Qin Zhaoye: I Trust What You Write
The moment the queue ticket reading "There is one Pope ahead of you" lit up in the center of the public screen, the cross-era spectators below erupted in a chorus of teasing.
Deep in the Heaven Dou Imperial Family's palace, Qian Renxue stared at the number two slot on the list and frowned slightly. Then she spoke up on the public screen.
[Qian Renxue: My order is just a route consultation. Does it have to wait until after her dead-end assessment?]
Qin Zhaoye glanced at it and, without much explanation, replied at an unhurried pace.
[Group Leader: The deposit for the number one order is already being transferred. This historian believes in first come, first served, and handles business in order. Number two, have a seat in the waiting area for now.]
Lan Xuanyu was delighted by what he saw below and was the first to jump in.
[Ten-Thousand-Year Melon Field Contractor: Hahahaha! The young lord tried to squeeze ahead, but the group leader sent her right back by the rules! His Holiness the Pope, customer number one, is having her goods inspected, while Heaven Dou's young lord, customer number two, waits online for her number to be called. This fate-changing shop's prestige is incredible!]
[Ancestral Precepts Recitation Champion: Even a rank ninety-four Pope and a young lord undercover in Heaven Dou have to take numbers and wait their turn. I get it now: at our group leader's place, no matter how important you are outside, once you come through the door, you have to respect the queue ticket!]
Lan Xuanyu's eyes, in fact, had never left the host platform.
[Ten-Thousand-Year Melon Field Contractor: Look at the order status in the host platform's sidebar. The number one order has already changed to "Deposit received, retrieving records for assessment"! The group leader takes orders so fast!]
[Ancestral Precepts Recitation Champion: It's a major order involving the backlash from becoming a god at rank one hundred, after all. I'm getting nervous too. I wonder how much useful information the number one inspection order will turn up!]
While the group watched the progress of the number one order, Qin Zhaoye had not been idle either, over in Suotuo City's new Perching Swan Academy building.
He had just finished checking the deposit left by Spirit Hall's special envoy before boarding the carriage. On the desk still sat a jade box containing sealed rare materials, along with a certificate granting access to branch hall intelligence records.
With every bit of the deposit for Bibi Dong's "Rakshasa God Dead End: Small-Scale Assessment and Inspection Order" delivered into storage, Qin Zhaoye's fate-changing toolbox had expanded considerably on the spot.
He leisurely sat back down at the desk, opened the bronze scroll himself, and activated the "detailed records retrieval" authorization included in the order's payment.
The cost of retrieving the records had already been included in the order's payment, so he did not need to spend any additional Talking Capital.
Golden search lines darted back and forth among the related entries in "Official History of the First Era: Record of Spirit Hall's Destruction," peeling away the hidden dangers buried in the Rakshasa God's inheritance terms, layer by layer.
Qin Zhaoye picked up the brush on the desk and thought for a moment before slowly writing the conclusion of the first assessment summary on the gold-paper receipt: "Three layers behind the dead end; can be dismantled."
Those were the only words in the conclusion, but below them he added a summary breaking the evil-thought erosion and hidden injuries from the inheritance into three layers. After all, a conclusion alone might not convince her. Then he tapped a finger lightly, and the receipt went back to the Pope's Palace through the contract channel.
Far away in the Pope's Palace in Spirit City, Bibi Dong looked at the first assessment summary receipt that had appeared on the screen of light. Her gaze fell on the words "Three layers behind the dead end; can be dismantled," and did not move away for a long time.
The receipt clearly identified all three roots of the problem, matching the hidden injuries in her body down to the last detail. Because of that, she felt the small-scale inspection had indeed been worth the price, and selected "inspection passed" on the spot. As for the subsequent full-case assessment, her desire to place another order also grew considerably at once.
As soon as she made her selection, the order status bar on the group's public screen changed too.
[Ten-Thousand-Year Melon Field Contractor: Holy shit! The number one small-scale assessment order already says "Delivered, buyer satisfied with inspection"?! His Holiness the Pope must have confirmed receipt on the spot and is getting ready to order more!]
Tang Wulin stared wide-eyed from below, repeatedly posting "That's incredible." He said that it could even break down the dead end caused by the Rakshasa God's inheritance backlash; this inspection order was practically a walking advertisement.
While the two of them chattered noisily below, Qian Renxue kept watching the number one order. Once it was delivered, she would be next.
[Qian Renxue: @Group Leader, since the number one small order has been delivered, it should be time for my number two consultation order, shouldn't it?]
Qin Zhaoye glanced at it but was in no hurry to agree, because the underlying records for the number two order had yet to be gathered.
[Group Leader: The small order was just delivered, and the underlying records for number two are being gathered. Be patient; everyone who has taken a place in line will get their turn.]
Qin Zhaoye closed the public-screen interface, picked up another set of assessment notes that had just been compiled on the desk, tucked them into his sleeve, and left the new academy building.
Half a shichen earlier, Night Owl Terrace had sent a secret order to Luo Tan, who was undercover in Suotuo City: "Assess the historian's sincerity in changing fate at close quarters."
With official business as a pretext, what followed came naturally: Luo Tan sent Qin Zhaoye an invitation to the Listening to the Wind Teahouse.
Outside a private room on the second floor of the Listening to the Wind Teahouse.
One of Luo Tan's informants stood guard beside a corridor pillar, head lowered as he made a note in the booklet he carried: "The two spent one incense stick's time alone together."
Inside the private room, Qin Zhaoye and Luo Tan sat facing each other across the table.
Although Qin Zhaoye knew full well that she had come on a mission from Night Owl Terrace, he did not wait for her to probe him. He drew the assessment notes from his sleeve himself and pushed them straight across the table in front of her.
"Night Owl Terrace sent you to investigate my sincerity in changing fate. Words alone surely won't be enough for you to report back."
Qin Zhaoye pointed at the notes on the table and said casually, "The brush and paper are right here, Miss Luo Tan. Copy whatever you like."
Luo Tan looked at the notes pushed in front of her, picked up a weasel-hair brush, spread out a sheet of plain paper, and lowered her head to begin copying.
She had only just finished copying the first side-branch entry when her brush paused.
When she reached the annotations in the middle concerning the branch hall's movements, her brush paused a second time.
By the time she had copied half a page, she saw that even the annotations on how she could retreat from Suotuo City unscathed were written out clearly. Her brush stopped for the third time, and she could no longer bring it down.
Just then, Qin Zhaoye picked up the teapot and refilled her cup with hot tea. Resting his fingers on the rim, he casually turned the cup until its handle was in the position easiest for her to reach.
Holding the brush, Luo Tan raised her head and looked at the young man opposite her. "You pushed these notes over to me without hiding a thing. Aren't you afraid I'll write it all down for Night Owl Terrace?"
Qin Zhaoye let go of the cup and looked at her with a laugh. "I trust what you write."
Luo Tan's fingers tightened slightly around the brush handle. She met his gaze for a while before lowering her eyes and finishing the remaining half-page.
That night, in the west room of an inn in the south of the city, Luo Tan sat beneath a lamp and picked up her brush to fill out the special assessment report for Night Owl Terrace.
When she reached the field labeled "Source of historical evidence remnants," her brush tip hovered over the paper for quite a while. Then she slowly put it down and wrote, stroke by stroke: "Ancient artifact of unknown origin, suspected to have been unearthed from ruins."
With those words, she had personally shielded one of his trump cards from being exposed.
After writing them, Luo Tan stared at the line for another long while. Then she put her brush down again and retraced the word "suspected," making it darker.
At the same moment, the Myriad Ages Douluo Group's public screen was far livelier. Seeing that the Pope's first order had passed inspection, the group members had swarmed over and packed the fate-changing counter so tightly that not even a drop of water could get through.
[Ten-Thousand-Year Melon Field Contractor: This is crazy, crazy! Look at the transaction total in the lower right corner of the public screen. With the number one order delivered and the reservation deposits that followed, the group's cumulative transactions should be about to break through the forty-thousand mark!]
Tang Wulin's eyes lit up when he saw the number.
[Ancestral Precepts Recitation Champion: Forty thousand in transactions! Doesn't that mean we're about to reach tier four?! Group leader, look, the fate-changing order queue has already hit double digits!]
[Qian Renxue: What's going on? I only got number two, so how did so many people take numbers behind me all of a sudden?!]
[Ten-Thousand-Year Melon Field Contractor: Even the spectators are flooding the screen, urging the group leader to release more numbers. It feels like demand at this fate-changing counter has completely outstripped supply!]
[Group Leader: Business is booming. Orders will be accepted by number; no cutting in line.]
On the Group Hub panel, the group's cumulative transaction total soared toward 40,000, and the countdown to the group's tier-four upgrade appeared above the entire group.
Below the host platform, the fate-changing order queue had climbed all the way to number 11. The screen-filling comments from the spectators, all urging "more updates," had already been folded into three consecutive layers.