Chapter 290: The Little Pest

Was this headstone made of memory metal or something? How could it crack open and then seal itself back shut?

Wei Xun’s expression was beyond description. If he hadn’t already sent a sample of the headstone material for testing and confirmed it was black granite, he’d have thought it was some kind of shape-memory alloy.

But if it wasn’t a material issue…

“This headstone…”

An Xuefeng, who had been wrestling with the question of his and Wei Xun’s relationship, shifted his attention to the headstone and frowned. He ran through the sequence of events at speed.

Then his expression became somewhat complicated.

Setting aside every other factor, even if the crack hadn’t appeared because of the kiss, but because of something like An Xuefeng’s own presence emanating from the poster, the only thing that coincided with the headstone sealing back up was An Xuefeng’s words: What we have right now doesn’t qualify as a boyfriend relationship.

Working backwards from that, the most probable cause of the crack opening was the display of closeness between him and Wei Xun.

An Xuefeng and Wei Xun arrived at the same conclusion simultaneously.

If it wasn’t a material issue, then… was there something the Puppeteer had left inside this headstone?

“Wei Xun, I want to run a more thorough examination of the headstone.”

An Xuefeng said after a moment’s thought. Wei Xun heard the intention in his voice and agreed without hesitation.

“Go ahead.”

Wei Xun had his own questions. The headstone had cracked, and he had established a connection with whoever lay here, that much was certain; but what the notification listed was a remnant soul in a consciousness state.

The headstone could open and close on its own. The remnant consciousness had energy, enough to influence physical matter. But Wei Xun felt his brother’s behavior was too emotional for who he knew him to be.

He had rarely let such feelings show in the past. He had always kept everything beneath the surface.

That made Wei Xun think of fragments.

The Puppeteer had no listed avatar, and he wasn’t a Council member, but Wei Xun refused to believe he had left behind no contingency whatsoever.

Could his brother’s fragment be inside the headstone? But when Wei Xun had just tried to use the Tomb Keeper title to communicate with the remnant soul, he had felt nothing at all in return. As though the headstone were completely empty, as though nothing was there.

Either the stone’s overwhelming yang energy was entirely blocking the remnant soul’s consciousness. But if that were the case, the remnant soul wouldn’t have been able to sense anything from the outside world either, and that was probably not it.

Or there was something wrong with the remnant soul itself.

Because when Wei Xun reached out carefully, he caught a faint trace coming from the headstone: something ominous. Something that felt dirty.

It wasn’t an ordinary Abyss aura, not the kind of Abyss pollution he knew. If it had anything to do with the Abyss, Wei Xun would have found it pleasant.

It wasn’t Sun pollution either; the feeling was different. And An Xuefeng, whose perception was extraordinarily sharp, had shown no reaction to it at all. Wei Xun had only noticed it after establishing the connection.

Something was off. He needed to investigate properly before drawing any conclusions.

“I want to be present for all of it.”

An Xuefeng wanted to examine the headstone; that was fine. His connections were in a completely different league from Wei Xun’s. Time was short, and Wei Xun wanted answers as fast as possible.

Besides, this location had already been exposed. Even if Wei Xun refused now, An Xuefeng, careful as he was, would absolutely examine the headstone anyway.

Better to use the opportunity to state his own conditions.

“It’s late. Come back to my place?”

Wei Xun said it so casually that An Xuefeng, who had been mid-thought about the fastest way to have the headstone removed, completely lost his train of thought.

An Xuefeng had certainly looked up where Wei Xun lived long ago, but bringing him back now would also let Wei Xun check whether Bingbing was all right.

Wei Xun thought.

He had known where Wei Xun lived for some time. But Wei Xun, someone this guarded and suspicious by nature, actively and personally inviting him over: that was something else entirely.

An Xuefeng thought.

Wei Xun trusted him.

An Xuefeng found himself straightening his clothes without thinking, his throat suddenly a little dry. It was, after all, his first visit; arriving empty-handed seemed wrong.

In the end An Xuefeng made himself useful: that same evening, he had the Puppeteer’s headstone pulled out and carried back.

On the way, he learned Wei Xun hadn’t eaten dinner and the fridge at home was nearly empty, so he stopped and picked up groceries without a second thought.

Wei Xun made a half-hearted suggestion about takeout. An Xuefeng declined outright.

Out of the question. In Wei Xun’s current physical state, takeout was not happening.

“Bingbing?”

A rapid patter of small feet.

Wei Xun brought the stranger through the front door, and Bingbing, not seen in quite some time, immediately launched into a panicked scramble and dove under the sofa. With people it knew, the cat was as enthusiastic as a dog; with strangers, it turned completely spineless.

“Bingbing?”

An Xuefeng followed Wei Xun inside, his gaze moving automatically across the room. The furniture and décor radiated expense at a glance, mostly black, white, and grey, with a coolness to it all. Honestly, the place didn’t carry much trace of anyone actually living in it; it was the cat hair clinging to the sofa, the floor, and the coat rack that gave the apartment most of its warmth and personality.

Then again, Wei Xun’s clothes also had cat hair on them. That was the nature of cat owners: even if you hadn’t come home for weeks, the cat hair would find its way onto your clothes with mysterious reliability. An Xuefeng kept a dog and a hawk, and somehow managed to stay free of fur and feathers.

“Right, it’s the cat I keep.”

Wei Xun took off his outer layer and handed An Xuefeng’s trench coat back to him. Underneath he wore a thin cream-colored knit sweater that looked soft and warm. It was a size or two too large; it hung loose around him, the sleeves long enough to swallow his hands entirely.

“Cold?”

An Xuefeng reached for Wei Xun’s hands out of habit and pushed the sleeves up for him. Then he realized the sweater wasn’t oversized; Wei Xun was just that thin. Even wrapped in the trench coat for the whole journey back, his hands were still ice cold.

“Any foods you can’t eat?”

He needed proper nourishment. An Xuefeng thought as he asked.

When Wei Xun said “I like spicy food!” An Xuefeng ignored it entirely.

“I’ll make you some congee.”

*******

Small bubbles broke slowly across the surface of the congee in the clay pot over the flame. The sizzle of a stir-fry rose alongside it, warm and fragrant. An Xuefeng was cooking for him. Said like that, it sounded a little strange.

Wei Xun had dragged a chair to the kitchen doorway and sat on it backwards, arms folded over the backrest, chin resting on them, watching An Xuefeng cook with a smile.

An Xuefeng had his sleeves rolled up, forearms solid with clean muscle, handling the wok with practiced ease. From Wei Xun’s angle he could see the broad line of those shoulders and the small floral apron tied at An Xuefeng’s waist. Wei Xun had mischievously pointed out the housekeeper’s usual apron, expecting some reaction; An Xuefeng had simply put it on without comment.

Which only made Wei Xun watch more intently.

His memories of family were actually quite vague. His memories of his parents were a separate matter; even his brother had always been busy and rarely home. “Home,” for Wei Xun, held no particular memories. It was just a building. They had all disappeared, and when Wei Xun came back, he mostly sought out danger, chased sensation. Even when he’d been too ill to leave the villa, Wei Xun had preferred the roof terrace: the open air, the unrestricted wind.

He almost never came downstairs. He had certainly never spent any time in the kitchen. Meals were made by the housekeeper or ordered in.

It hadn’t occurred to him that An Xuefeng would fit so naturally in a kitchen.

Wei Xun thought.

He carried the marks of wind, sand, rain, and old scars. He was tall enough that he had to duck slightly to clear the door frame. He looked like someone who belonged outdoors, cigarette between his lips, cooking meat over an open fire.

But standing here now, cigarette still in his mouth, wearing a little floral apron, cooking with complete focus, there was something strangely harmonious about it anyway.

“Death Sahara is something like a collection of the most spectacular formations the Saharan desert has to offer.”

An Xuefeng talked to Wei Xun about the Sahara while he cooked; their time was tight and the tasks ahead were heavy, so every spare moment counted.

“Get past the black sandstorm and through the whale bones, and you’ll find what looks like an eye. Almost identical to the formation in the Mauritanian desert at the southern edge of the Sahara.”

“You can only take in the full shape from orbit. It’s an enormous, perfectly formed set of concentric rings, like a great blue eye.”

“A blue eye?”

Wei Xun was curious.

“Yes.”

An Xuefeng said, “The layered ring-shaped rock strata, seen from high above, appear in a strange shade of blue. The inner rings that form the ‘pupil’ are a pale yellow.”

“It’s not a meteor crater, and it’s not a volcano. It’s deeply mysterious, one of the world’s ten great geological wonders. It’s called the Eye of the Sahara.”

An Xuefeng plated the stir-fry and mentioned Lop Nor in the same breath.

“Some call it the Eye of the Sahara; others call it the Eye of the Earth.”

“Why is it called Death Sahara?”

Wei Xun asked. He thought of what was written in the Mountain God’s commission task: the jade pendant lies in a desert surrounded by death.

He currently had two candidate locations: Death Sahara, and Lop Nor.

The mysterious events surrounding the twin-fish jade pendant at Lop Nor were well known; countless people had died there, gone missing, lost their minds. It, too, could be described as a desert surrounded by death.

Whereas Death Sahara was a Latitude 30 Degrees journey, and the name said it outright.

【The flower wreath in the highest sky】

【The peach branch in the deepest earth】

【The jade pendant in a desert surrounded by death】

Given the Mountain God’s level, it wasn’t strange if all three were found within Latitude 30 Degrees journeys.

“The naming of Latitude 30 Degrees journeys is sometimes descriptive and sometimes just a name.”

An Xuefeng said, “Once you enter the black desert of the Sahara, your eyes will be able to see death. That sounds a bit abstract; let me explain more when we actually get there.”

Then he moved to another subject, as though reading Wei Xun’s thoughts, and brought up Lop Nor next.

“…Lop Nor, as captured by satellite, looks remarkably like an ear. The canal, the ridges, the lobe. It’s also been called the Ear of the Earth.”

“The Eye of the Earth, the Ear of the Earth…”

Wei Xun turned this over, then got up to help carry the dishes to the table. An Xuefeng had kept it simple: sautéed baby cabbage, tomato and egg, sliced braised beef from the shop, with steamed buns and congee. Northern flavors, unpretentious.

Wei Xun had claimed he wanted chili, but he wasn’t actually picky. They didn’t bother with any rule about keeping quiet at meals, and over dinner Wei Xun asked, “Do you think there’s really something buried beneath the surface of the earth?”

He was thinking of the Mountain God, that vast a terrifying corpse. If something like that were buried underground, would it form some kind of earthly “eye” on the surface above?

“That would require a lot of eyes then. There are more than enough hollow formations on this earth.”

An Xuefeng said offhandedly, “Things called the ‘Eye of the Earth’ aren’t limited to the Sahara. There’s the Great Blue Hole in Belize, the Door to Hell burning in the Karakum Desert, the ‘Doomsday crater’ in Siberia, the ‘small eye’ in the Taklamakan Desert. There are many. Eat your vegetables.”

An Xuefeng noticed Wei Xun picking only at the beef, and without ceremony moved the beef plate aside and pushed the baby cabbage in front of him.

“I don’t really like vegetables.”

Wei Xun made a show of being put-upon.

“It might be the animal forms affecting me…”

When he first appeared in his Tourist identity, he’d had black hair and dark eyes; later, citing the snow leopard’s influence, his hair had gradually turned white. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] Once he could fully shift into the small white snow leopard, he had simply stayed that way, and hadn’t changed back after returning. Which was, honestly, a little strange. Very few people remained like this.

But An Xuefeng was the foremost authority on the Wild Heart title, and his frequent contact with Wei Xun had produced no ill effects, so others naturally assumed Wei Xun was simply a special case.

Hearing Wei Xun use that excuse again, An Xuefeng gave him a sideways look, faintly amused, and said nothing. Instead, he slid a small dish across the table.

It was a dipping sauce for the braised beef, with a fragrant chili in it. Wei Xun had been working his way through the beef all along; he’d been signaling the whole time. When he saw the little dish arrive, Wei Xun smiled.

“Don’t let your titles influence you too much.”

An Xuefeng liked the way Wei Xun looked when his attention was fully on him, especially when he smiled. There was a quality to that expression that always felt like deep feeling.

White hair, white lashes, skin pale to near-translucence, eyes the color of ice. He looked like some rare and beautiful snow spirit who had wandered into the human world.

But the “snow spirit” enthusiastically dipping baby cabbage into chili sauce was very much of this earth. An Xuefeng exhaled quietly and tapped the beef plate.

“Going along with your titles will make you stronger, but it will also pull you toward losing control.”

From enjoying meat, to preferring it half-raw, to eating it raw, to finding even raw meat insufficient; desire driving you to kill, to drink warm blood, to eat flesh that still twitched and pulsed.

An Xuefeng understood this better than anyone, and knew better than anyone how to manage it.

“But orange titles are extremely powerful, and their pull is strong. Whether Guide or Tourist, that small handful at the very top are all walking the edge between control and loss of it.”

An Xuefeng drank some congee.

“Guides especially are in greater danger. Once you reach the A-class level, their titles become who they are.”

Their titles become who they are?

Wei Xun felt An Xuefeng’s words carried a specific intent. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] A warning, yes, but also something deeper, something connected to A-class Guides, being passed to him.

“The Puppeteer plays with fate and is played with by fate. Dreamchaser controls beautiful dreams, yet on the road of chasing them, gradually loses control. The Puppet Master controls puppets, but she is controlled by them as well.”

When An Xuefeng brought up the Puppet Master, Wei Xun understood. The meeting was tomorrow morning. An Xuefeng had to know what was happening with the Butcher Alliance and the Shepherd Alliance.

Dreamchaser had mentioned it to him: his suspicion was that the Puppet Master’s terminal illness was a teratoma. The kind that develops neural tissue and splices into the nervous system.

And what An Xuefeng was saying now seemed to confirm exactly that.

“Don’t let her touch you.” An Xuefeng said.

“She appears to use puppet threads, but that’s not her real method of killing. And she’s not nearly as weak as you might imagine. Dreamchaser may have implied the Puppet Master isn’t that strong, but that’s because Dreamchaser’s title naturally counters hers.”

“The Puppet Master has dealt Black Widow serious losses. The grudge between the two of them runs deep. If Black Widow could kill the Puppet Master, she would never have let her live, and yet even an S-class Guide would rather not face the Puppet Master directly.”

“Don’t underestimate that woman. Her methods are formidable.”

Wei Xun hadn’t brought it up voluntarily, so An Xuefeng hadn’t offered to help. But he wasn’t doing nothing. While washing up and putting things away, he quietly laid out one of the Puppet Master’s more closely guarded secrets.

“This is not widely known; even the Weeping Medium may not know it. If it were me, I would not take in a single person who had been under the Puppet Master.”

An Xuefeng said plainly.

“If they plan to bring Pinocchio along tomorrow, they’re going to pay for it.”

An Xuefeng didn’t know for certain that the Weeping Medium’s group intended to bring the Sun charm in person, three of them together, but based on what he knew of the Weeping Medium, he felt it was highly likely the man would bring Pinocchio to the meeting.

Bringing Pinocchio was a direct humiliation to the Puppet Master, a public display of the Butcher Alliance’s strength.

And An Xuefeng would ensure the Puppet Master could not disrupt Wei Xun’s gathering. Dreamchaser, Zhang Xingcang, and the Metaphysics and Flying Swan teams coming today for the celebration were all on Wei Xun’s side. Unless the Puppet Master had completely lost her mind, she would never attack the Mutual Aid Alliance directly.

For the entire duration of the meeting, they would be safe. And before the meeting was over, public opinion would have largely settled. Even if the Puppet Master went after the Butcher Alliance afterward, it would be very hard to recover from.

Even if the Puppet Master tried to strike at the Butcher Alliance’s main base directly, the Weeping Medium had certainly made arrangements in advance, and the Sun charm, the most important piece, would be in their hands. If the Puppet Master wanted to go mad, let her.

But An Xuefeng felt the Weeping Medium was going to pay a heavy price.

Teratoma. Neural tissue. Spliced into the nervous system. Don’t let her touch you. Dreamchaser’s title, which controls dreams, naturally counters her.

A chain of clues converged inside Wei Xun into a single suspicion.

What is the most absolute form of control?

Control through objects, like puppet threads and puppet wires, is ultimately an inferior method.

But if you could silently rewrite the prey’s nervous system, seize their thoughts, seize their brain…

“Half-Life Daoist was injured by one of the Puppet Master’s puppets.”

Wei Xun asked suddenly.

“Will he be all right?”

“Using that technique costs her considerably. She can’t deploy it often; she wouldn’t waste it carelessly.”

An Xuefeng said.

“Besides, with Wan Anpin and Li Hongxue from the Metaphysics team there, Half-Life Daoist will definitely get a thorough physical examination once he’s back.”

“And is Silverfish under the Puppet Master’s control?”

Wei Xun brought up Silverfish again, and said it plainly.

“I want him.”

“Tonight? Going to his Abyss node tonight?”

An Xuefeng frowned.

“Tomorrow night. I’ll go with you.”

Tonight there was the headstone to examine; there wasn’t time.

After Wei Xun nodded, An Xuefeng continued.

“Silverfish is an alienation of a Demonic Insect swarm.”

“Not a single massive Demonic Insect, a whole colony of fluffy little Silverfish. Each individual is entirely itself. A colony-type Demonic Insect’s way of thinking is very particular. The Puppet Master would struggle to fully control him.”

“Demonic Insects also reproduce very quickly, and cycle through generations fast.”

So as long as Silverfish had left one freshly born, completely untouched little ball of fluff with Dreamchaser, he would ultimately be fine.

But the Weeping Medium and Yin-Yang Butterfly, being single-entity alienations, were a different matter.

They might not even make it to tomorrow. Something could happen to them tonight.

That night, neither An Xuefeng nor Wei Xun slept. An Xuefeng examined the headstone while Wei Xun was occupied with other things: having the Beekeeper arrange a duel as a pretext to lure Hair Ghost out, and making a trip overnight to the Eight-Armed Nezha City in search of the Nezha Spirit.

If the Puppet Master’s true method was what An Xuefeng described, Wei Xun had realized that those around him were not entirely safe either.

He needed to find the Nezha Spirit.

*******

Something had gone wrong. Something had genuinely gone wrong.

That was the thought running through Yin-Yang Butterfly’s mind in despair. From the moment he’d returned to the Butcher Alliance he’d been on the edge of a breakdown, words stumbling over each other.

“You— you really want to send this, this Sun charm, to the Mutual Aid Alliance?”

“We only have one in the entire Butcher Alliance! My god, are you out of your mind?”

The Sun charm was the kind of object where only after one was destroyed could another come into being. It carried a particular power that could establish direct contact with the Puppeteer inside the Sun Gate. It was irreplaceable.

Yin-Yang Butterfly had rushed back in a hurry to discuss serious matters with the Weeping Medium. He’d barely had time to register the welcome news of Pinocchio’s defection and allow himself a moment of good cheer before he looked up and saw the Weeping Medium actually taking the Sun charm down from the wall, and his mood collapsed instantly into alarm and dread.

Had something happened to their lord? Was it time to switch out the charm? He’d been thinking for a while that it had too many cracks on it…

…Then, upon learning that the Weeping Medium intended to give the charm to Bing-1, the dread became total devastation.

“And Bing-1 hasn’t even agreed yet! He might, he might not…”

Only an absolute fool would accept it. Wasn’t this essentially moving their Butcher Alliance’s great leader into the enemy’s den? Even between family there should be mutual wariness and guard, that was only right. Who knew what the Puppeteer was actually trying to do? What if he wanted to absorb Bing-1, or resurrect himself through Bing-1?

In that moment Yin-Yang Butterfly felt the full agony of being caught between two organizations.

“Why don’t we just open a passage to the Mutual Aid Alliance instead? I’ll fund it myself. The Vice President could come back to visit our lord whenever he wants. There’s really no need, truly no need to send the Sun charm over!”

And the Sun charm was absolutely covered in cracks on top of everything. Yesterday when Yin-Yang Butterfly had looked at it there hadn’t been nearly this many. He gathered that the Weeping Medium had spent an enormous sum acquiring multiple An Xuefeng posters and performing some kind of ceremony in front of the charm one after another.

An Xuefeng posters were too expensive and already out of print, though, so apparently the Weeping Medium had then bought ten Bing-1 posters and hung them in a circle around the Sun charm.

Surely, he wasn’t trying to make the Sun charm shatter completely upon seeing Bing-1 and An Xuefeng in person, right?

Wait. Hold on.

Something clicked into place for Yin-Yang Butterfly. Right, to move something like a Sun charm, you’d need either an A-class Guide, or the combined effort of the top three B-class Guides, to fully mask its presence within the Agency.

Merciful heavens. Was Pinocchio also going to the Mutual Aid Alliance tomorrow?

What was this, the Puppet Master’s personal buffet? She could just pick whoever she wanted to kill?

The Weeping Medium had genuinely lost his mind.

Yin-Yang Butterfly thought in anguish.

He’d been having nightmares every night at the Butcher Alliance. He couldn’t remember the content after waking, only a bone-deep, inexplicable dread. Especially this evening, around eight o’clock, Yin-Yang Butterfly had very nearly dropped to his knees.

Their lord had to be furious. The Weeping Medium was playing with fire.

But the Weeping Medium was completely unmoved. And then, calmly, he locked the door.

“We sleep here tonight.”

Yin-Yang Butterfly: ??

Sleep in the same room as the Sun charm? Wasn’t that… wasn’t that deeply disrespectful?

At this rate Yin-Yang Butterfly was half-convinced that the moment their lord arrived, the first two people he’d come for would be the two of them.

“You’re welcome to leave.”

When Yin-Yang Butterfly pressed the argument again, the Weeping Medium said flatly, “If you’d like to die.”

Yin-Yang Butterfly went immediately silent. The Weeping Medium had a way of saying things, like something that ate children, that frightened him every single time.

Because he knew the Weeping Medium always meant it.

So, in the end Yin-Yang Butterfly caved, and didn’t even respond to the message Pinocchio had sent asking if he wanted to come out for dinner.

Out of the question. Who in their right mind would take out their phone in front of the Sun charm?

******

“The Weeping Medium and Yin-Yang Butterfly aren’t coming… now that’s interesting.”

In the assigned residence room, Pinocchio toyed with his fingers out of boredom. He bent each wooden finger back and snapped it off, then reattached them one by one. White puppet threads moved like pale worms, writhing, filling the hollow joints of the marionette.

The Weeping Medium had told him to stay put in the safe residence for now, but upon confirming that neither the Weeping Medium nor Yin-Yang Butterfly would be found here, Pinocchio simply opened the door and left without any intention of listening. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] He drifted through the virtual hall and logged into the Mutual Aid Alliance’s app on his phone.

That was right; Pinocchio had quietly joined the Mutual Aid Alliance on his own. For now, he maintained a low profile as a mid-ranking Councilor.

Through the Mutual Aid Alliance, he found the Beekeeper. But to his surprise, the Beekeeper wasn’t responding either.

“Everyone’s busy tonight?”

Pinocchio clicked his tongue. A vague restlessness had settled over him, something he couldn’t quite name. He closed his eyes.

*******

Inside Wei Xun’s Demonic Insect Sphere, within the space of the embroidered ball, a parasite bee opened its eyes slowly.

This parasite bee was the one Wei Xun had obtained in Northern Tibet, the one that had shredded Hair Ghost’s hair. Its aptitude was limited; even the Abyss energy that had spilled over during Wei Xun’s repeated Abyss node fusions had not been enough to push it to the next level. In the end it had become nothing more than a nursemaid, tending to the insect eggs.

And now, something was very wrong with it.

Its wings had turned grey. Its flight was crooked and erratic. An ominous aura drifted off it. It lurched past the insect eggs, past the demonic bees, past the great swarm of Evil Ghost Insects…

The Demonic Insect Sphere was a space it knew well. In ordinary circumstances it could have moved through without disturbing the master at all.

But this time was different.

Why, why was everything around it sealed, and why was the temperature rising, slowly, steadily?

The parasite bee grew agitated and confused. Pinocchio, controlling it, grew agitated too, a creeping sense that something was wrong. Then, just as he was about to sever his connection to the parasite bee, the bee froze rigid from head to tail. Before it could flee, an enormous hand, blazing with flame, not to be refused, reached out of nowhere and closed around the back of its neck like it was seizing it by the scruff of fate.

“Oh my, little brother, look what I found in your embroidered ball.”

The Nezha Spirit surveying Wei Xun’s embroidered ball was delighted.

“A little pest!”