Chapter 23: Perception is weird
“Thank the ancestors that’s over,” Zhen Liu grumbled as he laid facedown in a bed for the first time in weeks, “who knew crashing your own funeral and mingling would be so exhausting?”
[I’m not sure milord, you seemed rather adept in navigating all of those conversations,] Nepherage commented in his head. Nepherage had turned back into the bracelet a little bit after Zhen Liu made his lie even more elaborate. This sudden transformation ended up shocking people yet again, but Zhen Liu managed to play it off as being part of Nepherage’s abilities as an aether puppet.
“It’s called faking it till you make it Nepherage. Faking it till you make it.”
[Whatever you say milord.]
The rest of the event went surprisingly smooth for Zhen Liu, despite everything that had just happened.
After Moka was safely incarcerated in the family dungeon, and patriarch Zhen Shi was informed of all that had transpired, the elders thought it’d be prudent to turn the funeral affair into a “welcome back from the dead” party for Zhen Liu.
Some people did leave the party due to the sudden change in planned activities, but a majority of people decided to stick around just of how novel the entire situation turned out.
“Betrayal, drama, sudden revivals and healing? It’s like a copper novel.”
“Eh…seems a bit melodramatic to me.”
“Please, if we haven’t witnessed any of it ourselves, we’d assume this convoluted affair was the work of a crappy writer too!”
There were some people who also had doubts about Nepherage being an “aether puppet”, but they bit their tongues in fear of incurring the wrath of Seventh Mistress of the Zhen Clan, or getting a “hands-on” demonstration of Nepherage’s strength. They all saw Moka getting bodied like a chump, it might’ve been a sneak attack but it was still strong enough to knock him the hell out in one move.
What followed was Zhen Liu bring subjugated to about two to three hours worth of socializing, explaining what the hell happened to him and a brief semi-awkward encounter between him, Jin Fang and Alicia.
Nothing too dramatic happened, and the two even bonded over sharing the secret of Zhen Liu’s circumstances. They also gave Zhen Liu some flak over Nepherage looking surprisingly… sculpted. They both knew he created her, so they couldn’t help but judge him just a little bit.
All of the guests eventually left and the clansmen disbanded to their own activities, leaving Zhen Liu alone to finally return to his quarters.
“At some point, I need to poke through this guy’s room to see if he squirrelled away anything interesting,” Zhen Liu thought to himself as he laid in bed, “Speaking of belongings…”
Zhen Liu rolled onto his back and lifted his left hand in front of him.
Dimly illuminated by the lamp in his room, he studied the strange ring on his middle finger, the weird marking on his palm and Nepherage’s bracelet.
Of the three items stuck on his hand, the only thing that he could get working was Nepherage’s bracelet.
When Zhen Liu created Nepherage, the ring on his middle finger had suddenly released a whole slew of aether arts that went flying into Nepherage’s form. He didn’t know where they came from or why, but he did understand that they were the reason Nepherage could do what she does.
Zhen Liu had first thought that this ring was a rare dimensional treasure that he had seen the elders use before, but that idea was disproven when he attempted to use it to store some random items he found on the way back home and nothing happened. The aether he channeled into it just dissipated into thin air.
He then tried to channel aether into the marking on his palm. He had felt something starting to happen, but it quickly sputtered like a cold engine. Zhen Liu guessed that the marking on his hand wouldn’t work until some requirement was met.
“Pop culture trope dictates that this thing is either powered by desire or I need to level up before more features unlock,” Zhen Liu thought to himself, “Wait a minute…”
Zhen Liu stared at his hand for a solid minute before a stupidly simple question to his mind.
“What would happen if I channeled my aether into all three at the same time?”
With this idea in mind, Zhen Liu began to channel a steady stream of aether into all three items, connecting them with a thread of energy.
[Milord? I feel tingly.]
“So is my hand.”
Nepherage’s bracelet, the ring on his finger and the marking on his hand soon began to glow as more and more aether was pumped into them.
“Should I-whoa!”
Just as Zhen Liu thought about stopping his course of action, the palm of his hand began to project a holographic image of Nepherage that rotated in his palm like a 3D model. Surrounding the model was a series of runes, diagrams, odd characters and formulas that he could kinda understand but not completely.
“Huh…this looks like, what they called it…Roaring Tide script? I guess if the old guy was in this body he could understand this stuff better than my isekai’d ass,” Zhen Liu grumbled, “Wait…maybe it’s connected to my state of mind?”
Zhen Liu began to focus on the image in front of him and tried to change the text to something he could understand.
Nothing happened initially, but as Zhen Liu focused more and more, the weird characters floating around Nepherage’s holographic figure began to change into neat and orderly rectangles.
When everything settled down, Zhen Liu was greeted by the sight of status screens and character sheets equivalent to the ones used in the video games and table top RPGs he was used to.
“Huh…that’s useful.”
He was about to do a deep dive into Nepherage’s abilities when a stray thought popped up. Zhen Liu narrowed his eyes a bit and the status screens changed back to the previous format of floating diagrams and runes. Focusing his mind again, he changed it back to the screens.
“So my state of mind affects how I see this? Neat.”
