Chapter 717: One Sided Burial
“Simply knowing someone is lying, doesn’t mean you have leverage over them. You just have the means to establish it.”
-Advice from a rather unscrupulous lawyer, who did all the wrong things for the right reasons.
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[Wait a minute…milord? I thought you said you weren’t going to try and just confront the man with the full knowledge of what you know about him. You just gave him a play by play of why you know he’s in this medical hall.]
‘I am not, Nepherage. I am simply giving this man the means to dig himself a hole.’
[The hell are you talking about, maestro?]
‘Just watch…’
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There are a variety reactions that can occur when someone gets caught in a lie.
They can get angry, as a means of trying to enforce the truth.
They can play dumb, as if trying to confirm that they honestly believed what they said.
They can also simply freeze up due to their brain failing to come up with anything useful in a given moment.
Normally. Zhen Jun Yao found himself in such moments, he would use the [False Dream Jade] to temporarily dazzle someone he was talking to, in order to make them a bit more susceptible to his less than stellar lies.
But as of this moment, Zhen Jun Yao was freezing up due to being caught up in one of his own lies and having no way to suddenly get out of it. Well, that was his initial reaction at least.
‘Wait…something about his statement didn’t sound right…’
Zhen Jun Yao managed to school his expression long enough to think upon what Zhen Liu had said, he remembered that he had mentioned that he was accompanying the clan’s matriarch. It was very possible that the matriarch had informed Zhen Liu about the hammer and it’s guardian on the walk from the vault to here.
‘If that’s the case…why would he assume I would know anything about it? Those seal markers were supposed to be secret and there’s no way he could know when-wait…when…oh fuck…’
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‘Okay, you guys can probably sense it, but right now, this guy is realizing that the statement I made against him had a glaring hole in it. A very obvious one that he will probably focus on, as opposed to the more damning thing I mentioned. It will be at this point that he will attempt to expand upon his lie. It will not pan out for him.’
[Why?]
‘Because I’m about to give him some more details to think about and agonize over.’
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As Zhen Jun Yao thought about Zhen Liu’s implied question, he realized that the man wasn’t looking for how the seal actually broke or asking why he was located in Elder Tinh’s office in the first place: the man was looking for a timeline. More specifically, he was trying to figure out when during the “attack”, did Elder Tinh fail to protect the sealing stone for the cursed aether treasure that was now hanging off of Zhen LIu’s hip like a trophy. Because depending on how he answered this question, Zhen Jun Yao would get off scot-free or he would be very, very screwed.
One would think that telling lie in regards to a timeline would be easy, but there are an interesting amount of issues with doing such a thing. And those issues can all be focused on a simple factor: timing.
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Zhen Jun Yao was very aware that this question had a surprising amount of weight to it, despite how simple it sounded.
‘Dammit, what time did I actually go meet with Elder Zhen Tinh?,’ Zhen Jun Yao thought to himself as he ground his teeth in quiet frustration. Because depending on what time Zhen Jun Yao stated, there was a very high chance that he could implicate himself or just simply contradict his own statements.
Too early would indicate that he might’ve been present for everything to go down, but too late would make it very clear that he was lying to everyone. Either way, he was kind of screwed.
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*Bing-Bong*
We interrupt this chapter to help explain in simpler terms as to why Zhen Jun Yao was having trouble stating a specific time in regards to Zhen Liu’s question, by providing some meta-data that he was not aware of.
In other words, a time line.
7 AM: The branch clan arrives to the Zhen Clan’s estate to undergo some ceremonial stuff and get their rewards. At this time, Zhen Jun Yao was in his room, plotting his revenge or something stupid like that.
8 AM: The branch clan scions enter the vault and begin picking out what sort of aether treasures they should use. Zhen Jun Yao leaves to go talk to Zhen Tinh, an elder who is a massive douche canoe and the owner of a seal that prevented the [Hammer of Damnation] from going wild.
9 AM: Two of the branch clan scions managed to pick out their treasures without much fanfare, but at this exact same time, Zhen Tinh destroyed his own sealing stone to release the cursed hammer upon the branch clan like an asshole. Battle ensues, Zhen Liu ends up taming the cursed hammer.
9:30 AM: With the hammer now tamed, Zhen Liu used it to launch a surprise attack against Elder Zhen Tinh, knocking him out with one hit. This, in turn, causes Zhen Jun Yao to panic over the possibility that he will be held responsible for this, so he punches himself out.
10 AM: Branch clan scions acquire the last of their treasures, the unconscious bodies of Zhen Tinh and Zhen Jun Yao are discovered.
Present 11ish: Zhen Liu is brought over to the medical hall by the matriarch, because his new hammer was directly related to the injured party of Zhen Tinh. Zhen Jun Yao is also there because he was in the room when it happened.
Throughout all of this: The kaijin were ransacking the room of Zhen Jun Yao and Spring Brawler was spying on both Zhen Tinh and Zhen Jun Yao, meaning Zhen Liu knows everything but is playing…coy, for the sake of driving Zhen Jun Yao insane. Or at the very least, he was going to make this man regret going for him and his kin.
We now return to your regularly scheduled chapter.
Thank you.
*Bing-Bong*
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‘Dammit! What time did I actually go see him?!,’ Zhen Jun Yao asked himself again with increasing frustration.
As Zhen Jun Yao was quietly agonizing over such a small, yet important, detail, the instigator of this downward spiral was simply sitting and watching with a calm breath and subtle smile.
After all, a subtle smile during an investigation was arguably the most unsettling thing of all.
‘Why are you smiling? Can you stop fucking smiling?! I’m trying to…wait….is it possible that the reason this guy is smiling is because…no. No, no, no, it can’t be! Does…does this fucking brackborn mongrel know that I’m lying? Does he know it doesn’t matter what I say because he already knows the answer?! What kind of sadistic game is this?!,’ Zhen Jun Yao thought to himself with increasing amount of frustration and stress. Unfortunately, he couldn’t physically express this frustration, so he had to make do with simply clenching his teeth and squeezing his bed sheet. ‘What the fuck else does he know?!’
Subtle little hints that Zhen Liu was all too perceptive of.
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[Huh…why is he so quiet right now? Is he about to explode?]
‘In a sense…what you are witnessing right now is what happens when a criminal begins to realize that they are absolutely, positively, screwed. He thinks I already know everything that he did, and how he is lying to me. As such, he is now in complete agony, as for the first time in his life as a liar, a cheat and a traitor, someone has finally manage to caught on to his bullshit and is now using it to torture him. And all I had to do, was drop some subtle hints. Cool, huh?’
[Oh…I get it.]
[I’m confused…]
[Say…what…?]
‘Long story short, the only people who can outsmart somebody who thinks they’re smarter than everybody else, is themselves.’
[Huh?]
‘The man’s overthinking himself into a fail state.’
[Ah.]
‘Either way, he’s about to make some bullshit and weak excuse that he couldn’t remember anything due to the head trauma that he sustained.’
[You mean the punch he gave himself?]
‘Bingo.’
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‘See?’
