Chapter 294: Catching the Sun

Hearing his words, the Rune Guide’s group quickened their exit, while the rest of the audience broke into an uproar. What had they just heard? An Unsolvable-level item, sent as a gift, just like that?

Nobody had expected the Shepherd Alliance, long suppressed by the Butcher Alliance, to have such deep reserves.

“Shepherd-style Tour Guides really do rake it in.”

Someone said sourly.

“Honestly, I’d rather see the Shepherd Alliance wipe out the Butcher Alliance. At least shepherd Tour Guides don’t kill people.”

Among Tourists, there were plenty who had been manipulated by shepherd-style Tour Guides, but in terms of reputation, the Butcher Alliance was genuinely the worst. Even in forum opinion, most people wanted to see the Puppet Master come out on top over the Butcher Alliance. An organization of total villains like the Butcher Alliance absolutely could not be allowed to fall behind; the moment they showed any weakness, they’d become everyone’s target, with people lining up to kick them while they were down.

There were actually quite a few Butcher Tour Guides quietly present in the Mutual Aid Alliance; even those who had snuck in still carried the Butcher Alliance in their hearts. Hearing those words, many of them went red with fury, some practically itching to kill on the spot, privately hoping the Weeping Medium’s group would arrive and slaughter this B-class Tour Guide who didn’t know her place.

The Butcher Alliance’s people still hadn’t arrived.

Among the three Tour Guide alliances, the Butcher Alliance was the only one whose representatives had not yet come. Many high-ranking Tourists had actually already arrived as well; the unspoken convention was that Tour Guide alliances presented their gifts first, and Tourists followed. So, everyone was waiting.

The Butcher Alliance really still wasn’t here.

Could it be, could it be that something had actually gone wrong inside the Butcher Alliance?

In fact, anonymous posts had been going around the forums since early that morning, nudging the mood: things like “a certain evil alliance is about to fall, not naming names,” and “waiting for a golden age with no Butcher Tour Guides,” and “what a shame, looks like one alliance is about to become two.” That sort of thing.

In the silence, people looked up toward the high platform with complicated feelings, seeking some kind of reassurance.

Bing-1 was the Puppeteer’s brother.

Surely, he wouldn’t just sit there and let people talk about the Butcher Alliance like this.

Butcher Tour Guides were all lunatics; when they lost control, they spared no one, not close friends, not family, not anyone.

But Bing-1 wasn’t a Butcher-style Tour Guide. He wasn’t a lunatic. He and the Puppeteer — they genuinely cared for each other, didn’t they.

“An Unsolvable-level item? She’s generous.”

On the high platform, the Beekeeper’s eyes had gone red with anger. He’d never been particularly loyal to the Butcher Alliance, but he did consider himself a Butcher Tour Guide. A measly little B-class, daring to provoke them like this?

Then he heard Bing-1’s voice and went cold and calm in an instant.

Bing-1 was laughing, but it was the kind of laughter that sent a chill settling into the chest. He reached out with leisurely interest, took the Unsolvable-level item, and glanced over it.

【Name: Crystal Skull of the Dawn Envoy】

【Quality: Unsolvable】

【Effect: The only part of the Dawn Master’s body that was not warped! Consuming this will grant you an entire series of orange titles, including the two orange titles ‘Dawn Envoy’ and ‘Absolute Healing,’ as well as five purple titles!】

【Note: When you use the Crystal Skull, you become the Dawn Envoy. And there can only be one Dawn Envoy in this world.】

If someone used this Crystal Skull, the Dawn Master would lose any possibility of resurrection.

Two orange titles. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] Five purple titles. Truly worthy of an Unsolvable-level item, and without a single problem attached, without any warping at all. Who could resist that kind of temptation? Especially Bing-1, who hungered so deeply to grow stronger. What was more, the Envoy type and the Demon type countered each other; even if he had no use for it, he would never hand it to an enemy.

Especially not to a certain person inside the Beijing Suburbs Funeral Palace who had recently moved against him.

And the moment Bing-1 showed even a hint of hesitation, that person would undoubtedly act immediately.

“It seems the Puppet Master wants to construct a common enemy for the two of us.”

Wei Xun smiled lightly. Then he tossed the Crystal Skull to the side without a second thought.

A pair of delicate pale hands caught it. The person froze, visibly startled, clearly having never expected Bing-1 to simply hand something like this to her. In the next instant she carefully, almost tenderly, drew the Crystal Skull into her arms. The grotesquely warped, twisted-near-to-breaking spider silhouette looming at her back vanished.

“The Mutual Aid Alliance’s first Unsolvable-level item, you can hold onto it for now.”

Wei Xun said casually.

“What do you say, Knight Beauty?”

“You are the true beauty.”

Black Widow’s projection had arrived just a few minutes earlier. She was using a special title that made her presence almost indistinguishable from being physically there. The many disguises she had worn inside the Beijing Suburbs Funeral Palace were shed; what Wei Xun was looking at now was something much closer to her true self.

Flaxen curls, a pale face without a mask, only a strip of white cloth covering her eyes. The marks of scorching flame spread like roses across nearly half her face.

Whether this was Black Widow’s true height he couldn’t say, but he did find her being one-sixty rather charming.

She held the skull with one arm, lifted her skirt with the other, and offered Wei Xun an elegant bow.

“I will pledge my loyalty to you and do five things for you without compensation. If Georges is resurrected…”

The last words were a private murmur between Black Widow and Wei Xun:

“I will hand the Babel Tower over to you, and tell you the Council’s secrets.”

Wei Xun smiled and let it pass. He had never particularly trusted Black Widow’s words; just as he had handed the Crystal Skull to her temporarily, its ownership still belonged to the Mutual Aid Alliance.

The two of them exchanged a glance. Black Widow put on the black robe marking her as a Knight and broke into a mischievous smile, her lips barely parting:

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to go clear out some fleas first.”

“Go ahead.” Wei Xun said.

“We’ve let them watch long enough. It’s time to begin.”

Down below the platform, the Yi-3 Tour Guide heard the murmuring around her and grew even more pleased with herself. Her tone was superficially modest but radiated arrogance.

“Once the Puppet Master has handled her business, she will personally pay a visit to the Mutual Aid Alliance—”

“Will the Puppet Master really come?”

At that moment a soft female voice drifted down from the high platform, warm with pleasant surprise and something like longing.

“I haven’t seen her in so long. I was starting to think she was avoiding me.”

Who would dare say they hadn’t seen the Puppet Master in so long?

Wait, that voice was coming from the high platform?

Countless heads turned simultaneously toward the platform, and sure enough, the fog had lifted. The Agency’s broadcast officially began: a worldwide transmission prepared specifically for a Latitude 30 Degrees organization, reaching both the East and West Districts. Most East District members were present in the virtual hall in person; the West District could only watch the stream.

When the broadcast showed the scene on the high platform, countless people fell speechless with shock. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] The person who had spoken stood slightly to the side, hood down, flaxen hair and a face of unmistakable distinction on full display.

It was Black Widow.

How was that possible? Black Widow was a West District Tour Guide. Even she had come personally to attend the Mutual Aid Alliance’s launch?

Black Widow had always been someone who paid no attention to East District Tour Guides or Tourists, with the sole exception of the Puppet Master. There could only be one reason she would come.

How highly did she regard Bing-1?

“It seems I was mistaken.”

Black Widow spoke gently, but the words themselves were deadly.

“If she truly comes… I won’t let her leave alive.”

The instant she appeared, the Yi-3 Tour Guide and her companions went rigid, not a single word left in them. Others assumed they had been frightened stupid. Those with real experience and seniority knew the truth: these people were already beyond saving.

They wouldn’t die inside the virtual hall; leaving here they’d have a day at most. They were finished.

When someone of A-class wanted to kill, there were countless methods available. Especially someone who held a Latitude 30 Degrees journey; the Agency’s rules were to them like a net riddled with holes.

But at this moment, almost no one was paying attention to them.

In the West District stream, the vast majority were screaming over Black Widow, entirely focused on her. In the virtual hall itself, countless eyes had landed on the person standing at the very front of the high platform.

He wore a black suit, conspicuous among the robes around him, yet extraordinarily striking, extraordinarily compelling.

He made Tourists who had spent years struggling to survive inside the Agency think involuntarily of the real world, of the ordinary but safe and happy lives they had lived before.

And his pull on Tour Guides was something else entirely, something beyond comparison.

Click.

Several Tour Guides felt their knees buckle before they knew what was happening; by the time they registered it, they were already on the ground. Then confusion set in.

Why had they knelt?

They didn’t know the reason. Many of the senior figures present did. In fact, the moment the fog on the high platform had cleared and Bing-1 appeared, their expressions had changed drastically. And that stunned, can’t-believe-what-you’re-seeing shock reached its peak when the Butcher Alliance’s people arrived.

They were finally here.

Yin-Yang Butterfly felt he had reached the very end of what his body could give. He was moving on sheer will alone, the last scrap of it; the Sun charm’s pressure on him was so immense that his mind had gone hazy and the path ahead had blurred to nothing.

It was only when the Weeping Medium transmitted a message to him that Yin-Yang Butterfly registered it with a dull delay and understood.

Finally. They’d made it.

Hurry up. Yin-Yang Butterfly hadn’t even processed that he was still walking at the front; all he wanted was to hand the Sun charm over as fast as possible and free himself.

So, they climbed up onto the high platform, and the thoroughly exhausted Yin-Yang Butterfly instinctively lifted his head. No, he didn’t even need to look up; Yin-Yang Butterfly felt it, an aura so familiar it lived in his bones, one that made him tremble without thinking.

Was this an illusion?

Had he exhausted himself into hallucinating? Or had Dreamchaser’s dreaming produced some strange new variant?

“You’ve worked hard.”

It had to be a hallucination. Their lord had never spoken to him like this. Yin-Yang Butterfly thought in a daze, and when he felt that familiar aura, when he looked up and saw the white-haired man in a black suit standing before him with demonic wings spread at his back, all the feelings that had been pressing and pressing inside Yin-Yang Butterfly finally broke through and poured out of him in a flood.

“My lord…”

He didn’t know when his eyes had filled with tears. They fell without stopping. Too exhausted to hold himself up any longer, Yin-Yang Butterfly dropped to his knees in front of him, and his voice broke into sobbing.

“My lord…”

He was a Yi-2 Tour Guide, lofty and imposing by any measure, and yet kneeling before a Bing-1 felt completely natural, as if this was exactly how things should be. The Mutual Aid Alliance’s launch ceremony officially began, and every single person in the virtual hall heard Yin-Yang Butterfly murmur those words — my lord — and watched him kneel before that person.

The Butcher Tour Guides felt a jolt run through them and surged with barely contained emotion. Could it be—

“Bing-1, this is the Butcher Alliance’s congratulatory gift.”

The Weeping Medium’s voice rang out, a single sentence that made Yin-Yang Butterfly’s action entirely comprehensible. Yin-Yang Butterfly could kneel; he could not. Bing-1 was not their great lord. They were two different people, yet equally extraordinary.

Even as a fierce, almost reverent light blazed in the Weeping Medium’s eyes the moment he laid eyes on Bing-1, his voice remained measured and composed.

The Truth Alliance had offered Legendary runes. The Shepherd Alliance had offered an Unsolvable-level item. What would the Butcher Alliance give?

Wei Xun’s gaze settled on the gift box Pinocchio was holding. It was dark red, roughly the size of a washbasin.

Without any hesitation, Wei Xun’s hand came down on the box. The dark red casing dissolved on its own, and what it revealed was a gold-red Sun charm, exquisite beyond description, its surface covered in fine, spidery cracks.

“Aahh—!!”

Pinocchio couldn’t hold back a cry of agony. The instant the Sun charm appeared, both his arms burned to ash; the terrifying Sun pollution was already spreading upward, about to swallow him whole. And the Sun charm, with no one holding it, plummeted toward the ground.

No, someone caught it.

Bing-1 had caught it.

The Weeping Medium, who had witnessed everything, felt his eyes blaze with sudden light. Tears of sheer emotion rolled down his face. Three Yi-class elite Tour Guides had struggled just to bear the Sun charm, and yet Bing-1 had simply reached out and caught the Sun.