Defeat the system! Kiss my little monster!

Pei Du was speechless at Sheng Shixian's actions.

At the rate that Sheng Shixian consumes two toothbrushes a day, Pei Du would need to buy at least a hundred more toothbrushes as spares.

"Uh... doesn't your tooth hurt?" Pei Du asked.

Sheng Shixian's eyes darted around slightly: "A little."

The plastic sheet won't damage his teeth, but it will cut his gums. The soft tissue there is delicate and not yet as firm as the plastic.

Sheng Shixian tasted the blood in his mouth and closed his mouth without saying anything more.

“That’s not how you brush your teeth.” Pei Du sighed. He took the toothbrush and toothpaste and demonstrated it to Sheng Shixian, intentionally guiding him to use it correctly. “Just brush it until it foams, there’s no need to bite it off, like this.”

Sheng Shixian leaned against the sink with one hand, his gaze following Pei Du's movements, his pupils reflecting Pei Du's features perfectly. Pei Du's thin eyelids and pupils, a few shades deeper than Sheng Shixian's, also occasionally revealed glimpses of his appearance.

"Do you understand?" Pei Du asked.

"Hmm." The darkness in Sheng Shixian's eyes deepened, and he nodded slightly after watching Pei Du's entire demonstration.

Pei Du didn't press further. Sheng Shixian had a strong learning ability; he could probably learn how to brush his teeth after watching it just once.

Pei Du washed his face, and after he finished, he arranged everything on the sink neatly and put a new toothbrush for Sheng Shixian inside.

Sheng Shixian stood motionless to the side. He had been sitting for five or six hours in the afternoon, so Pei Du gave him more time to move around in the evening.

Sheng Shixian walked around the room twice, leaning on his cane, with Pei Du following behind him, watching his every move.

Sheng Shixian lingered for quite a while in each part of the house, as if he was intentionally trying to memorize every detail of the house's structure.

Pei Du adopted a laissez-faire attitude, believing that with Sheng Shixian's rapidly increasing intelligence, it was only a matter of time before he mastered the structure of the house.

Pei Du was willing to let him know in advance, so that he wouldn't have any ulterior motives later and cause trouble for Pei Du in disguise.

Sheng Shixian walked hesitantly and slowly. He stopped at the long table in the hall for more than ten minutes.

Pei Du thought he had something to say: "Do you want to rest?"

Sheng Shixian didn't speak. He looked away and continued walking forward, leaning on his cane. When he reached the same spot on the second lap, Sheng Shixian seemed to have suddenly lost all his energy, standing blankly like a wooden statue in front of the long table.

This time it lasted longer, almost half an hour.

Pei Du immediately noticed something was wrong. He followed Sheng Shixian's gaze and looked ahead, his eyes fixed on the top of the long table.

This long table is quite old and is made of imported ebony. The wood is hard and extremely dense, sinking immediately in water. The grain of the ebony is ordinary, like ink splashed in water, spreading out and forming ripples.

Pei Du had very few things on this table: besides the usual fruit, there was a vase with a bouquet of roses. The water in the glass vase was already murky, and the rose petals on top had rotted into a lifeless grayish-yellow.

"Flower." Sheng Shixian remained silent for a long time before uttering a single word.

Pei Du narrowed his eyes slightly upon hearing this.

He remembered that on the day he was reborn, the roses in the vase had already rotted. Pei Du immediately changed the water in the vase and bought a new bunch of roses to put in it. Now, almost a week later, those flowers have withered again.

However, roses typically only survive for about seven days in a vase, and Pei Du simply considered this a natural phenomenon and didn't pay much attention to it.

Why did Sheng Shixian pay special attention to these roses?

Pei Du stepped forward, picked up the vase, and examined it closely, from the murky sewage inside to the rotten bouquet of roses on top.

The rose petals were already at their last gasp; their bases were still attached to the sepals. With just a slight squeeze from Pei Du, they fell off in large swathes like an avalanche.

The edges of the petals that had fallen onto the table were mostly a mixture of gray and yellow. Pei Du picked up two nearly rotten rose petals and looked closely. Only then did he see a large number of white and green dots at the ends of the petals.

The petals are white at the tips, and these dots only show green at the edges of the curves. As you move higher up and closer to the center of the red petals, the dots become lighter in color and harder to notice.

Pei Du vaguely guessed what was going on. He clenched the rose petals in his hand, and with a distance between them, he gently fanned the top of the petals with his palm, smelling the fragrance of roses.

The faint scent lingered near Pei Du's nose, then suddenly rushed to his head a few seconds later. Pei Du's vision went black for a moment; he gripped the corner of the table, almost losing his balance.

Sheng Shixian stood behind Pei Du. Seeing this, he grabbed Pei Du's clothes and threw the rotten roses aside.

“Dirty.” Sheng Shixian grasped Pei Du’s wrist and, mimicking Pei Du’s previous actions, wiped his fingers clean one by one with a wet tissue.

Pei Du's fingers were long and slender, and his thin, light-colored nails appeared even more translucent under the light. Sheng Shixian ran his thumb along the skin of Pei Du's palm and was surprised to find thin calluses similar to his own.

Pei Du came to his senses a few seconds later. The wet tissue was cool as it wiped his palm. He looked down at Sheng Shixian's movements, his fingertips twitched slightly, but he didn't pull them back.

After wiping Pei Du, Sheng Shixian took out a few more tissues and carefully wiped every part of his body, from his fingernails to his palms and wrists, three or four times before throwing the tissues into the trash can.

Pei Du found it somewhat amusing to see him wiping it again and again: "So obsessed with cleanliness?"

Sheng Shixian nodded.

As the dizziness in Pei Du's mind slowly dissipated, he kicked away the bouquet of roses scattered on the ground, somewhat melancholy: "Looks like I'll have to change jobs. I can't clean toilets every day."

Sheng Shixian: "..."

Afterwards, Pei Du cleaned all the rooms on the first floor. Apart from the rose petals that were rotten beyond recognition, Pei Du collected all the other parts.

Pei Du didn't throw away the dirty water in the vase. He tidied it up and put it in the cubicle, planning to take it to the laboratory for testing tomorrow.

Pei Du had bought countless roses over the years, changing shops countless times. Yet the person who poisoned him always managed to pinpoint his movements and mix the poison into the roses.

The withered rose petals were like a lump of rotten mud, decaying and lifeless. Pei Du put them all into a quarantine bag, threw them into the cubicle, and locked it.

Sheng Shixian had already returned to the sofa to rest. Only when Pei Du finished dealing with everything and approached him did Sheng Shixian lift his drowsy head.

His dark eyes were calm, as if they held a message.

Pei Du squatted down in front of him, holding the handcuffs and leg irons: "What's wrong?"

Sheng Shixian remained silent. He took out several items from his pocket and placed them one by one in front of Pei Du.

Those were five Rubik's Cubes that had been completely solved.