Chapter 292: The Suit

“Say that again?”

Standing in the main hall of the Butcher Alliance, the Puppet Master enunciated each word with cold precision through clenched teeth.

“The Weeping Medium and the others have already left… carrying the Sun charm with them??”

The morning sun had already risen, but before the Puppet Master’s eyes was nothing but darkness and question marks. Taking over the Butcher Alliance had gone smoothly beyond all expectation. The gate that screened Butcher Guides for contamination had no effect on her whatsoever.

Without a sound, the Puppet Master had walked straight into the Butcher Guides’ main hall. Dozens of cloaked Butcher Guides knelt before her, and at the very front, the Bride ranked B-6, knelt in docile submission, her blood-soaked red veil draped over her head.

Before the Puppet Master’s arrival, these had been loyal Butcher Guides to the core. The most steadfast kind, nothing like slippery operators such as the Beekeeper; these were the backbone who would fight to the death for the Butcher Alliance without question.

Yet the loyalty of half-mad Butcher Guides was, in itself, a strange thing.

The moment the Puppet Master stood before them and activated the contamination, she became their absolute master in their eyes. Those who had been contaminated but whose transformation was not yet complete had collapsed the instant resistance stirred in their minds, just like the two other B-class elite Guides stationed at the Butcher Alliance.

The Puppet Master had actually found something odd about it all. From the moment she’d discovered the Weeping Medium and Yin-Yang Butterfly had spent the entire night huddled next to the Sun charm, she had sensed that the Weeping Medium had probably figured something out.

But at this point, it didn’t matter even if he had. If the Puppet Master were willing to break the Weeping Medium entirely, she could seize complete control of him right now. But the Weeping Medium was a capable man, and the Puppet Master appreciated that in him.

The situation had already resolved itself into a settled outcome. She rather enjoyed watching the desperate, clinging struggle to survive.

Since the Weeping Medium had clearly anticipated this, the Puppet Master assumed he’d arranged for the more trustworthy Guides to evacuate in advance, taking them to shelter under some Principal’s protection, or to the Council, or somewhere of that nature. Preserving at least some of the Butcher Alliance’s viable strength.

She hadn’t expected the Weeping Medium to tell none of them anything, leaving every single one behind like pieces he was willing to sacrifice.

He really could be ruthless when it counted.

The Puppet Master thought with a slight smile.

Though he had made the right call, all things considered. After all, the number of Guides inside the Butcher Alliance who had been infected was beyond counting; nearly every Guide carried some degree of contamination. If he had actually brought any of them to whatever secret base the Butcher Alliance kept, she would have sensed it immediately.

As the Puppet Master moved through the Butcher Alliance, Butcher Guides dropped to their knees wherever she walked, a spectacle as grand as the Puppeteer’s own homecoming.

Without the Weeping Medium holding things together, without Yin-Yang Butterfly’s support and reinforcement, and after years of careful positioning, gathering the fruit of that labor was exactly this effortless.

…It was too effortless. So effortless that the Puppet Master herself grew suspicious. How was there not even a trace of the Sun charm’s pressure?

“Bride, report the situation to me.”

She dismissed the other Guides and kept only the Bride. The Puppet Master settled into the seat at the center of the Butcher Alliance’s main hall, the one belonging to the leader.

“Yes.”

The Bride knelt before her with lowered head. Without the Puppet Master’s commands, those under her control kept their own movements to a minimum in her presence. Most of the time she did not directly control her puppets, allowing them to move freely, especially those of higher rank.

The Guides in the Butcher Alliance who had been less affected would behave entirely normally the moment the Puppet Master was absent.

As for someone like Pinocchio, she could sense his location now, and could transmit information to him. But she did not control Pinocchio directly. Operating puppets within the Agency carried far too many restrictions; Guides and Tourists were considered the Agency’s own property, after all. What the Puppet Master was doing could be described as robbing the Agency, stealing from the Agency’s holdings.

Her title carried so many limitations inside the Agency that she often felt the Agency was specifically targeting her.

But it didn’t matter. All she needed was to secure one Latitude 30 Degrees journey.

The Puppet Master thought.

It was no secret that the Agency extended particular privileges to Guides and Tourists who opened Latitude 30 Degrees journeys. Those who had opened them formed their own world within the larger one, and the deepest secrets of that circle were kept with exceptional secrecy. Even the shallow degree of control the Puppet Master held over the Weeping Medium had never yielded a single piece of information relating to Latitude 30 Degrees.

The Sun charm was something she had learned of through Silverfish in the first place. Silverfish had learned of it through Dreamchaser.

“It’s not as though the Northern Tibet side has shown any movement at all.”

The Puppet Master sighed.

The Year-End Celebration preliminary matches were fast approaching; the end of this decade was almost here. The reason the West District’s S2, the Lizard Duke, had been willing to break the rules and fight was precisely because he, too, was a Guide without a Latitude 30 Degrees journey.

A Latitude 30 Degrees journey mattered enormously. Time was running short. She couldn’t afford to wait any longer.

The Puppet Master narrowed her eyes. She could still vaguely recall the bearing of Jia-1 Guide the Puppeteer in his time; the impression he had left was so overwhelming that she had proceeded with caution, had schemed at length, had come to want…

To take him, to control him, and ultimately to become him.

What use was absorbing the Butcher Alliance? The decade was nearly over; taking another large organization at this point was completely meaningless. What the Puppet Master truly wanted was the Puppeteer, and the Latitude 30 Degrees journey.

She had laid out multiple contingencies. Dreamchaser had Silverfish, but Silverfish had never been particularly obedient, and since Zhang Xingcang’s resurrection, Dreamchaser had stopped walking toward ruin.

An Xuefeng’s side; every contingency she’d placed on An Xuefeng’s side had been rooted out. She would leave that aside for now.

The greatest loss was what had happened with Black Widow.

The Puppet Master thought.

She had arranged everything in advance, waiting only for Georges to meet his end so she could take over the Babel Tower. But Black Widow had discovered the problem ahead of time and, with devastating efficiency, had simply killed Georges herself first, claiming the Babel Tower’s token with her own hands. And from that she had even advanced Black Widow’s title to orange tier.

The Puppeteer it would have to be.

Any A-class Guide was extremely difficult to approach. But the Puppeteer was different. He had left behind a Sun charm carrying his own presence, through which he could communicate with the outside world.

All the Puppet Master needed was to contaminate the Sun charm. From there, she could contaminate the Puppeteer himself.

“…The Weeping Medium, Yin-Yang Butterfly, and Pinocchio left carrying the Sun charm, and at the Return Tour Team’s entrance, Mao Xiao Le and Wang Yushu came to meet them…”

“You said what?!”

The Puppet Master was on her feet in an instant. For a single moment, the whole thing struck her as absurd.

How was that possible? How did the Weeping Medium dare?

Pinocchio hadn’t been in contact all morning; she’d known something was off. Arriving at the Butcher Alliance to find him absent, she’d assumed the Weeping Medium had brought Pinocchio along to have An Xuefeng deal with whatever vulnerability existed in him.

She genuinely hadn’t known the three of them would actually haul the Sun charm away with them.

What was even the point of raiding this place if there was no Sun charm here? Had she come to console these little puppets?

“This is surely a decoy the Weeping Medium set up deliberately.”

The Puppet Master steadied herself quickly and spoke under her breath.

“The real Sun charm must still be somewhere inside the Butcher Alliance. Hmph. A petty trick, and you think it’ll fool me?”

Of course. The Weeping Medium, careful and precise as he was, would he really dare carry the Puppeteer’s Sun charm directly to An Xuefeng? And with Mao Xiao Le and Wang Yushu coming to meet them, no less. Mao Xiao Le was the Tourist most notoriously hostile to the Butcher Alliance.

And even setting that aside, even if Bing-1’s standing meant they wouldn’t act openly, was Bing-1’s attitude really that favorable? If there was genuine trust, why not simply hold the meeting inside the Butcher Alliance?

So, what if Bing-1 was the Puppeteer’s younger brother? Inside the Agency, apart from herself, there was no one truly worth trusting.

******

“Wang Yushu, I’m about to lose it.”

Mao Xiao Le radiated killing intent, eyes sharp and vicious as any Butcher Guide’s. Anyone who so much as glanced at him along the way got that ferocious glare turned on them until they looked away.

It was useless, though. Mao Xiao Le had already clocked them with their phones. Posts were probably about to flood the entire forum:【Shocking! Return Tour Team and Butcher Alliance bury the hatchet; Mao Xiao Le and Wang Yushu personally escort the Weeping Medium, Yin-Yang Butterfly, and Pinocchio!】

“Bear with it a little longer, Xiao Le. Just a little longer.”

Wang Yushu coaxed.

“Look how scared Yin-Yang Butterfly is, he won’t even open his mouth. He’s pathetic. Enjoy it.”

Yin-Yang Butterfly, suddenly singled out: ?

At that moment Yin-Yang Butterfly was soaked through with sweat, his thin legs trembling with every step he took. Bearing the Sun charm was an ordeal beyond description; even with the Weeping Medium using special tools to pool all three of their strength together, it took everything the three of them combined just to contain that terrifying force.

It felt like being told to keep running after you’d already finished a thousand-meter sprint. That was how every single step felt to Yin-Yang Butterfly. He hadn’t been this exhausted since becoming a Guide, and the exhaustion had hollowed his mind completely blank; Mao Xiao Le and the others’ words reached him like garbled static, and his emotional state had settled into a strange, eerie calm.

He had no idea why. No idea why, when he’d opened the door that morning, Mao Xiao Le and Wang Yushu had been standing there, Mao Xiao Le’s eyes full of the promise of violence. No idea why the Weeping Medium had directed Pinocchio to carry the gift box containing the Sun charm with his own hands for the entire journey.

He had even less idea why he himself had to walk at the very front, ahead of even the Weeping Medium.

Yin-Yang Butterfly had simply given up thinking. However, the Weeping Medium arranged things, he would follow. He couldn’t even begin to understand how the Weeping Medium still had the energy to transmit messages to him. When the Weeping Medium’s voice came through and said the Puppet Master may have already gone to the Butcher Alliance, Yin-Yang Butterfly couldn’t even summon the energy to be surprised.

Yin-Yang Butterfly: ???

The Puppet Master had gone to the Butcher Alliance?? Then shouldn’t they get back there to hold the line? The Bride and the others couldn’t stop her on their own!

Yin-Yang Butterfly broke into a cold sweat and nearly cried out, but Mao Xiao Le was right there in front of them; he absolutely could not let the old enemy see the Butcher Alliance’s weakness. Yin-Yang Butterfly desperately signaled the Weeping Medium with his eyes until they started to cramp.

The Weeping Medium ignored him entirely.

“Our lord has always thought of Bing-1 deeply.”

The Weeping Medium had even begun conversing with Mao Xiao Le and the others.

“Though many assume our lord to be cold and indifferent, he places the deepest importance on those he cares about. Bing-1 likewise holds our lord in the highest regard; the depth of feeling must run in the family.”

So, it wasn’t “little young master” anymore? Now it was “Bing-1”? Keep performing, go on performing.

The Weeping Medium’s unshakeable calm was so complete that it actually pulled Yin-Yang Butterfly into a kind of calm as well. He’d even begun to suspect that today was a nightmare Dreamchaser was having.

They were all in a dream. Teehee.

“Don’t try to get friendly with us.”

Mao Xiao Le said with merciless sharpness.

“Stop testing my patience!”

Wang Yushu’s hand pressed down on Mao Xiao Le’s shoulder, and he said with measured courtesy, “We’re almost at the Mutual Aid Alliance.”

Wang Yushu himself didn’t quite understand why Captain An had sent Mao Xiao Le to receive the Weeping Medium’s group. If the goal was to project goodwill toward the Butcher Alliance, wouldn’t the more diplomatic Wang Pengpai and Bai Xiaosheng have been better choices? It would have looked more considerate.

Mao Xiao Le was famous for his absolute intolerance of Butcher Guides, his loathing openly worn. He wasn’t going to perform warmth; however long he held himself in check, his true feelings would always show.

Sending Mao Xiao Le was a statement that, though Bing-1 and Captain An were linked, Return’s stance toward the Butcher Alliance had not changed in the slightest. That it remained exactly as hostile as before.

But was it necessary to make that statement today of all days? Today was a significant occasion for Bing-1; keeping things too visibly tense on the surface didn’t feel ideal.

And honestly, Wang Yushu thought back to arriving at the Butcher Alliance’s entrance earlier that morning, and there had been something that struck him as off. A feeling of wrongness, some premonition he couldn’t name; a sense that something subtle was happening inside the Butcher Alliance.

He let it go.

Wang Yushu shook his head and draped an arm over Mao Xiao Le’s shoulders. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] As he’d said, the Mutual Aid Alliance was just ahead.

Whatever Bing-1 and the others had planned, he’d let them handle it.

******

“The Puppet Master should already be at the Butcher Alliance by now.”

Inside the Mutual Aid Alliance, in the room reserved for the Vice President, Wei Xun sat in the center wearing the very suit the Weeping Medium had sent.

The suit jacket was draped casually over his arm. The white shirt beneath was immaculate. A black belt with gold embossing traced the line of his narrow waist, as if it could be encompassed in a single hand. The suit trousers made his legs look long and straight. A pointed black shoe tapped idly against the floor, revealing a sliver of ankle wrapped in black socks.

The suit the Weeping Medium had sent was a formal style. On Wei Xun it read as refined and cultivated, elegant and composed.

And yet he was toying with a sharp blade in his hands.

A well-dressed thug.

Yu Hehui, who had been straightening Wei Xun’s collar and stepped back to check the result, couldn’t help thinking it.

A suit meant different things on different people: elegance, composure, restraint, control. But the black suit against Wei Xun’s snow-white skin and snow-white hair produced something extraordinary, a combination that startled the eye; Yu Hehui had a brief, disorienting sense that the person standing before him was someone else entirely.

And then Wei Xun’s lips curved faintly, turning the blade over with languid ease, and something that lived in the bone, a kind of unrestrained ease bled through. Especially paired with the suit’s barely perceptible, strangely powerful Abyss aura, which meshed with Wei Xun’s presence in a way that felt precisely right.

What Wei Xun was playing with was the Madman’s Blade. At seven that morning, the Arms Dealer’s Killing Blade had finally fused into the Madman’s Blade, advancing it to high grade. But its initial grade had been too low; the “killing” attribute hadn’t fused in particularly well.

The first person it killed would determine just how strong that killing attribute ultimately became.

Not a B-class Guide.

Wei Xun thought.

If he advanced to B-class, participating in the Year-End Celebration preliminary matches would become complicated.

“When the Puppet Master discovers the Butcher Alliance truly doesn’t have the Sun charm, she may come here.”

Wei Xun handed the blade to Yu Hehui to hold and stood, pulling on black leather gloves, then slipping his rings on over them.

He wore two rings, one on each ring finger. One was the orange-red Tour Leader ring. The other was a deep blue crystal ring set with a gemstone, twisting purple tendrils curling around the band.

An Xuefeng had mentioned that *** had sent this ring in return, and that today being Wei Xun’s important day, he hoped Wei Xun would wear it too.

It had to be said; the ring was a touch nicer than the one Wei Xun had carved himself. But sentiment was sentiment; the feeling behind both was identical.

Looking at the ring, Wei Xun thought of An Xuefeng. An Xuefeng wasn’t at the Mutual Aid Alliance; he’d returned to Return, spending the night examining the Puppeteer’s headstone. The Mutual Aid Alliance had not yet opened a shared passage with any Tour Team, so An Xuefeng would set out from Return and come directly when the time came.

Whether he’d uncovered the secret of the headstone yet, Wei Xun couldn’t say.

He was still thinking about it as he drank a small cup of chocolate-colored liquid, and in the next instant, demonic wings spread wide from his back.

The chocolate-colored liquid was the black demon sheep milk that the Fainting Goat had contributed. It had the effect of rapidly dropping SAN value, ideal for Guides who wanted to enter an alienated state but still maintain a high Death Countdown without taking damage.

The spreading wings left the suit entirely undamaged; the white shirt looked, if anything, exactly right. Wei Xun had examined this suit the Weeping Medium had sent with deliberate care and had even had An Xuefeng go over it, but beyond a certain Abyss aura permeating the fabric, nothing else had been found.

Wei Xun strongly suspected it wasn’t an ordinary suit, but so far, every sensation it gave him was simply comfort.

It fit as though it had been made to his measurements exactly; in every respect, it made Wei Xun feel completely at ease. After shifting into his alienated form, that ease seemed to double.

His alienated form had undergone new enhancements since his time inside the Tusi King Tomb. The tips of his demonic horns now held a faint dark red gleam like embers, as if hinting at some mastery over fire, while his demonic wings had grown noticeably more imposing and powerful. They were deep black without being dull; the surface caught the light in shifting, starlike points.

Most importantly, after shifting partway into his alienated form, Wei Xun had successfully gained considerable height. At a hundred and eighty-five centimeters in this state, he had made it quietly into the ranks of the tall.

“The Weeping Medium truly brought the Sun charm.”

Yu Hehui said quietly.

“If it really is a special Latitude 30 Degrees token that can communicate with the Puppeteer, it may well possess uniqueness.”

When an ordinary one was destroyed, a new Sun charm would emerge. But if this Sun charm ended up in An Xuefeng’s hands, and he threw it into the depths of the sunken Atlantic…

It would be possible to drown the sun itself.

“He brought it.”

Wei Xun said it with certainty. He glanced at the time, put on his sunglasses, and walked out of the room with Yu Hehui toward the Mutual Aid Alliance’s main hall.

“He’s here, he’s here, Bing-1 is here!”

“What do you mean Bing-1, today we call him Vice President!”

Yu Hehui had gone ahead; walking behind him, Wei Xun was immediately met by the cheerful uproar from Zhang Xingcang and Tong Hege up ahead. Today was the Mutual Aid Alliance’s great day; every Knight was present, and even Black Widow had arranged a cross-district projection to attend at the appointed time.

With Zhang Xingcang and the others setting the mood, it was impossible for the atmosphere to fall flat.

Thinking this, Wei Xun finished pulling on the suit jacket that had been draped over his arm and did up the buttons himself.

And when Wei Xun, fully dressed, walked forward with his mind half elsewhere, he noticed that the uproar had suddenly died. As if someone had reached out and silenced everyone at once. The hall had gone completely still.

Zhang Xingcang’s hand moved to his side, his pupils contracting sharply. A moment ago, his scalp had erupted and every hair had stood on end; it had taken conscious effort not to draw his weapon.

Abyss aura, but unlike any ordinary Abyss aura he’d ever felt.

It was the kind that only those who had held on until the very end of a battlefield, only those who had witnessed the most terrifying things that existed, could faintly perceive. A nightmare-level presence.

The purest, most undiluted Abyss aura.

Something that belonged to a darkness without edges or end.

Zhang Xingcang believed the Abyss and contamination were not the same thing. The purest Abyss had no particular alignment; it was more like a raw form of energy. Demonic creatures of the Abyss, alienated Guides, Heaven-grade monsters and above, even the mental pollution brought by Latitude 30 Degrees journeys; none of those were pure.

Contamination carried the imprint of whatever produced it, shaped by their experiences, their environment, their nature, and countless other factors. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] And however, it had been shaped, what had been contaminated always appeared, in the eyes of ordinary people and ordinary Tourists, as something monstrous.

Zhang Xingcang sometimes thought that what people called contamination, what they called mutation, was simply the process of reshaping whatever encountered it into a form capable of existing within that energy.

It wasn’t impossible that in the Abyss’s own eyes, they were the monstrous ones.

But was the Abyss itself monstrous?

At this moment, with this person standing in front of him, Zhang Xingcang’s nerves were wound tight, and he felt a lethal pull of fascination.

Power, mystery, something beyond comprehension, and yet it invited you to explore everything, to lose yourself entirely, and to find even that a pleasure worth having.

It was precisely that sensation of losing control that triggered the alarm in Zhang Xingcang’s mind reflexively, jerking him back to full clarity.

Then, involuntarily, he stepped back. The corner of his eye twitched.

Too much.

Zhang Xingcang couldn’t help thinking it.

The moment Bing-1 walked in… it was far too close to the Puppeteer.

Even without the cloak, even with a different alienated form, even with the obvious difference in height, that pure, undiluted Abyss presence had given him something close to a trauma response.

Something has changed.

Yu Hehui drew a slow breath, his snow-white fox tails flickering out behind him involuntarily, flicking with anxiety.

He had been with Wei Xun the whole time and hadn’t felt anything particularly different. But now that Wei Xun had put on the full suit, complete and properly worn, and was standing before them, the quality of it had shifted entirely.

Before, Yu Hehui had only been worried that Wei Xun in a suit would seem too unlike a person, worried that people might draw certain comparisons.

Now what Yu Hehui was worried about was something else entirely: whether this suit the Butcher Alliance had sent was hiding something monstrous inside it.

A pounding headache.

Yu Hehui’s head throbbed violently, his temples hammering, as though some memory was straining to burst through a dam and pour out.

This aura. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] This aura was far too familiar.

Familiar enough that Yu Hehui was faintly pulled toward the memory of his own death, toward the memory of…

The person who had killed him.

“Vice President, everything you arranged has been taken care of.”

The Beekeeper, still only at B-class, couldn’t perceive anywhere near as much; after a single moment of startled admiration, he was the first to break the silence. He’d come straight to business and quietly dropped the “Vice” from Vice President. The way you’d call a deputy director just “director,” a deputy team leader just “team leader”; it just sat better in the ear.

He walked quietly up to Wei Xun, and at close range something in the Beekeeper relaxed and his eyes half-closed with ease.

Deep in his mind, the agitation and barely suppressed madness that even purified demonic bee honey couldn’t fully clear, it was as though an invisible hand had smoothed over it, leaving everything quiet. Like coming home after an exhausting day, lying in a soft bed wrapped in blankets while rain fell outside.

So comfortable.

The Beekeeper couldn’t help thinking it.

As comfortable as… on those rare occasions inside the Butcher Alliance, in the uncommon moments when he and their great lord had occupied the same hall.

If only their great lord hadn’t spent these years sealed inside the Inca Sun Gate. If only there were still occasional chances to see him.

The Beekeeper felt a pang of something like loss.

The reason he had come to the Mutual Aid Alliance so decisively was in large part the mounting anxiety and tension that had grown over these years, the unease that kept pushing toward something out of control. Something had to change.

He had assumed only making offerings to the Mutual Aid Alliance and sitting through the little young master’s moral education sessions could buy him a moment’s peace.

But now, looking at Bing-1, he felt that same soothing calm.

Truly worthy of being their lord’s younger brother.

The Beekeeper thought with conviction, his resolve only deepening.

“‘Peace’ has been organized. We can go now. A lot of people came for the Mutual Aid Alliance’s inauguration ceremony.”

The Beekeeper’s words pulled Zhang Xingcang and the others back to the present.

“Captain An and the Weeping Medium’s group should be arriving soon too.”

“Good.”

Wei Xun narrowed his eyes. He hadn’t missed what had happened with Zhang Xingcang and the others just now. He reached out briefly to sense Yu Hehui and Tong Hege’s states and found nothing critically wrong; he decided to address it later.

So, Wei Xun walked at the front, with the Knights falling in behind him, and stepped out through the Mutual Aid Alliance’s doors.

Soft Agency light, a breeze that felt just right, and Wei Xun found himself standing on a high platform.

The Mutual Aid Alliance was a Latitude 30 Degrees level organization. Most organizations established their presence without any announcement at all, but the Agency had carved out a dedicated high platform for them in the virtual hall and had even sent out a special notification.

This was a privilege extended only to those who had opened Latitude 30 Degrees journeys.

Let every Tourist and every Guide in the Agency witness and remember this moment.