Chapter 830: Two lives intersection.
*Bing-Bong*
We interrupt this chapter to help explain what kind of lie the kaijin and the curator spirits had cooked up to prior Zhen Liu waking up.
Needless to say, it sounded absurd but the logic was more or less sound.
Building upon the past few interactions where Zhen Liu had the kaijin take on humans disguises before getting involved with the Zhen Clan’s family affairs, the kaijin managed to come up with the idea that Zhen Liu’s mysterious “master”, was actually the member of a hidden sect known simply as the Nowhere Temple.
It wasn’t the most creative name in the world, but it got the point across…mostly.
Using this “sect” as an excuse, the kaijin had a sound a tale about how they were tasked to protect their “fellow disciple”, given his unusual proclivity to attract fortune and misfortune like a lightning rod.
Their “master” had initially tasked Aranea and Lucille to be the only disciples sent for this task of watching over Zhen Liu and his family, but when the Zhen Clan decided to go to Roaring Tide, that’s when the other disciples came into play.
These “new” disciples were given the task of blending into the Zhen Clan, or at the very least, whatever area the Zhen Clan found themselves in, and provide support whenever necessary.
Necessary, in this case, meaning if someone significantly bigger and nastier than the Zhen Clan showed up to try and take advantage of them.
This order, however, was also used to help justify why the youngest disciples in this sect, Jasper and Janice, were allowed to participate in a series of deadly arena games for the sake of training and, to quote, “weed out potential weak threats”.
Either way, the appearance of the children at the arena is what prompted another “member” of the Nowhere Temple (Zhen Liu with his Frosttusk power-up disguise) to show up and extract them.
Everything would’ve gone smoothly if it wasn’t for the Spatial Beaver bloodliner and his friends suddenly interfering with the teleportation array that was being used to extract the kids.
As for how Zhen Liu ended up in Library alongside his cousins, the kaijin came up with the idea that he had also been caught up in the spatial explosion because he was trying to stop the Spatial Beaver bloodliner from doing so.
To be more precise, Zhen Liu was in the middle of returning home to get help and his puppets, when he found the Spatial Beaver bloodliner and friends about to teleport into the arena for some asinine reason.
Regardless, it was because of this combination of factors that led to the Zhen Clan scions getting summoned to the [Library of Nowhere], aka, the “Temple of Nowhere”, and being forced to go through what the kaijin called their “defensive measures”.
Did this lie make any coherent sense?
Hell no.
Did it at least provide the groundwork for Logos and Pathos to do their memory manipulation mojo with minimal invasiveness?
Hell yes.
Either way, We now return to your regularly scheduled chapter.
Thank you.
…
You didn’t want to weave this into the normal chapter narrative, because…
|It makes scenes too damn clunky.|
And this doesn’t?
|Not really, no.|
Sure…
*Bing-Bong!*
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“Behold! [Ink Puppet: Achilles]!”
“And don’t forget, [Cloth Puppet: Amy]!”
“Wow…”
“That’s adorable!”
“Huh…
“See? Told you that they were getting along.”
When Zhen Liu and Harriet(Hurricroak) entered the room where his cousins were staying in while being guests of the [Library of Nowhere], he wasn’t entirely sure what to expect.
A part of him had expected the kaijin to have rendered the lot of them unconscious and left them in a pile. That way, Zhen Liu could just carry them away from the Library and spin some tale about them getting caught up in some kind of arena explosion that dumped them in the middle of the desert.
There was a bit of a track record on both sides in this regard, that it wasn’t a massive stretch to assume this would happen again.
That didn’t happen.
Instead, in a moment that made Zhen Liu’s heart warm with some version of paternal pride, he found that his cousins were sitting around a conference table as his adopted… children/disciples/acolytes…showcased their skills for them.
To be more precise, Jasper used his ink and giant brush to paint a living image of an Ancient Greek warrior, while Janice used her threads to make a cloth version of a Japanese Shinto priestess.
The two children then proceeded to manipulate the [Chaos] made constructs to strike various poses and even mock fight each other.
‘Okay, I need to bother Logos and Pathos about the cross…world culture contamination later,’ Zhen Liu thought to himself.
Zhen Liu had the vague idea that Janice was trying to create a cloth version of Amaterasu, but wasn’t able to because she couldn’t pronounce the name correctly.
Zhen Liu and Harriet continued to watch the scene a little bit longer before the former cleared his throat in order to capture the attention of his cousins. Granted, he had to use a small touch of [Chaos] in order to make it so that his voice was louder than the sound of [Chaos] infused ink clashing against [Chaos] infused thread.
“Ahem! Am I interrupting something?”
“Huh? Oh!”
“Xiao Liu! You’re alive!”
The Zhen Clan scions were about to run over and check on Zhen Liu to make sure he was okay…only to be beaten to the punch by the two children.
“Big bro!”
“Oof!”
As soon as Zhen Liu made his prescene known, Jasper and Janice dismissed their summoned constructs as quickly as possible and performed coordinated tackle hug that knocked the wind out of Zhen Liu. Granted, the man was sturdy enough that he was still standing tall despite the blows to the gut.
Jasper and Janice then proceeded to do that babbling thing that children do when stressed out and made themselves unintelligible. That said, Zhen Liu could at least parse out that they were apologizing for participating in the Zhen Clan arena games despite knowing how dangerous it was.
“No, no, it’s okay, it’s okay…,” Zhen Liu replied while comforting the children.
This would normally be the part where Zhen Liu would reprimand Archanidame and the other kaijin for letting it get this far, but his connections to them were still incredibly fuzzy for another eleven hours or so.
For the time being, he could only work off information that could be gathered on a firsthand basis.
Which was…surprisingly limited.
Zhen Liu’s cousins allowed Zhen Liu to comfort the two children for a couple more moments, until one of them decided to step forward and ask a question that had been developing in their mind since they entered this crazy place.
Unsurprisingly, that someone was Zhen Yue.
“Xiao Liu…we need to talk?”
“Hmmm? What’s up?”
“Well…I’m not sure exactly how to phrase this…but how long have you known about this place? This…Library of Nowhere?”
“Ah…that…”
Zhen Liu knew, to the very bottom of his soul, that this question would happen at some point in his life.
Maybe a few months from when he first found the place, maybe centuries later after he cultivated to the point where he became the [Chaos] equivalent to an Aether God.
However, just because he knew this day would happen eventually, didn’t mean he was prepared at all to answer this question without spilling his guts.
And judging from how things were going…he had to at least vomit out some modicum of the truth.
That is…unless Logos and Pathos had some form of interjection in the next five seconds.
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=We don’t exactly have a choice. We’re still lacking in terms of resources we can use for things around the library.=
=I…was about to say the chances of finding an immoral psychopath with an absurd amount of resources was slim…but then I remembered who our lord is right now…=
=I’m surprised you didn’t say both.=
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“So…why are we up here instead of being in the room to help provide some form of moral or emotional support for darling?,” Jinju Ren asked while actively snacking on some popcorn. “Shouldn’t we be down there?”
“I mean…ideally, yes,”Jin Fang admitted, “but then we wouldn’t be able to watch as Xiao Liu try his damnedest to lie through his teeth.”
“True…”
“Also, Logos and Pathos requested I take care of interrogating these three morons and if I’m going to do that, I might as well have something playing the background.”
“Isn’t that the point of music?”
“I’m a visual person.”
“Ah.”
“Hey girls,” Rianna interjected, “it appears Logos and Pathos are throwing Xiao Liu a lifeline.”
“Nice.”
CREATORS’ THOUGHTS
Mizako
If you’re reading this, I’m going to be Vietnam for about two weeks, so updates are gonna be weird.
