V2C60: Searching for the Culprit, Part 2

Fu Zan accepted her apology easily, “That’s fine. She comes in every now and then, looks at my products longingly, then leaves. I suspect she’s a little shy about it or perhaps she’s ashamed of others seeing her in something like that.”

“Certainly, that is a possibility. I will say that both of those items of clothing are notably more risqué than anything either the people of the prison realm or the Planar Continents typically wear.”

“Yeah, so I’ve heard…” he smiled a little awkwardly, “Still, it’s bound to entice any partners one might have, so I think that it is a great idea! Comfortable yet attractive clothing is what we need, over simple and identical robes!”

‘He is far, far too excited over something like this… Anyway,’ she took out a scroll from her robes and showed one side of it to the man, “I’ve got a potential order for you. Do you think it’d be within your ability to fulfil?”

“Let me see… the Martial God?”

Wei Yi suddenly pulled the scroll away and look at the characters on the top of the material, sighing loudly.

“You really are an otherworldly demon, then,” she said softly, raising her voice to continue, “I’ll need you to answer some questions for me, Fu Zan.”

“W-What are you talking about?”

“Don’t play dumb with me and read this writing again – don’t tell me you completely failed to notice something this obvious?”

“Wh-” he was about to repeat himself when she shoved the scroll in his face, pointing directly to the passage that he had read. His eyes glanced at the characters, then at one of the random labels on his products, and his expression darkened in understanding. Looking away from the scroll, he lowered his head.

“You called me a ‘demon’… why?”

“I have met several of your kind- rather, several otherworldly people. The first was obsessed with rising to the top, thought that they deserved to be the Empress of the world, and constantly looked down on the heroes of the Planar Continents. For her own desires, she was willing and eager to kill everyone. The second, who was fought within this very prison realm, transformed every single one of his subordinates into objects just to increase his own power. Three more, that I’ve personally never met, all possessed incredible power and tended to focus their lives on combat and strength, just like this particular Martial God whose scroll you’ve now seen,” she explained, “I haven’t seen what kinds of things you can do, but I think that the label applies nonetheless.”

“I… I don’t have any great ability. I can just make clothes!” he exclaimed, slamming the door to his shop shut with spiritual will, “I’m not a demon!”

“Perhaps that is all you can do. However, in the language of the Planar Continents, demon also means foreign intruder, or chaotic troublemaker. By this definition, it fits perfectly, especially when you consider the effect you’ve already had on the world.”

“What effect?”

“Your clothes. As much as I have to admit that I would love to see a woman presenting herself to me in something like this,” she pointed to the same black set of underwear that Shi An Qi had been examining, “you appear to have affected the dressing style and sense of the entire right side of the prison realm. On the left, a set of one hundred robes encouraged conflict between the strongest so that they could display their dominance, so imagine what could happen if you got your hands on some rare material and created something wholly unique to this world. By the way, these are from your world?”

“Yeah… But… As I said-”

“Furthermore, I am not entirely convinced that your only ability is weaving fabric – and even if it is, something tells me that it isn’t as simple as you are making it out to be. Show me.”

He grimaced but sat down and grabbed the needle and thread that were already laid out on the table. With the two in hand, he closed his eyes and sat still for a few lengthy seconds, during which he was completely enveloped in Wei Yi’s spiritual perception.

When he opened his eyes, there was a curious aura around him, though not one that appeared to be formed from tangible energy, instead being a sort of manifestation of his intense focus. He brought the two items together just as Wei Yi blinked for just a second, having stared at him for far too long to keep them open.

And yet, when her eyes snapped open, half of the thread in the man’s hand had changed, almost miraculously, into half of a completed pair of black lace panties. The thread wasn’t black, nor was it in any way possible for a simple needle to achieve the creation of such an item, and yet it was right there.

She blinked again, and this repeated, with her next blink resulting in the sight of a finished product.

“Time always seems to go by quickly when I work on these things…” Fu Zan muttered, wiping non-existent sweat from his brow.

“To be more precise, that was five seconds.”

“Eh? Really?”

“Do I seem to be in the mood to lie to you, demon? No, I am being as truthful as I can possibly be, even if I was unable to observe a single part of the process with my spiritual perception… That’s the trouble with you lot – all of your abilities are completely against the standards of the Planar Continents and make very little sense within it.”

“What do you mean by that? I could sense this just fine…”

“Is that so? In that case, could you tell me if there is anything in, or above, my hand?” she asked, raising her hand while opening a connection to the House of Gold.

He spread his spiritual perception to her, felt around her hand, then shook his head.

“Then, even the otherworldly demons cannot perceive their own equipment. I’m guessing that you have some kind of innate connection with the ability that you’ve been using, and so you mistakenly believed that you were sensing it with one of your other senses instead of using the connection,” Wei Yi theorised, closing the connection to the House of Gold, “Furthermore, I cannot possibly imagine that all your ability is capable of is making things quickly. I suspect that if you used some other materials, or outright changed the type of item you are creating, you might be able to achieve quite a lot.”

She grabbed the panties from his hand and examined them and their material closely, finding nothing particularly odd about any part of them, other than the odd expression on Fu Zan’s face while she was doing this.

“The clothing itself seems to lack any particular effects, at least none that I can perceive, so you may have this back. Nonetheless, your ability is beyond any technique that should be possible without the usage of your energy. It is outright supernatural. For this reason, I cannot just leave you be, especially not if you develop the same murderous tendencies as the others. Do you understand?”

“Yes…” he nodded somewhat reluctantly, “But… what causes the madness?”

“You might want to ask yourself that. I have no idea, nor do I know if this is something that all otherworldly demons have to deal with. However, I think that it is best to assume so, lest you accidentally go mad with power nonetheless,” Wei Yi suggested, “If you do not wish to share in their fate, or if you would like to help me prevent people less sane or more powerful than you from running wild, why don’t you share a few things with me?”

Fu Zan looked at her for a few moments, then slumped into his seat, “Alright. Though, as I said, I don’t know all that much…”

“You do know how to read this, don’t you? Tell me what this says,” she showed that side of the scroll to him while also releasing a thread of Mental Intrusion spiritual will and directing it to the back of his head.

Before she had the opportunity to place it into his head, he suggested, “If there are more people like me out there, wouldn’t it be better for me to teach you the languages that I know instead? If… if I go mad, too… it’d be better if you didn’t need to keep me alive and rely on me… Or, if that would take too long, couldn’t you use Mental Intrusion to learn more quickly?”

She raised an eyebrow, “You wouldn’t object to me probing your mind? Alright then, focus on the language used here and I’ll tell you if you need to do something different.”

He nodded and obeyed, allowing Wei Yi to quickly lock on to his recollections of a strange language.

“This one’s called Enian,” he said, pointing to the scroll as he clearly did not expect her to have already stumbled onto his mental dictionary of the language.

Fortunately for her, he had learnt most of this ‘Enian’ during one prolonged period of his life, and so the memories were close to one another within his mind, letting her put her comprehension abilities to use and process everything in the matter of seconds to acquire some of the basics of the language and the meaning of the exact symbols used on the scroll, memorising the rest so that she could fully learn it at a later point.

When she had collected every single drop of knowledge on the language that she could from his head, she looked down on the scroll and read the side of it that had previously stumped her completely, despite each symbol being so tantalisingly similar to that of the Planar Continent’s language.

‘The people of this world call me the Martial God, but I am no such thing.

‘I have an ability, a physique that is one of the absolute physiques of this world, that I had found within myself when I came to this world, but I could not live a peaceful life.

‘Everything I touched became a weapon, every thought I had turned to conflict, every person I met found enmity with me. Despite everything I tried, this dead, rotting world did not let me go. I couldn’t break free to the supposed heaven on the outside, to the Planar Continents that everyone here desires. Eventually, I lost all hope.

‘If you are like me, with a strange power and thoughts that you never had before, never let them consume you.

‘Never.

‘The people of this world call me the Martial God, but I was never him. I am He Ningan, and all I had done in my homeland of Enia was make and sell buns in a rural town. I should have never indulged in conflict, and while I cannot change the past, I will not do so again.

‘When you read this, I will either be dead or in hiding. Don’t look for me. If all you get is this message, do not seek my gifts. Remain stable. Remain peaceful. Do not let yourself be lost to this world. And, if, by some twisted joke by whatever gods may exist here, you do stumble across me, all I ever could or will offer you is a small meal for the road ahead. I will never return to conflict. I must never return to battle.

‘Never.

‘If you do come into the possession of my technique, you must not use it to begin wars, to ignite conflicts, or to create enmity. Only defend yourself. If you have to, keep yourself sane by following our laws, even in this new world.

‘Do not repeat my mistakes,

‘He Ningan.’

Wei Yi stood still for a while before she sighed and passed the scroll to Fu Zan, letting him read it while she pondered the subject of the letter.

“If you had any doubts in my words before, you should believe me now,” she said after a lengthy pause, having gathered a few more words in Enian and thus chose to begin in it, switching to the language of the Planar Continents immediately after, “Unless you suspect that I’m tricking you and have faked this scroll.”

“No, no, I don’t… you’ve clearly never spoken Enian… but it is strange to read… It is almost like his misery is radiating from the words…”

‘I cannot sense anything of the sort, but this may be due to my lacking understanding of the language so far. Perhaps once I understand more about it and its intricacies, I will be able to perceive this as well. Alternatively, perhaps the emotion here is insufficient to break my significant mental barriers…’ she theorised for a few moments, “I have to ask, are there any other languages spoken within your world? Here, besides the Planar Continental tongue and the warped variation of it used here, there’s a different dialect on the Daoist Continent, the extreme south and north, a different language amongst the demons, ancient gods, planar beasts and there are even rumours of different tongues used by assassin organisations and certain factions… Is your world similar?”

“Yeah, Orbis is similar, but I wouldn’t know most of them. I could share the writing of traditional Enian-”

“Then do it. I don’t know what differentiates them, but I expect countless different otherworldly demons to have been here at countless different times, so it would be odd if none of them had used a more traditional variation of your common language.”

“N-No, Enian isn’t quite-”

“Shut up and think about traditional Enian. You’re wasting my time, your own time, and the time of the world itself.”

To Fu Zan, that sounded like nothing but unnecessary exaggeration, but he complied regardless. He pushed away the memories of modern Enian and recalled the time he had spent on learning the outdated form of his native language.

There was less information on it within his head, and Wei Yi had learnt a little more about the interior of his mind, so she got through it significantly more quickly.

“I see. Anything else?”

“Well, there’s also another really common language called Antanian-”

She nodded, “That too.”

He had even less knowledge on this language, but it different greatly from the first two that he had provided her. It only had a few characters, a few letters, and further meaning and complexity was derived primarily from various combinations of the letters and the words created from them. While that difference did mean that she needed a little longer to begin comprehending it, it seemed like it would be quicker to grasp once the basics were firmly engrained in her head.

“Learning languages this quickly is rather fun, actually. Do you have any more?”

He frowned for a moment, then nodded, “I know a bit of North Antania’s-”

“Give it to me, then,” she dug through the memories that arose quickly, finding far too little of the language to satisfy her. Before she could even consider a thought of complain, however, she saw him put a hand on his forehead as a trace of discomfort leaked into his otherwise stoic expression before then.

She took as much as she could from his mind then retreated.

“Is your mind struggling from the strain of recalling two entirely different languages in full after not using for a long time?”

“Presumably,” Fu Zan agreed, “I think that I should be able to handle one more, although, after that, I’ll probably need a break, maybe some time to sleep and rest my eyes. How do you manage to learn so many different things in such a short time?”

Wei Yi shrugged, “Some innate talent, maybe? What’s your last language for today?”

“Eh… I know several… A bit of Nerinese, a smidgeon of Roksgardae and just a few phrases in Vexidirian,” he replied.

“I have no idea what any of these are, so just tell me what the next most spoken language is after the previous two. Alternatively, share the one that you know the most about, so that we get the most out of this,” she said, “Try to think only of the language, not your memories associated with it, to reduce the pressure on the mind.”

The man considered it for a moment, then shut his eyes and focused.

She dove into his mind one last time and saw a series of memories labelled by a single, hastily scribbled word, ‘Vexidirian’. After going through all of it quickly, it appeared that it was more akin to Antanian than the language of the Planar Continents, except for having a few more letters and a differing grammatical structure. With this, she was able to learn the few words that Fu Zan knew, although the only sentence he had ever learnt appeared to be a simple greeting, meaning that she could not convey a single thing to any otherworldly demons that spoke it.

Before she had the chance to further affect his mental state, she withdrew her spiritual will thread and allowed his mind to relax.

“Since you’re not in the best state to talk, I’ll leave for now. However, if you are genuinely interested in preventing maddened otherworldly demons from terrorising the world, or if you care about those in a similar position to you, with the madness not yet encroaching upon your mind, I would advise that you leave this position and join Beast’s Rest, my faction. Tell them that Wei Yi sent you,” Wei Yi said, letting him figure out what to do on his own while she opened the door and left.

Outside, Ding Ju Rong was standing beside a different building and occasionally glancing in the direction of the shop, and thus he caught her the second that she left, approaching her in a calm and collected manner.

“You were in there for some time. What did you discover?”

“Shi An Qi is unlikely to be the founder, as you had suggested earlier. Her objection is with us savages, without any clear preference for the Greats. She could still be the one, but it is doubtful. Also, that man makes decent clothes.”

“Understood,” he nodded, turning in a different direction, “Our next potential target is some distance away. We should hurry if we do not wish to miss him.”