Chapter 680: The Ancestor's Gift (69)

When Du Zhengyi walked out of Qionglin, no one stopped him.

Just like the thousands of times he had walked out of Qionglin before, he had completed his mission and walked out alone. No one greeted him, and no one cared what he had done or where he was going.

The long winter in the high-altitude region seemed to have finally passed inadvertently, replaced by a colder, late spring. He felt the cold, which was rare; perhaps the quality control of his reconstructed body was not as good as the original, or perhaps he had simply not fully recovered. He still did not know how exactly Luo Qi had snatched his life back, but he must have risked his own life to do so.

He stopped at the human town closest to Qionglin and found a coffee shop to sit down and try to contact Luo Qi using his phone. There were many of Qionglin's eyes and ears here, though going further away would not be of much use; he believed someone was following him. The routine Qionglin pulled was nothing more than being loose on the outside but tight on the inside.

Erasing the memories of relevant personnel was the cleanup work after a mission was completed. Right now, the entire Qionglin was pretending the mission was complete, with everyone back at their posts and the memories of irrelevant people erased. But of course, this mission was not complete, and too many people had had their memories erased.

He leaned back into the sofa in the coffee shop; this posture made his fatigue fully apparent, making him look weak and vulnerable. He was like an injured lion on the savanna that was about to be discarded—young in age, but his life cycle had already reached its final stage. He did not cover it up, nor did he have the strength or mental energy to cover it up anymore.

The jazz playlist in the coffee shop flowed soothingly into its second loop; the call he made did not connect, and the phone calls and WeChat messages he waited for did not arrive. He sank into the soft cushions of the sofa, looking at the ceiling with half-lowered eyes, waiting quietly and listening blankly to the murmuring, swaying music.

When the human town fell into a deep sleep, still no one contacted him. The coffee shop had long since closed, but he remained half-lying on the sofa. Until dawn, until the human town woke up once again. Du Zhengyi walked out of the coffee shop; he was certain that Luo Qi had chosen to remain silent.

He tried to find a way to contact Guan Xinyue's father, and on the phone, Guan Xinyue's father asked him, "Who is Guan Xinyue?"

He hung up the phone.

He crossed this item off his list. What remained on his list were targets he needed to see in person, and at the very top was Wusu. But this was not someone he could see immediately, and once he started trying to contact people from Wushan, it would provoke those monitoring him; he might not even make it to the step of seeing the person.

He could not find anyone to discuss or deduce what had happened; everyone had forgotten. In fact, this was just the norm of his past life and work, only he had never felt his world was this quiet before.

He opened the video recorded on his phone once again—"Brother, I have to go. I have to take Guan Xinyue with me; they won't let her go. I also can't see... see your teacher, he is about to arrive."

This contained several brief pieces of information: 1. The person in danger was Guan Xinyue; 2. Luo Qi could not see Pei Shu; 3. Pei Shu had arrived in person, or rather, Luo Qi believed Pei Shu was about to enter the scene.

Perhaps there was one more point: based on his understanding of Luo Qi, the sentence he cut off was to hold back a curse. For a long time, Luo Qi had always had a strange attitude toward Pei Shu. Every time, he would first disapprove of Pei Shu, hint at Pei Shu being suspicious whenever there was an opportunity, and then, thinking he had committed the taboo of letting distance come between close relations, he would tactfully find some room to backtrack.

He knew Luo Qi had some vague hostility toward Pei Shu, but he did not mind this; he would not demand that others must respect or like his teacher. Luo Qi could certainly have his own views and keep his own opinions. Luo Qi was a gentle person, and the fact that he wanted to curse Pei Shu at a life-or-death emergency meant that he had finally found some evidence to substantiate his suspicions.

He knew he could not see Pei Shu, and he also knew that Pei Shu would definitely rush over.

Of course, Pei Shu did indeed come in the end. Otherwise, Majiang would not have lost his memory. Aside from Pei Shu, the only people who could make Majiang lose his memory while a Battle Mage was right beside him were Clownfish and Luo Qi.

Clownfish would not do such a thing; he feared nothing more than a world without chaos. Luo Qi would not do such a thing because he trusted Majiang; he would not erase his own existence from a friend's memory. The only remaining possibility was Pei Shu; Pei Shu had violated the mission completion regulations and violated the rules by raising the security clearance level.

If one analyzed Luo Qi's words more carefully, Luo Qi said Guan Xinyue was in danger, but he did not say he himself was in danger. Regarding himself, he said he could not see Pei Shu.

A human girl, in danger because Qionglin would not let her go.

A newborn Mind Archmage, facing the most powerful Mind Mage in the world—a king meeting a king. Even if they had met not long ago and were at peace.

He watched this short video repeatedly. In the instant before he started speaking, Luo Qi was gritting his teeth and cursing amidst the chaos. Luo Qi would not be like this toward an enemy; he knew that anger toward an enemy was meaningless, and he would not be provoked to this extent by an enemy now.

If one connected the events, there was a high probability he was losing his temper at Guan Xinyue. Guan Xinyue had done something, something Luo Qi extremely disapproved of. This matter was so big that even Luo Qi could not stop it, and Luo Qi knew this matter would cause Guan Xinyue to fall into danger, perhaps a situation from which there was no turning back. He had to take Guan Xinyue away immediately to save her life.

There was a very small possibility for humans to obtain weapons from the Seal Land and turn them against Mages. But that usually required time to understand and learn how to use them. At the time, Guan Xinyue was indeed somewhat abnormal; he had noticed it, but she should have been under Majiang's watch the entire time, and she had no time.

Since he could not figure out the method Guan Xinyue used, he had to treat this part as a black box for now: Guan Xinyue had achieved a goal through a method she had stumbled upon.

What was Guan Xinyue's goal? Her goal could not be clearer: to find her sister, Lu Xinchen, and to make the murderer who killed her family pay the price. This was the closest she had ever been to Zhao Jiaozhu and the Lotus Burner, and the longest she had spent with them; she would not give up this opportunity. Du Zhengyi was almost certain she was willing to pay any price to achieve her goal.

Guan Xinyue was just a human girl, a sixteen-year-old girl. How did she do it?

But immediately after, a thought he had been avoiding suddenly emerged: the person who actually killed her family with his own hands should have been Clownfish, right?

A sense of suffocation tightened around his chest; he returned to Qionglin at the fastest speed possible and went straight to check Qionglin's recent detention records.

The records were blank; no Lotus Burners had been sent in. Had not a single one been caught? Or was there simply no one to catch?

He had a conclusion that even he found hard to believe: perhaps before or after Luo Qi brought them all out, Guan Xinyue had killed all the Lotus Burners herself.

Perhaps for Pei Shu, this was the second major disaster since the young Luo Qi escaped from the Mind Mage list.