V4C24: Preparation

Wei Yi had been right about Shun Liu Min’s inability to fall asleep after that brief yet extremely invigorating display of lewdness. Her energy had been positively overflowing afterwards, and she found it extremely difficult to ignore the sudden burst of lust within her body, but Wei Yi held back and then managed to sate it quickly so that they move onto the more relevant matters of the day.

“Wow…” Shun Liu Min still gasped at the end, “Don’t you think that you could just recruit everyone this way? If I had been free from that man, I would’ve joined in a heartbeat.”

“Don’t know if you’ve met the two horny idiots from Meng Chu’s place, but that is the sort of thing that happens when I go a little overboard. Also, while something like that may be encouraging once or twice, you’re not going to completely change what you believe just to get laid every now and then… or so I’d hope, anyway,” she replied, cleaning her fingers with physique energy, “Anyway, the matter of teaching me, alongside Min Lian who you might have also met, is a very important one that requires immediate attention. We have a bit of a time limit.”

“Time limit? I think there may be something that I’m not understanding about this.”

“There is, and I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?” the maid asked as she looked around, as if she would spot someone else in the room with whom a secret couldn’t be shared.

“Well… Alright, let me tell you the bare essentials, and then you can stop with the questions. So, as you know, They are currently searching for us. One had come into the sandstorm, and even sent out some kind of message, so they certainly know that I went this way. I need to learn enough about their activities, plans and operations in order to be able to properly interfere with them, and in order to achieve this, I have a very stupid plan.”

“That… hardly sounds encouraging. You know that, right?”

“Sure, I am fully aware. The problem is that it is this stupid plan that might work best, and in order for it to succeed as intended, everyone needs to be absolutely convinced by what happens. That does include you, Great Dark, Luo Lia Kun, Meng Chu and everyone else in Paragon and the Arbiters.”

Shun Liu Min processed that for a bit, then said, “Is this a case of tricking your allies to trick your enemies?”

“Something like that, yes, and it is very vital. I want Them to be as weak and as vulnerable as it is possible for Them to be, and I can see one very effective method right this very moment, but it is one that may require some knowledge that I do not currently possess. It will require blending in, and it is very likely that I will do the duties of a servant, a maid, perhaps.”

“So you need to be as aware of the way in which someone in that position behaves as you can possibly be… It is obviously something that most of us, your Arbiters, wouldn’t like in the slightest… and presumably it is not something that we would respond to correctly if we are already aware of what you’re up to. This is going to be really dangerous, isn’t it?” Shun Liu Min asked, although she didn’t wait for a reply, “Well, that’s fine. I trust you. Rather, I believe in you. You’ve been able to get so far as this, get me out of that man’s residence, deal with everything in your way to get here, clear out the Ping District of a lot of thugs and thieves… You’ve done a lot, and I do not think that this will stop you. Still, good luck on whatever stupid plan you’ve gone for.”

“Aw, are people finally trying to take some of the encouragement pressure from me? Thank you, but I never thought about failure in the first place. I will do what I can, for that is what I must do. What all of us must do if we wish Yi City to be free.”

“Right, yeah. So, tell me, that Min Lian was that woman that follows you around frequently, right?”

“If that is the one notable property of hers you remember, then sure, you could say that,” Wei Yi shrugged, “She was an assassin, and she tended to blend in to groups in order to get closer to her targets. As such, she has a lot of experience acting as a servant, which she has been passing onto me. You could assist me with that.”

“I will do that right away, if you have the time. How much time do you have, exactly?”

“Ideally, it would be done in a single day,” she stated, quickly seeing the expected return of the immense confusion in her eyes, “I am a quick learner, but I could do it more slowly if that’s too much.”

“… Nah, fuck that. I can just ramble things off for the rest of the day, if you’ve got the time. You’ve got the time, right? Let’s meet with Min Lian, and I’m sure the two of us can just say word after word at you until we run out of all energy, right?”

“Eh… Yeah, sure. Give me some time to find a place for this, and I’ll readily learn everything.”

Meanwhile, Wu Yi Tai had intended to find his way to the surface, but was quickly distracted by what he found down there. At the edges of the underground portion of the fortress, Paragon as it was apparently called, there were walled off chambers in which living ore had been trapped and was being used for the purposes of obtaining greater quantities of materials than could ever be found through simply digging the earth.

Although he was not a miner himself, he did have the basic understanding that authamite was a rarity amongst the metallic substances of the world, and that not everything would regrow with enough time. However, this living ore appeared to solve that entirely, as stacks and stacks of metal ore shards were piled up beside these enclosed areas, with the miners working hard to dig through the ore on the surface to get at whatever was beneath. They still tried to obtain and conserve as much material as possible, but when the focus was on digging through something rather than digging it up, a significantly different rate of progress could be achieved.

“Miners, are you permitted to speak during your shift?” he asked one of them, a blond man that barely appeared strong enough to lift a pickaxe, and yet he managed to do so perfectly – in the general’s eyes.

“Why wouldn’t any one of us be?” that figure replied, huffing with seeming irritation, “Who’re you and what do you want? Wait… your armour and weapon are all black, and I recognise the technique. Are you a Hunter of the Cosmos?”

“I am indeed. I am General Wu Yi Tai, of the second host. You are familiar with us?”

“Of course I am. Your Hunters did a poor job during the War of Yin when you had been informed that the G- They might have very well been tapping into the power of all the primordial deities.”

“War of… Who are you, miner?”

The figure in white smirked for a moment as he lodged his pickaxe into bare stone and turned around, his sixth realm energy and aura radiating from him as he assumed a grandiose pose, a trace of happiness radiating from an attempt at a stoic and calm expression. He must have been waiting for a chance like this.

“I am-”

“Great Light, is that really necessary?” a voice much alike to his, yet profoundly separate, nearly opposite in some ways, emerged from behind the general, who quickly turned towards him.

It had come from the mouth of the man he had seen in the sandstorm and camps outside of Paragon, but he had now switched from his previous attire and an attempt at a cold flame cultivation to an elegant dark robe and the display of a pure cold energy that froze the air around him merely by existing in proximity with it. His hair, which had covered most of his face previously, revealed the full extent of his androgynous features.

“Do not try to scare him just because he is related to the Hunters. He had no authority in that decision, and it was as much of a blind guess as They would have needed to make to presume that Wei Yi was the worshiper of Primordial Cosmos. I can see why such a thing might be assumed, but it is nonsense.”

“What are you two talking about?”

“The decisions of your commander… what else could we mean, General Wu Yi Tai? Why have you decided… to go snooping around, Hunter?”

“I was merely curious regarding the infrastructure of such a fortress. It is not in a suitable position for trade, yet people seem to be living here without issue,” the general claimed, although he was sweating beneath all of his armour as he noticed that both of these had been in the sixth realm, and weren’t particularly weak ones at that if they were to be judged from energy quality alone, “Neither I nor my Hunters are spies, I can assure you!”

“That is fortunate… I suppose,” Great Dark said, “So long as that is true… we have no reason to observe you with great care… but I would still suggest that you do not snoop around as you currently are. First confirm that Wei Yi does not object to your actions.”

“She had left too quickly for me to ask anything… Are both of you genuinely on her side?”

Great Dark and Great Light looked to one another in confusion, and Wu Yi Tai was tempted to join in after a while. The question may have been simple curiosity, which he considered that he was permitted to have regardless of his faction’s final relationship with this one, but he had effectively gone in and questioned the loyalty of two of those in the highest realm while right in the fortress that she controlled. Given that Wei Yi was able to open up spatial gateways and vanish from the spot without a single clear drop of effort, for her to be aware of them right now would not be farfetched.

Even if those two needed to tell her afterwards, for him to be doing such a thing in combination with looking around places he had never explicitly been permitted to see would be highly suspicious.

“I was merely surprised that you, in the sixth realm, are not just on her side, but seemingly below her in the hierarchy,” he tried to explain himself, more than aware that his earlier choice of words made him seem even more suspicious.

“You should have said that before you made a fool of yourself!” Great Light exclaimed, “Also, do you think that this is all about realm? You’ve not seen that woman when she had been a young girl in the first realm, rushing through every task and challenge that we could have had, breaking through in her techniques while walking up the stairs. She defeated someone in the second realm, who wielded a forbidden skill, while only being in the first! If someone needed qualifications to command others in the field of strength and power, she would have them, that’s for sure.”

“Indeed… you also seem to be forgetting the black sun she had broken before you… You had taken the least of the power in that technique with your barrier,” Great Dark added.

Wu Yi Tai nodded, “My question was poorly considered. I shall not make the same mistake again.”

“Tch, you should’ve. Then I could have done something slightly less monotonous than digging stone after stone,” Great Light huffed as he removed the pickaxe from the wall that he had forced it into and returned his focus to the ore vein.

In the small amount of time since he had first been sent to work as a miner, he had not learned a great deal about some of the more complex methods that may be put to use in the process of mining, nor did he have some great technique that he could proudly showcase if asked, but he had figured out how to dig fast and well. His yin-type energy was highly useful at piercing through stone without dealing much harm to the things around it, nor raising the temperature and potentially causing some violent reactions for certain materials as an extreme yang-type energy might.

As such, he was able to showcase his ability before the two of them, somewhat proud of his own accomplishment. Meanwhile they… lacked much understanding of mining either and couldn’t appreciate it whatsoever. In their eyes, it seemed slow and not particularly efficient, although when they looked around and saw some of the other miners acting similarly, they understood even less.

“I think I will leave this area, since I am not meant to be here,” General Wu Yi Tai decided, being afraid to question just what he was seeing when the miner was rash and in the sixth realm.

Fortunately enough, his twin brother also nodded, “Yes, I think that we should. I shall bring you away… to ensure that you do not end up somewhere else where you really shouldn’t be. Then… we shall get going. Great Light, work hard.”

The miner in white nodded and kept going as the two of them headed away, with the twin of Great Earth leading the general of the Hunters of the Cosmos to the nearest surface-bound staircase into the stone above. They climbed it mostly in silence, then Great Dark took him to his own residence within Paragon. They weren’t sure what to talk about just yet, but not remaining in a mine where Great Light worked seemed sensible.

“Are you sure you don’t want to get back to how we were?”

“No. The whispers are quiet, and I can ignore them most of the time. I also have no reason to mess around with you quite as much when you too appear more reasonable,” Mo Zhouquan replied, resting back in a chair that was only lightly covered by a thin layer of strange, viscous substance, but one that had hardly grown since she had chosen to occupy it some time ago.

Long Huang nearly pouted, “Come on, it is so dull now! Half of my drive was to show you just how much of a fool you are with your corruption, but it is now both more reasonable, and the atmosphere around here has changed entirely. In the Brotherhood of Power, there’d been some tension, some drive, but now we all just sit around. I can call you a creepy bitch all I like, but it is hardly as fun as when you actually responded with something creepy.”

“You… may just be stranger than the whispers. Are you really unable to just get over it and change the way our relationship works now?”

“Changing it is fine, but this isn’t much of a relationship no matter how you look at it. You’re too dull to light the match of my mind, and I barely have the drive to verbally abuse you when that chair and that bed are the only things to have been affected even slightly. It’s even possible to bathe with you now.”

“It has gotten much quieter around here, hasn’t it? We’re getting most of our things without needing to fight or even work, and we can’t go out much for the moment due to the sandstorm and Their persistent threat,” Mo Zhouquan agreed on one of the earlier points, “Luo Lia Kun and the others appear to have found something to do, but I cannot research much on corruption when I have already fallen so far due to it… while you won’t leave me alone even if I was able to do so. Did you also have someone like me in your Blood Alchemists?”

“Not a disgusting thing like you, but… see! I can’t even do that anymore!” Long Huang exclaimed, getting closer and poking the corrupted woman’s cheek, “You’re only a little moist, without that sickening layer of slime that seemed to exist around you. That could easily be mistaken for sweat!”

“Have you even gotten over your displeasure at touching me?”

“It’s not like I’d become some black-blooded bitch myself anymore, so I have no reason to hold back. I’d love to dissect you, but I am scared of what I would find within you.”

“I think I have at least three distinct parts that resemble hearts in some way, so I am sure that would be an interesting thing to behold,” Mo Zhouquan mentioned, tapping on her chest, then the left of her abdomen, then the point where her neck and right shoulder met, “They all beat when I listen carefully, so I imagine they have some kind of similar function.”

The researcher from the Blood Alchemists wanted to look at her in disgust, but her facial muscles didn’t wish to put in the effort to do anything more than a half-hearted grimace.

“Dull. Many things have multiple hearts. If you had a bloodline or physique, it could be the same.”

In reply, Mo Zhouquan stared at her in silence for a while, clearly elaborating on something within her mind. At several times, her black and purple eyes glistened ominously several times, although her flat expression didn’t change much. Still, to have this go on for almost a minute was rather unnerving for Long Huang, although she felt a little excited at the same time. Could Mo Zhouquan have been coming up with something that could then give her the chance to get her old fire back?

She couldn’t subdue that flicker of interest entirely, and so the spark grew and stabilised within her heart, causing it to speed up slightly as she took a step back and watched the corrupted woman think. After a while, she lightly bit her lip, unable to contain that feeling just to her heart and mind.

“You need something, right?”

“… Yes, something. Something to excite, to motivate, to give me a real drive to push the boundaries of bloodline research!”

“Hm,” Mo Zhouquan folded her legs and put a hand on her chin, “Then get on your knees.”

For a moment, Long Huang couldn’t be sure of what she had just heard. From the more mild-mannered Mo Zhouquan that she had gotten to know since moving into the prison realm, and then into Paragon, something like that had been even stranger than if she had managed to reclaim her previous lewder nature, not to mention the fact that it was said with such a dry tone that she nearly ran off to get the corrupted woman some water.

“Sorry, could you repeat that?”

“I told you to get onto your knees, stupid worm. You lack the energy to be productive, so I will fill that void for you. Now, get down, and…” Mo Zhouquan removed her shoe and reached out with that foot, “why don’t you start with just massaging it for now?”

Long Huang thought that she would be able to say with absolute certainty that she had never been this shocked in her entire life, and that she would never be this shocked again.

Despite that, the little glimmer of excitement refused to go out within her heart, and thus she sank to her knees. For a moment, she had to question her own behaviour and actions, whether up to that point or at that very moment. Perhaps she had been wrong the whole time before this, and rather than bossing other people around, she was much more suited to being on the other side… or perhaps she was currently intoxicated without her own knowledge, and was just doing what Mo Zhouquan wanted out of some random bout of curiosity.

Either way, just that action alone felt strangely right.

“Thanks for visiting again!” the woman at the reception’s desk of the massage parlour said, “We hope to see you again soon!”

“Yeah, same!” Zhi Qiu Ya said back, walking out with the corners of her lips raised involuntarily. She had been visiting this same place for a month now, and she had to admit that she had felt far, far better than she had at first.

Initially, everything had been highly awkward, and she could barely display what parts of her body remained in a bestial state to the people there, but after they essentially had to force her into the massage bed, she had managed to fully relax properly after a long period of tension and anxiety. As such, she went back soon after, and was slowly allowing the kind woman there to go further and further than before. Judging by the direction in which their treatment was developing, she was now almost certain that this place did indeed serve as a brothel at the same time, as she had begun to suspect when she had gone through that street with a clearer mind and saw just the kinds of business that the nearby stores tended to engage in, but some of the touches couldn’t have been accidental.

Some time ago, she would have almost certainly seen that as a reason to stop attending the place right away, as she wanted nothing to do with all of the primal experiences that the wolf enjoyed. However, as a result of their slow and pleasant introduction to those kinds of feelings, touches and whatever else, she was tempted to experience that as well.

Even then, she did not wish to rush anything. She could barely believe that any of this was happening as it was, and to accidentally awaken that wolven side once more would be devastating.

‘Still, that was…’ her thoughts paused when she saw a familiar figure in the distance, “Luo Lia Kun? Vice-leader, wait up!”

The woman who she had correctly identified with her superior vision turned around, confirmed that she wasn’t hearing things, and waited for Zhi Qiu Ya to approach, allowing her the opportunity to see the slight change in her hairstyle. Usually, Luo Lia Kun would have obscured her forehead as much as she could to hide the scar that most of the Brotherhood of Power had known about but didn’t mention, but she now had it trimmed slightly, showing just a little bit more of it.

It was likely the cause for her currently turning away slightly, as to minimize the number of other people that would be able to see the scar as they walked past her on the street. While the perpetual vice-leader managed to avoid any redness from appearing in her cheeks, perhaps having learned the method by imitating Wei Yi’s masterful control over her own blood flow, that hardly changed the rest of her current stance and expression. For a moment, it was even difficult to liken this figure to the one that had led Zhi Qiu Ya, Mo Zhouquan, Long Huang and the others in the Brotherhood for many years, as one seemed to be nothing like the other.

“Hey, Zhi Qiu Ya. You are looking far better than usual today.”

“You could too, if you were making yourself a little less small,” she replied, “Just brighten up and show yourself off.”

“For you to say that… I know that all of you have seen it, but do you really think its fine?” Luo Lia Kun asked, lightly lifting just enough hair to reveal the scar fully, “I’ve heard Wei Yi say so before, and I’m sure some of you have hinted at it in the past… No, of course you have, but, right now, could you tell me exactly what you think?”

“What I think… Well, is it just that?”

“Yes… is something wrong with the scar?” the vice-leader asked, checking it right away with her spiritual perception.

“No, not at all. In fact, I thought that it was much bigger and scarier, but it is actually just that large. I don’t see any reason to be hiding it that much, especially when all of us got into fights all the time,” Zhi Qiu Ya said while she got a little closer to take a proper look, “Yeah, everyone’s been in a fight or two where they couldn’t quite recover perfectly. That’s fine. I doubt that anybody would be particularly put off by that.”

“Oh, so that is indeed what all of you thought. I… feel a little silly, to be honest…”

The wolven woman quickly got closer and put her hand on the woman’s shoulder, “Don’t be! Actually, I feel a little bit like that too, since I had been rather afraid of all of my wolven features, but I’ve been getting much better lately! Look at me, I barely look the same, right?”

“Yes, you have changed a lot. Fine, I’ll try to be a little less afraid of this scar, since you and Wei Yi have both said the same thing. I trust the two of you if you’re being this direct.”

“And I will attempt to get over this whole wolven thing entirely,” Zhi Qiu Ya said, “Imagining having the ability to switch between my human and wolven state while keeping my mind the whole time is quite exciting, so long as it doesn’t lead me to throwing off my clothing constantly again. That is very much unnecessary.”

Since the two of them had been standing around for a while, and both had initially been going in the same direction, they decided to get going and talk about a few things while on their way. While both of them had been in the Brotherhood of Power, the relationship between them had been far more profession than it was now, but the sudden spotlight cast on a few of the members of that organisation as a result of their involvement with Wei Yi while she had been faking her identity led to them getting to know one another much better.

In addition to the relaxed way in which Wei Yi typically ran the Arbiters, if she gave any orders at all, it gave them a lot of opportunities to hold more and better conversations than before, and both were clearly being helped by the additional time they had to talk.

The day came to an end with a number of things being learned, some being shared, and others being studied. Save for two members of the Ascendant’s Arbiters, the rest were barely even aware of the very notion of Wei Yi’s stupid plan, and even she doubted that it was necessarily the best one out there. However, she could say with certainty that it was the best one she had at the moment, and thus she had no choice but to go along with it.

Her first requirement of learning a vast amount of information on the proper mannerisms and etiquette of a servant figure was fulfilled easily enough, since she could just listen or read an endless amount of information then sort through it afterwards. It was all done in a single day as a result.