Facing an Ancient God for a Year

Chapter 2293: Chapter 2288: Casual Discard

As expected of our resident tech expert—worthy of being one of the talents our Academy exports to the outside world.

Deng Feizhou was just a substitute Executor; the designer of Chen Xing’s advancement plan is also this person right in front of us.

For Fu Qian, Nepheli’s answer was, unexpectedly, not strange at all.

Back during that incident in Shangjing, there’d actually been one blatantly unreasonable point: Deng Feizhou himself was still a ways off from Demigod level.

You could hear from the conversation that he had solid theoretical knowledge and held the Native Council’s great ideals in very high regard.

But from Fu Qian’s own experience, if you haven’t personally touched Divinity, trying to give guidance in that area is extremely difficult.

That’s also why the step of grasping Divinity is considered the impassable chasm on the Transcendent path.

Now though, everything suddenly looks much more reasonable.

Nepheli provided the concrete plan; Deng Feizhou was a competent executor, and he really did a damn good job.

Most importantly, this way, ”The Shangjing Chen Family Research Report”—that thing he’d only guessed might exist—suddenly feels like it has a solid landing point.

”I’m really curious what the core idea was. In theory their path is traditional Cultivation, right? They even have a clan Secret Skill.”

For a moment, Fu Qian didn’t stand on ceremony at all and just asked humbly and directly.

...

The way the atmosphere evolved all the way to this point felt downright bizarre to Nepheli.

From a deliberate hunting trap, to later revealing it was all just a façade, and then straight into a technical exchange...

Throughout the whole process, the person involved never changed his tone, as if he really had come here purely for this purpose.

Staring at Fu Qian in silence for a moment, Nepheli seemed to finally realize that if she kept up this grim ambience, she’d just look stupid; the next second, she raised her hand and beckoned.

The place was still the same place, but the light suddenly flared bright.

Plus the pus-and-blood stains had almost fully faded; the oppression index dropped sharply.

”So Deng Feizhou really was killed by you?”

She even took two steps forward as she asked back, then sat down in a nearby chair.

”Yeah. After I saw Old Master Chen’s situation, I was super jealous and wanted a full set for myself, but he refused.”

Fu Qian recalled that upright and unyielding man; his voice and face vivid as if alive.

”I knew it. I said back then it wasn’t necessary to waste more effort investigating... Also, you’d actually fancy this kind of crooked Evil Path?”

Hearing Fu Qian’s explanation, Nepheli shook her head slightly, clearly also slipping into her own memories.

And you could tell that for the Native Council, Deng Feizhou dying instead of being captured and taken away by the Night Watchman was actually the more acceptable outcome.

”Honestly, with that presence behind you, the fact that you still weren’t a Demigod at that time was something I actually found a bit strange.”

The next moment, her eyes narrowed slightly as Nepheli suddenly dropped a sensitive topic, watching Fu Qian to see how he’d react.

That’s because I’d just started the job, and the organization’s operating situation was bad.

The fact that Nepheli knew about the warehouse had been an open secret for a while.

Not only had he used Senior Ariel as a Puppet, he’d even directly told Emperor Yasui that he himself might have an unusual origin as well.

But you could tell from her expression that she still treated that as a major secret, and would totally understand if he chose not to respond.

”Sadly, people really aren’t all the same. At that time I genuinely wasn’t... What about when you picked up Ariel?”

Yet the very next second, Fu Qian nodded neatly and even used his senior as a point of comparison.

Come on, he’d finally caught a tech person, and through various methods forced her to sit down and talk properly—there’s no way he was letting her go that easily.

...

Lady Nepheli’s situation was far from optimistic.

She’d abandoned the light for the dark and given up her research post, and now she was no longer tolerated by the Native Council.

After all the things she’d done, it was hard to imagine the Night Watchman didn’t have a pile of dirt on her; even trying to clear her name would be difficult.

And judging from her earlier actions, she clearly had no intention of being a good person. Right now, what she was most likely pondering was how to keep going down this path to the very end as a solitary fugitive.

But really, if you look on the bright side, having no organization isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

After all, if she’d stayed in the Native Council, how to withstand the Night Watchman’s upcoming blows would be a serious question.

They’d screwed up too many things lately, and there were even villains tirelessly splashing dirty water on them.

Hmph, that’s the price of going against my Rebirth Club.

Thinking of his senior and then of his competitor’s current woes, Fu Qian couldn’t help but let out a cold snort.

”When I picked up Ariel, he really was already a true Demigod, though he was roaming around in an intensely chaotic state.”

After a brief hesitation, Nepheli was clearly moved by this atmosphere of honesty and actually started talking about Little A’s past.

”It wasn’t just that he’d gone utterly mad in terms of will—his whole state was extremely unstable, and he could easily turn any living being he touched into ash.

”But the one bit of luck he had was that the place was a Forbidden Area far from human society; otherwise he probably would have been discovered and cleaned up by the Night Watchman immediately.”

Mental and Extraordinary Form double madness? Is this how a senior ends up after his SAN Points bottom out—this miserable?

He could more or less picture the scene Nepheli was describing; as for her calling that ”luck,” Fu Qian actually agreed.

It seemed the warehouse had no real measures for recovering contaminants from seniors who’d died in the line of duty; they just tossed them aside wherever.

And a Forbidden Area... was there some mission going on in there?

Either way, appearing in some place normal people could never reach would indeed slow the Night Watchman’s response.

”I put in a huge amount of effort just to trap him and confirm the situation. The collapse of his will was one thing; his own state was even more severe than the usual kind of loss of control...

”For example, there was a hollow in his chest containing three Stars circling each other, with a Ranking even more exalted than his.”

Once she started recalling, she couldn’t stop; Nepheli quickly began recounting more details.

”A Trait? Is that why he was later able to advance to Second Phase?”

Visualizing the scene she described, Fu Qian nodded slightly and voiced a hypothesis.

”Exactly. I almost thought at first that something had gone wrong during his advancement... Anyway, in order to calm him down, I activated a Miracle that was supposedly once used to help those who’d lost control—Tyrant’s Blessing.”

Mentioning the Miracle she’d once discussed with Fu Qian, Nepheli’s emotions were a bit complicated.

After all, this guy had just admitted that he was the one who’d truly received the Tyrant’s Blessing.

”The effect was surprisingly good. Ariel not only calmed down, the things in his body were being digested—you could see them transforming into a new form.

”And I couldn’t even figure out the underlying reason, so I went to consult Rom, and that’s how we ended up with that special Second Phase you saw.”