Chapter 115: I Only Need a Little Return

The moment the sound reached his ears, Wang Shenyu immediately sprang out of bed. He glanced around—the room was small, no one else was there, and the door was locked. Then his eyes shifted to the window, where the faint glow of the opposite apartment building’s lights was reflected outside.

He cautiously approached the window, leaning out slightly to scan up, down, left, and right, but saw nothing amiss. His home was on the fifth floor—not very high, but certainly no place for anyone to be standing outside the window. Quickly, he stuck his head out and then retracted it just as fast.

It seemed like there was nothing there. Had the sound just now been a hallucination?

At that moment, the room’s lights flickered dimly, causing his heart to skip a beat, yet after a moment, nothing happened. He chided himself for being paranoid.

He shut the window and locked it securely.

Casting a glance at the stack of papers on his desk, he found no motivation to work on them. Fatigue weighed on him, and he wanted nothing more than to lie back down.

“Ha ha ha ha...” A burst of laughter echoed through the room.

This time, it was definitely not a figment of his imagination.

Wang Shenyu spun around, and before him stood a burly man in a suit, smiling calmly.

“Who are you? How did you get into my house?” Wang Shenyu took a few cautious steps back, eyes flicking to the phone on his desk. The door had been locked tight earlier.

The situation conjured up unsettling images from movies and news reports in his mind.

As he hesitated, debating whether to scream for his parents, the man spoke.

“Do you yearn for change? Do you crave power?”

The words were exactly the same as those Wang Shenyu had just heard.

But now, he had no time to ponder them. A strange man, clearly not normal, had climbed five floors and entered through the window in the dead of night.

Although impeccably dressed, this man posed a serious threat to his safety.

Why he hadn’t seen him when closing the window no longer mattered.

A wave of heat surged down his back; tiny beads of sweat formed on his skin.

Should he call out? Would that provoke a dangerous reaction?

Wang Shenyu forced himself to stay calm.

“W-what do you want?” he stammered.

The man named Salaso looked at him with serene eyes, his voice unusually gentle.

“I can grant you the power to change.”

There was an almost hypnotic quality to his tone, which eased Wang Shenyu’s restlessness.

“Cowardice, timidity, confusion, oppression, irritability, pain...”

“Why, why must these afflict you?”

Salaso’s eyes began to change color; the pupils remained deep black, occupying half of his eyeballs, but the sclera seemed to dissolve into a faint reddish hue.

“I sensed your belief in change, which is why I have appeared.”

“Admit it—you desire recognition, you yearn for freedom.”

“I can give you the power to change. Do you crave power?”

If Wang Shenyu were just any casual bystander, he would have answered without hesitation, “No, I want ***!”

But he was not simply a bystander.

The words Salaso spoke stirred the oppression and discomfort within him, making him wish to escape reality immediately.

Though he hadn’t forgotten this man was a stranger, the words resonated deeply.

His inner defenses were already breached.

He let out a self-mocking laugh.

“You’d better leave. I can check if my parents are in the living room, then you can go. I won’t call the police.”

Salaso smiled at Wang Shenyu.

This boy’s resolve was shaken. All that remained to be established was a foundation of trust.

One of the human prototypes behind the primordial demon Salaso had once been an outstanding individual—what kind of person he was, Wu You didn’t care to know. It was a pity that such talent was wasted as a pirate.

Salaso reached behind him and grabbed a book from the desk.

Its title: *Mathematics Essentials*, a thick volume of two hundred pages filled with math problems.

“Tsk tsk tsk... how self-tormenting humans can be!”

Every word reached Wang Shenyu’s ears without omission, stirring a profound upheaval within him.

Suddenly, many things seemed to “make sense.”

Why could this suited man appear silently in his room at night?

He had been watching the window closely before locking it, and the door was locked as well.

There was only one explanation—

He was not human!

Those words just now—asking if he desired change and power!

Wang Shenyu’s recently calmed heartbeat began to pound fiercely once more.

Salaso observed all this clearly; the surface of the *Mathematics Essentials* began to emanate a dark shadow.

Soon, the thick reference book transformed into a solid black block.

Holding his breath, Wang Shenyu stared fixedly at this unmistakable supernatural phenomenon.

After a short while, the blackness dissipated, revealing the *Mathematics Essentials* as if unchanged.

Salaso tossed the book to Wang Shenyu, who caught it in a panic.

Curious, he opened one of the many exercise books he had long despised.

To his surprise, every problem was already filled in with answers, identical to the notes he had made on the first few pages.

He was even certain that all the answers were correct.

Salaso smiled as before, but Wang Shenyu might not have noticed that the printed text was slightly faded, the missing ink seemingly used to “write” the answers.

These problems, which Wang Shenyu found like an unfathomable code, were equally beyond Salaso’s ability—at least for now.

But the last several dozen pages contained the standard answers to the exercises, so Salaso didn’t need to solve them.

Because Salaso’s “actions” unfolded over an extended period, Wu You had only reminded him to send a conscious signal at a critical moment for him to observe.

So when Salaso appeared outside Wang Shenyu’s window, Wu You was already in observation mode.

The trick that fooled Wang Shenyu so impressively was transparent to Wu You, who thought wryly, “So it can be done like this.”

Yet at this moment, Wang Shenyu was utterly captivated by Salaso, lost in boundless imagination.

Hero’s aura, protagonist’s adventure, birth of a golden finger—all manner of thoughts surged forth.

At his age, such fantasies were natural, especially having read many novels.

“So, I’ll ask again. Do you yearn for change? Do you crave power?”

Salaso smiled warmly at Wang Shenyu.

“I ask for but a small repayment in return—I can grant you the hope of change, the seed of power!”

Following the yearning deep within his heart, Wang Shenyu blurted out.

“What do you need?”

Though the question had been asked before, now it bore a different meaning and tone.

Salaso closed his eyes softly.

“All I need is your gratitude and trust—daily, monthly, yearly. As long as you hold gratitude for me in your heart and believe wholeheartedly in the power I grant you, sincerely and with all your heart!”