Boss’s mortal enemy left them horrified.

“Hah!” Huo Li sneered. “What use do I have for fools like you?”

The group exchanged despairing looks, their faces filled with hopelessness. Was the Boss about to deal with them right here and now? Liu Mo, who had just started to regain consciousness, overheard this sentence and nearly fainted again. He managed to stay upright but staggered to the back of the group, trembling.

In this suffocating, tense atmosphere, the dark-haired youth suddenly grabbed Huo Li by the arm and leaned to whisper in his ear, “Haven’t you had enough fun yet? It's almost time for you to stop; you're already very cool. We still have business to attend to. The Zerg laboratory and the parasitic beasts from the Interstellar Alliance are waiting for us to deal with them.”
 
Huo Li took advantage of the situation to reach out and gently turn the youth’s head toward him. He whispered back, “Just five more minutes. I need to test their loyalty before deciding whether to reveal the secret of the parasites. This secret concerns the lives of billions of humans. I must be cautious. Xiao Yi, I’ve just thought of a plan, but I’ll need your cooperation. You’ll need to pretend…”

The task force members watched their Boss—who had been moments away from unleashing wrath—suddenly exchange soft whispers with Xiao Yi. Their admiration for the youth grew tenfold. Who else could interrupt Huo Li mid-rage and get away with it?

“…Is this okay?” Huo Li finally asked expectantly after whispering a lengthy explanation into Xiao Yi’s ear.

(What do you mean by ‘I might need your cooperation’? What exactly are you planning?) Xiao Yi inwardly grumbled. However, he nodded reluctantly, feeling somewhat guilty about the recent trouble he had caused. He resolved to make up for it later by showing Huo Li’s figurine form to his subordinates as a peace offering.

Huo Li turned back to the group, his voice icy. “You guys seriously violated my orders in your previous actions. I have no use for subordinates who are both stupid and self-righteous. However, you’ve worked with me for centuries and know too many secrets. Especially now that I am a wanted man across the galaxy, I cannot let you leave here alive. Out of consideration for our years together, I'm not going to torture you as much as I tortured Lewis. You may choose how to end your own lives.”

The group froze, their faces filled with disbelief. They had anticipated that today’s events wouldn’t end well, but hearing Huo Li command them to commit suicide was still beyond what they could comprehend. Stunned into immobility, they stood like nails hammered into a board, unable to move.

Huo Li sneered, “Hurry up! Don’t force me to do it myself.”

“Boss! We—we…” Da Li’s tears streamed down his face uncontrollably.

While the group was hesitating, Xiao Yi, who was standing behind Huo Li, suddenly moved with lightning speed, drawing a sharp blade and slashing it toward Huo Li. In less than a second, Huo Li’s throat was cut open, and he collapsed lifelessly to the ground with a heavy thud. Blood spurted from the slashed neck, pooling rapidly on the floor.

The group stared, dumbfounded. It felt like a dream—a nightmare, even. It took them several seconds to fully grasp the reality of what had just happened.

“Boss!”

The team members rushed forward with their eyes wide open as if they were crazy. The black-haired boy stepped back, allowing Huo Li’s panicked subordinates to take over.

Afterward, Xiao Yi secretly reached into his pocket and touched the little Huo Li's head, which was looking around in his pocket. (Haha! My figurine is back! It's a pity that he can only stay for a short time…)

The group anxiously tried to save Huo Li. They half-lifted his body and pressed the edges of his gaping wound together in a desperate attempt to stop the bleeding. Aliena retrieved a syringe of healing serum from her spatial storage and injected it into the intact side of Huo Li’s neck. Another member, who seemed to know a bit about suturing, shakily began stitching the wound. Meanwhile, Liu Mo, upon realizing that Huo Li had no pulse, laid him flat and began chest compressions. With his first push, blood gushed out of the unsealed wound.

“Liu Mo, stop making things worse!” The others shouted at him in fear.

“But we need to restore Boss’s heartbeat and breathing!” Liu Mo was nearly in tears.

The black-haired youth leaned casually on the side and said indifferently, “Alright, stop being hypocritical. Huo Li was about to kill all of you, and you lot still want to save him so that he can finish the job of silencing your group?”

“You! How dare you!” Britney pointed at the black-haired boy, her face filled with fury.

The youth took a step forward, making the group instinctively tense up, ready to stop him from doing something crazy again. But Xiao Yi simply looked down at Huo Li’s body and said, “There’s no point. His right carotid artery and trachea are completely severed. He’s beyond saving. Don’t be fooled by how powerful his psychic abilities are. Physically, he’s just as fragile as any human—perhaps even more so. One slash, and he’s done.”

Xiao Yi’s words immediately enraged the already distraught group. Da Li shot to his feet with a roar, charging straight at the youth! “I’ll crush you!” ¹

The others could only watch as Da Li, who was as strong as an ox, was sent flying by what appeared to be a casual kick from the young man. He crashed into the conference table, rolling to the ground with a loud thud and struggling to get back up.

The black-haired boy stood calmly with his arms crossed, a faint sneer on his lips, “What’s this? Are you trying to avenge your Boss? I really don't understand your group. Huo Li was about to take your lives, yet you’re still on his side?”

“Boss is a good man!” Liu Mo raised his head, glaring at Xiao Yi as though seeing him for the first time. “Boss, he loves you so much! How could you? How could you… you murderer!”

The black-haired boy looked at Liu Mo, whose lips were trembling slightly, and spoke coldly, “Hah! You should all understand the principle of choosing a good tree to live on. When Huo Li was the all-powerful Boss of the Salvation Alliance, it was natural for us small fries to follow him—or even be his boyfriend. But now? Huo Li has been expelled from the Salvation Alliance for committing heinous crimes and is hunted by the Interstellar Federation. It’s time to switch sides. By killing him, I’ve saved your lives. You should be thanking me. Now that your Boss is dead, I’ve simply killed a galactic fugitive—a man who destroyed an entire planet. Even the main system can’t punish me for this. After all, he just threatened to kill you guys, so I was acting in self-defense.”

“You’re talking nonsense!” Britney’s voice cracked as she cried out, “Boss has always been an upright and good person. For 600 years, he dedicated himself to saving worlds! How many people owe their lives to him? He was just trying to scare us earlier!”

“So what?” The black-haired boy sneered, “He’s the most wanted person across the entire galaxy. The only ones on par with him are the Aliens and that psycho 0193. Now he’s as dead as can be, we can take his body to the Interstellar Federation and claim the reward as law-abiding citizens. Ten billion star credits—half of that could be yours. And don’t try to argue morality with me. Your Boss just returned from Happy Planet, and everyone there ended up blowing themselves up with bombs as if possessed. Who would believe that wasn’t the handiwork of a spiritual powerhouse like him?”

Aliena’s hands trembled as she looked at Huo Li’s pupils, which had already dilated, and his body was getting colder and colder. With the young man's cold words constantly echoing in her ears, Aliena finally couldn't help but explode!

“Stop your slanderous lies! There’s no way he did that! The Boss did not slaughter the entire Happy Planet!”

The remaining group members were equally enraged, rising to their feet as if ready to fight Xiao Yi to the death.

But the black-haired boy looked at them coldly, as if he didn't take their ability seriously, “Heh! Do you think I'm just a useless little rookie? I am also an SS class savior, so do not act rashly now. I will ask again if anyone has given up on protecting this wanted criminal and wants to go to the Interstellar Federation with me to receive the award; come forward now! I will be polite to the rest, but if you attack me first, the main system will judge you guilty of assaulting a fellow savior.”

“You're dreaming!”

“Don't even think about it!”

The six people shouted one after another, each taking a position. Knowing that their opponent, an SS rank savior, was not easy to deal with, they looked as if they were going to fight with their life in line. Danger radiated from Aliena; her eyes gradually turned crimson red, and her power began to surge uncontrollably.

The black-haired boy chuckled, “Huo Li, isn’t this enough proof? Your subordinates believe you’re dead and are ready to fight me to death.”

The youth walked over to Huo Li’s empty body and replaced it with an identical new body within 0.01 seconds. Xiao Yi lightly kicked the “corpse” with his foot, a playful grin on his face.

“Alright, stop pretending. Get up already.”