Chapter 273: From “oh no” to “oh f-”
=Hold up, is our lord doing the “devilish dealmaker” schtick again?=
=I don’t think so…anyways, I’m surprised our lord this time around is being so careful about people knowing his identity…well, sorta careful. Our last lord was very loud and proud about it.=
=Excellent…so you think his ruse will work?=
=Right…you ready for showtime?=
[Si seniors y senoritas, and Frosttusk and Nepherage even helped to prepare an escape route.]
[Took…awhile…]
[Not used to being so…subtle.]
[Either way, good job guys. Now then…let’s make someone shit their pants.]
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“Uh oh.”
At first, everything was going fine.
All of the the spies were assigned to their intended targets, feeding back information to the heads of the operation.
Namely, Zhen Wang and his disciple that looked surprisingly similar to him.
The two of them kept watching the scrying mirror, observing how these exiles and their allies went about their day here in this “quaint”, little frontier city.
Evidently, the two of them were so certain of their operative’s abilities, that Zhen Wang got a little lazy…again.
Let it be known, arrogance is more likely to get your ass killed moreso than
“Contact me if anything goes wrong. I’ll grab us something that isn’t too…dry,” Zhen Wang told his younger counterpart as he left the room to head back to the main dining area on the floor below.
This left the younger counterpart alone with the scrying mirror…and a full view as two of the displays suddenly went out.
Namely, the ones that were tailing those two young ladies that were supposed to be engaged to the Fourth “Young Master” of the Zhen “clan”.
“Huh…looks like those girls were more competent and alert than I gave them credit for…sensing a bit of a pattern here…no matter. Those two were trained on how to deal with these situations, and push come to shove, they have their ‘parting gifts’ ready to go. Nothing to bother master about.”
This was his first mistake.
He watched the displays patiently, occasionally checking on the two blacked out displays, waiting for them to either start showing images again or disappear completely, a sign that the operatives had “taken their gifts to their ancestors”.
However, as more and more time went by…nothing happened to those two displays.
They just remained pitch black.
Now a tad more worried, he proceeded to make those two black displays the main focus of the mirror.
“Hmmm. If they were knocked out col, they should have been conscious enough now to either escape or take their pills…what’s going on?,” the disciple asked himself, “did those two girls figure out they had poison in their teeth? No…impossible…unless…”
So engrossed about the problem before him, he failed to notice the entry of three little figures, crawling around like mice, from the ceiling lining.
This was the second mistake.
“Oh shit.”
“That’s it, I need to go and talk to master about this,” he said as he placed the mirror down.
It didn’t take him long to make his way across the room and get to the door handle, but just as he about to reach out and open it, a voice suddenly called out.
“Ah, ah, ah,” the voice scolded in a melodic, “I wouldn’t touch that door if I was you~”
“What the-?!”
“A handle that cold will give you frostbite~”
On cue, the door to the leave the room suddenly froze over as a thick layer of ice spontaneously formed over it.
The disciple was just about to lash out with an art in attempt to break the ice, but he managed to notice the thick aether mixed in that would have surely smashed his hand and attack to pieces the moment they made contact, and stopped himself at the very last minute.
“A smart lad indeed! Now tell me, can you guess where in this room I’m speaking from?,” the voice taunted.
This was a rather tricky question for him to answer, because the voice sounded as if it came from the entire room all at once.
The disciple however was used to such unusual methods of vocal transference and began to use his aether to search the room for any hidden tools, arrays, anything that was out of the ordinary.
(Un)fortunately, he found nothing.
“Nothing?! Not even the faintest trace of aether? That’s impossible, unless the speaker is…”
“Oooh, your senses dulled or something? Why don’t we play a game of hot and cold then, all you have to do is point your little finger around the room and I’ll tell you if you’re close by saying you’re hot, or that you are getting too far by saying it’s cold. Understand? If you do, please nod your head.”
In his head, the disciple went through a dozen or so scenarios as to how and why this voice was able to speak to him at this moment.
Outside of his head, he simply nodded.
“Good.”
Following the voice’s instructions, he pointed a single finger around the room, slowly moving it about.
“Cold.”
“Warm.”
“Getting warmer.”
“Hot.”
“Hotter!”
“Ha ha, you’re boiling baby!”
The place in the room that caused the voice to exclaim in such a manner was none other than the place that he had just put the scrying mirror down on.
“Now then, are you going to continue to gawk and wonder how I’m doing this, or are you going to come over and pick up this fine Frozen Reflection mirror off of the table and look at me in eyes…Zhen…Li?”
“Oh fuck.”
In that moment, Zhen Li realized the type of person he was dealing with and his blood ran cold.
‘Why is someone at this level getting involved with our affairs? We didn’t insult anyone prestigious on the way here, right? Fuck!,’ Zhen Li mentally cursed as he walked over to the mirror.
Slowly and carefully, Zhen Li picked up the mirror to see who had been addressing him this whole time.
“Ah, now isn’t it better to have a conversation face to face? Well, mask to face, really. Forgive me for that, I just love being….dramatic.”
“It’s…no problem at all…sir.”
Staring back at him, through the scrying mirror’s display, was a man dressed in an elegant purple robe, wearing a simple featureless mask, sitting upon a strange looking throne, looking as if the entire world was nothing more than his plaything.
He might have been dressed strangely, but in Zhen Li’s eyes, this was behavior appropriate for anyone at the Aether Overlord level.
“Now then…shall we talk?,” the robed man asked.
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Meanwhile, at a certain magic library in the middle of nowhere…
“Xiao Liu…what the hell…was any of that?!”
