Zane sat down in the shade of an old arbor, overgrown with purple flowers that appeared like tiny dots. The fight had ended briefly enough, with Hua Anhe stepping in between them in anger after their excess mana had caused a few plant pots to shatter.
Zane glanced up to see Rhian was sitting on one of the benches with one finger twiddling a piece of long grass, while Hua Yi was busy fussing over his hair, braiding them with intent.
[
[
Zane ran his thumb over Ember's sheath, tracing the ridges along it. The obsidian color was almost unnerving in a way, but it gave the sword an unexplainable beauty at the same time. He squinted his eyes open when he heard a scuffling sound and saw Rhian collapsing on his back on the bench.
"Can you not stay still for a single second?" Hua Yi snapped. "Jie jie, tell him," she prompted Hua Anhe.
Hua Anhe glanced at them with a bemused glare as she continued cleaning the blade of her sword with a white handkerchief. "Why is that the first thing that you two do?" she asked.
Hua Yi ignored her. "Stop moving!" she scolded Rhian.
Zane couldn't help but be reminded of his own sister, who made it her goal to get under his skin for no reason. Speaking of which, after he'd been imprisoned, he hadn't seen her for a long time until he had been passing the palaces after the 'catastrophe.' He bit his tongue at that and exhaled.
He wouldn't let that happen this time.
"Zane," someone said, and Zane turned his head in Hua Anhe's direction. "Thanks for helping him."
Zane blinked, not expecting the sincerity in the woman's eyes. 'I suppose. . .?'
He looked at Rhian, but the older man had busied himself with tying the grass strands. "It's…" he began but quickly shut his mouth. He couldn't tell them that he would've left Rhian there if the other man hadn't gotten out by himself before.
Instead, he took the opportunity that Hua Yi had given him prior. "You were going to say something after our spar."
Hua Yi looked at him and sighed. "Hardly a spar, if I must say," she said. "There was a situation."
"Yi." Rhian sat up and stared at Hua Yi with a pressed expression.
Hua Yi waved her hand in front of Rhian's face, tapping his forehead. "It was a murder, to be precise. It was a perfect setup crafted to trap anyone who was close enough. A certain member of a royal clan in the Amatsu Kageri, and Xiaoshi happened to be there during a Night Hunt."
"How can you be sure he wasn't the one who killed them?" Zane asked blatantly. "I mean, he was in the Celestium out of all the prisons in Draknir."
"Out of Draknir, there are no prisons that will completely isolate the victim without any intervention," Hua Anhe said.
Zane bit his tongue.
"We… Hua Clan and Lu Clan were ready to investigate, but we couldn't because it was a union territory between our nation and that of Selvaris," Hua Yi continued. "I think the word 'union territory' is demeaning to them in a way, and our only thesis is that they wanted to take gege to prove a point."
"And it sucked further because no one could do anything," Rhian said, tying the last knot of the grass crown. "See, when I told you I was framed, you didn't believe me. What if I told you, approximately every month, a man would come into the Celestium and drop a million species?"
Zane blinked thoughtfully, careful to avoid using his voice for whatever reason. "That is probable."
"Well that's how he went missing. The Sect Leader had given up on finding him completely, since communication was shut off, and there was already the case of revenants that were plaguing the land."
"Revenants?" Zane asked.
"You're lucky to not have encountered them," Hua Anhe said. "They have a dead brain—no pain cognition. They'll charge at you even with their arms cut off. They can only be killed with ether. We like to think it's because of the amulet."
Zane pursed his lips before he spoke again. "The Shu?"
"Yeah, ever since the introduction of this Trial, every inconvenience is traced back to them," Hua Yi said, giving up on Rhian's hair after she couldn't find a hair tie on her wrist. "The amulet has capabilities of bending will to the user's choice. Thus, it isn't difficult to imagine Shu Meiying desired to become a necromancer."
However, Zane couldn't be bothered by that information. "Did you look into the history of the royal member who had died?" Zane asked.
"Obviously," Hua Anhe replied, sheathing her sword once she'd deemed it clean enough. "It was around the third trial. That trial had a lot to do with taking down these massive spires, which had formed all over the nation and were emitting diabolic energy and leading to dungeon breaks within the Temples. What Xiaoshi got caught in was merely the crossfire. However, I still believe there was something else going on as well."
Zane swallowed. "There has to be. There is no way one would spend a million species to ensure his stay in the Celestium."
Rhian looked back at Zane. "You're making it sound as though I don't deserve to have that much money paid for my life."
"It's for your cause, not your existence," Zane replied coolly.
"I've become an important asset on the run," Rhian replied, placing the grass crown on top of Hua Yi's head.
"Not really."
"Why?"
"More like we're living targets ready to be shot at any moment," Zane said. "Important assets is an overstatement."
"You two have some issues," Hua Yi murmured.
Rhian merely shrugged and raised his eyebrows in Zane's direction. Zane responded by pursing his lips into a thin line and sighing through his nose. Just then, in the corner of Zane's eye, he noticed a well-dressed woman approaching them.
"Lady Hua," she said, bowing a little as Hua Anhe stood up. "The Sect Leader demands your presence."
Zane couldn't help but feel a sort of pinching sensation from the inside at those words. He wasn't very attuned to Xiaoluo's history with his own whirlpool going on in Selvaris… but there was something—something that he couldn't recall.
Hua Anhe gave a curt nod to the woman before she sent pointed gazes towards Rhian and Hua Yi. She didn't react much to Zane's presence other than holding eye contact for a few seconds. Zane stared dumbly, because when a light breeze blew and ruffled the cloth near her neck, he saw an imprint of a lotus.
—
The sound of wind chimes greeted Rynn's ears as her head began recovering from the dimensional shift. She cracked her shoulders and raised her eyes when she noticed a handsome man sitting in front of Temple on a makeshift bench.
"What weapon did you earn?" he asked.
[
Rynn stared at him wordlessly before she triggered her [Clandestine Chest]. In her arms, in light ether, appeared a spear. "I've earned Xuefeng's third weapon," she said, twiddling her fingers on the shaft, which was cool under her fingers. "The Spear was crafted by the breaking of the Yin sword."
"That is good," the man said, a delicate smile on his face. "Xuefeng's achievements display a new type of domain to tread into, do you not think so?"
Rynn raised her eyebrows. "I don't recall mentioning my location."
"And neither do I recall mentioning where you should go," the man said, voice smooth. "You've entered the twenty-fifth temple despite my suggestion to enter the thirty-first."
Rynn twirled the spear in her hands and rested the sheath on her shoulder. "I'm tired of swords. They're convenient, but this spear?" She drew a careful hand down the spear's middle. "This is made of the strongest materials. Only anything ranked above an SS can break past it. And when it does, the blade of the spear will be renewed for me to wield it into daggers."
"So, you intend to break it?"
"Not out of convenience. Out of chance," Rynn murmured, then glanced at the side as she felt a nauseating presence approach them.
Rynn simply sighed at it and raised her eyebrows in flat amusement as Adrian appeared from the bushes with a long and thick sword in his hand. 'A Chasm,' she diagnosed mentally as her eyes scanned the floral pattern on its hilt.
The man on the bench simply shot Adrian a sweet smile. Maybe it was so sweet that Rynn felt sick. "What is your weapon?"
"A Chasm," Adrian replied.
"Very well." The man carefully stood up and gave them another smile before he turned around. Rynn wondered if it was natural for a man to have the type of hands every woman dreamed of having. As they stopped at the entrance of one of the old ruins near the Temple which must've been part of some great monument, the wind raised itself, engulfing them in yellow pollen. Rynn merely squinted her eyes.
"I think it's time you two told me what exactly you need," the man in front of them said, his robes fluttering.
"Where are those two bastards?" Adrian asked, bluntly, to say the least, if Rynn felt like whacking the back of his head but withheld it for the only reason of not wanting to lengthen things more than they always were.
The man calmly countered, "I know many bastards."
"News travels fast, old man," Adrian said, sitting down on a broken pillar and stabbing his sword into the grass nearby. "I know you've heard it."
That made the man turn around and watch them carefully. "I would praise them for getting out of that hellhole. I mean, what? They were at the zero level. I think everyone knows it's infamous for keeping innocent people locked up."
"As much as we'd like to discuss injustice," Rynn said conversationally. "Our supervisor might as well slaughter us if we don't back good news. One of them is a huge deal for the Amatsu Kageri, and the other is a suspect of being a part of Vradulus."
"The division of informants?" the man asked incredulously. "Selvaris is much worse than what I imagined."
Adrian frowned. "I would generally agree. But you are withholding important information."
The man laughed a little before he opened a fan and covered his mouth. "Rhian and ␣␣?"
Rynn bit back a wince as she felt her head hurt, déjà vu overcoming her. She glanced at Adrian; he also had a weird look on his face. "His name… is what?" Adrian asked. "This tall?" he motioned to the top of Rynn's head.
"␣␣."
"Do you only hear silence?" Rynn asked.
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[Many
Adrian nodded.
The man then raised his eyebrows the slightest as he pulled away the fan from his lips. "Perhaps he hasn't yet revealed his 'name' to the Watchers."
"You know who he is," Rynn repeated.
The man shrugged. "Do you remember what Sect Leader Lu had said?"
"Obviously," Adrian said.
Rynn took a deep breath. "He should be in the System, right? Given that the Celestium didn't label him as 'unregistered.' Then how?"
They looked at the man that now had averted his attention back to the rising sun. "The Shu clan will attack in no more than a few hours," he proclaimed.
At his words, a screen appeared in front of the three of them.
Rynn opened the Trial's description.
[Trial 5: Battle the Corrupted
Grade: A
Conditions: The age of royals has always provided corruption; help by participating in defeating the corrupted.
- Have to make a contribution
- Kill the traitor
Time limit: 3 hours; 2 days
Failure: ??
Reward: ?? * Reward depends on contribution]
"Well," the man said, his eyes gleaming just the way his sun necklace reflected the moonlight. "Focus on this. I'll see what I can do about your people. You two do complain an awful lot. I had handed a gold platter in front of you, yet you decided to chase after something else."
—
"Shu has a helper?" Rhian asked, gazing at the screen.
"Unfortunately," Zane replied.
'I wonder how things are going in Selvaris…' The Nine Moon Relics must've been taken to perform the ritual by now, he supposed. If he recalled correctly, Caue and Morgan were there—Master Khan had also returned, so Zane supposed he should stop worrying.
"It's not surprising." Hua Yi muttered. "The Shu have a pretty good relationship with us. It would be common for someone to side with them."
The Republic of Draven, the Zariya Empire, the Kingdom of Mouzhar, the Dukedom of Dalaznun, and the Ellesmere Empire were the main rulers that ran Selvaris. A few countable small kingdoms ruled as well, notably the Sovoner Pavilion. If Zane recalled correctly, one of the small Kingdoms, which had inherited the Grand Library of Mouzhar, would side with the Republic.
Zane scrunched his brow.
<␣␣␣>
He pressed a hand against his temple as he felt something pang inside his head. Something felt wrong. Like a memory displaced.
"Are you okay?" Hua Yi asked.
Zane muttered, "I'm fine."
"Mn, that feels hard to believe," Rhian murmured.
Zane pursed his lips and glanced at Rhian. Now that Zane thought about it… what was his repercussion for changing the past? There had to be something, right? He couldn't just make such major changes and leave.
Rhian wasn't supposed to be here. And considering the skillset of the latter, there was a high chance that it'd change the outcome of some element in the war. However, a part of him supposed that this wasn't merely the situation.
[A Genesis Skill within you is fluttering!]