V2C59: Searching for the Culprit, Part 1

“- to do what?”

“You do not want to fight one another for no good reason, right? Surely it would be better to persuade the Nobility faction that they are in the wrong rather than ending up in a long, destructive and meaningless conflict?”

“Naturally,” both Ding Ju Rong and Mo Liang Shen nodded, with the former continuing, “However, how do you intend to accomplish something like that?”

“You mentioned that you have a small list of the people that may have been responsible for creating the Nobility faction, correct? If that person is proven to be misinterpreting some information or just lying for their own gain, then the premise of that faction would be weakened significantly, allowing most of their number to be siphoned away to the Continental faction or brought into some independent group with which you and I could work with more easily,” Wei Yi explained, “Alternatively, I would like to request that you search for something that can distinguish lies from truth, or to confirm the validity of memories, or to show them to others. Depending on how the plan on dealing with the propagator of the Nobility faction plays out, any one of these could be immensely helpful.”

“Indeed, that could work…” Mo Liang Shen said, “There is a technique for viewing one’s memories via a spiritual will thread, but it does not allow us to confirm the validity of these memories. There may be more techniques like that, but I would need to consult the archives to learn of them. The chances of finding an item with a similar purpose is higher.”

“Then look for an item or artefact to fulfil that role. If you don’t object, Ding Ju Rong, could you bring me to see a few of the aforementioned individuals?”

“I can, although there are only so many people that we can visit before the Nobility faction deduces that we are trying once again to learn something about them. Due to this, I could either lead you to the most likely individuals, or you could choose who you’d want to see from a list yourself.”

“The best way to begin would be by finding everyone who isn’t up in some private room in one of these enormous towers,” she suggested, “I’m sure that if you’re leading me through some points of interest, we could interact with several of them and confirm whether they have any particularly odd memories with that technique you mentioned. Mental Intrusion, is it not? I happen to have some experience in it.”

During this discussion, Mo Liang Shen headed upstairs to consult the archives.

Ding Ju Rong pondered the matter for a moment, then pointed out, “The weakest of the suspects is in the upper third realm. Typically, such a thing only functions on someone of a lower realm…”

‘If I reveal this, I will lose any opportunity to scan their minds in the future, but it would provide me with a certain degree of trustworthiness and value, meaning that they would be more keen to involve me in their politics…’ Wei Yi considered her options for a second before smiling, “Why don’t I have a go? As Mo Liang Shen knows, my mental energy is incredibly stable.”

“That has nothing- well, if you insist,” he wanted to retort, but changed his mind and stood in place.

Whether he thought that she would stand a chance, or if he just wanted to indulge her curiosity, Ding Ju Rong put him hands behind his back and calmly waited for her.

Since he was intending to make things easy for her, Wei Yi decided to take advantage of his folly and did not ask him to put up his guard, instead releasing a thread of transparent energy that she quickly stabbed into the back of his neck without any sign of him noticing.

Quickly, she came across the memories that were connected to his immediate experiences, which she skipped over as she would not gain much from them – even his inside thoughts would be incredibly muddled unless she spent a high length of time just to interpret them – instead going directly to the more distant, potentially more relevant and hopefully far more interesting ones that were generated several days or weeks ago.

The moment that she spotted a curious memory that she could never learn about without the time or opportunities that she clearly lacked, she dove into it and scanned as much from it as she could.

After a moment of analysis, she realised that her very first venture into the memories of an individual from the spiritual side of the prison realm had ended up bringing her the same results as her absorption of the Thunder Lord’s echo. However, while those scenes provided her with pleasant scenes of women enjoying their time, this one… lacked such a detail.

Fortunately, she had experienced much since the meeting with the Thunder Lord, and had participated in certain activities that would put his libido and prowess to shame, and so she was able to ignore the sight and look through things that were less raunchy in nature.

All the while, she remained relaxed in posture, almost as if she was doing nothing at all.

“Have you finished preparing the thread?” he eventually asked, clearly believing that impression after he scanned the area with his spiritual perception and discovered no traces of her thin energy.

“I’ve done everything I needed to do,” she replied, “Should I share the results?”

“Go on. Show me your expertise in the Mental Intrusion technique!”

“You’ve misunderstood. I have already browsed through some of your memories, and, I must say, I understand why Mo Liang Shen was so keen to have a brothel built within the Virtuous Side. However, you have a pretty good understanding of arrays to be able to obscure your room to such an extent, both visually and aurally, without making it too conspicuous,” Wei Yi nodded alongside her praise, “Congratulations.”

He froze for a moment, “Excuse me? Did you just accuse me of-”

“You were the one that told me to read your memories. In the future, if that is the sort of thing on your minds, please involve a female member of your faction,” she stopped him, “I couldn’t have possibly known about this from the small team that you sent into the Crimson Side, could I?”

“No.”

“Then, there’s only one conclusion that you can – and should – make,” Wei Yi stated, removing the spiritual will thread significantly more harshly as to make sure that he was able to sense it, “This method does work.”

“That might indeed be the case… One final question, and then I will be convinced. What colour-”

“Silver. Asking me about colours is unnecessary in a world that is almost entirely absent of them, Ding Ju Rong,” she pointed out.

“True, although there is one person that is trying to create dyes from the many plants and trees of the prison realm. If he succeeds, we might be able to differentiate our robes from that of the Nobility faction further!” Ding Ju Rong stated, “I could bring you to him on our route, if that interests you. I wouldn’t know of the clothing situation in your Beast’s Rest, although the robes look to be incredibly well-made…”

“There are only a hundred of these, so if you want to take a look, I would recommend attempting to kill one of the crimson robe wearers to steal their clothing, as per tradition. They regenerate themselves, so you don’t even need to worry about how you attack the wearer.”

He raised his eyebrow, “Eh… I shall consider it?”

Sitting inside of a medium-sized building, a man sat at a large table that contained a number of curious designs and ideas scrawled on sheets of paper that were laid out atop it. He stared closely at one of his latest creations, frowning intensely, to the point of wrinkles forming permanently on his otherwise young and soft face.

The soft white light of spiritual will poured through the wide space in between every single white wooden plank that made up the roof, filling in the room completely with the addition on the glow from the two windows at the front of the structure.

It was impossible to tell exactly what he was thinking, but he was most certainly not paying attention to the entrance of his residence, as he completely missed a figure in crimson robes enter.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what exactly is this supposed to be?”

“A bra, something to support a woman’s breasts and prevent them from sagging with age, as well as making things more comfortable in general…” the man answered without any actual thought about the question, nor about the sudden intruder into his space, until something internal suddenly shook him.

He stood up abruptly, turned to face the figure in red, looked back onto the table, then swiftly swiped his arm across the table, throwing everything away from it, including the item of clothing.

“Dear customer! You should have knocked!”

“I did. Several times. Loudly. You did not hear me.”

“Ah… is that so? My apologies, then… if I may say, you have a very odd outfit for this place. Where did you get it from?”

“A body.”

“…” the man wasn’t sure how to respond to such a casual yet surprising answer, so he looked towards the scattered papers and then back to her, “Since you’ve come here, can I assume that you’re interested in viewing or acquiring some of my goods?”

“I’m not sure about acquiring anything yet, but I wouldn’t object to inspecting your wares,” Wei Yi answered, “Before I do that, could I get your name?”

“Fu Zan, aspiring craftsman and merchant. I hope you find one of my products helpful, dear customer.”

He directed her to a room at the side, where a large set of his products was arranged on wooden imitations of the human figure, carved by someone that clearly needed more experience with both the crafting process, as was obvious from the many rough areas and countless scratches in the white wood, and the human body.

These displays were predominantly for female clothing and underwear, but there was still a greater number of male items than she had ever seen within the prison realm and the Planar Continents combined. Even if she was to say nothing else about this person, Wei Yi had to admit that he had a lot of creativity to create such a vast array of items on his own. Furthermore, the designs for the female clothing were incredibly intricate and pleasing to the eye, presenting a vast range of styles despite his only equipment appearing to be a needle and a table.

‘I can see why Ding Ju Rong believes that this man might revolutionise the clothing of the Virtuous Side, as he’s clearly gotten used to wearing his existing products,’ she thought as she glanced in the direction of an item labelled as ‘boxers’, ‘However, the style of these things reminds me of something…’

She looked into one of the inner pockets of her robes and felt the grey shirt that had been made for her by the hatred avatar tailor and compared their physical sensations.

‘Not identical, but the inspiration appears to be similar when it comes to the way that the material is handled and weaved together, or whatever the proper terminology in this field is,’ Wei Yi silently shrugged to herself, enveloping the entire area with her spiritual perception, ‘Now, I’d hate to make any random allegations and further develop my slowly growing paranoia, but all of this is so new that I can’t help but make a certain assumption that makes me profoundly uncomfortable…’

While considering what to do, she looked at one particular type of underwear and asked, “How durable would you say that this material is?”

“Depends on what it’ll be going through. These panties – that’s what they’re called, by the way, customer – wouldn’t survive a direct strike from a sword, but when it comes to enduring liquids, dirt, sweat, or whatever else, so long as they are washed frequently, they will endure for years, at the very least.”

“At peak condition?”

“Exactly. I am very proud of my work, so if you purchase anything and find that it does not hold up to my promises, you can return or replace it at a tenth of the price!”

“Nice pitch, but I’ve rather gotten used to walking around lightly. I could recommend this place to a few others, if you want,” she suggested, finding no trace of either otherworldly characters or any particularly odd things with her first look through the shop, ‘Well, I don’t actually care about improving his financial situation, especially since I have no idea how this place compares to others, but I don’t know how to- actually, perhaps the Martial God-’

She did not have the opportunity to consider her idea before a wisp of spiritual will containing a simple message floated over to her, voicing itself within her mental domain when she allowed it to, “The first one is coming. She is Shi An Qi, although she has a low likelihood of being the founder.”

Almost immediately after, the door to the building was opened by a woman with nigh-transparent skin, blood-red eyes, colourless white hair and an ample yet slender figure. Her blood could almost be seen pumping through her veins, though the opacity of her skin did not extend to revealing her bones or muscles, causing her visage to be somewhat otherworldly – in a good way, for once.

She entered without any care for Wei Yi or the owner, heading directly to the women’s section of the shop and browsing through it.

‘This gives me a better opportunity than I would have expected. I can approach her entirely naturally!’ Wei Yi smiled to herself, dismissed Fu Zan to allow him to gather up whatever it was that he had thrown onto the floor when she entered, and approached the woman.

When she did not react despite her easily getting into the range of her spiritual perception, she chose to speak first.

“Hello there. If you’re looking for a second opinion on that particular set, I think that it would fit you perfectly,” she said, making sure that her honesty was as obvious as it could be within her voice while carefully directing her spiritual will thread into the back of the woman’s neck and stepping over to her side.

“Hm?” the woman turned to face her with a certain curiosity in her voice, but that swiftly sputtered out when she noticed the crimson robes on her body that stood out greatly amidst the purely white realm, “Tsk. Savage. Get out of here before you ruin this store.”

‘Lovely, this is the sort of person I’m dealing with. It’s fortunate that she made her stance clear from the beginning, or else I could have developed some liking for her,’ Wei Yi resisted the urge to step away right away, forcing the thread into the woman’s skin and into the mental landscape located within her head while shaking her head, “I was just offering a suggestion. Furthermore, is there a reason why I’m getting such a negative response from the get-go?”

“…” Shi An Qi did not deign her with an answer, taking a single look at the displayed items before turning around to leave.

‘You’re not going to leave that quickly, unless I quickly confirm that you’re not the founder of the Nobility faction, so…’ she quickly called out, “I’m actually a first-generation prisoner on the Crimson Side. I’ve lived in the Planar Continents for eighteen years before ending up here. Passing up something that isn’t even seen there just because of an inconvenient encounter seems… unwise.”

“Have you been hired to advertise? Poor move.”

“No, I’m just speaking my mind,” Wei Yi stated as she finally got access to the memories on the surface and scanned through them, finding nothing akin to the unfortunate memories of Ding Ju Rong, but also nothing of particular use to her, prompting her to dive deeper.

The albino woman turned back around with a frown on her face, “What would the Planar Continents say about filthy criminals like you?”

‘It’s hard to do anything but sigh in this situation… thankfully, she’s thinking enough about the other side of the prison realm for me to find some potentially relevant memories. Before I look at them, though…’ she summoned Bai Hao from her mental domain and asked, ‘Enlighten me, was the Sanctuary that you had left particularly against the other side of the prison realm, or is the notion of us being savages being widespread something more recent?’

“You should have heard how many times I’ve called you a savage. It’s very common… wait, when-”

‘I threw you into my mental domain when the others went off to do their own things. You wouldn’t have been able to get too far away from me, given your nature as a temporary sprite of spiritual will, so I brought you back in and confused your senses a little. We can talk later, but for now, I’ll be handling this,’ she stopped the old man in white from speaking and shoved him back into the tower of the Augur’s Library, returning her focus to the woman in front of her, ‘In that case, if she just wanted to further the dislike of the Crimson Side, she would not need to side with the Greats, unless she wanted to increase the divide by making the Crimson Side into despicable criminals and the Virtuous Side into necessary political sacrifices for the greater go- ugh, I can’t even think of such a thing. What nonsense…’

A group of people that nonchalantly burnt cities just to get at one person, whose life they had already ruined forever simply due to that person’s parents, couldn’t possibly be concerned with the likes of the greater good, especially since they would have bragged about it instead of telling her to blame her parents for their actions.

“If I was to be brought before the people to be judged, I’d imagine the first question would be about my crimes. Could you name any, besides me ending up in the wrong half of the world?”

“…” the woman’s glare intensified, but she offered no response verbally.

However, her memories revealed an unusual crimson scene that couldn’t have been seen by anyone who had been trapped within the Virtuous Side of the prison realm, instantly catching Wei Yi’s attention and causing her to look deeper into that particular recollection.

Almost immediately, she caught glimpses of physique cultivating barbarians surrounding the woman. Wei Yi was unable to understand any of the words spoken by either party without taking more time to view the memory, but she did see how Shi An Qi was easily chased down and severely beaten before she was somehow able to return to the other side – her memories had clearly eroded from the passage of time, cutting out the things that she did not personally care for while focusing on the event itself.

Based on that memory, the red-eyed woman appeared to get several long-lasting injuries, so to confirm its validity, she drove some of her spiritual perception beneath her clothing and found a series of large marks on her skin exactly where the strikes from the physique cultivators had landed in her memories.

‘I’d imagine that this kind of thing serves as perfect motivation for the Virtuous Side to increase their combat preparedness, providing another reason for them to be carrying the spiritual concentration blades… Either way, the dislike of the ‘savages’ appears to be a genuine, reasoned reaction from her, not something inspired purely by the city’s culture,’ Wei Yi sorted through a few more memories and found that the woman appeared to join the Nobility faction after it already had half a dozen people, meaning that she was not likely to be the one simultaneously responsible for starting it, prompting her to shrug and say, “Well, since you clearly aren’t interested in speaking to me, I will leave you to browse on your own. Sorry for bothering you.”

Shi An Qi continued to look at her with suspicion, then took another look at the black set of underwear and left without making a single purchase.

“Sorry for scaring away your customer. I hadn’t expected such a response from her,” Wei Yi lied, ‘Now, I can check who you really are.’