The Way to Repay
Good. The old man's guidance hadn't been for nothing.
Seeing Qiu finally get on the right track and quickly come up with several worthwhile questions left Fu Qian feeling quite pleased.
He had sought out this group to stir up trouble in seemingly peaceful Xiyuan, then see whether it would provoke anything unusual.
Now things had turned out even better than he'd hoped—the anomaly had been there all along. It had simply taken this little intervention for the people involved to realize it.
What's more, this anomaly could be corroborated by what he'd encountered outside the Night Watcher base, leading to one conclusion: the corrupt tree that could grant the protection of the "Sacred Law" hadn't vanished. It had merely adopted a more proactive way of making its presence felt.
Besides, unlike the possible Blood Lion squad members, there was one thing Fu Qian could be almost certain of about Qiu: she hadn't actively pursued anything.
And yet she'd still received its protection.
That was by far the most terrifying contradiction in the whole affair.
As he considered why, Fu Qian naturally recalled a scene: the entire city looking up in awe, then quickly turning into idiots beneath the giant tree's glory.
What if something similar had happened here without anyone realizing it?
What if more than one person in all of Xiyuan had already been granted a share of its divine radiance, without needing something like Ill Omen to trigger it?
Like slapping shit around with a mop.
The people affected might not even know it—like Qiu here, or the watcher outside the Night Watcher base, whose behavior had seemed contradictory no matter how Fu Qian looked at it.
Could it be that the watcher hadn't known either, that she was protected by a divine