Chapter 299: The Butterfly Tattoo

【Shocking!! An A-class Tour Guide Has Appeared!!!】

In the space of half a day, the news had spread across the entire Agency and shot to the top of the forum’s trending posts. The thread was packed with photos. Nobody knew who had taken them; the angle was ordinary enough, but the image quality was sharp.

A deep-red cloak, the color of blood. A tall, broad back.

Even though thick fog had descended over the platform in the very next second, someone had still managed to capture the Puppeteer’s silhouette.

【Holy hell, is this real?!】

【I’m devastated, I was chatting and didn’t look up in time!】

【Whoever posted this is bold, careful the Butcher Alliance doesn’t come for you!】

【If he’s really come out, this is going to be absolutely brutal…】

【Hmm, wasn’t the Jia-2 Tour Guide supposed to come? But she didn’t… did she not show, or did she show and get killed?】

【The Shepherd Alliance has gone into total lockdown… though the Truth Alliance is doing the same, and all the major Tour Guide alliances have sealed themselves off.】

【No way, I can’t believe it. What the hell, I actually lived to see this with my own eyes!】

【Calm down, you’re being naïve; did you forget that Bing-1 can wear the Puppeteer’s cloak?】

【Exactly. He wore it multiple times in the Beijing Suburbs Funeral Palace! Honestly, Captain An was right there on the platform — if Jia-1 really came out, wouldn’t it have been absolute carnage?】

【Bing-1 was there too, right? Maybe both major figures held back out of consideration… actually, I can’t keep this going. Honestly, I think it was Bing-1.】

Was that crimson silhouette Bing-1 or the Puppeteer? The forum erupted into fierce debate. Many people tried to use height as evidence; others noted that the photo only showed Captain An and the red silhouette, with no sign of Bing-1, so the one in the crimson cloak had to be Bing-1.

But someone with the observational powers of a reincarnated microscope had zoomed into the space beside An Xuefeng and circled it carefully, and there was Bing-1 right there, being held in Captain An’s arms. Only the angle had made him hard to see.

If Captain An and Bing-1 were both accounted for, the blood-red silhouette could only be the Puppeteer.

While that debate raged on, those who still remembered the Agency alarm had split into factions of their own.

“My read is that the Puppet Master disguised herself as Silverfish and came to cause trouble, and got caught by An Xuefeng and Dreamchaser.”

Qi Le’chen of the Flying Swan Tour Team analyzed it.

“Making a move in the virtual hall would absolutely trigger an Agency alarm. Bing-1 wearing the Puppeteer’s cloak was probably to protect himself.”

“The Puppeteer is still inside the Inca Sun Gate.”

Wan Anpin of the Metaphysics Tour Team held the tortoise shell in his hands and rubbed it, his expression grave. He was in Return’s reception hall right now; the captains of the other major Tour Teams had come over, the situation being far too serious to ignore. If the Puppeteer had come out, did that signal a change at the Inca Sun Gate? Was the Agency warning connected to him? Everyone knew the answer, but no one said it aloud.

He hadn’t been able to get in, only Wan Anpin, Qi Le’chen, and Captain Wu were in the reception hall.

Wan Anpin had just cast a divination; the result had been clear. The situation had not changed; the Puppeteer remained sealed inside the Inca Sun Gate. But he’d heard what An Xuefeng had said: ‘I’ve found where the Puppeteer’s fragment is.’

An Xuefeng had said it on the platform with the fog raised, and only those on the platform had heard it at the time. But by now, the three of them all knew.

The Puppeteer being still inside the Inca Sun Gate was fine. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] But his fragment could come out.

The headstone. Could it really be that the Puppeteer’s fragment had been hidden inside the headstone? Qi Le’chen was right, An Xuefeng and Dreamchaser had definitely gone after the Puppet Master. He’d heard that the Puppet Master had given Bing-1 trouble several times in the Beijing Suburbs Funeral Palace, even going so far as to go for his eyes.

The Puppeteer’s eyes were indeed unusual, and Bing-1’s eyes… it wasn’t strange that the Puppet Master would do that. Was it the Puppet Master moving against Bing-1 that had disturbed the Puppeteer’s fragment inside the headstone?

No, Wan Anpin thought, frowning. Knowing the Puppeteer’s nature, it was more likely he had struck from the shadows while An Xuefeng, Dreamchaser, and the Puppet Master were all tangled up with each other. After all, it seemed there had been a butterfly fragment inside the Puppet Master.

But whatever the case, the headstone was unquestionably the key. Yet the headstone had been forcibly taken away by the Puppet Master at the last moment, right after it was penalized by the Agency.

“Captain Wu, how is Silverfish doing?”

Wan Anpin asked. Captain Wu, who had been radiating low pressure since he arrived and hadn’t said a word, gave a cold snort.

“Less concern for other people’s Tour Guides; more concern for your own situation!”

Understood; he probably couldn’t reach Silverfish right now.

Wan Anpin withdrew his gaze and exhaled quietly to himself. Captain Wu wasn’t wrong. Historically, the vast majority of Tour Teams had some grudge with the Puppeteer. Half-Life Daoist losing half his vitality was directly tied to the man.

This was someone who had stopped at nothing to collect butterfly fragments, and those who possessed butterfly fragments were, without exception, the top-tier Tour Teams and Tour Guide alliances with the standing to explore Latitude 30 Degrees journeys. And he had always hidden himself deep, skilled at pulling strings and stirring chaos from behind the scenes. It could be said that back in that era, both the East and West Districts; Tourists, Tour Teams, Tour Guides, and alliances alike, had been in absolute turmoil. It was only after the Puppeteer was sealed inside the Inca Sun Gate that all parties gradually settled down and began to understand what had been happening.

The Maria Butterfly fragment; the Metaphysics Tour Team had one. But what it actually did, Wan Anpin had not been able to determine after all this time, and most other organizations were in the same position. Yet there was no doubt this thing was enormously significant. Whether for breaking free of the Agency or finding a thread of survival on a battlefield, this was something that could save lives.

The person who had researched it most deeply was probably the Puppeteer himself.

It was only because he and the others had steady nerves. Right now… there were probably already countless people hunting the Puppet Master. He’d heard people from the West District had come over too.

An extremely weakened Jia-2 Tour Guide, in possession of a headstone with the Puppeteer’s fragment living inside it. At this moment the Puppet Master was like a fragrant, rich piece of meat; and everyone wanted a taste.

“Just tell him that squatting here is useless!”

Just then, Wang Pengpai’s voice came from behind, accompanied by heavy footsteps. He was speaking at full volume, voice stretched with the particular tone of someone who had completely run out of patience.

“Whether he goes back to the Butcher Alliance or to the Mutual Aid Alliance is none of my business, but don’t think joining the Mutual Aid Alliance means you get a free pass. Return doesn’t buy that. Stay any longer and our defense system will take you out!”

“Well, that’s something—”

“Where is all this fire coming from, Pengpai? You’re even more worked up than I am.”

Qi Le’chen laughed. Wang Pengpai swept in like a gale and, hearing that, let out a pained grimace on his round face.

“Don’t even get me started. Before things got like this, he would’ve been dead by now! Blocking Return’s entrance like that, where does he get the nerve…”

Hearing that, Wan Anpin couldn’t suppress a laugh. “Yin-Yang Butterfly still hasn’t left?”

“Right, and he’s standing there all meek and mild, looking like a little wife; the whole act makes my skin crawl.”

Wang Pengpai shuddered his solid shoulders irritably. It wasn’t as though he didn’t know what Yin-Yang Butterfly was capable of; they’d done journeys together before. He knew exactly how ruthless and cunning the man could be.

The Weeping Medium had gone back to handle Butcher Alliance matters, but Yin-Yang Butterfly had dug his heels in and refused to leave. Coaxed and cajoled repeatedly, he wouldn’t budge. Ignore him and he’d start quietly crying on his own after a while, laughing one moment and weeping the next; watching it had Wang Pengpai feeling half-broken.

Yes, the Puppeteer’s silhouette had appeared, and everyone knew the Butcher Alliance people were going to lose their minds over it. But waiting for the Puppeteer at Return’s doorstep, wasn’t that a bit thick?

Return had been burned before; their defense systems now were set to kill any Tour Guide who tried to slip in. Yet right now they couldn’t actually dispose of Yin-Yang Butterfly. Which meant someone from Return had to keep him company, and after spending most of the day babysitting Yin-Yang Butterfly, even Wang Pengpai had reached his limit. Bai Xiaosheng had just gone to relieve him.

“No idea when Bing-1 and the captain are coming back.”

Wang Pengpai felt as alien in his own home as if something from another world had moved in.

Get back soon and sort this Yin-Yang Butterfly situation out. Can’t take any more.

******

Mount Lu. Poyang Lake.

A vast, glittering expanse of water reflected the deep blue of the sky. Blue sky, white clouds, clear air, brilliant sunlight; the weather was magnificent. With the National Day holiday in full swing, countless tourists and tour groups were playing around Poyang Lake’s shores; the water was busy with all manner of pleasure boats. White cranes drifted lazily across the surface of the lake, drawing delighted exclamations from the crowds.

But the northern stretch of Poyang Lake rarely saw a soul. On the eastern bank of that stretch stood a temple. To an ordinary visitor it would have looked like any temple built in recent years, but to a Tourist of the Agency’s Thriller level, the structure appeared dilapidated and ancient, like something out of the last century.

The temple was called the Lord’s Temple, and the triangular body of water behind Poyang Lake was known as the Lord’s Temple waters.

A devil’s triangle, sitting precisely on the thirtieth parallel north.

Countless vessels had sunk in these waters. Clear skies would give way to storms and thunder without warning. Over a thousand people had gone missing; neither wreckage nor remains had ever been found. The living left no traces; the dead left no bodies. Almost every survivor of the disasters here had been found mentally broken.

At this moment, a tall man was half-crouched at the water’s edge, splashing lake water over a cat to wash it. His hair was wet through, his clothes steaming with moisture; he wore only a pair of black military trousers, barefoot, as though he had just come out of the lake. The small Maine Coon lay completely still in his hands, soft and cold as a toy.

The man moved with clean efficiency, rinsing the cat twice through, then wrapped it firmly in a large dry towel. At the same time, he filled several buckets with lake water and stored them away.

Then he walked at a long stride toward the ruined temple, expression carrying a trace of irritated concern.

Return had a hidden safehouse beneath the Lord’s Temple at Poyang Lake, known only to An Xuefeng and a few of Return’s oldest members. After leaving the platform, An Xuefeng had brought Wei Xun directly here.

The Maria Butterfly fragment.

The thought put a hard edge into An Xuefeng’s expression. He moved with athletic ease down a concealed passage behind the Lord’s Temple, passed through several verification stages, and finally entered the safehouse. The layout was similar to the safehouse at the Huashan cave complex, only smaller.

Roughly fifteen square meters. Against one wall, a camp bed. Wei Xun sat on it, bare and wrapped in a thick army-green blanket, tilted to one side, studying the shattered pieces of the Sun charm with evident interest.

The Sun charm was, after all, a Latitude 30 Degrees token; even after being cleaved apart by the Agency’s expulsion, it had not crumbled to ash the way the Puppet Master had. The pieces were small, but they could be arranged back together.

The Puppeteer’s true self remained inside the Inca Sun Gate. What had appeared on the platform was more properly his fragment, or the “remnant soul consciousness” Wei Xun had formed a connection with. The headstone, the cat, and perhaps the crimson cloak combined had allowed him to manifest temporarily.

In the end he had vanished on the Sun charm, appearing as though he had returned to the Inca Sun Gate through it, but that was all misdirection for Dreamchaser’s benefit. The true remnant soul consciousness had already shifted back into the cat and returned to Wei Xun’s hands long before.

And then An Xuefeng had taken the cat out for a bath.

“You’re back?”

An Xuefeng came back still steaming with moisture. Wei Xun immediately set down the pieces in his hands, smiled, and held out both arms.

But An Xuefeng deposited the towel bundle on a spot out of Wei Xun’s reach and didn’t hand it over, face stern.

“You don’t get to touch it right now.”

He hooked a basin out from under the bed and filled it with the lake water he’d brought back.

“Feet first.”

Then he picked up the remaining buckets and carried them into the small room on the east side, sluicing the water into the reservoir of the rigged-up shower.

“Come wash properly in a bit.”

By the time An Xuefeng finished and came back out, Wei Xun had only just managed to slowly extend his legs and submerge his feet in the basin. An Xuefeng moved with decisive efficiency, crossed to him, and crouched in front of Wei Xun, hands gentle but attentive around Wei Xun’s lower leg as he examined the top of his foot.

With the water rippling it was hard to make out at first. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] Looking carefully, a layer of soft white thread could be seen winding around the top of Wei Xun’s foot, fine as silk and pale.

An Xuefeng watched it without blinking until the threads began to gradually dissolve in the lake water. The tension he’d been carrying in his chest eased by a fraction. But when he spoke his voice still sounded like it could frighten children into tears.

“Reaching out to grab someone else’s butterfly fragment with your bare hand, do you have a death wish?!”

“Is the contamination that serious?”

Wei Xun asked with genuine curiosity. He hadn’t particularly felt anything wrong. If An Xuefeng hadn’t immediately stripped his clothes and checked him over from head to foot, he wouldn’t have noticed anything beyond these threads on his feet; painless, itchless, entirely unobtrusive.

It wasn’t until he saw the sleeping kitten growing twisted, malformed horns, going soft as overcooked dough, and An Xuefeng’s own hands warping into tentacles, that Wei Xun grasped how serious it was.

“Serious?”

An Xuefeng seemed to let out a breath of laughter, but there was nothing warm about it.

“Only a Latitude 30 Degrees journey can neutralize it. Any worse and you’d be dead.”

The reason he’d brought Wei Xun here in the first instant was to stop the contamination from spreading as quickly as possible. Even without direct contact, both An Xuefeng and the cat had been soaking in this lake water for the better part of an hour.

He had originally intended to bring Wei Xun in too. By rights, Wei Xun’s case should have been the worst of the three.

And yet in practice…

“I didn’t feel any pain.”

Wei Xun said it plainly and honestly. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] He lifted his foot slightly and sent a small splash across the basin. Some of the white threads were simply carried off by the current, soft and yielding, with no visible aggression whatsoever. Most importantly, he had not felt any sense of danger.

“By the time you feel pain it’ll be too late!”

An Xuefeng reprimanded him sternly, determined that Wei Xun should take this seriously. But beneath that, his mind was running through something he couldn’t settle. The contamination on Wei Xun was, genuinely, not particularly heavy. It might not even qualify as contamination in the proper sense.

An Xuefeng had initially assumed the suit Wei Xun wore, saturated as it was with pure Abyss energy, had acted as a shield. But now…

“The butterfly tattoo on your chest, is it still there?”

An Xuefeng asked quietly. Wei Xun opened the blanket directly and showed him.

An Xuefeng’s gaze shifted.

Wei Xun’s skin was pale and thin, as though it had been dusted with snow, white enough to sting the eyes. And on the left side of his chest, beside his nipple, was the imprint of an incomplete blue-violet butterfly.