Lango sat atop a small dune. Before him rested an object shaped like a crystal ashtray, along with a tortoise shell.
The ashtray was carved from magical crystal and radiated just the right amount of heat. At the moment, three venomous scorpions were skewered and roasting over it.
Reaching into his pocket, Lango pulled out a small pouch of salt, pinched a bit between his fingertips, and sprinkled it evenly over them. The resulting sizzle sounded like delightful music to his ears.
Ever since he "ventured outside," he had developed an immense passion for food.
Even the Gatekeeper of Samsara had teased him: *Lango, the older you get, the younger you live.*
Indeed, only after coming out into the world did he realize food could be so wonderfully rich and enjoyable beyond merely sustaining life.
Pinching a roasted scorpion between his fingers, he popped it into his mouth. As he chewed, a look of blissful enjoyment spread across his face.
Having finished one, he looked down at the tortoise shell while waiting for the remaining two to roast. Three small ladybugs now rested upon its surface.
At the exact center of the shell was a white dot marking his current location. The three ladybugs represented Karen, Demetria, and Daliwenluo.
However, the ladybug representing Demetria was already belly-up, completely motionless.
Lango pinched it up and tossed it into his mouth. It burst with juices, delivering a satisfying spicy kick that made up for the plainness of the roasted scorpion.
"Tsk..."
Lango smacked his lips, savoring the flavor. But when he looked down again, he found that the ladybug representing Daliwenluo had also flipped onto its back. It was dead. He was dead.
"Heh, two gone already."
Far from looking shocked, Lango found it rather amusing.
In this observation delegation composed of brilliant youths from the major churches, he was truly an anomaly—because he himself had nothing to do with being young.
Most of the time, watching them chat away in high spirits only bored him.
The arrogance radiating from those youngsters smelled distinctly sour to him.
Moreover, he wasn't surprised that Karen dared to counterattack and had successfully taken down two of them.
Although he wasn't particularly close with Karen, the young man had left a deep impression on him. Karen possessed a demeanor that gave off a very peculiar feeling.
It was hard to put into words—perhaps just the natural intuition of an aged soul. Live long enough, and so long as you hadn't drifted through life in a daze, you would always perceive things a little differently.
It was like looking up at the sky and knowing whether it was going to rain.
Besides, Lango had reviewed Karen's dossier. He didn't know if Karen was truly an orphan, but there was indeed no apparent trace of a prominent family backing him. How could a young man who had achieved so much and climbed so high in such a short time ever be a simple character?
"A bunch of conceited brats, dreaming of showing off his severed head. Well, look at you now—you've just served up your own heads on a platter."
Muttering his mockery, Lango pinched up the bug representing Daliwenluo. But just as he was about to pop it into his mouth, he felt a faint vibration against his fingertips. The bug that had supposedly "died" had actually come back to life.
"What's going on?"
Lango opened his fingers. The little ladybug dropped back onto the shell and began crawling toward the white dot at the center.
Not only was he alive, but he was heading straight here?
No matter how clever and experienced Lango was, it would never occur to him that Daliwenluo had actually died and then been resurrected.
His instinct told him that Karen and Daliwenluo must have used some special method to cut off all external perception to hold a secret discussion. During that secret talk, the resonance on his end made it seem as though Daliwenluo had died.
Now the discussion was over. Karen remained where he was, while Daliwenluo was heading this way.
Lango sensed a dangerous aura.
*Did the two sides communicate on behalf of their respective churches and reach some sort of agreement?*
*No, if communication had been planned in advance, why would the Church of Order's investigation delegation have fallen in Machina?*
*An impromptu negotiation? Karen's status is barely sufficient, but Daliwenluo doesn't hold any practical executive post. He isn't responsible for operational affairs, so how could he possibly conduct negotiations?*
Had it been anyone else, that hypothesis might have been more plausible. Lango had observed the bald young man from the Church of Life; he belonged to the pure, ascetic practitioner type.
Regardless, Lango chose not to linger where he was. Packing up his things, he began avoiding Daliwenluo.
For a time afterward, Daliwenluo closed the distance while Lango kept his distance.
When Daliwenluo stopped, Lango stopped as well. Since the resonance was mutual, this was practically an explicit message: *I don't want to meet you right now.*
"Heh, are all aged souls this cautious?"
Daliwenluo remembered Karen telling him that an ancient soul from beyond the Gate of Samsara actually inhabited Lango's body.
Since this fellow was giving him no opening whatsoever, Daliwenluo could only give up on the closest target and switch to the next.
Lango kept a close eye on the positions tracked on the tortoise shell. Seeing Daliwenluo change direction, he didn't take the opportunity to flee further away. Instead, while attempting to sense Daliwenluo's new target in advance, he kept a safe distance and trailed after him as closely as he dared.
***
Meanwhile, a girl clad in a purple clerical robe stood with her head down, sulking as she looked at her broken wand.
Not long ago, she had caught up to that bone dragon and attempted to apprehend it using spells from the Church of Thunder. At first, she had succeeded; the bone dragon's movement speed was visibly slowed, and a tug-of-war began between them.
Yet out of nowhere, a swarm of things resembling tender white maggots suddenly emerged across the bone dragon's body.
They blanketed the areas restrained by her lightning spells, instantly creating an insulating barrier. With a flick of its tail, the bone dragon easily broke free, accelerated, and bolted far into the distance.
Seeing how gleeful it looked as it bounded away, the girl felt it had done so on purpose. That bone dragon was deliberately humiliating her, toying with her.
And indeed, her intuition was entirely correct, for the mockery came from another little girl.
Little Kanna was furious that this woman from the Church of Thunder had dared to "touch" her dragon tail.
Big Sister Purr had taught her that no one was allowed to touch her tail casually.
In Little Kanna's mind, no one except Karen was allowed to touch her tail, because she often saw Big Sister Purr deliberately wrap her tail around Karen's fingers.
In the end, not only had Sophreya failed to capture the bone dragon, but her most cherished magic wand had also been damaged. This wand was extremely important and precious to her; it had been temporarily lent to her by her mentor when she was selected by the church to join this observation delegation.
Once her mentor learned that she had broken the wand, she would undoubtedly use it as an excuse to demand that Sophreya sleep with her for an entire month.
She was sick and tired of her mentor. Her own orientation was completely normal, yet because her mentor had been hurt by men and rejected them, Sophreya was forced to cater to her mentor's desires.
Just then, Sophreya sensed a familiar aura approaching. Stowing away her broken wand, she moved toward it of her own accord.
Before long, they crossed paths. The moment they caught sight of each other, Sophreya saw the other figure slide forward and collapse face-first into the yellow sand.
Sophreya moved to his side. Seeing the heavily wounded Daliwenluo, the wound on his chest was shocking to behold.
Daliwenluo was pale and his lips were parched. In a faint, trembling voice, he gasped out to Sophreya:
"Save... save me..."
One of his hands clutched the toe of Sophreya's boot, while his other hand held tightly to his sapling.
With those words, Daliwenluo slipped into unconsciousness.
Sophreya's gaze fell upon the sapling.
She knew this bald young man had once been granted the opportunity to train in the Garden of Life. It was said he had brought out a leaf from the Tree of Life and nurtured it inside his own body.
For some unknown reason, the original wooden club had now become a slender sapling, but it remained extraordinarily precious—an exquisite material for crafting a magic wand.
With it, not only could her damaged wand be repaired, but its quality would also leap up an entire grade!
Most importantly, unlike her church's specially supplied cigarettes—which, though nominally forbidden from being sold, were absolute hard currency on the black market—a branch derived from the Tree of Life was something one could only dream of finding. Even high-ranking officials within the Church of Life could rarely possess one.
Even if her wand hadn't broken, Sophreya would have coveted this sapling immensely.
During their previous gatherings, the others had treated this taciturn, bald young man from the Church of Life with cold indifference, privately calling him a "mongrel." After all, the true secrets of the various churches were difficult to hide from people of their standing.
The bald man hadn't liked associating with them either, always keeping to himself. She was the only one who had repeatedly taken the initiative to approach him, hoping to obtain a graft from him.
To that end, she had even drugged his drink, hoping something might happen while his mind was clouded so she could demand compensation afterward. Unfortunately, the drug had seemed useless against him; the damn, surging life force within his body had completely neutralized the aphrodisiac's effects.
Now, the opportunity lay right before her.
"Hey, did you run into that Karen? Did he beat you like this?"
Sophreya received no response from Daliwenluo.
"Heh."
Sophreya hesitated no longer. Opening her right hand, a purple dagger appeared. She would finish him off completely and take the sapling. After all, the blame could easily be pushed onto Karen of the Church of Order.
*Whoosh!*
The dagger thrust down toward Daliwenluo's chest. But at that very instant, the sapling—which had secretly taken root beneath the desert sands at some unknown point—burst through the surface, instantly impaling Sophreya's torso.
"What..."
Sophreya looked down at the stem and leaves sprouting from her chest, her face filled with disbelief.
Daliwenluo opened his eyes and slowly sat up, gazing at her expressionlessly. With a twitch of his fingertips, the sapling began siphoning Sophreya's life force to repair itself.
The original wooden club had been the sapling's optimal form, but that form had been destroyed in the battle against Karen. To restore it now required a massive infusion of vitality.
Daliwenluo had even tested absorbing a small amount for himself. It indeed provided a noticeable boost to his physical condition, but it had no effect on the tiny ecosystem Karen had left inside him, which operated like a fragment of rules.
In other words, even if he were surrounded by a sea of life force, the moment that tiny ecosystem stopped, he would still face death.
"Phew... Haha, I really have no way of escaping his control."
There was not the slightest dejection in Daliwenluo's muttered words. Instead, they carried a hint of excitement and relief. He had genuinely feared he might be able to slip away, terrified that the chain binding him was not secure enough!
"You..."
Sophreya tried to resist, but she couldn't. The sapling had already taken root and sprouted inside her body, throwing her spiritual power into chaos and rendering her completely unable to cast spells.
Much like Demetria, she was a spellcaster. And when a spellcaster was successfully ambushed at close range, it usually meant the game was over.
If one were to ask why she had been completely off guard against an ambush... well, because she had been preparing to ambush someone else at that very moment.
When Sophreya moved to kill Daliwenluo, she never imagined he was laying a trap to kill her. She was killing him for the precious sapling; why was he killing her?
Even now, Sophreya couldn't fathom why he wanted to kill her. Had he gone mad?
"I gave you a choice," Daliwenluo said flatly. "If you don't respect my life, don't blame me for trampling upon yours."
"Aaaahhh!"
Sophreya began to scream in agony as her skin rapidly cracked.
"Oh, and another thing. You were the one who drugged my drink at the banquet that night, weren't you? You know, that night left me far more stimulated than usual. When I slept, I had more dreams than normal—dreams of me and my mother. Thanks to you, I got to relive strangling my own mother with my bare hands several times over."
"You..."
Just as Sophreya was on the verge of being drained into a desiccated corpse, her hair turning white, Daliwenluo pulled the sapling free.
Sophreya lay on her side, not yet dead. Having just brushed against the jaws of death, profound terror gripped her heart. She managed to gasp:
"I'm sorry... I was wrong... thank you..."
"No, you misunderstand. I didn't say I was letting you go. I was just worried that if I kept absorbing, your skin would shrivel completely into a mummy, making your features unrecognizable. I was also worried that once your hair turned white, the texture would become too brittle to tie around a belt."
With that, Daliwenluo picked up the dagger she had intended to kill him with.
*Thwack...*
He severed her head and, imitating Karen, tied it to his belt.
Standing up, he took a few steps and sighed helplessly.
"This accessory really isn't very proper."
After a moment's thought, he added:
"Though if I hang a full ring of them, it might look a bit better."
Daliwenluo turned his head. In that direction, he sensed Lango's aura once again.
However, he didn't bother pursuing that sly old fox any further. This was his first mission as an Order Knight; he had to bring back enough trophies.
Leaving behind a set of coordinates, Daliwenluo glanced at the sapling in his hand, which had regained its lush green vitality after absorbing Sophreya's life force. He smiled.
"I'll just test them one by one with this method and see if any of them are tempted by you."
With that, Daliwenluo's figure vanished from the spot.
A good while later, Lango appeared. Looking at the headless corpse lying on the ground, he knew it wouldn't be long before the shifting sands buried it.
"Heh, what kind of game are they playing? Didn't these youngsters agree to go head-hunting? How did it turn into mutual slaughter? Ah, the tricks youngsters play these days are truly too elaborate and high-end for me to comprehend."
Lamenting softly, Lango popped the ladybug symbolizing Sophreya into his mouth, savoring the burst of juices.
Just then, a voice rang out from behind him:
"You must admit, there is a massive generational gap between you and young people."
Hearing this, Lango didn't turn around immediately. Instead, he looked down at the tortoise shell in his hands. The ladybug representing Karen remained stationary where it was, yet Karen himself was already standing behind him.
"Tsk, my tracking sense malfunctioned."
"It's completely normal for that thing to be inaccurate. Setting up a minor decoy formation can easily fool it."
As Karen spoke, he walked over to Sophreya's corpse and crouched down. First, he picked up the broken wand, then searched the body, retrieving several exquisite sacred tools.
When fighting Demetria earlier, she had been blown apart by stacked, high-powered spells, leaving behind no intact sacred tools. But this girl, having died to an ambush, clearly dropped quite a few good items.
In her pockets... there was actually a thick wad of point coupons from the Church of Thunder, a pack of cigarettes, and two bearer cards from private black-market banks.
Karen couldn't help grumbling about Daliwenluo: "Are you out of your mind? You clearly grew up in poor conditions, yet after growing up, you've developed such extravagant habits that you look down on all this stuff?"
In truth, Karen was misjudging Daliwenluo.
First, having just died and returned to life, Daliwenluo felt as though he had seen through worldly vanity, placing little value on sacred tools or coupons.
Second, Daliwenluo had never imagined that the God of Order would actually be short on Order coupons!
Lango spoke up: "Hey, Karen. We meet again. Do you still remember me?"
Karen didn't answer, silently sorting and stowing the items.
"I heard you've been doing very well lately—living a rich, exciting life, even becoming a department head. Heh, you'll probably become a Regional Chief soon, won't you?"
Setting the items aside, Karen turned around to face Lango. The air between them grew heavy and still.
Lango held out his hands. "Even if we aren't friends, we're at least acquaintances, aren't we?"
"An acquaintance who is hunting me down?"
"Uh..."
"Logically speaking, I should hate you even more."
"Sometimes, matters of allegiance aren't something any of us can clearly explain. Take this incident, for instance: I was sent as the representative of our Church of Samsara, but that hardly carries any major weight.
"When the Church of Order investigates afterward, if they found that my Church of Samsara hadn't participated at all, it would actually make the Church of Order suspicious. They'd feel uneasy, wondering if our sudden purity hid some ulterior motive.
"You see, if it caused that kind of misunderstanding, wouldn't things be even worse?"
"So, you were being wronged?"
"No need to be so polite, really, no need." Lango pointed at Demetria's severed head at Karen's waist and asked, "You're angry, aren't you?"
"It's certainly not a collection made out of fond affection."
"Of course, of course," Lango said with a smile. "Please rest assured, I don't want to fight you. You know my true identity; I'm not like them."
"Your soul power is very formidable."
"You flatter me, you flatter me."
"However, I'm not afraid of an advantage in soul strength. Furthermore, I know that this body of yours cannot unleash your true power. Therefore..."
Karen raised the Sword of Diamans.
Seeing this, Lango's expression grew solemn. Drawing the twin scimitars strapped to his back, he held them across his chest and said in all seriousness:
"Therefore... how about I join you guys as well?"
Chapter 744