Right around then, Igola finished querying his future path of development, an exceedingly complex look spreading across his face.
Noticing this, the butler youth puffing on his cigarette asked, "Mr. Bogin, do you have any questions?"
"Nothing. It's just... I can't help feeling the people here are truly blessed."
Igola's tone carried a hint of desolation. "The guidance I received just now for eighty-two points is something no amount of money could have bought in my former country. But I suppose a butler who grew up here couldn't possibly relate to the sentimental sighing of a country bumpkin like me, could you?"
"That isn't necessarily true," Banjie said with a light chuckle. "Though the Gospel sheds its light selflessly upon the world, not everyone has the right to spend it. When I first prayed to the Gospel, I was just as awestruck by the greatness of the Omniscient Weaver."
"Speaking of which, I've had a question since last night," Igola said. "There are fewer than ten thousand leaderboards in total, each displaying only ten spots. Even without factoring in overlaps, there are less than a hundred thousand slots in the entire country. Given that being on a board is the sole source of points, how do ordinary people earn them?"
"Organizational boards," Banjie answered concisely. "Take the Funeral Agency, for example. When we make the rankings, the young mistress distributes a portion of the points to me. As long as ordinary people join a top-ten company in any industry that ranks on the boards, their salaries virtually always include points.
"Beyond that, the points generated by various municipal leaderboards are also distributed to workers in relevant sectors. For instance, a substantial share of points from the Public Security Board goes to the Red Hats. Essentially, any citizen who pays their taxes properly receives an annual welfare payout of points at year's end."
Igola nodded. "That sounds quite fair..."
Drafting a query of his own, Yaxiu raised an eyebrow at those words. "Igola, do you really think that's fair?"
Igola instinctively opened his mouth to retort, but when he caught the subtle surprise on Banjie's face, he knew Yaxiu had hit the mark. Even after pondering it for a moment, however, the swindler couldn't pinpoint where the catch lay.
"A clever fellow like you naturally wouldn't spot the deceit at play here," Harvey chuckled. "That's because you're utterly confident you can join a prestigious company through sheer effort, secure your first pot of points, and slowly snowball from there. But even a corpse could figure out that positions or companies entitled to a share of points are strictly limited. The people qualified to vie for those seats will inevitably be those who have already used points to polish every facet of themselves into high-caliber elites.
"Points are a universal currency, and no one ever has enough. Unlike mundane wealth, where even the most extravagant lifestyle hits a ceiling, points can be burned through with effortless ease. Therefore, the Gospel Country must obey the eighty-twenty rule, with the vast majority of points flowing into the hands of a tiny few. On top of that, you have a family system here. The deeper the foundation accumulated by the parents' generation, the easier it is for the offspring to make the rankings. The lower classes don't have a prayer of competing against point-rich families."
"Surely it can't be that bad?" Igola frowned. "There should be free basic education here—"
"That's precisely why you can't see it—you're too smart, Igola," Harvey said. "Did the other children from the same rearing institute as you manage to become Two-Winged Sorcerers as well? Your intellect and self-discipline already surpass ordinary human bounds; you could assemble a complete system of knowledge through self-study alone. But ordinary people need guidance and corrective tutoring when they learn, and that is precisely where points come into play.
"Of course, perhaps I'm mistaken." Harvey glanced toward Banjie. "Perhaps points truly are an untainted boon from the Gospel Country and haven't become an insurmountable barrier between social classes."
Banjie flicked his ashes into his palm and smiled. "Mr. Harvey, you are essentially correct. However, because of a loophole in the Book of Gospel, the social structure of the Gospel Country isn't quite that straightforward."
"A loophole?"
"The young mistress doesn't seem to have mentioned this," Banjie explained. "Aside from the 'Sin Boards' like the Murder Board, most regular rankings take personal credit into account."
Almost instantly, Yaxiu saw an uncanny gleam ignite in the eyes of both Igola and Harvey—the unmistakable joy of laid-off workers discovering an unexpected opening in the job market.
"While not every criminal is caught—in fact, even if you commit murder, so long as the Red Hats never uncover it, it's as good as having never happened—the Book of Gospel logs every violation into your personal credit record. If someone abruptly drops off a board, the Red Hats almost always turn something up if they bother to investigate.
"The loophole in the Book of Gospel lies in this: as long as you didn't commit the act yourself, your credit remains untainted.
"Consequently, those unqualified to rank on the boards have work that only they can do."
Igola grew pensive. "I thought our agency was the underworld outfit responsible for doing dirty work..."
"The agency doesn't do wet work. At most, we prune branches, exterminate pests, and clear out mold." Banjie gestured with his cigarette toward the balcony outside. "Azula is actually a three-tiered city.
"The second tier is the canopy basking in sunlight; the first tier is the trunk entrenched upon the earth.
"And then there is the basement tier: the roots tasked with absorbing nourishment."
* * *
Azula Sewers, Mermaid Palace.
"Are you people really not planning to buy a dehumidifier?" Annan squatted by the pool and grumbled, "Everything is so slimy and sticky. It feels disgusting."
"This level of humidity is just right for us sirens." Lounging in the water, Silimolo swayed her body languidly, her tail fin splashing up droplets that Annan promptly deflected with an air barrier. "Stop messing around. I don't want to head back soaking wet."
"You could always change here," Silimolo said, resting her hands on the edge of the pool, her voice melodic like song. "It's not like your agency has any business left after being struck from the Task Board. A broker who sells out her employer won't be getting commissions anytime soon. Since you're so free, why not jump in and play with me?"
"You certainly keep your ear to the ground."
"The water knows all."
Resting her chin on her hands, Silimolo tilted her head back to look up at Annan. "Why not just join us mermaids? Granted, you aren't a siren, so you'll never become one of the Ten Sea Witches, but I'd put you in an important post and hold a Foam Ritual just for you!"
"Thanks for the kind offer," Annan retorted dryly, "but I don't have a lover, nor do I have any interest in losing my voice."
Sirens were an offshoot of the fishmen, yet they differed substantially. Where fishmen evolved limbs while retaining predominant piscine traits, sirens possessed upper bodies virtually indistinguishable from humans—barring coral-like fin-spines on their heads—while their lower halves remained serpentine and piscine.
Blessed with extraordinary innate talent in the prophecy faction, sirens were the undisputed uncrowned queens of the Gospel Country's underworld, naturally capable of extracting the maximum intelligence from the Book of Gospel at minimal cost. The Ten Sea Witches were rooted across the nine most prosperous cities in the land. Silimolo before Annan, for example, commanded the loyalty and submission of every underworld syndicate in all of Azula.
Sirens did not bar outsiders from joining, but new recruits had to undergo the Foam Ritual: either murder their beloved or sacrifice their voice. Completing either condition earned the sirens' trust and even granted a fraction of their prophetic talent, but it also permanently revoked the right to appear on normal leaderboards—serving as the underworld's pledge of allegiance.
"I want to—"
"If you wish to discuss business, you know the rules."
Annan froze, then helplessly dropped flat onto the stone floor and began doing push-ups.
Mermaids harbored an odd quirk: they loved watching people exercise. In everyday circumstances it mattered little, but anyone seeking to negotiate business with them had to converse while working out, just as banquets required social drinking.
"I want... to call in... my favor... for you to do something for me," Annan panted before finishing more than a handful of reps.
Watching beads of fragrant sweat break out across Annan's brow, Silimolo giggled and leaped gracefully from the pool without splashing a single drop. She glided alongside Annan, her silky voice carrying a dual-toned resonance like layered music. "Are you sure? This is the favor you earned by helping me rise to Sea Witch. Once spent, you won't enjoy any special treatment among the mermaids."
"I'm sure."
"State your request. The water listens."
"Over the past fifteen years... in the Azula region... have any... Echo Children died prematurely?"
Silimolo summoned her deep-blue Book of Gospel. With a single thought, the relevant information organized itself and unfolded before her. Once a person acquired a Book of Gospel, it automatically recorded all intelligence surrounding its bearer; whenever necessary, they could open it at any time to review everything they had ever known without expending a single point, functioning essentially as a portable, personal library.
"Seventy-six of them," Silimolo gloated with a smirk. "Virtually none succeeded. The longest-lived one died at age five."
"Did your people handle all of them?"
"Of course. Those families would never dare touch wet work themselves; our people were commissioned for final disposal," Silimolo said. "Mind you, if you're hoping to extract the miracle techniques of those great houses, I can't help you. We signed contracts. In the Gospel Country, not even a Legendary Sorcerer can breach a contract sealed on weave-paper."
"I don't need their techniques," Annan said. "Did your people handle the disposal of the corpses as well?"
"Naturally. It was convenient enough."
"What was the caliber of those Echo Children?"
"Exceptionally high, all things considered. After all, the techniques have gone through generations of iteration," Silimolo replied. "Almost every single one was a brilliant, all-faction prodigy possessing immense intellect. There was even an infant who attained the Silver rank in a faction by age two. But for geniuses forcefully manufactured through miracles, a brief lifespan is practically guaranteed. Yet to swindle a seat at the Weaving Ceremony, one must survive for at least ten years; otherwise, the ceremony won't recognize them at all."
Echo Children were a peculiar product unique to the Gospel Country. Miracles were applied to these infants while still in the womb to artificially hasten their intellectual development, endowing virtually every one of them with all-faction aptitude. So long as they survived to age ten, they were guaranteed to master a faction at the Gold rank.
Yet hardly any survived to reach ten.
The sole reason these Echo Children existed was to ambush and trick the Weaving Ceremony.
If an Echo Child managed to survive beyond ten years of age and had their potential verified by the ceremony, they would almost certainly become true Echoers. After all, while the Weaving Ceremony chose its competition categories at random, an Echo Child was an all-faction genius—no matter what challenge was posed, they could answer it.
Naturally, the rewards granted by the Weaving Ceremony were pocketed by the sponsoring family, while the Echo Child was kept alive until natural death claimed them. Without lifespan-extending rewards, an Echo Child could survive to fifteen at most. Artificially forced geniuses defied natural law to such an extreme that without a devastating price, the entire Gospel Country would have ascended long ago.
Just as the Blood Moon Country excelled in biological modification, the Gospel Country had cultivated deep expertise in artificial prodigies. From the very day the Weaving Ceremony first emerged, countless minds had plotted how to deceive the prophetic foresight of the Omniscient Weaver.
Perhaps future generations might produce all-faction geniuses capable of living stably to age twenty, but for now, Echo Children were essentially lottery tickets for high-scoring families. Striking gold was a blessing, but failure was expected—a field test verifying fifty years of accumulated technical progress, nothing more than an ongoing arms race.
Annan said, "I need you to alter the profiles of the Echo Children to match three specific individuals, and even create the illusion that they never died, but instead spent their lives operating throughout the outskirts, sewers, and forests."
Silimolo looked slightly surprised and asked casually, "Not a problem. Do you need to pick a specific birth year?"
"No need. Modify all the Echo Children who died over the past fifteen years."
"All of them?"
"All of them."
Silimolo narrowed her eyes slightly.
She realized what Annan was trying to pull off.
The Book of Gospel had plenty of loopholes, one of which was the 'search loophole.' When querying individuals sharing identical names, the Book of Gospel could potentially conflate the records of multiple people into one.
That vulnerability had been patched long ago, however. Anyone born within the Gospel Country received a unique identifier known only to the Book of Gospel itself, preventing mistaken identities even among namesakes.
Annan undoubtedly knew this, yet she was willing to burn her hard-earned favor just to merge the profiles of these Echo Children onto those three individuals. That meant she possessed immense confidence in triggering the search loophole, misleading the Book of Gospel into assuming the three were all-faction prodigies.
Which meant those three...
Suddenly, a sheet of contract weave-paper was thrust before Silimolo's eyes.
"Much as I... trust a Sea Witch's integrity... signing a contract... is safer." Annan collapsed completely, sprawling exhausted against the stone floor as her amethyst earrings swayed with glimmering light. "Once the contract is signed, I will hand over... their names, appearances, and profiles."
Silimolo accepted the weave-paper, signed her name, and watched the document ignite into motes of light. "You were willing to let your agency be delisted just for this? You put everything on the line back then to help me become the Sea Witch of Azula just for this moment?"
Annan nodded, determination gleaming across her weary face.
"I have already staked the Doran name."
Chapter 202