The master bedroom was enormous, and even included a private washroom. Unlike a hotel suite, however, this master bedroom referred to a suite of relatively independent spaces, including a washroom, a study, a sunroom, and even a golf practice platform.

The study directly in front of the master bedroom resembled a formal office space, essentially a reception room for discussing matters. It could be said that half of the entire floor was dedicated to the family patriarch, being used for their work and private living space.

“Put the things down. You may leave.”

“Yes.” After placing the toiletries down, the two maids turned and left, closing the bedroom door behind them.

Karon took off his clothes and got in the shower to bathe.

He liked letting his emotions drain out while showering. As hot water washed over his body, his thoughts instead became calm.

After finishing his shower, he glanced at the bath that had already been filled in advance. He did not get in to soak, but rather dried himself off and put on a black set of sleepwear, and then walked over to sit on the bed.

It was very soft, and there was a faint scent of vanilla that lingered in the air, though he did not know what was giving it off. In any case, it was definitely not incense.

The golden retriever was currently lying on the large sofa opposite the bed. It very consciously tugged a blanket up with its mouth, covering itself properly. After lying down, it seemed to notice Karon’s gaze and even bared its teeth at him in a grin.

Then, where is Pu’er? Karon’s gaze swept to his side. He picked up a pillow next to him and found Pu’er lying there.

Karon looked at the cat, and Pu’er looked back at him. “It’s been so many years since I’ve slept on a bed at home. I really missed it. Oh, the smell of home!”

“Don’t you think it’s a bit inappropriate for you to sleep here?”

“Hm?” Pu’er blinked her big eyes. “What’s the problem?”

Then, she smiled. “I’m a cat now. Isn’t it perfectly normal for a cat to sleep on the same bed as its owner?

“Or are you saying you don’t see me as a cat? Oh, if you don’t see me as a cat, what do you see me as? Ohohoho! How can your mind have such filthy thoughts, ol’ great heretical god?”

Karon also smiled at Pu’er.

She lowered her head again and closed her eyes, intending to go back to sleep.

She then felt herself being picked up, her body leaving the soft bed.

“You can’t do this! I’ve been away from home for so many years! Why can’t I sleep on the bed?”

Ignoring Pu’er’s protests, Karon placed her on the sofa.

The golden retriever pulled at its own blanket, trying to offer some for Pu’er to share.

“Get lost, you stinking dog!” Pu’er jumped back off the sofa and prepared to dash back onto the bed when Karon’s gaze swept over. “Well, Young Master, I’ll just sleep at the foot of the bed. The foot is fine, right? Just that spot. Just that little bit of space.”

The foot of the large bed was connected to a soft couch.

Karon nodded. Pu’er jumped onto the soft couch and lay down. He picked up a pillow and tossed it to Pu’er.

“Oh, thank you, my stingy yet generous Young Master, Your Highness.” Pu’er leaned against the pillow and looked at Karon, who was sitting against the headboard.

“Actually, things are pretty good right now, aren’t they? Your purification ritual requires a large quantity of blessed items, as well as an absolutely quiet environment where you won’t be disturbed. Both of these requirements can be handled for you by the Allen family. You just need to give the word, and they’ll take care of everything as quickly as possible. At least they’re capable when it comes to doing that kind of work.”

“I don’t know how to run a family.” In his previous life, Karon had only ever run his own psychological clinic. While the clinic did have quite a few employees, that could not really be considered management in a strict sense.

“Relax. The Allen family has already fallen to this point. They’re on the verge of bankruptcy. They might even deal with that during Eunice’s generation, so this family is already sitting at rock bottom. No matter how badly you do, there’s nowhere left to fall.

“Even taking ten thousand steps back, if you truly do nothing at all and simply treat the Allen family as the place where you cultivate the Church of Order’s faith system, letting them assist you is still perfectly fine. After you complete purification, you can fabricate an identity and enter the Church of Order, keeping one foot inside the Church of Order having the other supported by the Allen family.

“Once you become an Inquisitor and get a better assignment, you can place the Allen family under your protection. After all, the Church of Order is very protective of its own, and its fists are very hard.”

“What about this family’s system itself?” Karon asked. “I mean, you never really told me about the stages of the family system’s legacy, or even its structure.”

“Because it doesn’t really have a system, at least not one as clearly stratified as a church’s. For example, the early stages of the Church of Order are: Purified to Divine Servant; Inquirer to Divine Seeker: Contemplator to Divine Shepherd; and then comes the Inquisitor stage.

“Other churches may use different names, but in the early phases all have the same three stages of Divine Servant, Divine Seeker, and Divine Shepherd.

“A Divine Servant purifies their body, like cleaning a house. A Divine Seeker questions their own heart and receives revelation from their god, inviting the divine presence into the house. A Divine Shepherd then uses their own understanding and contemplation to fuse the god’s revelations with themselves through constant thought and reflection, like renovating the shop.

“Breaking through that level leads to the Inquisitor stage, which is when the shop officially opens for business.

“Family faith systems do not have the Purifier, Inquirer, or Contemplator stages.”

“They don’t have those stages?”

“That’s right. Because gods are supreme and mighty beings. They show mercy to mortals and scatter divine radiance upon their believers. It’s like a teacher at school. Only when your desire to learn is sincere will the teacher be more willing to teach you.

“But an ancestor is different. Your relationship with your ancestor is determined by your bloodline. If you are born into their family, then their blood flows through you, and you naturally gain their recognition. When parents give birth to a child, do they wait until the child is three or four years old, administer an IQ test, and only then decide whether or not to acknowledge that the child is theirs? From the moment the child is born, even from the moment the mother becomes pregnant, that relationship already exists. Family faith does not require self-preparation. It only requires reaching a kind of unseen resonance with the ancestor.”

“Does that mean that, for family systems, the starting point is already Inquisitor level?”

“That’s correct,” Pu’er nodded, but then shook her head. “But the gap is enormous.”

She shifted so that she was sitting on the pillow before continuing, “First of all, under normal circumstances, family ancestors cannot compare to gods. Their standing is fundamentally different. Of course, there are a few families with truly monstrous bloodlines whose ancestors can come infinitely close to gods, and some even surpass gods, but we’re not talking about extreme cases. We’re talking about the norm.

“Most family ancestors cannot compare to true gods, so the difference is vast.

“Next, don’t think that the Divine Servant, Divine Seeker, and Divine Shepherd stages are a waste of time. They are actually laying the foundation. The initial three stages of an orthodox church faith system are like finishing high school and then going to university. You might do some part-time work, but most of your support still comes from your family.

“A family faith system skips these three stages. It’s like graduating from middle school and immediately going out to work and earn money. You don’t need family support, and you can even earn a decent income yourself, but when looking at future development, generally the people who went to university have definitively more options and room to grow in their careers.

“Of course, it can’t be denied that some exceptional individuals can build their own careers even with only a middle school education, but the effort required is far greater and the proportion is very small. We can just look at the median case.

“To give another analogy, an Inquisitor in the Church of Order is like the chief of a local police department. Someone who comes from a family faith system is more like a gang boss on the street.

“If you really want a classification system like the one you’re asking about, there is one. We usually just use levels, level one, level two, level three, all the way up to level ten.”

Hearing this classification, Karon sighed. “That’s really... casual.”

“Yes, exactly. It’s that casual, because it doesn’t really have any substance. These level one, level two, level three distinctions can be understood as percentages, but they aren’t absolute percentages either, because the degree of difference within them is huge and cannot be precisely described.”

“I don’t think I quite understand.”

“That’s because family faith systems worship ancestors. Descendants grope their way toward inheriting their ancestor’s power through veneration. Each ancestor’s strength and abilities differ wildly, so it’s impossible to create a standard that applies to all family systems.

“For example, my family’s ancestor could punch your family’s ancestor to death. I may be a level one in my family faith system, while you’re level three in your family faith system. Because the benchmarks of our ancestors are at different heights, when you face me, you would actually feel uncertain.”

“In that case, does level ten mean fully replicating the ancestor’s power?” Karon asked.

“Yes, but almost no one truly replicates their ancestor. I’ve never seen it. Bloodlines thin out as the inheritance is divided, and there are always other conditions. An ancestor may have reached that height through a singular opportunity or a unique resource, something you will never be able to repeat.”

All of this meant that the overall development trajectory of family faith systems was basically a downward slope, though it could be slowed through other means. With luck, it might even open up new paths of growth.

For example, fusing or absorbing other family faith systems. At minimum, doing so could enrich a family’s own system. There was also an extremely small chance that concentrating two systems would cause some sort of mutation in their descendants.

“The simplest example is a husband from an earth-attributed family system marrying a wife from a nature-attributed family system. Their child might inherit both earth and nature attributes, and those two aspects can resonate and reinforce each other. With a certain probability, that dual attribute can even be passed down to the next generation. This is why families with compatible attributes intermarry so frequently, and also why even when attributes don’t align or match at all, if there is any chance, they will still try the pairing. There is always the possibility of an unexpected outcome.”

“It sounds like family faith systems and what you’re doing are kind of like...”

“Like what?” Pu’er waited for Karon’s analogy.

“Like hybrid rice breeding.”

Pu’er blinked. “That analogy is a bit obscure. Can I understand it as something like selective breeding?” 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

“More or less.”

“Then yes, that’s exactly what it is. So, we’ve always known that weakness is the original sin of our family. Once you weaken to a certain extent, your clansmen become breeding vessels for other families, pigs in a pigpen.

“In fact, many years ago, the slave markets already had this category of ‘pigs’. Descendants of some family or listed for sale. Whoever wanted to try could buy them and see.

“Among them, women commanded far higher prices than men and were sold much more easily. As slaves, women could become pregnant and give birth, which buyers found more acceptable, both in terms of cost efficiency and psychological comfort.

“That said, there were also rare and valuable male slaves, but such men invariably possessed truly special family faith legacies. They could often be auctioned off for astronomical prices.”

Woof! Woof! Woof! The golden retriever suddenly barked at Pu’er.

She froze for a moment, then cursed back at the dog. “You dead dog, you’re actually trying to sow discord!”

The golden retriever shook its head and lay back down.

Pu’er spoke frankly to Karon, “For example, you, Karon. On the slave market, you would definitely fetch a sky-high price, because you’re currently the only heir of the Immers bloodline, and you’re also so handsome. There would definitely be noble ladies who, while coveting your appearance, would also long to personally give birth to children with powerful bloodlines.”

Karon leaned forward, looking at Pu’er sitting on the pillow at the foot of the bed. “So this is why you’ve always wanted me to stay with the Allen family?”

Pu’er mimicked Karon’s posture, placing her paws in front of her and resting her chin on them while looking at him. A man and a cat mirrored each other while staring at one another. “Karon, I never hide my intentions, and I also believe you’ve always been able to see them clearly. I like sweet-and-sour fish, so I ask you to make sweet-and-sour fish for me. Isn’t that perfectly normal? I didn’t deceive you by saying I was poisoned and only sweet-and-sour fish could save me, right?

“Also, I know that from your perspective, this way of joining would make you uncomfortable, especially after I told you about the existence of such a slave market, but don’t forget one thing: who was it that helped you choose the Allen family?”

A contemplative look appeared in Karon’s eyes. This was indeed his final concern.

“Actually, I’m not familiar with Anderson. He was born after I’d already left the family. But Tiz knew him.

“Now, I think that old man is indeed a useless fool when it comes to running the family, cultivating systems, and educating descendants, but... why would Tiz be willing to sit in a study drinking tea and chatting with a ‘useless fool’? And even endure that useless fool’s endless nagging, urging him not to be negative?”

“Weren’t you the one who forged the relationship between the Allen family and the Immers family?” Karon asked.

“Yes, I did forge it, but is the Allen family with me the same as the Allen family without me? More importantly, is an Immers family with Tiz the same as one without Tiz? Back then, I chose to establish ties with the Immers family because they were a stable source of Church of Order personnel. A family capable of producing church talent with that level of consistency was genuinely rare. And at that time, I was at the height of my glory. Choosing whom to form ties with was just a matter of a sentence. But later, I became a cat, and Tiz grew from a child into what he is now.

“The history of the Immers family can be divided entirely by the appearance of Tiz. From that point on, what qualifications did the Allen family have to form ties with an Immers family that had Tiz? Tiz dared to blow up the Temple of Order. Would he care about so-called inherited family friendships from the previous generation? Even Rasma had to speak cautiously when talking to Tiz. What right did Anderson, that idiot leader, have to drink tea and chat with Tiz?

“So, is it possible that Tiz long ago saw that while Anderson is stupid in many aspects, he might have certain instincts that are extremely sharp? For example, the moment you entered the Allen estate, he immediately overruled opposition and insisted on handing the family over to you.”

Karon did not speak, because he had already thought of another possibility. No one understood his grandfather’s temperament better than he did. Even Mina, Lent, and the others held his grandfather in awe. As for outsiders, unrelated outsiders, his grandfather was too lazy even to offer perfunctory courtesy.

Most importantly, when Tiz arranged something, his meticulousness was genuinely terrifying upon examination. He seemed to never make useless arrangements. Every step laid the groundwork for something in the future. You only realized it once events unfolded, and sometimes, after some time had passed, you would suddenly have another moment of realization.

Pu’er said bluntly, “You say I saw your potential and your future and wanted to pull you into the Allen family to help drag my fallen, useless family back onto the right track.

“Then... all those years ago, why did Tiz personally receive the Allen family idiots again and again?” Pu’er leaned forward further. Then, she accidentally tipped forward, rolled once, and sat down in front of Karon, her tail once again upright in front of her belly, the same position as when she laid on her back. “Could it be that while Anderson, that idiot, was encouraging Tiz to pull himself together, Tiz was savoring the Allen family’s faith system? Was the Allen family’s faith system exactly what Tiz believed would be the best supplement to the Immers bloodline?”

Karon spoke, “But Grandpa wanted his family’s descendants to live peaceful lives as ordinary people, no longer stepping into the dark church circles.”

“That was the later Tiz. The earlier Tiz might not have had those same thoughts. Besides, even if he did have that thought, it wouldn’t matter. Maintaining a relationship with the Allen family until that outcome was achieved is perfectly understandable behavior.

“Look at what Tiz prepared for you: me, that stupid dog, and that radio demon. You also lack neither money nor resources, which is why you had the idea of packing up and leaving. It’s because you could completely live in seclusion in Veyn and take everything slowly. The Allen family might provide you with help, but it could also bring you trouble. And as a refined egoist, what you dislike most is trouble and responsibility.

“Do you think Tiz wouldn’t have thought of that? Then why did he still force you to go on a blind date with Eunice? Why insist that his most beloved and his dearest grandson live with the Allen family? Anderson doesn’t have that much face. Since you want to walk this path, then why couldn’t Tiz consider this for his... great-grandchild?

“You might blame me for treating you like breeding stock these past few days, but perhaps for decades, Tiz has considered the Allen family to be living inside the pigpen he envisioned.”

Pu’er opened her mouth, bit her own tail, then pushed it forward and spread her paws. “My suggestion is that you wait and observe for a bit. You’ve already bathed here and are preparing to sleep here in this master bedroom. In fact, you already have your own analysis and decision in your heart. But there is still one thing I need to remind you of. If you believe that Tiz always has your best interests at heart, then after hearing his instructions, as his most treasured grandson, what kind of response should you give?”

Pu’er clapped her paws together. Unfortunately, her paw pads were too thick to make a sound. Even so, she imitated Karon’s tone, “‘Alright, Grandpa.’”

At this point, Karon glanced at the sky outside the window and said, “I’m going to take a nap. We’ll probably still have dinner together tonight.”

“Alright, Young Master Karon.” Pu’er rolled back to her soft couch.

Karon lay down, pulled the blanket over himself, and closed his eyes. Pu’er’s words continued to echo intermittently in his mind, but after such a long journey, he was indeed tired.

Pu’er, sleeping on the soft couch, extended a paw. Just next to the couch was a small wheel, which she gently turned with her paw.

A faint, crisp sound rang out, like a lullaby. The design of the master bedroom seemed to have taken this wheel’s existence into account. This sound echoed and seemed to start to dance about the room. The person about to fall asleep would feel no irritation at all, because it was a sound intended to aid sleep.

Pu’er lay there, listening to the lullaby while falling deep into her memories. Her eyes carried a hint of melancholy, but she soon closed them.

On the bed, Karon was the same. Within this gentle, silent hypnotic melody, he fell into sleep.

***

“Uncle.”

“Ah, Karon, you’re back!”

“Aunt.”

“Oh, my Karon has come home.”

“Aunt Mina, where are Clarice and the others?”

“They’re back in school; Didn’t you know?”

“So that’s how it is.”

Familiar stairs. First floor. Second floor. Third floor.

Karon walked to the study door and raised his hand to knock.

Knock. Knock.

“Come in.”

Pushing open the door, Karon saw Tiz sitting behind the desk. “Grandpa, I’m back.”

Tiz put down the fountain pen in his hand and raised his head to look straight at Karon. “Is it true that Eunice is pregnant?”

***

Karon opened his eyes. A strong numbness and soreness surged through his body, as though all the fatigue stored in every cell had been completely released while he had been asleep. The discomfort quickly faded, replaced by a sense of fullness and vitality in both body and spirit. He had slept soundly, and very deeply.

When he raised his head to look at the clock right in front of the bed, he found that it was four thirty. However, it was pitch black outside the window. It was no longer the afternoon. He had not taken a two-hour nap, but had slept through to the early hours of the next morning.

“Huff...” So he had missed dinner. As a guest, that was a serious breach of etiquette.

Karon lifted the blanket, preparing to wash up. Unexpectedly, Pu’er, who had originally been sleeping on the soft couch, had somehow ended up on the blanket atop his chest. By moving the blanket, he had rolled the cat off his chest and onto the floor with a soft thump.

The floor was carpeted, so it did not hurt. Pu’er was sleeping soundly and did not even wake. She merely rolled over and continued sleeping. After all, while Karon had spent half a month traveling to Veyn, Pu’er had spent more than a hundred years on her road home.

After washing up, Karon opened his luggage and changed into his formal attire. He felt a little hungry, but regardless, he needed to go out and express his apologies. Anderson and Bede were likely asleep as well, but at the very least, he could convey his apologies to the night-duty servants.

When Karon pushed open the bedroom door, he froze. There were three people sleeping in the corridor outside.

Mike was asleep in his wheelchair, Bede was asleep on a chair, and Master Anderson lay on a makeshift bed formed by pushing three chairs together.

The sound of the door opening startled them all awake. Mike woke first, followed by Bede. The old man, Master Anderson, whose sleep was shallow and who had opened his eyes earlier before closing them again, “accidentally” rolled off the chairs and onto the carpet once his two sons had risen.

Bede immediately moved to help his father, but the old man waved him off, laughing as he turned to Karon. “You’re awake, child. Oh no. Young Master Karon.”

“What is this...?” Karon asked.

“It’s like this, Young Master Karon.” Anderson straightened up. Beside him, Bede lifted a thick stack of folders. “These are the Allen family’s business and asset accounts. Please have a look.”

Bede held out the documents. Mike’s expression was solemn. Another red cane mark now marked his face, an addition to the previous one. Master Anderson’s legs trembled, his lips quivered, and his gaze remained locked onto Karon with naked expectation.

Karon placed his hand on the documents. Then, he gently pushed them aside.

In that instant, Master Anderson’s face went ashen. His legs stopped trembling, and his lips stopped quivering.

But just a moment later, a single comment from Karon brought the color back to the old man’s face. “Let’s go to the study.”