Chapter 409: Zhou Quan

Luo Qi finally got the chance to go out for some air, and he could walk steadily without the help of any external force. He was truly proud of himself; to be able to achieve the feat of walking upright twice in one lifetime.

While mocking himself, he peeled a pistachio to eat, leaning back leisurely against a tree. Du Zhengyi sat in a higher position in the tree, flipping through a paper book someone had brought back from the city.

From time to time, some Mages passed by them, casting curious glances in a sneaky manner, but no one dared to approach. Luo Qi felt he was a good boy who had never been treated like a Plague God before; it must be that the star of disaster above his head had too strong a ghost-repelling ability. When Luo Qi had slowly eaten enough pistachios to cover the ground in shells, he finally felt someone approaching.

He spat out a piece of shell, raised his head, and saw the face of the person coming, "Pah, Zhou Quan!"

Du Zhengyi's gaze moved away from the book for only a brief moment; he frowned, glanced downward, and then continued flipping through his book.

Zhou Quan smiled at Luo Qi in a half-awkward way, moving closer as he said, "Hey, brother!"

"Who's your brother?" Luo Qi put another pistachio into his mouth, his dark, bright eyes fixed on the grandson who had caused him such terrible luck.

"Sister?" Zhou Quan asked curiously.

"Did you take the wrong medicine?" Luo Qi said. "Did you smell anything here?"

Zhou Quan paused and actually sniffed seriously. This was the Highland Mage's forest, full of the fragrance of trees; there really wasn't any special smell. Zhou Quan asked tentatively, "Pistachio smell?"

"It's the smell of gunpowder." Luo Qi cracked open a pistachio and said indignantly, "After being used as a gun by someone and firing a shot, the smell of gunpowder has been around me ever since."

Zhou Quan grinned ingratiatingly, "This... this was completely unexpected. I didn't think it was that dangerous there; I thought I could cover it..."

"What can you cover? You can't even cover a fart; you're not even as useful as a plastic bag!" Luo Qi said angrily.

"Sigh, who could have guessed? I just wanted to hunt for treasure. Who doesn't know that Highland Mages have plenty of good things? They're like a hen laying eggs, keeping those treasures tucked under their butts, not letting anyone touch them." Zhou Quan sighed and leaned a little closer to Luo Qi. "Brother, in all fairness, which Mage wouldn't want to try their luck if they had the chance? Who doesn't want to see what their treasures actually are? Don't you have that curiosity? Everyone has curiosity!"

"That's not how you started out; you kept saying it was all for the Committee." Luo Qi punctured his words, saying mercilessly.

Zhou Quan didn't even blush, smiling quite honestly, "I was doing it for the Committee too. Doing it for the Committee and satisfying my curiosity don't conflict!"

Before he even finished speaking, a sound like a small animal coughing or snoring suddenly came from the branch behind him. Zhou Quan's reaction was fast; as he turned his head, he suddenly remembered that everyone said Luo Qi had a cat of the Qionglin Scavenger level. The moment he saw a pair of round eyes, he lunged to the side to dodge.

The little black cat spat at him, but he dodged it, and the saliva burned a hole in the tree branch next to him.

Zhou Quan looked back at Luo Qi with lingering fear. Just as he was about to speak, Luo Qi raised his finger and pointed upward, "Shut your broken mouth and think before you speak. What's this little cat? I've got a big one up there!"

Zhou Quan glanced through the gaps in the leaves at Du Zhengyi, who was still reading. He didn't pay them any mind at all, not even changing his posture. But then again, he was Zhou Quan of the Committee, knowledgeable and experienced, but when had he ever seen someone treat the great Plague God of the Committee like a cat, and that Plague God didn't even show his divine power, actually acting like a big cat continuing to sunbathe?

"Brother, I surrender." Zhou Quan gauged Luo Qi's rank and status and said wisely, "You tell me, you old timer, what can I do to make you stop being angry?"

Luo Qi looked him over for a while, "I could actually go into your brain myself and see. None of your little secrets can be hidden from me. I'd know things like whether you prefer to jerk off in the morning or at night. You do have a decent thick skull, but I can still drill it open."

The expression on Zhou Quan's face turned serious, though not out of fear. Luo Qi understood this look; he was just calculating, assessing the situation, and calculating how he should choose.

"In the future, I'll publish a little booklet," Luo Qi said, tossing a pistachio into his mouth. "Filled with the inner secrets of everyone in the Qionglin hub, one person per volume, one chapter for sexual fetishes, one chapter for final fantasies..."

"Wait, wait, wait," Zhou Quan stretched out his hands in a gesture of begging for mercy. "I'll tell you, I'll confess myself. My finances have been a bit tight lately. A while ago, to balance my accounts, I added some Credit Points to my name in the Planning Committee's reports."

"You can change that?" Luo Qi asked in surprise. "But what does that have to do with what happened here?"

"First, about modifying the Planning Committee's reports—since I have to tell a buddy the truth, let me tell you about the most glorious feat of my life. I modified it flawlessly, skimming just a tiny bit of Credit Points from everyone's accounts. Hey buddy, you know how the Planning Committee encrypts Credit Points, right? Every time they update the Credit Point files, they simultaneously synchronize them to storage Crystals hidden in various secret places around the world! The total, heh, is quite considerable. I, being supremely clever, got the geographical locations of these storage Crystals! That was a top-secret document! Even more secret than that was the Secret Language to update the storage Crystals. For this, I even dated that old hag in the Planning Committee who has a face like a dog for a whole year! Finally, the simplest yet most arduous part was writing the forged data into these storage Crystals. I couldn't use the Committee's large-scale Synchronous Magic because the magnitude of that magic is too great; once used, it would definitely be recorded by the Magic Monitoring Network. So I could only modify them one by one manually. So many Crystals... I nearly ran myself to death." Zhou Quan sighed and shook his head.

"So you're a rich tycoon now?" Luo Qi asked with interest. "Why do you still smell like a pauper?"

"I should have been the biggest invisible billionaire in the Magic World by now," Zhou Quan said regretfully. "Unfortunately, I made one mistake in a hundred, and one Crystal was left unchanged. Just because of this one tiny error, all my previous efforts were wasted."

"That doesn't sound like 'flawless' at all," Luo Qi said.

"But can you believe my luck is this shitty? Let me tell you and you judge—is fate fair to me? Who the fuck would think to check that Crystal? It was a bead placed in the Imperial Palace three hundred years ago, embedded in a huge, green stone that big, with carvings of deer and an old man with a big forehead on it..."

"A Mountain Carving?" Luo Qi asked.

"Yeah, that's the name, carved really ugly. That Imperial Palace is now the Palace Museum, and that Mountain Carving isn't even in the Palace Museum, it's in the National Museum of China. It's not even among the exhibits in the National Museum, you know? Maybe they didn't think it was anything good either, so they just kept it in the warehouse, a big warehouse. The document I got only said it was in the Imperial Palace. You know those clerks in the Planning Committee are lazy bastards; surely no one has updated this address since the Xinhai Revolution. I knew at a glance—how the hell could it still be in the Imperial Palace? Puyi didn't have much time left! Where was I supposed to ask him about the whereabouts of a broken bead? Even if he were alive, he definitely wouldn't remember. As for the court Mages, the Emperor is gone, we haven't had that profession for a long time. Just like that, I didn't think much of it. Qiqi, you tell me, who would have thought the trouble would come from this one Crystal? They really have one bastard in the Planning Committee—you might not know him, looks like a ferret, small short face, long forehead, body like a stool—I don't know why it was so coincidental, but one day he went to the National Museum of China to compare and verify the information in that bead with the information in the other storage Crystals! Is there any justice? You tell me, why does someone as smart, capable, and hardworking as me not get rewarded? Is it high to take a one-dollar kickback from each of you?" Zhou Quan shouted angrily and kicked the tree.

"And then?" Luo Qi asked, listening with great interest.

"Then the ferret blackmailed all my money away. All the money I worked so hard to move was gone; I just ended up doing the work for someone else," Zhou Quan said. "If I hadn't given it to him, I'd be stuck in the Cube under the Committee right now."

"I've never heard of a Mage doing this," Luo Qi said with interest. "Did you have a genetic mutation?"

"Don't talk about that. In short, I already had financial problems, and after that, it was adding frost to snow. How many points can you get doing clerical work for the Committee? You think everyone is as rich as your buddy in the tree. I had no choice, so I wanted to touch something here and scramble for some money on the Black Market," Zhou Quan said.

"I can feel that you're actually telling the truth."

"Why would I lie to you? It's just this little thing; now that it's explained, we're still good brothers," Zhou Quan said, reaching out to put his arm around Luo Qi's shoulder.

"Who's your good brother?" Luo Qi said. "You still owe me a life!"

"I owe you a life, so we can just continue doing business together in the future!"

"You're selling your life to me?" Luo Qi asked in surprise.

"No, no, a person like you will definitely encounter many good things in the future. You sell them to me, I'll help you sell them, and as brothers, I'll just earn a commission," Zhou Quan said obsequiously.

Luo Qi looked at him in astonishment, "You idiot, you nearly killed me, and today you come to find me not to beg for your dog life, but to hope to keep in touch with me and earn some money? You big idiot, I can't even be bothered to hold a grudge against you!"

Suddenly, as if Luo Qi had thought of something, he looked up and shouted, "Did you know all along? That's why you didn't pay any attention?"

"Something like that, I guessed it," Du Zhengyi said idly, turning another page of the book.

Zhou Quan smiled along and reached out to grab Luo Qi's arm again, "How about I tell you some gossip about the Committee to relieve your boredom, as a deposit?"

"Deposit your mother's head!"

"Why use dirty language? Civilized Mage, civilized Curse!"

"Get the fuck out..."