May 28th, the two-story manor in Mengfeila, a workday.
"Hey, why don't you just join Belldete too?"
Evalin crouched on tiptoe atop a statue of a Veela paladin, as if flaunting her superb sense of balance. "Even if you leave Mengfeila, where do you think you can run? On the latest Family Board released by the Gospel, you've managed to offend nine of them. The imperial royal family has an arrest warrant out for you, and the Red Hats are just waiting to bag you for ranking points. Your contract with Annan is definitely an unequal slave pact—she's the kind of woman who takes an inch and never gives back a fraction... You're either going to end up as dog meat or keep living like a dog, so why not be a dog for Belldete? Our benefits are fantastic!"
Yaxiu, who was busy scrubbing the crevices of the statue where dust gathered easiest, irritably swatted aside the hem of her dangling dress. "Except you guys make people work overtime!"
"I can give you two days off!" Evalin said in all seriousness. "A full two days off a month! That's one day more than anyone else! You could take one day to rest and one day to spend!"
*Damn it, I only had two days off a month before I transmigrated, and after transmigrating I still only get two days off a month—did I transmigrate for nothing?!*
*And how on earth do the people of Mengfeila manage to take out loans and spend when they only get a single day off? This internal consumer circulation is absurdly efficient—it completely shattered the workplace truth that overtime keeps you from spending money!*
"Can you even protect me, though?" Yaxiu asked. "I'm a wanted criminal right now, you know."
"The Book of Gospel." Evalin cupped her cheeks in both hands. "I can directly spend Gospel points and have the Book of Gospel erase your warrant."
"Wait, wasn't that warrant issued by the empire?" Yaxiu asked in shock. "The Book of Gospel can directly control the empire? No, I should say—the Gospel can actually dictate how society operates?"
"Gospel points carry entirely different values in the hands of ordinary people, sorcerers, and people like us," Evalin said. "Commoners can only use Gospel points to buy fleeting moments of happiness. Sorcerers can trade them for tremendous power. But in our hands, Gospel points are a universal energy source.
"Gospel points are very much like currency. When your circulating wealth rivals that of a nation, you can sway commodity prices, leverage the societal machine, incite mass movements, and even literally become a 'rival nation.' Gospel points cannot be circulated, but the Book of Gospel itself is an omnipotent wishing machine that simplifies your 'avenues of consumption' to the absolute minimum. For example, if you want to buy a bag of chocolate balls, you'd usually need to know where to find them, buy them through an intermediary, and then wait for them to arrive. But the Book of Gospel..."
Evalin summoned her Book of Gospel, and a bag of cookie chocolate balls materialized in her left hand. "Expensive as it is, it really skips every single step... Want one?"
"Only if you give it to me unconditionally for a taste," Yaxiu replied, without leaving an opening.
Evalin shot him a glare and shoved a chocolate ball into his mouth. "While it would certainly cost an exorbitant amount, getting your warrant canceled is something Belldete can still pull off."
"If it's that amazing, why didn't the Red Hats just spend Gospel points to capture me?"
"The Book of Gospel can alter the weather, raise the dead, and warp reality, but the one thing it cannot do is pin down the ever-shifting human heart, nor can it directly pry into personal privacy." Evalin tossed the chocolate balls in her hand. "Take these chocolate balls, for example. They probably came from some shop; the Book of Gospel merely teleported them here and paid the tab. It didn't mind-control a chef into whipping them up for me on the spot.
"Changing your warrant works the same way. The Book of Gospel won't erase everyone's desire to hunt you down, but it will directly suppress the imperial warrant, cancel the bounty on your head, and block any news about you across all media channels, thereby nullifying your wanted status in practice.
"So from that perspective, the Isu royal family doesn't really care that much about you anyway." Evalin chewed on a chocolate ball as she continued, "If they were truly out for blood, they would have plastered your wanted poster everywhere your eyes could reach and offered a bounty so absurd it would warp the minds of the populace. If the temptation were large enough, not even I could suppress the greed of the people of Mengfeila.
"To me, that warrant is just the empire making a show of its stance to mollify the major factions. They haven't paid much attention to you at all. After all, the very night the Art Board came out, I, as the Mayor of Mengfeila, demanded that Nabistin apprehend a criminal brazen enough to parade around during the apocalypse—and there were at least a dozen other leaders filing complaints along with me."
A spark of realization hit Yaxiu. "In other words, you could pull strings in reality to stop the other leaders from hating me, and then the empire would revoke the warrant?"
"Indeed, I could," Evalin said. "As long as you sign your name on this paper..."
"A marriage registration?"
"An IOU. The amount isn't really that large, just a mere hundred million gold coins. As collateral, I only need ninety percent of your cognitive capacity; you're not using that much of it anyway."
"No way!" Yaxiu shook his head. "Why does Igola get such great perks while I have to mortgage ninety percent of my brain?"
"Mmm..." Evalin mused. "If you want Igola's treatment, that's not entirely out of the question..."
"Huh?" Yaxiu blinked. "You want to marry me too?"
The blue-haired girl suddenly fished a gold coin from her pouch, slipped it down Yaxiu's collar onto his chest—"That's compensation"—and brought a sharp knifehand down on his head.
"How dare you humiliate me like this..." Yaxiu ground his teeth as he carefully tucked the gold coin away.
"Setting aside the fact that I wouldn't spare a glance for raw, low-grade genes like yours that haven't even been filtered by miracles, the head of the Belldete family never marries for life," Evalin huffed. "Sigh, but I suppose it's only natural for you to harbor such delusions in front of the number one beauty in Mengfeila—"
"Thank goodness that's not it. At least our future kids won't blame me for their height..."
Watching Evalin blankly conjure nearly a ton of gold coins that slammed onto the ground with a deafening crash, Yaxiu raised his chin with stubborn bravado. "Could you at least let me wear a helmet?"
"You want to act tough and wear a helmet too? Do you really think life works like that?"
"Blue-haired goblin... I wasn't even talking about you!"
By the time Evalin rose from on top of Yaxiu looking thoroughly refreshed, a bedraggled Yaxiu stubbornly stuffed the gold coins into his robes.
Since most of his sorcery spirits had been replaced with Two-Winged ones, and his Void Realm battles over the past few days had been far too frequent, the spirits working full overtime were starving at an alarming rate. His gold coins weren't even enough to feed them, so swindling some cash from Evalin, the big capitalist, had resolved his burning crisis.
Yaxiu could have asked Annan for money, but she always insisted that he show his spirits and then rationed out funds based strictly on his spirit count. If he asked for money too often, Annan would grill him about why he was burning through them so fast, asking if he was out paying his 'marital duties' somewhere or secretly running a side hustle behind his boss's back. Yaxiu constantly felt that continuing down that road would eventually expose the anomalies of his Void Realm Exploration, so he avoided asking Annan for money whenever possible.
"So you still refuse to join Belldete?" Evalin asked. "I'd give you a very lenient contract."
"You've been pestering me for days," Yaxiu said. "Honestly, wouldn't Harvey be a better choice than me? In the future, he's going to inherit your ancestor's legacy and dig up your family grave, you know."
"He's way too much trouble. I never planned to recruit him from the start," Evalin shrugged. "As for the Angel of Necromancy's legacy... that is an angel's legacy, not a family inheritance. The Harvey in the recording was right: Belldete doesn't qualify to inherit an angel's legacy in the first place. All I need is to hold onto the Dominance Faction and Belldete.
"I only need you and Igola." Evalin stared at him. "Name your terms. I refuse to believe Belldete can't satisfy your appetite!"
"In any case, anything worse than Igola's treatment is off the table." Yaxiu dampened his rag in water and went back to wiping the statue. Even after being thoroughly trampled by the lady of the manor, a lowly valet still had to earn his keep.
"If you really won't budge..." Evalin hesitated for a moment. "Fine, I can agree to that!"
"Didn't you say you can't get married? Oh, oh, I get it—we can only be lovers?"
"Bullshit! I just think you're actually quite well suited for Anfiel too."
Yaxiu was shocked. "Wait, isn't Anfiel passionately in love with Igola right now? You want me to steal Igola's lover?"
"It's not like Anfiel can only have one lover." Evalin studied him closely. "Come to think of it, between you and Igola, one is smart and one is an idiot, one is aloof and one is cheerful, one is delicate and one is rough, one for day use and one for night use. Marrying you both into the family together is just perfect."
"Who's for day use and who's for night use... Forget it," Yaxiu said helplessly. "Can't you just give me an offer that doesn't involve throwing in a wife?"
"You really just wanted to find out what Igola's contract with us looks like." Evalin let out a quiet hiss of exasperation. "I knew you were stalling me."
"Who says? If your terms were good enough, of course I'd be willing!"
"If you're so worried about Igola, and so unwilling to let him stay in Belldete, why didn't you ruin their date that night?" Evalin leaned down to watch Yaxiu work. "My original plan was for you two to make a mess of things so Igola would grow disgusted with you and come over to our side completely—otherwise, do you think that remote control would've been so easy to fling away?"
"You owe Harvey an apology for stomping him into the dirt!"
Yaxiu retorted sourly, "I just figured Igola is smarter than me. Since he thought it was fine, why should I meddle? And besides..."
"What if you guys are genuinely sincere toward him?"
Evalin coaxed patiently, "Exactly! Since even a clever man like Igola is willing to join us, why won't you come along as well?"
Yaxiu picked up his bucket, walked over to another statue, wrung out his rag, and continued working.
"Because he didn't ask me to come along."
The cult leader shrugged. "Maybe he thinks my prospects are brighter sticking with Young Lady Annan."
Chapter 400