Old Tang had been startled by himself at the time, but he looked immensely pleased, curling his mouth into a crooked grin as he said, "Hehe, I've been envying your superpowers for ages. And here I was, daydreaming every day about how to awaken my bloodline. Turns out all my peerless talent was concentrated in cultivation! Hahaha..."
In truth, Old Tang himself had no idea what had happened. He was a lousy student who had dropped out before finishing high school. Complex theories about the meridians gave him a headache. The Zhou Family members had all received a traditional classical education, so learning it posed no barrier to them, while he could only stare at it with a miserable face until his head spun.
When Emiya taught him how to activate his Magic Circuits, he told him to imagine a "switch" inside his body. Emiya said this was not about creating Circuits; all he had to do was imagine it in his mind. For example, "pressing a button on a circuit board," "a knife stabbing into the heart"... Any imagery that suited him would do.
In the end, Old Tang spent the entire night imagining it with his head down, tense to the point of death, yet he still could not make it work. He exhausted himself until he fell asleep—and then he had a nightmare.
In the dream, Old Tang vaguely heard a deep, imposing voice cursing him furiously: "You idiot, you can't even handle something this simple! Let me do it!"
So when Old Tang woke up, he found that his Magic Circuits had been activated.
Old Tang attributed this utterly absurd experience to things like "I really am blessed with great fortune," and his smugness was so unbearable that Emiya avoided him whenever he saw him.
Wa Lord clearly knew about this as well and teased him. "I hadn't expected results so quickly, but this works out nicely. When we roll out the cultivation system later, you two successful cases can add some persuasive power. Those Mixed-Blood Families aren't easy to fool..."
Although they planned to use this to get the other great families of Divine China to deal with the Chen Family, it would not be easy. At the very least, until they saw some real stuff that tempted them, those families would certainly be unwilling to make a move.
"Is it really okay for you to say outright that you're fooling them?"
"If they get a taste of the benefits, then what does it matter even if it is deception? That's called venture capital!"
Wa Lord had recently been diligently reforming the family system, and her vocabulary was becoming increasingly internationalized. The little girl casually tossed around terms like gold futures, cross-border settlement, IPOs, and public offerings. When the Bitcoin and blockchain created by Satoshi Nakamoto appeared in the future, she would probably want to get involved too.
Wa Lord climbed off his back and stretched. "Enough of that. Today, I'm going to show you something good!"
As Emiya wondered what she was up to this time, he suddenly saw Zhou Yuxuan approach from the side, holding a brocade box in both hands. When it was opened, there were actually two bronze short swords inside. Their blades were razor-sharp, one bright and one dark, seemingly extraordinary Noble Phantasms.
Each sword bore five lines of inscriptions, which together read:
The crane wings never fall short; my heart stands firm as stone.
Heart and skill reach Mount Tai; strength pierces through mountains.
Heart and skill cross the Yellow River; Sword Intent severs flowing water.
My fate has reached the Li Palace; only my name remains beyond heaven.
Together we exist like crane wings; both heroes meet their separate fates.
"Could these be..." A guess formed in Emiya's mind.
Wa Lord rapped him on the head. "They're the twin swords Ganzhiang and Moxie you were looking for."
So it really was them. At first glance, Emiya had noticed that these two swords looked completely different from the Ganzhiang and Moxie projected by Red Archer in his memories, so he had not been certain.
But upon further thought, Red Archer's black-and-white short blades did not look like original weapons forged during the Spring and Autumn period at all. Perhaps Red Archer had never seen the actual Ganzhiang and Moxie either. Perhaps they were merely products of information he had collected, completed with his own imagination through Projection Magecraft.
The two before his eyes were the true originals of these Noble Phantasms.
Emiya happily accepted the gift, only to receive another new demand from Miss Wa Lord afterward:
Take her shopping.
For an ordinary woman, that would not have been a demand at all. It could even be called an invitation for a date. But Wa Lord was rather special. Her half-human, half-snake appearance would scare people to death if she went outside. This truly was a difficult problem.
The moment she appeared in public, someone with poor nerves might faint from fright, and then all of Xiangyang would be flooded with shocking news about sightings of a "beautiful snake" or a "female Snake Demon."
Now that he was the Zhou Family's chief aide, Emiya could not refuse the task. It nearly gave him a face as bitter as a bitter melon. He asked Zhou Yuxuan, but Zhou Yuxuan merely shook his head and said that Wa Lord had never made such a request before. She had hardly ever gone outside. Even when she occasionally traveled, she sat inside a sedan chair, while the family handled all her food, clothing, and daily necessities.
Shirou Emiya suddenly had an idea.
Although this girl had cast off the family elders' suppression and become the master of her own fate, seemingly undergoing a dazzling transformation and picking up Wu Zetian's script overnight, her past had been practically like a palace drama—perhaps even the heart-wrenching, step-by-step kind.
She had once said that she wanted to ride in cars, wear different styles of clothes, and even fall in love... Perhaps these were all things she had genuinely wanted but had been unable to attain.
Yet to other ordinary girls, they were desires that were not remotely out of reach.
With no idea for the moment, Emiya opened an employers' chatroom he had not logged into for a long time.
Genius Girl Charlotte was currently enthusiastically chatting with a newcomer named "Chips." As Emiya wondered why anyone would call himself Chips, he saw Charlotte laughing and bragging with the newcomer. Even through the screen, he could feel her delight:
"...That person hasn't logged in for ages. He must be feeling guilty, right? Haha, I knew it. How could someone possibly buy swords online and make Alchemical Weapons? Reinforcement Magic, my foot. It doesn't exist. It was all fake!"
Good heavens. Emiya's eyes widened slightly. After not seeing her for a while, this young lady's mindset had changed so much that she had begun avoiding reality... Could it be that her grandfather had assigned her too much homework again?
The newcomer, Chips, voiced his doubts at just the right time. "But the world is vast. There are always greater people beyond greater people, and higher heavens beyond higher heavens. There's always a chance that a few geniuses who defy common sense might appear, right?"
"Impossible. Absolutely impossible!"
Charlotte vehemently denied it. Would she really admit that after being dealt a blow by Emiya, she had personally gone to her grandfather for confirmation, only for him to discover that she had secretly gone online during her study time? Then he scolded her with, "Other people's children have already done this and that, so how can you still have the nerve not to work hard?"
Governor of Gaul, however, pointed out with great emotional intelligence, "Madam, the truth is another matter. But just look at Charlotte's ID and you'll understand. What she needs is a sense of identity."
She had already proclaimed herself Genius Girl Charlotte. When a genuine genius appeared in the chatroom, it was easy to imagine how unbalanced her mindset would become.
"That makes sense. You understand her psychology very well?" Chips was greatly surprised. Could this guy be some playboy who was very good at sweet-talking women?
"Thank you. I, Governor of Gaul, never live to please anyone—women excepted."
Shirou Emiya quietly joined the conversation. "A newbie has a question. Do any of you know how to take a girl who can't go out on the street shopping?"
The chatroom suddenly fell into an eerie silence.
Everyone seemed to be trying to decipher the logical components of this contradictory sentence.
Seeing this, Emiya took both hands off the keyboard. It seemed that he had accidentally become the conversation killer again...
Before you continue