Chapter 346: Death Sahara (26)

The Stargazer really did say only that one sentence. Then he stood, looked at “Bai Xiaosheng” with a blank expression, and suddenly raised an eyebrow slightly. He said to “Bai Xiaosheng” with great solemnity, in a casual tone:

“Then it’s settled between us.”

After that Stargazer glanced at the Phoenix bird from the corner of his eye, gave a performatively meaningful nod, and turned and walked back to the campfire with clean efficiency.

Playing riddles, was he? As though he was the only one who could.

The Stargazer gave a soft snort, his right hand went back into his pocket. By the fire, David immediately made room for him and asked curiously:

“Captain, what did you and the know-it-all work out? You look quite pleased, is that a smile?”

Who’s smiling?

The Stargazer pressed his lips flat immediately and fixed David with a piercing look until David raised his hands in surrender and mimed zipping his mouth shut. Then the Stargazer sat down, folded his hands against his lips, and the corner of his mouth seemed to curve upward again, though this time David absolutely did not dare say anything about it.

The captain genuinely liked the know-it-all; one sentence and he was this happy.

David reflected on this, then looked over at centaur Katie still contentedly eating dates, and couldn’t help saying:

“Katie, you’re so lazy.”

With Katie’s orange title “The Good Teacher,” if she just put in the effort to gather more students and build an organization, she would be no less formidable than the know-it-all.

Katie: ?

On the other side, Wei Xun returned to the campfire lost in thought. An Xuefeng flapped his wings and settled onto the back of the wheelchair; the Stargazer’s little performance wasn’t going to interfere with him, but An Xuefeng was genuinely a little curious about what Stargazer and Wei Xun had exchanged. Even with a good relationship with Metaphysics, An Xuefeng knew he couldn’t fully trust the Stargazer.

Nobody knew which side fate would choose, and if fate hadn’t chosen you, the Stargazer would cast you aside without a second thought.

Even so, however curious he was, An Xuefeng didn’t take the initiative to ask. If Wei Xun wanted to share, he would tell him on his own.

Wei Xun had indeed fallen into thought. The Stargazer’s words carried an enormous amount of information. So, the Stargazer’s claims of being deceived, his mistaken decision, including fragmenting ??? and his subsequent hostility toward the Puppeteer and his announcement that he would snap a certain great Tour Guide’s head off, had all stemmed from the Stargazer mistaking Wei Xuechen for him?

This genuinely caught Wei Xun off guard, yet he also had a strange feeling of “of course.” He thought back to the Mutual Aid Alliance founding ceremony, the glimpse he had caught of Wei Xuechen, that one blue-violet eye—

Wei Xuechen’s eyes were black, Wei Xun was certain of this; not the brown or dark brown common among Asians, but a deep black like ink-dyed glass, and without glasses his gaze would project a cold, dangerous quality that made people feel he was difficult to approach.

Many titles could change eye color, the Devil Merchant’s being one example, but in the instant Wei Xun had made eye contact with Wei Xuechen at the ceremony, he had felt those blue-violet eyes were almost identical to his own.

Wei Xun also thought about how Wei Xuechen had always kept a Tour Guide with the Cold-Blooded One title at Bing-9, and Wei Xun had arrived to take Bing-9’s place.

Had his brother predicted long ago that he would enter the Agency, and out of a desire to stop him, or protect him, kept him out all this time? Though “protect” wasn’t quite the right word for what existed between Wei Xun and Wei Xuechen. Their relationship was more like testing, tempering, climbing, challenging each other; brothers, with a subtle competitive quality of pursuit, mostly Wei Xun doing the pursuing.

So, was the prophecy and the fragment issue Stargazer’s own mistake, or was there some level of “substitution” or deception? Just as Wei Xun often impersonated his brother now, had his brother once impersonated him?

Wei Xun couldn’t work it out. Why would his brother do something like that? What was there about him worth his brother impersonating? His own impersonation of the Puppeteer had been for intimidation, survival, and leveraging advantage. What would his brother’s purpose have been?

Or perhaps he and his brother only shared some similarity in their fates, and the Agency and the Stargazer had simply confused them?

No.

‘I once thought he was you.’

The statement carried a strong sense of specific direction; the person the Stargazer had been trying to find was him, the person he had foreseen was him. If the Stargazer could read fate, a mere similarity of fates wouldn’t escape his eyes. What the Stargazer’s words more strongly implied was that his brother had been impersonating him.

Even with this unconfirmed, even with the Stargazer revealing so little, a subtle delight rose in Wei Xun’s chest, impossible to fully put into words. Even his heartbeat was faintly quickening; he could feel the fine hairs on his arms standing up from the stimulation. What was Wei Xuechen trying to do? What was he planning?

But whatever the answer—

‘The Stargazer told me he has something to give me.’

Wei Xun couldn’t suppress his happiness and said privately to An Xuefeng in a low voice.

‘Something very valuable.’

If Wei Xun had understood correctly, the Stargazer’s fragment ??? was under the Puppeteer’s control, and Wei Xun had to be connected to that somehow; in other words, that fragment ??? was probably meant for him.

But the Stargazer had gotten the wrong person and given it to the wrong one.

Which means the fragment that should have been mine is mine to reclaim.

‘Is he going to give you a prophecy?’

An Xuefeng had no idea Wei Xun’s thinking had taken such a turn. Sensing Wei Xun’s happiness, his own mood grew more serious. An Xuefeng knew perfectly well how deep the Stargazer’s grudges ran. Back when he had gone to the Atlantic and brought David along, staying at Metaphysics’s real-world location, the Stargazer had given him a voodoo doll at the time, with the Puppeteer’s name on it, stuck through with needles, asking him to find a way to smuggle it into the Inca Sun Gate.

‘If he likes the sun so much, let him spend the rest of his life inside it.’

The Stargazer had said it as though it was nothing, with perfect calm. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] Unfortunately, the voodoo doll had fallen into the sea afterward and An Xuefeng hadn’t managed to bring it back. But An Xuefeng didn’t believe for a moment that Stargazer had made only one such doll; who knew how many years the Puppeteer had been trapped inside the Inca Sun Gate, and whether Stargazer’s curses had anything to do with it.

An Xuefeng was genuinely worried the Stargazer might misdirect his resentment, or use Wei Xun to curse the Puppeteer in some way; blood relations certainly produced various effects in these matters. He lectured Wei Xun at length and seriously warned him: if Stargazer asked for blood, hair, nails, or any other personal item, claiming he wanted to do a divination, absolutely do not agree.

‘Perhaps, though he said the proper conversation will be at the Year-End Celebration pre-match.’

Wei Xun was also curious what Stargazer had prophesied back then. If he had mistaken the person, the prophecy he had made would also have been the wrong one; the Stargazer had intended to give him a prophecy and it had gone to Wei Xuechen instead? If that was the case, Wei Xun wanted to know both prophecies.

‘That’s right. This year’s pre-match is very likely to be in the West District.’

An Xuefeng said.

‘Dreamchaser is now at Jia-2, so the West District is more likely.’

Among the top Tour Guides from both districts participating in the Year-End Celebration pre-match, both Dreamchaser and the Lizard Duke were now at S-2, and Wei Xun had won the East District the priority choice of side, which meant the journey location would probably be in the West District. (T/N: Well, I know it’s confusing since Jia (A) and S are clearly not the same, but that is what is written in the raw.)

By that point Wei Xun would be going abroad into West District territory, and the Stargazer’s abilities wouldn’t be limited there either; a divination for Wei Xun at that point?

For reasons he couldn’t quite name, An Xuefeng found himself even more worried.

‘What do you think your luck is like?’

An Xuefeng reasoned with him.

‘The Stargazer only ever favors those blessed by fate. Just like how he proactively warned Zhu Yuande when they came in, something like Half-Life Daoist, except he’s not a good-hearted person at all; he’s far more extreme than Half-Life Daoist.’

Half-Life Daoist, when he encountered people with bad luck, simply steered clear and avoided direct contact with them. But the Stargazer—

‘If someone’s luck is particularly terrible, he might kill them outright.’

An Xuefeng cut straight to it.

‘In the Stargazer’s thinking, if your luck is that bad, then you deserved running into me.’

‘He’s awful.’

But this only made Wei Xun find the whole thing more thrilling. By An Xuefeng’s account, if the Puppeteer had driven the Stargazer to despairingly cut away his own pessimism, his brother must have brought truly terrible luck upon him. Wei Xun felt as though, through the Stargazer, he had caught a glimpse of a side of Wei Xuechen that nobody else ever saw, and he said with feeling:

‘I love it.’

An Xuefeng: ?

“Mmph—!”

Before they could exchange another word, a violent gasping sound came from the corner by the fire, accompanied by a crack like a whip, drawing everyone’s attention at once. Zhang Xingcang and the others were on their feet and surrounding the spot in an instant. Wei Xun and An Xuefeng arrived shortly after to find Zhu Yuande in the center of the circle, hand pressed dazedly to his forehead, eyes still wide with shock. Beside him, Chen Cheng had drawn his sword, and where the sword tip was pointing, a tendril was quietly trying to retract and hide.

Baby Corn, Baby Corn had smacked Zhu Yuande with a tendril.

“No no, don’t blame it, don’t blame the worm, I had a bad dream.”

Seeing everyone crowd around, Zhu Yuande was so startled he was stumbling over his words, but his first sentence was a defense of Baby Corn.

“I had a nightmare, or, I almost had one. I must have been tipping over, and then—”

“Then he fell onto the worm’s body.”

Chen Cheng helped explain.

“This is Wei the Boss’s worm, it wasn’t doing anything bad; it was an accident.”

The reason Baby Corn was there was that they had just been feeding it dates.

“Why were you asleep?”

But nobody’s attention was on that point. David said seriously: “Didn’t we agree nobody was sleeping tonight?”

“I don’t know either, it just suddenly—”

Zhu Yuande couldn’t explain it, but everyone else immediately realized something.

Wei Xun, Zhang Xingcang, and the others were already looking at the Yu twins. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] The brother had his arms around his sister, head bowed as if comforting her; the two of them had been eating dates just moments before, yet Half-Life Daoist had immediately noticed something wrong.

He gently touched them both, and didn’t expect—

Thud.

The Yu twins fell at that slight touch. Their eyes were still open, their breathing normal, but their gaze had lost its focus, and nothing would wake them regardless.

Eyes open, “asleep.”

“Hmm—”

Just then, the Dreamchaser dragon, which had been resting on Zhang Xingcang’s head, suddenly let out a low, deep rumble. It had never made a sound like that before; the tone was grave and strange, like wind moving through a canyon corridor. But Zhang Xingcang understood its meaning immediately.

“They’ve fallen into a nightmare.”

Zhang Xingcang said, his voice serious.

“No warning at all, none of us felt anything beforehand. This is no ordinary technique; this is ‘history’ from inside the scene re-enactment.”

Zhu Yuande and the Yu twins, who were historically meant to be swallowed by the crippled old giant, had all fallen unconscious at the same moment; this was far from simple. And medium Lily’s words confirmed what Zhang Xingcang was thinking. Lily had crouched beside the twins, and her hand, floating just above their bodies, seemed to sense something; it was trembling faintly.

“The giant has come.”

Lily suddenly said, and the words sent a chill down everyone’s spine.

“Inside their dreams.”