Chapter 86: The King of Arguments

"Every time you seem to be telling the truth, you aren't actually telling the truth. Are you treating me like a naive child? Can we ever be on equal footing?" Luo Qi said loudly. "It's always this same behavior; just when it seems like you're about to pour your heart out, what you pull out is still only half a story!"

"What the Gushan Guard specifically does has absolutely nothing to do with the reason I was sent out, so why would I talk about my own affairs? I am a Gushan Guard, sent out to investigate the activities of the Lotus Burners because the Lotus Burners have infiltrated the Qionglin, so they could only send someone other than an Execution Mage. Is there a problem with that?" Du Zhengyi also said irritably, then added sarcastically, "Do you want to learn about the history of my ancestors for eighteen generations?"

Majiang coughed, ignoring their arguing, and asked with some excitement, "So the Lotus Burners' interests have expanded to immortality? Is that the secret they want to dig up? Is this ultimately the interest of the Lotus Burner organization or Li Xu's personal ambition?" It was clear they had touched upon a core secret and made a breakthrough, yet no one paid him any mind.

He sighed. Why could any two of the three of them start an argument, and how had they not yet parted ways? "Xinyue, could you roll your eyes at them for me?"

Guan Xinyue did not pay him any mind either, and asked hesitantly, "Is... is there really immortality?" She actually thought of a question she cared about more, "Is there really a soul?"

"No." The one who answered her question was Du Zhengyi, his face still looking dark and unpleasant. "There is no immortality or soul in this world. Whether it is a Mage or an ordinary human, when it is time to die, they will die."

"Was there really a need to be so blunt in front of Guan Xinyue?" Luo Qi frowned and said. "Don't you know she meant to ask if there was a chance to see her grandfather again?"

"If everyone could understand such a simple truth, there would be fewer issues in this world. Why can't I be direct and clear?" Du Zhengyi said mercilessly.

"It doesn't matter." Guan Xinyue said quickly. "Can we skip this part and move on?"

Luo Qi was so angry he stiffened his neck and stayed silent. Du Zhengyi waved his hand dismissively, as if to wave Luo Qi away. "No need to pay attention to him, let's continue with our discussion."

Majiang chuckled a few times. "I only heard about the Lotus Burner situation recently, so why don't you give a complete official briefing? Considering that Luo Qi might continue to encounter new sources of information in the future, you should be more honest too." "I don't know that much either," Du Zhengyi said stiffly. "Three or four years ago, the Lotus Burners were still a legend. Hardly any Mages in the Qionglin believed they were actually active. It was only when reports started coming in over the last two years that they began to get the attention of the Qionglin Venerables. The reports were sent to the Calculators for processing, and they began to look back at the abnormal deaths of Mages in human society—you know about this too."

Majiang said, "I knew the beginning but not the end. By the time they reached a conclusion, I had already left the Qionglin."

"The conclusion was that in many places where Mages are frequently active, the number of humans dying from abuse far exceeds the usual average. In other words, from a human perspective, the probability of serial psychopaths appearing is higher than the historical average. In the past, this situation might have meant the appearance of a High-Reaction Mage, because a Mage serial psychopath is more efficient than a human one. But..." Du Zhengyi paused, and a sense of worry began to overcome his earlier irritation, "but likewise, if it were just individual psychopaths, then the probability of Mage psychopaths appearing is also higher than the historical average."

Majiang pondered and said, "You mean to say that at this point, it can basically be confirmed that there is an organized operation, with a platform and pursuits, and clear objectives."

"Let's use a way of putting it that both of them are familiar with," Du Zhengyi said. "It is equivalent to the emergence of a terrorist organization among Mages."

Luo Qi said somewhat bitterly, "Then I knew about it much earlier than the Qionglin. Back then, every child knew, and in every school, there were people saying they were Lotus Burners."

"Compared to humans, our social organizational form is, after all, much looser, so our reaction speed to discovering problems is much slower than human society," Du Zhengyi said, not noticing at all when the two of them had started talking normally again. "When determining the scale and movement trajectory of the Lotus Burners, a group of Calculators was also recruited by the Qionglin to analyze the death data of humans and Mages. The Calculators believed that the Qionglin's reaction speed was slower than ever before, so they believed that the Qionglin itself had also developed problems. At this time, the Venerables did not know who was trustworthy, so they decided to stop using the Committee's Execution Mages. My identity as a Gushan Guard is almost a secret; most people only know me as a student being trained as a Battle Mage. So Pei Shu, as one of the Qionglin Venerables, proposed that since the Execution Mages could not be trusted, students currently in school should be sent to investigate. As for why the Guan Yushan case was chosen as the breakthrough point, I am not privy to that. Pei Shu believed that the Qionglin had been infiltrated too severely and that any data might have already been contaminated, so it was best for me not to touch any background materials and rely entirely on myself to investigate."

Luo Qi didn't know if he should feel relieved after hearing this. "So the real reason I was chosen must be that my ability level is too low, and I am very obsessed with human life, making me the type the Lotus Burners would love to torture and kill; I could never be a Lotus Burner."

"That is the most logical deduction," Du Zhengyi said.

Majiang smiled, still unwilling to let Luo Qi off the hook entirely. "It is also possible that your L-Value is indeed high. Your innate emotional infectiousness is strong, and you are an optimist. You must have had a good life for the most part, and you are indeed very lucky in your daily life."

Luo Qi didn't pay attention to his teasing and said, "But I feel that Li Xu's investigation into the Guan Family is real, and their suspicion of the Daheitian Temple is also real; otherwise, they would have no need to mention the situation within their own organization to us."

"There are several possibilities," Du Zhengyi said. "The first possibility is that Li Xu's interest in the Gushan legend might be personal, so he might not be entirely loyal to the Lotus Burner organization. The second possibility is that the Lotus Burners have split, and the group at the Daheitian Temple is doing things that Li Xu's faction is unaware of. Currently, we only know that the high-level members of the Lotus Burners are Sage Mages. The number of Sage Mages is unknown, but I suspect they would set up around nine, mirroring the Qionglin's structure; they have always had a tendency to proclaim themselves the orthodox ones. With this number of people, it is very normal for factions to emerge internally. I personally suspect it is very likely that the Lotus Burners are currently splitting."

"How do you know it's an internal split?" Luo Qi asked in surprise. "Have you been part of their organization?"

"Observed it. Most of the Lotus Burners are young people. Although they claim to be the most traditional Mages and practice the most ancient Mage rituals, they inevitably still have many traces of human culture. Ironically, their rituals and organizational scale carry many shadows of human games and movies." Du Zhengyi explained to Majiang again, "The organizational form of the Daheitian Temple is very similar to the form of game points; this is what Luo Qi discovered."

No one spoke. Du Zhengyi was the authority among these people in this regard, and he continued, "I also once suspected that the Daheitian Temple was a purely human organization. But after seeing some of the monks' reactions, I felt they had undergone psychological interference. That intensity of psychological interference does not seem like something a pure human could achieve. So this is the third possibility, but it has basically been ruled out by me."

"Speaking of which, Li Xu once said that the monks in the temple and the women of the Qi Family were puppets." Luo Qi said with a bit of disgust, "I think he had some special meaning when saying that word, but I haven't found the answer."

Du Zhengyi looked toward Majiang. "Do you have any thoughts on this?"

Majiang shook his head. "Puppets are an old story. Nowadays, when people talk about them, they are just legends. I estimate that even Li Xu himself has only heard of them. Those were things played with by early Consciousness Mages; back then, they had their own secret societies, their own rules, and their own scriptures. But now, no one remembers those rules, the scriptures have been burned, and things like Puppetry have long been treated as a Forbidden Technique and disappeared eight hundred years ago. I don't know how strange those monks felt to you to make you and Li Xu think of this, but from an academic perspective, restoring such ancient techniques is quite impossible."

"Then we don't need to talk about this part for now; the truth will slowly surface sooner or later," Du Zhengyi said, turning to Guan Xinyue, who had been listening blankly on the side. "The remaining part is the key point of this step—what exactly did Guan Yushan discover?"