By the lake, on the terrace, around a wooden table set with a pot of clear tea, Gu Xiechen, clad in black and white robes, sat opposite Peng Hua.

"The Chief Retainer position—you truly have no interest?" Peng Hua took a sip of tea to moisten his throat, looking at Gu Xiechen with marked surprise.

"What's the rush? We can't be sure what that girl's true intentions are," Gu Xiechen said, shaking his head after lightly patting the water's surface, startling a nearby school of small fish into a hasty retreat.

Earlier in the banquet hall, thanks to Fu Yaming's diligent mediation, an open conflict had been averted, and the wager involving spirit stones had naturally dissolved without issue. Gu Xiechen had calmly finished the dinner after declining the offer to become the Chief Retainer of the Broken Hook Adept Group. Claiming fatigue from the past few days, he excused himself to his room. Was it an illusion? When Gu Xiechen refused the offer, he thought he caught a faint, relieved smile playing on Fu Yaming's lips.

"That... that woman!" Gu Xiechen fanned himself gently with the Fuyao Fan, narrowing his eyes as he listened intently to every rustle and shift in the surrounding wind.

"That woman?" Peng Hua let out a cold laugh. "Can she even be called a woman? Ah, but you haven't noticed that she looks remarkably like someone else, have you? From her demeanor to her aura, she's very similar."

"Oh? Who?" Gu Xiechen already suspected the answer but was curious to hear Peng Hua's expert opinion.

"That dead—Siren!" Peng Hua spat the words out through gritted teeth. "That dead woman looks almost exactly like that dead. Hmph, I was momentarily interested in trying to flirt with her, but looking at that face... I don't want to feel like I'm embracing Siren every time I hold her! Even if I don't suffer physiological impotence, a psychological collapse would be a huge loss for me!"

Stunned into silence, Gu Xiechen suddenly shivered violently. The terrifying image of Jin embracing Siren made every hair on his body stand on end.

His distant divine sense, which had been silently monitoring a certain palace far away, suddenly registered movement from both Fu Yaming and Jin. Gu Xiechen gestured subtly to Peng Hua, then activated the Seven Emotions and Six Desires Illusion Talisman, which erupted in a faint glow enveloping his body. He silently dissolved into a breeze blowing in from the side. Mo Liqing, who had just been lounging on a sofa inside the palace, sprang up like a startled carp, twisted his body, and instantly transformed into the spitting image of Gu Xiechen, striding over to sit opposite Peng Hua.

"Come on, how about a whole jar?" The transformed Gu Xiechen (Mo Liqing) stared wide-eyed at Peng Hua.

"One jar isn't enough for a real man—ten jars!" Peng Hua immediately became excited, reaching into his storage pouch without hesitation and pulling out jar after jar of aged fine wine.

The door to the palace room was suddenly pushed open from the outside. A maid cautiously poked just the small upper half of her head inside, quickly glancing at the two figures sitting opposite each other, drinking. Suddenly, Mo Liqing's grotesque, colorful face lunged close to the maid, and he roared in a muffled voice, "Hey, girl, what do you want with this old master? Are you looking for this master's subordinate?"

The maid shrieked and scrambled backward, clutching her long skirt as she fled. A short while later, the intelligence that Gu Xiechen was currently drinking heavily with Peng Hua was promptly delivered into certain hands.

Having long since left the palace, Gu Xiechen looked up at the sky. The wind-and-rain summoning technique recorded in the Great Wilderness Sutra rose effortlessly to his command. Dark clouds rapidly piled up overhead, and a fine, drizzling rain began to fall. Nodding with satisfaction, Gu Xiechen once again clearly experienced the exhilarating feeling of wielding the power of heaven and earth at will.

Unleashing the Water Evasion technique from the Supreme Yin Scripture, Gu Xiechen's body dissolved into a wisp of vapor, merging with the fine rain.

Fu Yaming and Jin, escorted by several Broken Hook Adept Group ability users, emerged from the palace and boarded a small shuttle craft. The water vapor that was Gu Xiechen had just affixed itself to the top of the shuttle when the craft silently lifted off, ascending without a sound and heading toward the distant, pitch-black mountain range.

The shuttle employed extremely advanced technology; it lacked the conventional plasma exhaust ports at its stern. It broke the sound barrier with incredible speed yet emitted no audible sonic boom. The compact, swift-like shuttle ghosted across the upper atmosphere, reaching an altitude above a vast mountain range several thousand kilometers west of the City of Glory in barely thirty minutes.

Gu Xiechen's divine consciousness locked onto Fu Yaming and Jin inside the cabin. Both were lost in thought, gazing out the viewport at the scenery until the shuttle entered the restricted zone. Only then did Jin lazily stretch, yawning, and ask with a puzzled tone, "Sister Fuyaming, are you really going to cooperate with this Gu Xiechen? Do you know what I saw on him just now?"

Fu Yaming frowned slightly. "You shouldn't have provoked him in that manner. That was a direct insult to him."

Jin nodded grudgingly, her own brow furrowing. "When I spat that bit of saliva, I hadn't considered that. But I regretted it almost immediately."

Her enchanting eyes rolled, coating them in an eerie violet glow, within which two deep whirlpools could faintly be seen slowly revolving in the depths of her gaze. These were a pair of supernatural eyes that seemed capable of piercing space and traversing time. Jin stated in a low voice, "What I saw on him—the people who died directly or indirectly by his hand—numbered no less than a million. I seriously doubt his identity as a mercenary. No mercenary kills that many people; not even the leader of the Star Alliance’s largest pirate faction, the Maniacs, has done so."

A million people directly or indirectly killed by his own hand? Gu Xiechen stared, his eyes wide with astonishment. Calculating carefully on his fingers, perhaps... it was even more? The number killed directly, just on Paradise Star, was several hundred thousand. Indirectly? Heaven knew how many lives were claimed by the weaponry he sold during his years at the Gu Corporation? And how many soldiers from Hard Path Defense died in battle? If all that counted as deaths caused indirectly by him, a million seemed conservative!

...An interesting ability. What exactly is this little girl's power? Is it prophecy? Or time reversion? If it’s a divination-type ability, it’s terrifyingly powerful. If it's time reversal...

Hmph. The most fitting job for her isn't piracy; she should be a criminal detective! Gu Xiechen maliciously assessed her power in his mind.

"A million people?" Fu Yaming was clearly startled by the figure, but her expression quickly turned to excitement. "Isn't that even better? If he has the power to kill a million people, the current Kingdom of Yafik needs someone like that right now. Jin, what you said has actually solidified my confidence in forming an alliance with him."

Jin grumbled as she shot Fu Yaming a look, then crawled into Fu Yaming's lap like a sluggish slug, her fingers gently stroking her short hair.