Finally shutting the door, we started the bus, only to have thousands of fans chase after us for over a mile.

Watching the crowd recede, I took several deep gulps of water and remarked, "I didn't expect the fans in Japan to be this enthusiastic."

Beside me, Nicholas Tse commented, "But when real celebrities arrive, they don't end up as dishevelled as we are."

Edison Chen chimed in, "That's because they have professional security teams. We're short on funds and can't afford guards, so we have to do it this way."

Shawn Yue, unwilling to be left out, added, "When watching their movies, the Japanese women looked pretty good, so why wasn't there a single attractive one among the crowd just now?"

His comment opened the floodgates, and everyone started chatting about whether they might get to shake hands with an 'Aoi Sensei' this time, or how someone like Sora Aoi would be nice too.

As the lively discussion peaked, Jie Yuting cleared his throat a few times and asked Tse, "What is that you're holding?"

Tse showed Jie Yuting the green hat in his hand.

Jie Yuting stood up, took the hat, and turned it completely inside out, revealing a copper wire lodged right at the very top, inside the cap's lining.

Jie Yuting frowned, and without a word, took out a lighter and burned the hat.

We watched him finish without saying anything.

It wasn't until he used his pocket knife to carefully extract a piece of metal, resembling a copper chip, from the hat's ashes that we all gasped sharply.

Because that object was a miniature listening device.

Jie Yuting glanced at the other celebrities around him and said sternly, "What else did you take? Hand everything over."

Evidently, these people were trained; under questioning, they all claimed they hadn't accepted any gifts.

However, we eventually found something stuck to the sole of Shawn Yue’s shoe: a piece of chewing gum.

And embedded within the gum was another miniature listening device.

After discarding everything suspicious on their persons, Jie Yuting stated, "Whoever is targeting us is not simple. It might be the same group we encountered on the ship last time. We are probably exposed now."

I pondered for a moment, then asked with a frown, "Are those people monitoring every Chinese person?"

Jie Yuting understood my implication and replied, "Of course not. I don't know how they learned our true identities—perhaps there's a mole among us, or maybe we accidentally slipped up. In any case, we are public figures now, so they probably won't make an open move against us. From now on, nobody takes off their [Note: The user input here has a censored word, retaining the asterisk as requested]; we have to maintain the facade until the very end."

As he spoke, the car slowly pulled to a stop; we had arrived.

Fortunately, we weren't entering through the main entrance but using the underground parking lot connected to the mall. The area had already been sealed off by mall security to ensure our passage was completely unobstructed.

Next, we spent an hour conducting a promotional event for the mall.

It was essentially just making an appearance, handing out gifts, and participating in some interactive games.

During the event, I noticed several men in black vests loitering near the edge of the crowd, their gazes fixed on us filled with undisguised malice—clearly their lookouts.

After the activity concluded, the management specially invited us to dine at a renowned local restaurant. The place wasn't luxurious, but its décor was exquisite.

Evidently, even if the fans couldn't distinguish authenticity, the merchants knew our background, which is why they hadn't splurged on the dinner.

Or perhaps, if our promotional impact hadn't been decent, they wouldn't have bothered inviting us for a meal at all.

Despite it not being top-tier, we certainly indulged ourselves heartily.

We ordered one of everything—onigiri, sushi, ramen, and chashu. We ate with great pleasure.

Putting aside judgments about Japan as a country, their cuisine is undeniably good.

After dinner, we returned to the hotel smoothly. Although we were exhausted, Jie Yuting didn't let us rest immediately; instead, he called an emergency meeting.

Jie Yuting informed us that he had already cancelled an appearance scheduled for a radio interview tomorrow. The sentiment from 'above' was that the longer we stayed here, the more dangerous it would become. Tomorrow, we would pose as tourists heading to the Rokko-san scenic area in the suburbs of Kobe to find what we were looking for.

We all breathed a collective sigh of relief, because while being celebrities looks glamorous, none of us wanted to experience a repeat of the scene outside the hotel this morning.

Jie Yuting instructed us to keep our doors and windows locked for the night, not to allow service staff into our rooms casually, and to refrain from making phone calls, urging us to sleep early.

I didn't dare to delay; upon returning to my room, I followed every instruction Jie Yuting had given.

The next morning, we held another briefing to quickly outline the details of our operation.

Our destination was an ancient shrine deep within the Rokko mountains.

This shrine was massive, dedicated to a revered deity from six centuries ago, and it used to be a major focal point for worshippers from all over Japan. Though abandoned for many years now, it held crucial documents that were extremely useful to Jie Yuting, making the retrieval of these records our primary objective.

It seemed unlikely that an abandoned shrine would require the coordination of so many people.

I suspected the shrine was far more complicated than Jie Yuting let on—perhaps it was some kind of underground palace or labyrinth.

After the meeting concluded, Nie Chuan and I stayed behind to ask Jie Yuting two questions.

The first: When would we search for Liang Qian's antidote? And the second: Was the shrine connected to that old man with white hair we encountered previously?

Jie Yuting was forthcoming and answered both questions directly.

He explained that the specific herb had last been sighted on Mount Rokko, so our trip would serve the dual purpose of retrieving the documents from the shrine and searching for the herb simultaneously.

Regarding the second question, Jie Yuting’s answer was a cautious "I don't know," but based on the intelligence he possessed, the shrine might still be a stronghold for certain dangerous elements.

The reason the shrine was shut down was that the Japanese government discovered the followers frequently held secret assemblies, accumulating vast resources with seditious intent.

To prevent the formation of an armed force threatening the government, the shrine was forcibly closed.

Logically, with the shrine closed and the followers dispersed, the matter should have concluded then.

However, since then, locals reported seeing large numbers of military personnel traversing the mountains to reach the shrine, staying inside for ten days or half a month without emerging, and nobody knew what they were doing in there.

Some villagers even claimed that lights frequently appeared at the shrine at night, and others swore they saw five or six helicopters parked outside.

In reality, these were internal Japanese affairs, having nothing to do with the Xie family initially.

But the fact remains that the shrine's underlings not only survived but secretly festered, eventually posing a direct threat to the Xie family's existence—hence today's mission.

I thought to myself, Well, they brought us here to help the Xie family settle a blood feud.

Jie Yuting countered that this was not solely a Xie family affair; it was deeply connected to my own grandfather. Otherwise, with so many experts in the Xie family, they wouldn't have needed to specifically request my presence.

Ultimately, Jie Yuting was acting to help me, because helping me would, in turn, help many others.

I didn't fully grasp his meaning or motivations, but I had a persistent premonition that this entire situation was inextricably linked to me, just as Jie Yuting claimed.

That evening, Jie Yuting distributed gear to us—mostly survival and mountaineering equipment, packed into large hiking backpacks. Following local custom, the packs were all marked with a back-to-back logo.

I noted that the gear included everything needed for wilderness camping, except for firearms. Knowing Japan's strict gun control laws, I wasn't surprised.

To prepare for the journey ahead, I decided to get a solid night's sleep first.

I'd heard the scenery on Mount Rokko was stunning, particularly the maple leaves and flower fields, which were supposedly world-class sights. Unfortunately, we were out of season; the maples hadn't turned red, and the flowers had mostly withered. Still, watching the remarkably tame monkeys on the mountain would be a consolation.

Lost in these thoughts, I drifted off to sleep.

I slept soundly that night, yet in the middle of the darkness, I was suddenly gripped by a strange dream.

I dreamt I was sitting in my grandfather's small courtyard, engrossed in reading a book, though the text was blurry, I focused intensely.

Just as I was completely absorbed, my younger female cousin approached and handed me a package, saying it was sent by Grandpa.

When I opened the package, the contents startled me so badly that my soul nearly fled my body.