Chapter 859: Funny Whispers
Meanwhile in a “specially created” observation room…
‘So this is what my son does when he needs to extract information from someone? Hmmm.’
The evening prior to today, Zhen Liu explained to his mother that he technically had a special key that allowed him to access the Library of Nowhere whenever he wanted.
The following day, he then explained how Logos and Pathos were able to manipulate the library as they wished, or how he wished.
After making these two revelations known, Daria had Logos and Pathos prepare for her a special room in which she could watch as Zhen Liu did… whatever the hell he did when he needed to break someone’s mind, body and soul for the sake of information.
So far, she was seeing a whole lot of the first and third, and very little in regards to the second.
This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but she did find it mildly boring to say the least.
It wasn’t until Zhen Liu suddenly brought a trio of strangely sexy zakos that she started to pay a bit more attention.
‘Huh…I’m starting to get the impression that most of my son’s kaijin are female on purpose…,’ Daria thought to herself. Evidently, she wanted to know for certain about the origins of these zakos.
“Excuse me, Logos? Pathos? Can either of you answer a question for me right now?,” Daria asked aloud.
She wasn’t entirely sure if the curator spirits could hear her thoughts, so she figured that she might as well verbalize herself.
Thankfully, it actually did prompt a response.
=I am here, Madam Daria. What do you need?=
“Which one am I talking to right now? Logos or Pathos?”
=Logos, ma’am.=
“Ah, the straightforward one. Good,” Daria nodded at the pleasant surprise. “I wish to know the exact origins of these rather feminine looking zakos that my son has tied to chairs for some reason. Were they made by his hands or someone else’s hands?”
=The zakos you are referring to call themselves the GalEm Force, and they were…technically made by your son. Well, they were actually made by a [Chaos] based parasitic entity that infused some normal zakos with the power of pure [Lust] and resulted in the physical creation of those three.=
“Physical creation?”
=The three men that our lord is interrogating were engaged in intimate activity with them, resulting in the development of rudimentary sentience.=
“Ah.”
=Is that all you wanted to know, ma’am?=
“Not yet, what can you tell me about what my darling baby boy has planned for these six?”
=Ah, well…=
________________________________________
“While I’m not sure what rumors you heard about me, I can at least assure you that the thing about my puppets being strangely life-like are…not entirely exaggerated,” Zhen Liu said with a smile that was becoming more and more sinister and fake to Victor and his cohorts.
When Victor and his friends started to investigate Zhen Liu in earnest, they found a lot of crazy rumors in regards to him and the clan he came from.
They heard about how when the Wolfe Family attempted to make a powerplay, they overthrew them in retaliation and became the overlords of Stone Claw City.
They heard about how they went to Roaring Tide in an attempt to make contact with their familial roots, that they caused an even bigger ruckus and won some fancy tournament thing that had a rumored prize so powerful, that many nobles pursued it for the sake of becoming the kings of their respective kingdoms.
They even heard rumors in the underworld how the Marquis de Howlite, a big mover and shaker in the black markets of Stampeding Bison, mysteriously died shortly after cutting a deal with the Zhen Clan, with his fabled ledger disappearing along with his burnt out mansion.
The weird thing about all of these aforementioned deeds though was that, none of them could be traced back to a specific member of the Zhen Clan, exactly.
Most of the time, when someone powerful gets toppled or someone causes a big enough ruckus that high tiered sects get involved, people can usually trace back the origin of these deeds back to singular source, a notable warrior who would go on to become known as a living terror or a fool who flew too close to the sun.
However, most rumors involving the Zhen Clan of Stone Claw City, always seemed to refer to them as a collective.
That is…unless you know what to look for.
Over the course of their investigation, despite Simos and Graff not having much to show for it other than tracking the Zhen Clan’s movements, Victor managed to piece together that most of these more famous incidents always seemed to involve one individual who had one massive rumor tied to him and one strange trait that was made true about him.
That is, the Fourth Young Master and his strange aether puppets.
During the battle for Stone Claw, Zhen Liu and his puppets were seen fighting like one-man armies, beating dozens of warriors by themselves. Some people even swore they heard rumors about how the Wolfe Family attempted to take the Zhen Clan’s civilian half hostage on the day of the powerplay, only to be foiled because one of the young masters stayed behind and had help from these strange puppets.
When the Zhen Clan of Stone Claw caused heads to turn at Roaring Tide, one of the most talked about fights was the Fourth Young Master “bitch slapping” someone so hard that they passed out, only for the subsequent fights to consist of him controlling puppets that moved with more grace and fluidity than even the most trained fighters.
Finally, in regards to the Marquis de Howlite, Victor heard from one of his informants that on the day of the Marquis’s death, several strange, monstrous figures were seen looting the house before burning it to the ground like a giant funeral pyre. It didn’t take Victor too long to connect the descriptions his informants provided him with the puppets that the Fourth Young Master liked to practice and fight with.
In every rumor, in every incident, it seemed as if Fourth Young Master of the Zhen Clan was some kind of walking natural disaster, with his puppets serving as extensions of his will…to most sane people.
To a few, rather speculative folks, they always assumed that Zhen Liu’s puppets were a bit more…lively than he let on.
Perhaps it was paranoia, perhaps it was a sharp eye, but people speculated that the reason why Zhen Liu’s puppets were able to use aether arts, that the reason why they could fight in such weird and discordant styles and that the reason why they could fight off foes that would normally be able to easily defeat them, was due to the fact that they were alive.
Beings that weren’t quite mortal, but had enough of a soul to technically be mortal.
Victor had personally filed these speculations as being nothing more than flights of fancy, but now hearing it from the source of the rumors themselves…he was starting to second guess other things he had dismissed in his life.
Granted, his biggest concern right now was why this particular rumor turned fact involved him, his mates and these awfully familiar statues that caused his heart to ache in ways that he had long since discarded.
(Un)fortunately, he and his friends were about to be given the answer in a manner most…well, embarrassing.
“Now to make a rather long story short, you three managed to stumble upon my sanctuary during a rather…sensitive time…and somehow stumbled upon these incomplete creations of mine,” Zhen Liu said as he gestured to the unconscious trio of feminine statues.”And then y’all proceeded to try and get nasty with them.”
“What?”
“No we did-”
Snap
Before Simos and Graff could voice their dissent at this accusation, Zhen Liu simply snapped his fingers and summoned a display in front of the trio that showed… exactly that.
More specifically, they were showed the part where they were heavily groping the statue girls in a luxury bath house.
Victor for his part looked mildly embarrassed and says from the display, while Simos and Graff watched with their attention glued to it like flies on a carcass. Once the footage ended, Simos and Graff sat their with their respective mouths agape and minds relatively shocked.
It was one thing being told they did a thing that they didn’t remember, it was a whole other thing when being shown exactly how they did a thing in painstaking detail.
“Oh good gods, I remember everything that happened now.”
“The massages…the oil… the…the…bathhouse!”
“Alright, you made your point,” Victor interrupted. “What in the hells are you bringing this all up for?!”
“Tsk, tsk! So sensitive! Why,I’m only bringing this up because I wanted to prep you lot for your happy reunion. It’s not often one gets to meet with their literal dream girls after all.”
