Chapter 343: Bonus Chapter

Honestly, this kind of death announcement gave Zhu Yuande a genuine fright. After entering the Agency, most of the divinations or prophecies he had encountered were things like “you’ll have a lucky encounter in the next journey,” “fortunate boy, you’ll discover a string of title tasks,” “you’ll join the strongest tour team.” Nobody had ever told him he would be dead in one minute.

Yet this person in front of him gave Zhu Yuande a profound sense of cold. Behind him was deep darkness; the Red Sand settlement’s bonfire had gone out, and the damp chill of deep night coiled around his neck like impenetrable mist, making Zhu Yuande feel he couldn’t breathe. He pressed his hand to his own throat instinctively.

But the “blind man” in his small black round glasses in front of him seemed to see his every movement.

“Decapitation.”

He rendered his final verdict, then moved past the half-speechless Zhu Yuande and walked forward. But after one step he stopped again.

“Sir, did you just say something would happen to Yuande?”

Several members of Chen Cheng’s group who had noticed the situation were nearby, just about to come over, but when the mysterious person’s footsteps halted, they all froze like sandmice caught in a serpent’s gaze, rooted to the spot. One of them screwed up their courage and asked with a stammer, but the Stargazer paid them no attention and walked directly to the wheelchair.

“Stargazer, what did you see?”

Half-Life Daoist asked urgently; he had caught the prophecy the Stargazer had made toward Zhu Yuande, Wei Xun in the wheelchair looked at him with interest. An Xuefeng had said Stargazer’s abilities were limited here and he couldn’t see much, but Wei Xun was still curious.

Would the Stargazer see through his disguise? Wei Xun also noticed that even after reaching the wheelchair, Stargazer wasn’t “looking” at him; he was looking at the Phoenix bird standing on the back of the wheelchair.

Everyone went quiet as all the attention was on this direction. After a long moment, the Stargazer opened his mouth and what he said was:

“I’m a blind man right now, what can I possibly see?” The Stargazer said impatiently.

“A roomful of dead people? Hm?”

“Ha ha, that’s the captain’s lucky phrase for this year.”

David, dressed the same way, shrugged and laughed to ease the atmosphere.

“You know how it is, Metaphysics always has its little mysteries.”

David’s understanding was that ‘disability’ was the Stargazer’s lucky word for the year; after lending the wheelchair to An Xuefeng he had started playing blind man, and Lily’s incident, plus those enormous eyes in the centers of the desert giants’ faces, all seemed to suggest that “eyes” were dangerous in this scene re-enactment.

The Stargazer had a short temper and no patience, and the tone he had used when saying “a roomful of dead people” was particularly casual, sounding almost like something thrown out carelessly, an impatient brush-off. But everyone in Wei Xun’s group understood that Stargazer wasn’t wrong.

In theory, they were indeed in a roomful of dead people; seven of the people in Chen Cheng’s group had already died in history, and right now they were standing in this tower.

“Don’t leave this tower tonight.”

The Stargazer didn’t say why Zhu Yuande would be decapitated, but it was enough to give Half-Life Daoist a sharp sense of urgency. He went over to Zhu Yuande and stayed with him for a full five minutes. Nothing happened in those five minutes, but Half-Life Daoist still wasn’t reassured; he moved the group to the shorter sand tower adjacent to the main one, where the chieftain’s male giant and children lived, half-sunken into the ground like a mud fortress, considerably more secure.

Then the proper exchange of information began.

“Long time no see, old friends. I have to say the feeling of solid ground is much better than a cold sea. An, your flames feel more vigorous than before; did the desert stoke your passion? No no, there’s even a bit of pink in your flames. Aha, so you’ve finally found your other half?”

David greeted everyone warmly, but the Phoenix bird couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge him, didn’t even spit a small puff of flame. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] David cheerfully ignored this, the little fire dragon resting on his shoulder like an extension of his eyes. He greeted Zhang Xingcang and the others one by one, and his attention finally landed on Wei Xun.

“This is Bai Xiaosheng.”

Zhang Xingcang cut in immediately with an introduction; he had been burned by the words “androgynous” before and wasn’t waiting for David to open his mouth.

“Since when did the know-it-all become so captivating.”

David said with a teasing grin, then looked surprised.

“Oh my God, my little darling says you’re in a wheelchair? Know-it-all, what happened to your legs?”

Westerners generally preferred calling Bai Xiaosheng ‘the know-it-all’ rather than ‘Bai Xiaosheng’; different titles translated differently over there, and by all accounts the first West District tour team, the Cathedral, had their own “know-it-all” as well.

“Minor matter, don’t worry about it.”

Wei Xun gave a dismissive answer, his gaze fixed on Stargazer’s hand. An Xuefeng had said the butterfly fragment was in the star chart tattooed on the back of Stargazer’s right hand. Wei Xun was very curious about the state of Stargazer’s butterfly fragment; when he had encountered the Puppet Master, his sensing hadn’t been this strong, which suggested Stargazer’s butterfly fragment might be more active than the Puppet Master’s had been.

Unfortunately, from the moment Stargazer walked in until now, his right hand had been tucked in his pocket the entire time, not exposed for even a moment.

Centaur Katie and medium Lily arrived soon after, both wearing the matching small black round glasses on the bridges of their noses.

“Our captain said this is a journey more dangerous than Unsolvable, a place that shouldn’t exist.”

Metaphysics shared intelligence quietly with Zhang Xingcang’s group.

“This is a scene re-enactment of the previous decade’s Unsolvable journey, the Ancient Oasis. Some kind of anomaly has occurred.”

Zhang Xingcang said. “More dangerous indeed; who else came in on your end?”

He didn’t mention the contest for Dreamchaser’s authority, and didn’t reveal the little dragon’s current state. Zhang Xingcang wasn’t familiar with Metaphysics, and anything touching on the Puppeteer, he handled with extra caution.

“Blood Wolf Rex, the Blood Baron, and one black werewolf.”

Eight people had come in total on the new side; adding An Xuefeng and Zhang Xingcang made exactly ten, matching the current headcount of Chen Cheng’s group exactly, just as Half-Life Daoist had speculated.

“Honestly, after the last journey ended, I heard the Werewolf Alliance had a major purge, but Rex never caught the Silver Moon Killer. He said the Butcher Alliance had negotiated with him and the Silver Moon Killer was no longer in the Werewolf Alliance, but werewolf word can’t be trusted. The Silver Moon Killer might have just dyed his fur; frankly Rex might genuinely not be able to tell. Regardless, anyone who could get pulled into this place, that black werewolf is definitely not a simple figure.”

The Blood Baron, Blood Wolf Rex, and a black werewolf. None of them easy to deal with.

“This involves some rather clichéd business, ahem, like killing the people who are meant to die with our own hands being the only way we survive, and if these people die as they did in history, we don’t survive either. God, how tedious.”

David shrugged.

“I think we need to focus more on the dangers of this Ancient Oasis journey itself; those giants, for instance. Those Tour Guides may have some ill intent, but not to worry, they can’t perform at full strength here.”

David said breezily: “And the captain also said that we Tourists can change everything. Let those rotten Tour Guides go to hell. Ah, naturally I don’t mean Dreamchaser.”

The little Dreamchaser dragon paid him no attention at all, perched on Zhang Xingcang’s shoulder with its claws gripping Zhang Xingcang’s hair, half its body raised, head tilted toward Wei Xun’s direction, apparently wrestling with something.

Since Wei Xun had taken hold of the bloodsucking blade, the little dragon seemed to have sensed something and no longer flew affectionately straight into Wei Xun’s arms as it had before; instead, it maintained this constant expression of a dragon that didn’t quite know what to make of things.

Was it all Tour Guides who could sense the blade, or only Tour Guides who held authority over a Latitude 30 Degrees journey and had a butterfly fragment? Could Tourists sense it too?

Half-Life Daoist and the others hadn’t shown any reaction, and neither had the Infected. Wei Xun was paying more attention to the Stargazer, but this person had been consistently avoiding meeting his gaze.

It was centaur Katie speaking up that finally drew Wei Xun’s attention.

“When we arrived, we saw a rather ugly giant. I mean genuinely ugly, dirty skin sagging off it. I saw it holding a giant beast carcass in its hands, headless, like it was going to offer it to the chieftain.”

Katie mentioned it offhandedly.

“But it was afraid of us; more precisely, this giant had some kind of disability, and it was afraid of the female giants in the settlement.”

A headless carcass, an ugly, crippled giant. Then there was the Stargazer’s prophecy that Zhu Yuande would be decapitated within a minute. Wei Xun’s eyebrow went up; he looked at Yin-Yang Butterfly, who immediately understood and slipped out to catch the giant. Wei Xun then briefly told the group something about the scene re-enactment.

“That giant was originally going to kill a great many people.”

Medium Lily said slowly.

“I see many shadows behind it; five, five people in total.”

Lily’s words made Zhang Xingcang and the others frown. The crippled giant had already killed two people; which meant in the current Chen Cheng group, counting Zhu Yuande, three more people would be killed by the crippled giant.

“Lily, could you…”

Zhang Xingcang started to speak and stopped. Lily looked back toward the Stargazer, who said simply:

“Go ahead, you can open your eyes.”

Lily nodded and went to the back to read the fates of Chen Cheng’s group members. Wei Xun’s attention on the Stargazer grew sharper.

He had sensed something faint and familiar from Lily, like an Abyss presence, extremely thin; only he could have detected it. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] That trace of Abyss presence was in her eyes, as though she had been lightly tainted by something she had seen, the way Wei Xun had once been unable to look at *** without risking his eyes being contaminated.

Had it been medium Lily looking at him just now, not the Stargazer?

And the Stargazer’s words carried meaning too: she could open her eyes once she went to the back, which meant she couldn’t open them here, which meant the Stargazer knew some of his secrets.

How much did he know?

Wei Xun shooed the Phoenix bird off the wheelchair back, but even after the Phoenix bird flew away the Stargazer’s gaze stayed fixed on the wheelchair itself, not drawn by Wei Xun’s movement at all.

Wei Xun understood; the Stargazer was deliberately not looking at him.

“Stargazer, thank you for the wheelchair.”

Wei Xun tested. “Did you foresee this day?”

You had the wheelchair made for me?

“Is that right, captain? Is that what happened?”

David was also very curious. The Stargazer had spent a full year in a wheelchair, had even had a custom-designed real-world wheelchair of exceptional quality made, comparable to Agency tools, something he carried everywhere, never going anywhere without it. Was all of it really for this moment, to hand it to Bai Xiaosheng?

David said cheerfully: “The captain often said that only the know-it-all can keep up with his thinking. Well, it seems the captain does like the know-it-all after all.”

“…”

The Stargazer seemed to draw on some inner reserve. The corners of his mouth tightened, producing an expression faintly edged with mockery. He looked as though he wanted to say something, but held it back in the end.

“David is truly an idiot.”

David was thoroughly immune to being insulted at this point, so thick-skinned it rolled off him like wind. But Wei Xun found himself even more interested in the Stargazer.

Avoidance, restraint, not looking at him, no desire for direct confrontation; since arriving, the Stargazer had said very little and shown none of the behavior of someone trying to dominate or take control. He had been consistently understated, even showing a degree of forbearance toward Wei Xun.

Forbearance; what was that about?

And Wei Xun was simply not the type to sit still when someone started exercising forbearance toward him; the moment someone held back, he couldn’t help himself and wanted to push further.

“Stargazer, how are you feeling?”

Wei Xun said with perfect seriousness.

“Earlier I found two kinds of Latitude 30 Degrees contamination in the chieftain’s body, from the Sahara and from the Ancient Oasis. The Maria Butterfly fragment will have a subtle influence on this scene re-enactment, and tomorrow we’re going to surround and capture the Star Borer Insect. Before all that—”

Wei Xun alluded delicately: “I’d like to check on the condition of your right hand… shall we go over there and talk?”