Chapter 765: Unusual Developments
“Well… that’s a new one…”
“I didn’t even know Zhen Liu could get that…vicious.”
“…”
As was tradition at this point, Jin Fang, Rianna and now Jinju Ren were given access to a special room in which they could use to watch Zhen Liu basically make a fool of himself.
While they understood why Zhen Liu had to act the way he did in order to obfuscate his identity and intimidate his targets, they also found the outlandish acting to be incredibly funny given how Zhen Liu normally acted.
All that being said though, they were rather shocked at this new side of Zhen Liu that seemed to appeared out of nowhere.
It was an understandable reaction to get mad when being spat upon, it was another thing entirely to threaten to use a live goose and a quarter ton of goat butter as torture implements.
As Jinju Ren and Rianna did their best to try and mentally process what they heard Zhen Liu had used as a threat, something rather unexpected.
“Sniff…”
“Huh?”
“Sniff.”
“Oh…”
“Sniff.”
Jin Fang, for no discernable reason, started crying.
Jinju Ren and Rianna were taken aback as this was the first time they had seen Jin Fang actually cry. They weren’t entirely sure why she was crying, but they could hazard a guess given the current context.
“Hey, Jin Fang. I know Xiao Liu looks a bit scary right now, but-”
“Sniff,sniff! I’m so proud of him.”
“Yes, I am also very-wait, what?”
Evidently, it wasn’t tears of fear or sadness that Jin Fang was crying right now, they were tears of pride.
With this new bit of information, Jinju Ren and Rianna couldn’t help but lean back a bit in surprise. They leaned even further when they heard her reason for having happy tears.
“I’m sorry for confusing you guys, it’s just… this is the first time I’ve heard him make a threat and mean it,” Jin Fang explained while wiping away a tear. “Although, I would’ve used a King Crab instead of a lobster, olive oil has less friction in comparison to butter and as much fun as it sounds to use a live gorilla, they’re always more trouble than they’re worth.”
“The hell?”
At this exact moment, Jinju Ren and Rianna shared the exact same thoughts and question: what the fuck does Jin Fang do for Zhen Liu’s mother, exactly?
“Hey…do you think we should ask her or Xiao Liu’s mother, directly?”
“I…I get the feeling once we do ask…we can never unask…”
“That…is a legitimate fear.”
With their shock over Jin Fang’s reaction now being more dominant in their mind, they could now appreciate that Zhen Liu’s insane threat was probably not as bad as they initially thought.
Especially in comparison to whatever the fuck Jin Fang just suggested.
…
∆I fucking knew Lady Jin Fang was crazy crazy.∆
=I want to say that’s an unfair statement…but the things she just suggested as a passing comment could be used as the basis for this world’s version of the Geneva Convention.=
∆Yeah…∆
________________________________________
“-and they will not find your bodies until three weeks after the last of the salt is washed away by wind, rain or hungry scavangers, do I make myself clear?!”
“Y-yes!”
“Oh gods, we’re going to die!”
“GOOD!”
As Zhen Liu finished his incredibly detailed, incredibly weird threat, he could see the change in demenaor occuring in the eyes of Yin Yue and Yin Kang.
“Now…are you going to answer my questions, or what?”
“We’ll talk! We’ll talk! Just…don’t fucking bring out the goats. It’s kinder to let the clan kill us for our failure than…whatever the fuck all that was!”
“I won’t, as long as you answer my questions.”
“Okay…”
While Zhen Liu didn’t actually mean half of the things he said in that heat of the moment, he knew damn well that saying it with enough conviction and fury made it incredibly easy to get people to believe almost anything.
“Now let’s start simple, who were you guys sent here to kill and how many more of you assholes are on this ship?”
“That…”
Now, for all intents and purposes, Zhen Liu didn’t actually care who these assassins were sent to kill while on this ship. That sounded a bit callous and cruel, but Zhen Liu didn’t know any of these people and had no moral or societal obligation to try and prevent their deaths…to an extent.
For all he knew, maybe some of these people with assassination targets on their asses were actually massive assholes in their own right.
Nobody could please everybody, but some people made it a point to piss off everybody.
Which is why, after he extracted all he needed to know about whomever each of these assassins were targeting, he was going to send his own sneaky bastards to take a look for themselves.
After all, the most appreciative people are those who were just rescued from certain death…
…
‘Okay, you guys have all the details on who is trying to murder who?’
[Of course, milord.]
[More or less, manager.]
[Yes…]
[Memorized, ringmaster!]
[Man, we really need to add a stealth kaijin to our roster. We’re going to get caught one of these days.]
[To be fair, we do have a stealthy kaijin in our ranks, but she’s busy teaching our lord’s younger clansmen how to defend themselves using spider silk scarves and poison.]
[Oh yeah…what the fuck does her syllabus even look like?]
‘I don’t know, and I’m afraid to find out. Logos, Pathos, despite these two having weird probability manipulating shit, can we still scramble their memories?’
=It’ll take a few minutes, but yes.=
‘Baller.’
_____Fast Forwarding a bit…______________
[Huh…I’m honestly surprised that that the assassin thing was the most interesting thing to happen while we were here,] Hurricroak commented. [I figured that there would at least be a storm or pirates. I’m not expecting another rogue kaijin over here, but still.]
[Meh, I welcome this slower pace for once,] Nepherage added. [We’ve been dealing with back to back insanity as it is, a little downtime is more than welcome.]
[That’s…fair…]
[Is…is that attitude due to everything we’ve dealt with up until now, or is that attitude due to the fact that we’re probably gonna be in for a shocking development back at home due to Arachnidame and Lacerage being left in charge to influence the aides of the elders?]
[Yes.]
[Aight.]
[You know…I figured being a kaijin would involve more violence,] Screamira commented.
[You’d be surprised…]
________________________________________
“ATTENTION, ATTENTION! THE NIMONA WILL BE MAKING PORT WITH PEARL TUSK HARBOR IN ABOUT AN HOUR. PLEASE MAKE SURE TO HAVE YOUR LUGGAGE PLACED OUTSIDE OF YOUR CABIN DOOR, SO THAT THE PORTERS CAN BRING IT TO THE PICK UP AREA, THANK YOU!”
The Nimona’s voyage from Roaring Tide to Stampeding Bison was remarkably smooth this time around, as the ocean steamer, it’s passengers and crew, didn’t meet anything more dangeorus than a small rain cloud.
While this peaceful development came as a disappointment to some of the rowdier passengers who wanted to fight off sea monsters or pirates, a good chunk of them were actually quite relieved. After all, it wasn’t often they got to enjoy a moment of peace and luxury in such a novel setting.
Granted, none of them could’ve known that the reason for all this leave and quiet was because a certain young master and his merry band of monsters were doing their absolute damnedest behind the scenes to prevent any incidents, accidents or deaths from occuring in the first place.
“Home sweet home…”
Speaking of, Zhen Liu at this time had already finished packing up all of his stuff and left it out in the hallways, so he decided to use this time to go up on the upper decks to see Pearl Tusk Harbor come into view.
A warm feeling developed in Zhen Liu’s chest as he saw the familiar architecture of Stampeding Bison come into view.
Zhen Liu may have had Roaring Tide ancestry, hell most of his family was from the place, but he felt significantly more at home in the dry deserts of Stampeding Bison.
People there at least didn’t give him any funny looks because of his mixed heritage…mostly.
“So this is Stampeding Bison, huh? I can sense the Terraqi aether from here.”
“Hmm? Oh. Hey, Xiao Ren. Already finished packing? Nice outfit, by the way.”
“Wouldn’t be up here otherwise. Also, thank you for the compliment.”
Normally, Jinju Ren would wear this rather sexy red and black silk dress that was done in the Roaring Tide style, which constituted flowing silks and open skin for the sake of preventing the natural humidity from ruining whatever outfit they were wearing.
However, this time around she opted to wear a more casual looking frilly dress that was the style in Stampeding Bison. After all, it was better to beat dust off of ruffle than trying to rub it one’s skin.
“So, now that we’re back in your home turf…are there any other places that have been influenced by your chaotic touch?”
“That…”
It had been about two to three months since Zhen Liu had left Stampeding Bison, but he caused quite a bit of a ruckus when he did. So now, after all this time, he got to see what exactly happened to the places he…”influenced”.
“I mean, there were a few places. But probably nothing too big.”
