Jingle~

The warm morning breeze swept past the windowsill, shaking the golden bells on the curtains and producing crisp, ringing sounds.

Inside a luxury flat towering over the Upper City, the harsh sun outside Hive City—where radiation levels far exceeded safe limits—was filtered through the autonomous purification system at the edge of the skyline, transforming into a soft glow brimming with vitality that made one intoxicated just by breathing it in.

“Hoo...”

After tossing and turning all night and fighting continuously until late into the night, a figure so exhausted his bones felt loose rolled over, spreading his arms as if trying to embrace something.

But those long arms grasped nothing.

Beside the soft bed, the tender body that should have been cuddling him had long since left, leaving only a sweet lingering scent drifting through the elegant room.

“Xiao Wei, Xiao—oh, right, at this hour Xiao Wei’s already gone to work.”

Li Chen woke up.

Looking at the bed beside him that still retained a trace of warmth, a flicker of disappointment passed through Li Chen’s eyes.

Ding-dong.

[Dear Member Mr. Li Chen, you have a new incoming call.]

It was Xiao Wei.

‘She must have guessed that I’d feel a bit down if I woke up and didn’t see her, so she called specially to comfort me, right?’

Knowing his fiancée’s temperament inside and out, Li Chen’s gloom came quickly and left just as fast. After adjusting his mood, he deliberately put on a silly expression and accepted the call.

“Good morninggg~~”

Dressed in a crisp Public Security Bureau uniform, showing no trace of last night’s battle, his wife looked radiant and energetic as she beamed happily at him.

“Dear hubby, guess who I am?”

“Ah...”

Pretending to still be groggy from sleep, Li Chen rubbed his eyes before widening them in exaggerated surprise, “Huh? Xiao Wei, how are you already at the Public Security Bureau?”

“Hmph hmph, unlike a certain silly husband who snores like a little pig the moment he falls asleep, did you forget your cutest fiancée’s job?”

Bai Wei patted the desk in front of her, piled high with documents bearing headache-inducing titles like “Compilation of Informant Intelligence (Top Secret: Paper Records Only, No Electronic Storage),” “Latest Movements of Wanted Criminals (Confidential),” and “Latest Statistics on Black Market Prosthetics (For Internal Reference).”

Just looking at them made Li Chen break out in goosebumps and even feel a bit nauseous.

If there was anything in the world that could terrify him—someone who feared neither heaven nor earth and treated death as nothing—then the mountain of paperwork before his eyes was the one and only thing.

Back when he had followed a certain consortium heiress through the cutthroat world of business, earning heavy trust thanks to stacks of era-defying proposals, he had been nominally a bodyguard but in practice also served as head of security, personal confidential secretary, driver and a long list of other “important positions.” It was then that he developed a strong distaste for certain habits of Hive City’s upper class.

The most typical of these was the so-called “reverence for ancient styles.”

And unfortunately, in this cyberpunk era, “ancient” didn’t refer to medieval nobility, but rather the “modern era” Li Chen had lived in before transmigrating.

Of course, according to the consortium families, that period was called the “Age of Super-Enterprise Emergence.”

For someone who had once lived every day as a corporate drone in that so-called “ancient” era, what could be more detestable than grand-sounding meetings with no real substance, documents stuffed with meaningless jargon to make simple things obscure and other such nonsense?

When he had first crawled out of the Lower Hive and struggled in the commercial zone between the Lower City and Upper Hive, Li Chen had been pleasantly surprised to find that many old-world bad habits had been eliminated in this cyber world due to the emphasis on efficiency.

Who would have thought that in the Upper Hive, the higher one’s status and the more “leisure time” elites had, the more they worshipped these chaotic formalities?

“Wah, spare me!”

Li Chen raised both hands sincerely in surrender.

“Respected Miss Bai Wei, your fiancé has deeply realized the insurmountable gap between us. Please spare me!”

“Good that you know.”

Seeing her husband’s terrified expression, Bai Wei felt all her fatigue vanish, leaving only warmth behind.

“Anyway, Xiao Chen, after wrapping up yesterday’s operation, our Special Operations Unit shouldn’t have much busy work for a while, so...”

Her eyes filled with tenderness, “I’ll be home earlier today. Don’t be like yesterday and flirt with improper bad women outside while your poor wife is working overtime late into the night, okay~~”

“Alright, alright.”

‘This little rascal.’

Li Chen laughed helplessly, going along with her words, “From now on, your husband will stay home all day, never stepping outside, locking himself in and being a chaste, good man.”

“T-that’s not necessary…”

Seeing such an extreme vow, Bai Wei lowered her head shyly on the other side of the screen.

“I-I’m not trying to restrict your freedom. It’s just that you’re too handsome—every time you go out, wild women stare at you. I—I get jealous too.”

Looking at Bai Wei’s pitiful expression, Li Chen snorted theatrically and declared righteously, “Wild women? Xiao Wei, is that how you see me? Looks like when you get home from work, I’ll have to punish you properly~”

Recalling last night’s fierce battle, where he had emerged victorious and thoroughly “disciplined” Xiao Wei until she surrendered completely, Li Chen brimmed with confidence.

“Ugh! Y-you stop talking already, it’s embarrassing! Anyway, I’m going back to work now. O-oh right, didn’t you make dinner for me yesterday? I prepared breakfast for you today too~~”

Beep beep!

As if recalling something mortifying, Bai Wei’s face flushed red. She stammered a few words and hung up the call.

“Breakfast?”

Li Chen froze, then seemed to realize something. The victorious grin on his face stiffened instantly.

Uneasy, he left the bedroom and crept toward the dining table, his heart pounding.

‘Please don’t be too disastrous.’

Since the Great Catastrophe, human civilization had regressed countless steps from its golden age, including a field humanity had mastered since ancient times—cooking. [TL: I don’t see how cooking could possibly regress, but oh well lol.]

Although archaeologists’ restorations and high-tech assistance allowed people to roughly recreate simple dishes via pre-made meals and database-driven robots, once it came to “pure manual cooking,” only so-called “masters” trained specifically for Uppermost Hive consortium families were passable. Everyone else was a disaster.

But a wife’s goodwill couldn’t be wasted…

So Li Chen steeled himself with the resolve of marching to an execution ground—the wind sighs, the Yi River runs cold; the hero departs, never to return—and nervously looked at the “loving breakfast” his fiancée had left.

‘Eh… ehhh?’

Just as he had braced for the worst, what entered his vision wasn’t a scene of destruction.

On the ceramic plate lay a neatly made sandwich.

Triangular slices of white bread, thin cheese, a few leaves of cabbage and a slice of ham…

Simple, even crude.

But not a disaster.

Li Chen took a bite.

The taste was ordinary, no different from street-side breakfast shops from before his transmigration.

Yet that familiar warmth—something that didn’t belong to this era—hit his heart harder than any luxurious feast ever could.

‘Hm?’

As he picked up the sandwich, Li Chen noticed a small card underneath. Written in elegant handwriting was a single line:

[To my most beloved fiancé:

You stinky husband, you actually secretly broke through to second tier behind my back?

Alright, I know you never gave up on your childhood dream, so… I specially bought you a top-tier membership card for Thunder Martial Arts Hall.

I heard their hall has a special method for improving martial aptitude. If you have time, go try it out.

Your cutest wife, Bai Wei.]

‘Thunder Martial Arts Hall?’

Touching the gilded card beside the note—clearly very expensive—Li Chen’s eyes flickered.

Of course he knew this famous top-tier martial hall.

Founded by the world’s number one spear user, a legendary ninth-tier martial artist. In late-game content, it was a place where top-grade manuals could drop—though the probability was… well, those on the grind deserve it.

‘I heard even the personal guards of many consortium families train there.’

Li Chen shook his head.

‘Really, Xiao Wei spends money so freely again.’

Yet despite the faint complaint in his words, as he ate the breakfast filled with his fiancée’s care, Li Chen’s eyes shimmered with affection too thick to melt.

‘Come to think of it, I used to handle meals for those bad women every day and never once saw this kind of gratitude… The difference between people, huh. Forget it. I’m about to marry Xiao Wei anyway. Why bother with those people? Though I wonder if I should notify them about the engagement?’

Li Chen thought for a moment, then shook his head hard.

‘Better not. A clean cut is best. So, what to do today? Chat with the neighbors’ husbands? Uh, never mind. Better not waste Xiao Wei’s goodwill—let’s go to that martial hall.’

Beep beep!

As Li Chen pondered, the familiar interface popped up on his retinal display.

[Daily intel loading complete!]

* * *

Meanwhile, in the Uppermost Hive.

At the headquarters of the Solares Consortium.

“Young miss, it’s time for breakfast.”

A mature woman dressed as a butler clapped her hands lightly. A woman in a pristine chef’s coat carried a pure silver tray and respectfully presented the meal.

Clack.

Fragrance filled the air.

A fully roasted, ruby-red chicken looked especially appetizing against the refined plating.

The newly appointed president of the Solares Consortium took a small bite with her knife and fork, tasting it elegantly.

“Young miss?”

The butler lowered her head.

“Does it suit your taste? This was prepared by a top chef from a culinary school sponsored by our consortium, using ancient methods—”

“Not this flavor.”

Daili set down her cutlery and asked boredly, “By the way, how did the matter I asked you to investigate last night turn out?”

“You mean Newborn Pharmaceuticals…”

“Hmph.”

A flash of killing intent passed through Daili’s eyes.

“They actually dared to secretly investigate my Xiao Chen. Butler, do you think they’ve lost their minds?”

“Uh, I believe this may have been an accident,” the butler analyzed dutifully.

“An accident? I hate coincidences the most.” Daili tapped the table lightly, “Arrange a dinner with the chairman of the Montmorency Consortium. I’m curious how much the head of one of their subsidiaries’ CEOs is worth.”

“…Understood.”

The butler froze for a moment, then bowed and prepared to carry out the order.

“Wait.”

Daili stopped her.

“Y-young miss, do you have further instructions?” the butler asked, barely daring to breathe.

“Well… didn’t you suggest last time that I should be proactive, proactive in expressing my feelings to Xiao Chen?”

The powerful figure who moments ago had casually spoken of taking Upper Hive elites’ lives now looked awkward, speaking softly like a young person meeting a lover’s parents for the first time.

“Do you think I should give him a gift? Maybe a recipe? You know, I used to love the dishes Xiao Chen cooked for me…”

Ding-dong.

[An account you follow closely has posted a new update.]

“It’s that Bai Wei’s. Hmph.”

Daili opened the screen with displeasure.

A table full of sumptuous dishes filled her blue eyes, stealing all her attention.

[My husband personally prepared dinner for me. Ahhh, I’m so happy!]

The Solares Consortium president scrolled blankly.

This time, it was a figure making sandwiches in the kitchen.

[To repay my husband, I also made breakfast with love for the first time. I almost cut my finger, but it was all worth it.

Tag: Newlywed life, super gourmet, love…]

Clatter.

“Xiao Chen, y-you actually cooked for another woman?”

The knife and fork fell to the floor with a clear clang.