Inside a medium-sized transport truck headed for an unknown destination.
Jiu De Mayi held her breath and kept silent. Though there were more than a dozen Bloodline Descendants with no weak auras in the truck, none of them noticed her standing in the corner.
Her figure was as black as the backdrop of the deep night, like flecks of ink blended into a pool of ink. Without shining a large flashlight directly at her, no one could possibly notice anything unusual.
Serial Number 69, Word of Power: Underworld Reflection.
This Word of Power allowed her to turn into a phantom amid shifting light. As long as she remained within her own domain, she could not be detected; even with focused attention, others could only see a faint, smoke-like shadow. At night, without targeted measures, she could infiltrate virtually anywhere with ease.
...Why has it been pitch-black this whole way? Do Chen Family drivers not turn on their headlights when they drive?
Jiu De Mayi grumbled inwardly. That meant she could not investigate the route along the way... but it did not matter. The miniature tracker would handle it.
She waited idly in the cargo compartment. As the most skilled infiltrator and scout among the Little Devil's support Trio, she naturally became the contact responsible for secretly communicating with Nono.
Of course, Nono could not be given detailed intelligence. She would only know that her contact was a Ninja Master, with no idea of the organization's name or general circumstances.
Ever since the cooperation with Emiya and the Zhou Family had been established, Jiu De Mayi had been responsible for the Chen Family's secret operations. This included infiltrating Chen Family Manor to map out its structure and personnel deployment, as well as approaching the Chen Family daughter in her rebellious phase to see whether she was suitable to serve as an inside agent.
Jiu De Mayi's gaze occasionally flicked toward Nono, who lay on the floor in a sack, already drugged unconscious.
Her boss had said that this girl, whose real name was Chen Motong, was the best candidate. As long as Jiu De Mayi boasted herself up as the Chen Family's greatest enemy, this girl would defect and surrender at once.
It really is like that.
Looking at Nono, whose mind was full of thoughts of fatherly love and filial devotion yet who obeyed her every word, Jiu De Mayi nodded inwardly.
She thought that although her elusive boss always assigned bizarre tasks, with unconventional goals and reasons that never repeated themselves, and possessed unrivaled skill at speaking in riddles... in short, he had plenty of strange quirks. Still, his intelligence was truly accurate and never wrong.
That included this time.
Not long ago, her boss had declared, "It is time to stir up a bloody storm. Bring the innocent truth, sinful and cruel as it is, into the open where it can be seen, and force those ignorant people to face it..."
This was her boss's standard riddle-speaker opening before assigning a task. Only afterward would he tell Jiu De Mayi exactly what she was supposed to have Nono do when contacting her—
Namely, have Nono falsely claim that she had passively triggered a profile reading of a certain scene.
So-called profiling referred to inferring a person's psychological state from their behavior, then analyzing their personality, living environment, profession, upbringing, and so on. It was common in detective novels, but Nono's profiling was a special ability unrelated to Words of Power.
Jiu De Mayi had gathered relevant information. Nono did not need to make contact with a person to profile them; simply touching related objects or entering a relevant environment—or even without touching anything at all—she could directly reconstruct past events and the people involved.
Rather than profiling, it was more like "spiritual sight."
Thus, Nono had a nickname—the "Little Witch."
But what special meaning did the profile reading they had fabricated for Father Chen carry this time?
Jiu De Mayi quietly pondered it. Picking out a few keywords at random... ancient times, black, white. Could it be referring to the story of the Black King and the White King?
But was the Chen Family not made up of Chinese Bloodline Descendants? What did descendants of the Chinese Black King have to do with the White King? Could Little Witch Nono's profiling ability really be that absurdly powerful?
The Ninja Master, bored out of her mind yet left with nothing but waiting, could not help filling her head with questions as she followed the group all the way to a high-tech industrial park in the suburbs.
It was already late at night. The park was lush with vegetation, with the occasional chirp of insects. Other than that, there were vast stretches of darkness, and only at long intervals did a single LED streetlamp stand lit, as though they were stingily conserving electricity...
Seriously, were they that desperate to save on electricity bills? Was this supposed to be standard villain style? Jiu De Mayi found herself unable to mock it.
The armed Bloodline Descendants had no mood for such complaints. Familiar with the route, they moved through the place as though day and night made no difference. They escorted the unconscious Nono into a testing and inspection center painted entirely white, its faintly ghastly pallor revealed by the residual glow of the streetlamps.
Jiu De Mayi looked around and found research and development centers, scientific research institutes, public laboratories, data centers, and more scattered nearby... the research infrastructure was quite comprehensive. It was just unknown how many of those facilities were merely for show, meant to fool the government authorities.
After entering the testing and inspection center, the indoor lighting became noticeably brighter. At the very least, rows of tall ceiling lamps cast dense illumination down the corridors. This time, Jiu De Mayi did not follow them too closely, lest they turn around and notice something was wrong.
In any case, Jiu De Mayi had come to gather "evidence" of the Chen Family's Death Servant research. And as the Chen Family Eldest Miss, Nono probably would not come to harm even if something happened.
Still, judging from the way Nono was being treated like an experimental subject, perhaps she might stumble upon an unexpected gain?
Nono hazily had a dream.
She dreamed that she was tightly locked inside some cold metal machinery, unable to break free. Dampness and a sickly sweet stench filled her throat and nose. She painfully tried to gasp for air, but the crushing water pressure denied her any chance of breathing again. She nearly believed she was about to die.
Then the metal machinery brutally lifted her from the water, and a cold electronic synthesized voice said, "Seventeenth execution complete. Suffocation time: forty-five seconds. Frigga Three, you may begin your statement."
Nono seized the chance to open her mouth and breathe. She felt blood running down her face, her body covered in wounds. With her head hanging down, she glanced slightly toward the water's surface and saw herself—her face deathly pale, dressed in a white gown stained with blood...
Frigga Three was referring to her? What did that mean?
Nono tried to think, but sharp, needle-like pain suddenly pierced her head the next instant... Ahhh... Enduring the agony, flickers of insight finally flashed through her mind—
Freya, the queen of the Aesir in Norse Mythology, was the wife of the great god Odin. She presided over love, family, childbirth, harvest, and fate, and was usually depicted wearing a white robe...
But this was clearly some sort of experiment codename. If she was Frigga Three, did that mean there were also Number Two, Number One, and a Number Zero that served as the prototype?
What exactly was she...?
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