Chapter 628: Conflicting agendas and they didn’t know it
“Xiao Liu, a question.”
“Wassup, Jin Fang?”
“Do we really need to be here to watch this…horror show, as you put it? Because it’s honestly making me squeamish…which is weird for me because I’ve done torture before and it didn’t before…”
“Probably not,” Zhen Liu answered while doing his best to ignore that last portion of her statement, “but at this point I am so morbidly process of it all that I can’t help but to watch.”
“That’s…fair enough.”
“Besides, they’re almost done. I might as well see this thing all the way to the end.”
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*Bing-Bong*
This scene has been removed at the writer’s discretion due to him deeming it to be too repetitive.
As a substitution though, he will be providing the reasons, motives, origins and names of the people who were interrogated, including dialogue transcript, grouped based on their affiliations. Any pauses and/or stutters have been removed in order to provide ease of reading.
The reason for this substitution, is because he has deemed it unnecessarily gross to write about how five more people either had to swallow spiders or have a swarm of lacewings fly into their ears.
This is for the sake of the readers and not because the writer of this work thought it was a good idea to look up real world examples and became so uncomfortable from what he saw that he-
*THWACK!*
HEY!
|Stop blabbing about my work process!|
Quit being lazy!
|NEVER!|
*Bing-Bong*
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Prisoner#1: Yin Mai
Affiliation: Xing Family
Purpose for showing up: Had been sent by the Xing Family to, initially, spy on then main Zhen Clan in order to keep tabs on them but ended up taking the branch clan due to the notoriety of the patriarch and performance of the scions.
Reason: It was her job anyways , and the branch clan weren’t in the Blessed Willow Manor, meaning they were easier to spy on.
Explanation of capture: Ended up getting rendered unconscious by Nepherage, alongside Prisoner#2.
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Prisoner#2: Zhen Du
Affiliation: Main Zhen Clan
Purpose for showing up here: Several members of the main clan weren’t happy that the “brackborn scion bastards” were somehow doing well in the Zhen Clan competition and wanted them either crippled or eliminated before they could progress any further. Poisons were provided, as well as “evidence” that would point the finger at current rivals of the Zhen Clan.
Reason: The Zhen Clan members were angry that a bunch of foreign born exiles dared to share their family name…that and they were to be provided with aether pills if everything went fine.
Explanation of capture: Nepherage kicked in his teeth and dragged his ass to the library.
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Prisoner #3-4: Tang Yi and Tang Er
Affiliation: Imperial Family
Purpose for showing up here: The 24th Prince was still not over the fact that his nemesis(Zhen Shi) was alive, well and had a family of his own. As such, he sent the Tang brothers to either sabotage the Zhen Clan as a whole, or at least kidnap one of the Zhen Clan scions long enough to get them eliminated from the Zhen Clan competition. Violence wasn’t necessary, but it was still welcomed.
Reason: Absolutely loyalty to the crown, long live the Pearl Scale Emperor.
Explanation for capture: Frosttusk managed to get the drop on them and froze the both of them into giant popsicles.
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Prisoner #5-7: “Kuro”, “Shiro” and “Gure”
Affiliation: One of the Fallen Clan’s, unclear which.
Purpose for showing up: The Fallen Clan had sent these three in order to see if they could recruit any of the members of the branch clan to their cause. Ideally, they’d get the whole branch clan to join them in destroying the main clan, realistically, they could only recruit one of the scions. Whatever the plan was exactly, it would involve fucking with the Zhen Clan Competition.
Worst case scenario, they could have one of the scions or even the patriarch captured or killed in order to curry favor for a future betrayal.
Reason: The Zhen Clan had prospered for too long, it is time for the Fallen to rise up and take back what was rightfully theirs…or so they claim.
Explanation of capture: Kuro got taken out by Razorstella and Spring Brawler coming out of nowhere, Hurricroak electrocuted Shiro and Gure before they even realized she was there.
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‘Well… they’re not college grade notes, but they do get the point across,’ Zhen Liu thought to himself as he looked over the detailed information sheets Logos has prepared for him post possession session.
Jin Fang and Rianna had left the room at this time and had actually gone back to the hotel.
The latter had started falling asleep due to how late in the evening it was, so Jin Fang decided to bring her back to their shared room before she passed out in a chair.
“Don’t take too long in here, you need to sleep too.”
“I won’t…darling.”
“Good,” Jin Fang said with a goodbye kiss to Zhen Liu’s cheek.
Once the girls had left, Zhen Liu brought his attention back to the notes.
‘One random, one family member, two imperials and three fallen…sound like the line-up to a terrible crime movie.’
While there was a lot more technical jargon and even some incredibly intimate details like, height, weight and personal goals, none of that was as important as the explanation as to why these jackasses showed up in the first place.
Before he could act on any of this though, he had to express his gratitude.
‘Good job you two, that was…terrifying.”
[Anytime, young master.]
[Next time you call us, can be it for a fight and not intelligence gathering? It’s been awhile since I could rip into someone.]
‘I will keep that in mind.’
At this point in time, Arachnidame and Lacerage had finished jumping in and out of the bodies of the seven or so schmucks that had the unfortunate opportunity of running into the one branch clan scions that made it a habit to learn how to deal with clandestine activities.
And now, with all of the interrogations coming to an end, Zhen Liu and company now had to deal with the another problem: what to do with the unconcious assholes in the next room over.
[Are you sure we can’t just kill them?,] Arachnidame asked. [They are spies and assassins, they’re quite literally the one type of warrior nobody asks about in the event they suddenly go missing.]
‘Yeah, but it’s also a good way to attract the ire of whatever group they’re affiliated with,’ Zhen Liu answered, ‘that and we already went through the trouble of removing their suicide methods, so I’d feel bad about just butchering them.’
[As you wish.]
Zhen Liu stared into the monitor depicting the unconcious assassins the next room over, contemplating about what to do with them.
Keeping them in the library was out of the question, because even if Logos and Pathos had the place covered in protection and jamming arrays, he did not want to risk Jasper and Janice getting near any of these guys.
Partially because he didn’t want them getting hurt, partially because he felt it in his soul that Logos and Pathos would used these guys as…teaching material.
Zhen Liu could easily imagine Logos and Pathos using these captured fools as either dummies for anatomy lessons, target practice for [Chaos] techniques or anything in-between, really.
That or, judging from the footage where Zhen Liu saw how Logos and Pathos used horror show tactics to scare the shit out of the Wolfe Family several months ago, used them to test out that stuff.
Either way, it was a bad idea to keep them in the library.
‘So I either need to kill them, after getting over my objections to it, or I just scramble their brains…again…the latter option hasn’t failed me yet, but…if Zhen Hai is an indicator…hmmm…’
Evidently, this was the main reason why Zhen Liu hadn’t just thrown these guys to Logos and Pathos to play brain mind scrambler with, the possibility to remember something.
Zhen Liu had been assured by Logos and Pathos that their ability to scramble memories was absolute, and that only very specific circumstances could cause the scrambled’s memories to return, and even then, it would come out incredibly fuzzy.
He had wanted to just straight up erase their memories of this evening, but he knew better than to request something like that.
Gaps in memories lead to intrigue and mystery, since amnesia is inherently mysterious, while distorted memories aren’t questioned since everyone in existence had misremembered something at least once, ranging from a password character to a portrait detail.
All of that stated though, there was another reason why he is hesitant about using memory manipulation, but it was a rather…questionable reason.
‘And unfortunately, I can’t use another party scenario this time since all of these assassin types have conflicting agendas and affiliations. How annoying…”
In other words, Zhen Liu didn’t want to come up with four different set of memories out of laziness.
