Chapter 322: Information on the Fake

Luo Qi was bleary-eyed, slumped in a pile of cushions in the small reception room, hoping the cushions would swallow him whole. Du Zhengyi had dark circles under his eyes; he sat relatively upright, though only Luo Qi could tell he was actually exercising restraint—he was always quite irritable when forced to sit on the floor with his long legs bent. Humans had invented high-legged furniture, climbing up from the ground onto chairs; there was indeed a logic to its existence.

Pei Shu didn't look too healthy either; through his disguise, Luo Qi guessed he hadn't slept since the day before yesterday. His weary gaze swept over the two of them, his expression stern, and the first thing he said to them was, "How did you find Guan Yushan's crystal? Explain the process in detail."

Du Zhengyi's expression looked a bit dazed; Luo Qi groaned in disgust from within his blanket, neither of them answering. Du Zhengyi was unable to focus due to lack of rest. Luo Qi was suffering from sleep deprivation, compounded by having spent too much time in the Consciousness World; his symptoms were somewhat like a hangover—dizzy and with a bit of a headache—so he clutched his head and refused to climb out of the pile of cushions.

"What is going on?" Pei Shu asked. "Have the Highland Mages stopped abstaining from alcohol? Or did you make the liquor yourselves?"

"How is that possible?" Du Zhengyi said, startled, kicking Luo Qi to make him sit up.

Luo Qi pulled himself together and sat up. "What? What happened?"

Pei Shu raised a finger, summoning two mugs. Luo Qi glanced at them; the porcelain was of poor quality, the kind that would sell for about fifteen yuan at a night market. The mugs were filled with a reddish-brown liquid and drifted steadily toward the two of them. Luo Qi took his. "My brother had best not drink anything; if he sleeps a bit more later, he'll recover naturally."

Pei Shu looked at him with concern. "I have to leave soon; you should continue resting later."

Du Zhengyi nodded and set down his mug. Luo Qi downed half the drink in one go; his headache eased a little and his mind cleared up quite a bit, though he was also vibrating with excitement.

He began to recount the ins and outs of discovering Guan Yushan's crystal in a jumbled manner, focusing on the description of Guan Xinyue's Ear Bone Stud.

"Child," Pei Shu stopped Luo Qi. "You might be drinking too fast."

Du Zhengyi chuckled. "He was never very reliable to begin with, and you even lit a fire under his backside. But Teacher, what exactly happened? If you could give us some hints, we might be able to explain things more clearly."

Pei Shu pondered for a moment, though to Luo Qi, it didn't look like hesitation, merely organizing his thoughts. He seemed to have had a very long day; Luo Qi thought with a bit of schadenfreude that the Qionglin First Mage seemed to have met his match. Just then, Pei Shu said a crucial sentence: "The crystal you brought back is not Guan Yushan's crystal."

Luo Qi spat a mouthful of water onto the Highland Mage's cushion. As if receiving retribution, he looked up at Pei Shu in shock. "You said... what?"

"The crystal—how did you obtain the crystal? Where did the Guan Family's little granddaughter get it? Did she truly receive the crystal from Guan Yushan's own hands?"

"Certain, absolutely," Luo Qi said in surprise, his brain rapidly recalling every detail of the process. "Guan Xinyue's mind was very clear; she can be certain the crystal was given to her by Guan Yushan personally, with no one else's hands involved."

But Luo Qi himself was not as certain as his words suggested. All the memories related to the Guan Family were racing through his mind; he searched at high speed, hammering away at every detail. There were so many places that could be problematic, so many things that didn't add up. He exchanged a look with Du Zhengyi and saw the same meaning in Du Zhengyi's eyes.

"I saw a Consciousness Fragment of Guan Yushan inside the crystal," Luo Qi said, pondering. He pushed aside all negative suspicions to first state the things both he and Du Zhengyi could be certain of. "Although I don't know Guan Yushan, I believe that consciousness was a complete Consciousness Fragment. Could someone nest one consciousness inside another? No, no, that was a single consciousness..."

Pei Shu shook his head. "That consciousness no longer exists."

Luo Qi's heart sank. "Right, at the time, that consciousness did indeed consume all its energy to exist in the real world for a moment." The consciousness had deleted itself; it was meant to be a message-leaving consciousness, so they hadn't paid much attention to it. If someone had played them here, then their entire line of reasoning was flawed. But this did, quite maliciously, align with the subsequent situation—for instance, why the intelligence left behind by Guan Yushan contained no list of Lotus Burners, nor did it specify that the Lotus Burners' intention was the Seal Beast...

"Are you certain that consciousness was indeed Guan Yushan?" Pei Shu asked.

Luo Qi did not hesitate; he didn't know if he was taking a huge risk by saying this, but he nodded. "I judge that to be the case."

"Teacher Pei," Du Zhengyi said from the side. "Luo Qi's judgment has always been correct."

Luo Qi looked at Du Zhengyi nervously; he must have already thought of everything Luo Qi had, but nothing could be read from his face. Du Zhengyi's expression was quite calm; there were still dark circles under his eyes, and his brows were slightly furrowed, looking as if he hadn't fully woken up, but Luo Qi knew he was already completely alert, his mind still running at high speed.

Pei Shu nodded; Luo Qi could see that Du Zhengyi's opinion carried great weight with Pei Shu. "Anything else?"

"That consciousness also acted as a defensive line for the information in the crystal; it attacked Du Zhengyi and me, but stopped attacking completely when it saw that Guan Xinyue's consciousness was present," Luo Qi said.

"His granddaughter, a key," Pei Shu said knowingly.

Luo Qi then described the entire process in detail, though there were many things here that Luo Qi was only relying on basic deduction and his own instincts; he wasn't very familiar with how these things were explained in orthodox Mind Mage textbooks.

Pei Shu listened attentively the whole time, not interrupting until Luo Qi finished. He thought for a while before saying, "It wasn't very standard, but I understand what you mean. I also believe your judgment was not mistaken; that consciousness should indeed have been Guan Yushan."

"Then how is it that you say it isn't Guan Yushan's crystal?" Luo Qi asked.

Pei Shu pondered for a moment and said slowly, "I can only say that someone put another soul inside Guan Yushan's shell."

This sentence made Luo Qi feel a chill down his spine; many details in his memory were highlighted as if by a marker pen. He didn't know how to interpret Pei Shu's words.

Pei Shu looked at Luo Qi with dim eyes; Luo Qi looked back at him, and after a long while, asked, "What?"

Pei Shu sighed at length. "Child, I mean that someone bypassed the defenses Guan Yushan left in the crystal, preserved Guan Yushan's Consciousness Fragment, and kept him there to act as the crystal's Guardian. However, this person changed the content left inside the crystal."

Luo Qi opened his mouth wide without realizing it.

"To put it more simply, someone didn't break the lock, but entered the house, took what the owner left behind, and replaced it with other things. Then, they locked the door again and walked away. The people who came later saw the owner's lock was still there, opened it, but what they got was already a fake," Pei Shu said.

Luo Qi was speechless; he had vaguely suspected this for a long time, but couldn't articulate it, and his actual knowledge of Mind Mages was too limited to evaluate the possibility of this being successfully pulled off. "Can one walk through the door without breaking the lock?"

"That is the only possibility," Pei Shu said. "I gathered the best Calculators in Qionglin and used the best resources of Qionglin to crack it. But at the first step of verification, it already didn't match. Guan Yushan was an important Mage; he had many reports archived in Qionglin. Comparing the two, the conclusion reached was that the content inside was not left by Guan Yushan."

"May I ask, did you have a pre-agreed code?" Luo Qi asked.

"The mind is not a particularly good place to store secrets. Even if we have agreed-upon codes, if we truly encounter an opponent, there is no guarantee they won't dig the code out. So, codes are actually useless. However, the composition of a person's consciousness is extremely complex; a person's behavioral characteristics, as well as their likes and habits, are generally constant yet difficult to measure. To fully grasp a person's various likes, habits, and traits requires a massive set of samples. For example, all the reports this person submitted over a hundred years could fill a room if written on paper. With a sample set, Calculators can know if this report came from the original person's hand," Pei Shu explained patiently.

"I understand," Luo Qi said in a low voice. "It's like a complex, multi-dimensional graphology."

Du Zhengyi shook his head helplessly. "If Mahjong knew that everything he had been painstakingly calculating for so long was a fake, and that everything he received was false intelligence, he would be furious to the point of death."

Pei Shu said, "This at least explains why every place you went to, you not only returned empty-handed but also encountered an accident every single time."

Du Zhengyi thought of something else. "So we have actually confirmed one thing—the Lotus Burners are playing us. They are showing their hand to Qionglin; they are openly declaring war on Qionglin."

Pei Shu spoke only after a long while. "We originally wanted to confirm if this organization existed. A few years ago, Qionglin still thought they were a small gang of thugs, a group of anti-social elements that couldn't even be considered high-level opposition. The current result, however, is that they have become so radical that the Lotus Burners not only exist but have openly declared war on Qionglin. This situation is indeed something Qionglin did not foresee."

"Wait," Luo Qi interjected. "Sorry, let me interrupt; I still want to know that person—how did that person bypass an active consciousness, a dynamic door lock, and get inside?"

Pei Shu seemed to think for a moment before realizing Luo Qi was asking him a technical question; his expression softened considerably. "You really are a studious child."

Luo Qi saw Du Zhengyi roll his eyes in disdain from the side.

"Unfortunately, I don't know how this person managed to do it either. Perhaps they found some ancient Secret Language and obtained higher permissions, or perhaps they created some method themselves," Pei Shu said with a humble attitude.

"Not necessarily," Luo Qi shook his head. "I understand what you mean; you mean this person reached an unprecedented height academically. However, I think it's unlikely. You are the authority on Mind Mages; if even you don't know, then this person must have done it through engineering."

Luo Qi glanced at Du Zhengyi; he hadn't forgotten how Du Zhengyi had dismantled Qionglin's defenses. Du Zhengyi was a very flexible and pragmatic person; perhaps the one who always seemed like the first Mind Archmage to open up the world was just a flexible engineer. "Perhaps," Pei Shu said.

Perhaps. Luo Qi realized Pei Shu didn't want to dwell on this issue; he still had too much to do. Du Zhengyi continued to talk to Pei Shu about the series of events that occurred after they cracked the fake information. But Luo Qi's thoughts returned to an earlier time, to the terrifying story Guan Xinyue had told. The story wasn't entirely true, but Guan Xinyue's meaning was clear: Guan Yushan's mind was already unclear before the incident.

He also thought once again of the pain he had felt at the bottom of the well that didn't belong to him. Whose pain was that? Clearly, it wasn't even Guan Yushan's pain; it was a personal mark inadvertently left behind by the person who had made major modifications to Guan Yushan's relics.

Luo Qi knew who that person was. The one who severely wounded Du Zhengyi was him, the one presiding over the Great Black Heaven temple was him, and the one who likely wiped out the Guan Family was also him. He had the most opportunity and the most ability to modify Guan Yushan's relics and set a trap for those who came after. It was even possible that before Guan Yushan died, he had already controlled Guan Yushan's consciousness.

It was this bastard who made them run around the Grass Market buying High-Energy Crystals, made them work hard to calculate and decrypt, and made them run around like monkeys. As it turned out, every place they went was a place this bastard wanted them to go, playing them like monkeys.

Luo Qi suddenly collapsed onto the floor.

Du Zhengyi, who was in the middle of speaking, stopped and looked at him in astonishment. Pei Shu was also taken aback, almost reaching out to check his pulse. However, Du Zhengyi knew him better after all, stopping his teacher and asking with a frown, "Luo Qi, what the hell are you doing?"

"I'm so pissed I'm dying," Luo Qi lay on his back on the floor, staring at the ceiling. "I don't even have a shred of self-respect left."

"Get up," Du Zhengyi said. "What kind of thing is this? Don't take it to heart."

Luo Qi refused to get up, kicking his legs in anger.

Pei Shu looked at him in astonishment. Du Zhengyi smiled, "Teacher, you saw it; he is just like this. Letting him help do things is absolutely taking a great risk."