Xianyu: "...No."
He had been perfectly happy slacking off on the Luofu. Why would he want more work?
First Hua had asked whether he was rebelling, and now Jing Yuan was asking whether he was planning to break the law...
With that look on Jing Yuan's face, anyone would have thought he was interrogating a traitor.
After a long silence, he asked Jing Yuan, "That's not what you really want to ask, is it?"
Jing Yuan readily nodded in admission.
Xianyu folded his arms, his tone level. "What you wanted to ask was whether I would betray the Reignbow Arbiter?"
When Jing Yuan nodded, Xianyu didn't so much as twitch an eyebrow. It was as though a close friend wasn't questioning his loyalties, and they were merely discussing something trivial.
"The answer is no."
He didn't say whether he believed in the Aeons, only that he wouldn't betray one.
Xianyu knew his attitude toward the Aeons differed from everyone else's. He also knew that part of the reason Jing Yuan, a staunch Xianzhou native, had approached him was to confirm where he stood.
After all, that was five hundred thousand Strales.
Xianyu didn't think it mattered.
He wasn't a follower of Abundance, after all. The Xianzhou might regulate everything under the sun, but could it really police everyone's thoughts? Could it force everyone to become a fanatic of The Hunt?
His conscience was clear, and he couldn't be bothered to hide anything.
Besides, after all that crap in his previous life, he felt that nothing anyone did or said would surprise him.
More importantly, how long had it been already?
Xianyu wasn't angry at his friend's suspicion, just exasperated. He couldn't help demanding:
"We've known each other for over ten years, haven't we? Didn't you already know the answer?"
After hearing Xianyu's answer, Jing Yuan's expression changed, and he became his thoroughly amiable friend again. With a cheeky grin, he said:
"I just wanted to double-check. An answer I guessed and an answer straight from your mouth aren't the same thing, are they...? Anyway, have you gotten tired of an ordinary person's life? Do you want to leave the Divination Commission?"
Xianyu shook his head. "No, I'm not planning to leave the Divination Commission. As for my plans lately... I want to look up some information in the archives, so I'm preparing to submit a transfer request to the Diviner."
He wanted to get to the bottom of his previous life.
If he couldn't find anything on his Jade Abacus, there had to be some clues in the Divination Commission's archives.
Jing Yuan's confusion slowly surfaced. "Can't you look it up after work?"
Xianyu was just as baffled. "If I can take care of personal business during work hours while getting paid, why would I waste my time off?"
Jing Yuan fell silent for a moment. Good grief, you really are a master at slacking off!
Even he, a member of the Cloud Knights, knew how easy an archivist's job was.
Easy as it was, it offered practically no prospects. It was hardly any different from being permanently sidelined.
Anyone else would have avoided it like the plague, yet Xianyu was rushing headlong toward it... Wait, could he be doing this on purpose? Trying to prove he was unsuited to work so that they could only assign him to the archives?
Jing Yuan suddenly connected the dots, but he was baffled. "You don't honestly think saying all that to the general will get you transferred to the archives, do you? How would that ever work?"
Xianyu: "...Let me say it again. The problem really was with the question!"
Jing Yuan gave him a long look and complained, "If I were the general, I'd transfer you to the most tedious position with the longest overtime hours! I'd never let you get your way!"
Xianyu immediately called Jing Yuan vicious after hearing that. "That's going too far."
Jing Yuan breathed a sigh of relief and stopped beating around the bush. "I thought you'd gotten bored of being an ordinary person and wanted to stir up trouble."
Xianyu gave him a polite smile. "So that's why you were asking such a strange question... Can't you think something good of me for once?"
Jing Yuan argued his case. "Before you'd even graduated, you were already running circles around all the wealthy people on the Luofu and raking in so much money... How could I not worry?"
Xianyu protested, "Take that back. That's prejudice! I earned that money fair and square with my own abilities-"
They bickered back and forth as they walked. Just before they parted, Jing Yuan cautioned him again, "Don't break the law, and don't keep dancing on the edge of what's allowed. You'll make people sad."
Xianyu couldn't even be bothered to complain anymore.
Jing Yuan clearly believed there was something wrong with him mentally, so nothing he said would help.
Xianyu could only nod perfunctorily.
If he had been even remotely rebellious, Hua and Jing Yuan would have driven him to cause trouble long ago.
Jing Yuan waved goodbye to Xianyu. The instant he turned away, his expression changed, his brows knitting tightly and his face clouding with worry.
He let out an inward wail.
Master, this person you've set your sights on is really hard to deal with.
Even being questioned by a close friend didn't anger him in the slightest.
It was as though he had never trusted Jing Yuan at all.
He held no expectations or trust toward anyone or anything. Whatever happened, he could accept it all, even putting himself in the other person's shoes and understanding their thoughts...
Understanding was one thing, but Xianyu never acted according to an outsider's wishes. He couldn't be bothered to expend effort on people who had nothing to do with him.
Unless someone subjected Xianyu to utter social humiliation, he barely showed any emotion.
When he wasn't causing trouble, Xianyu resembled an animal Jing Yuan knew called a capybara. His indifference to life and death was staggering.
He also resembled a player immersed in a game who, after seeing through everything, ignored the irrelevant NPCs and switched to a more relaxed playstyle.
In a certain sense, he really was quite arrogant.
How was someone like that supposed to fall in love with another person?
Jing Yuan let out a weary sigh and began thinking about how to put in a good word for Xianyu with General Teng Xiao and salvage his friend's reputation.
Little did he know that General Teng Xiao, the very man on his mind, was equally troubled at that moment.
After learning from the Marshal that the Former Marshal was on the Luofu, Teng Xiao, despite his near breakdown, immediately searched through the Divination Commission's personnel files. Using the date of the Reignbow Arbiter's arrival on the Luofu, he identified the man.
What he found shocked him.
How had You-Know-Who, who had once turned the world upside down and wiped out entire clans as a starting point, become an utterly ordinary Diviner on the Luofu?
Impossible. Absolutely impossible.
Teng Xiao kept investigating Xianyu's network of connections and finally uncovered a few clues.
Apparently, after being bullied by his classmates at school, Xianyu had magnanimously forgiven them.
Good heavens, who dared provoke Xianyu? Who had bullied him? Did they have any idea who they had messed with?
They probably wouldn't even know what killed them!
The Former Marshal loved messing with his opponents' heads. He often claimed the moral high ground and pointed fingers at his enemies.
Teng Xiao continued following the trail, only to discover that those bullies had actually survived to this day, completely intact.
They hadn't accidentally drowned, nor had pieces of them been discovered in the wilderness. From childhood to adulthood, they had never suffered a single life-threatening accident.
They even held important positions in various departments.
Teng Xiao: blue brain buffering.gif
For a moment, he was utterly stunned. Thoughts churned through his mind, tangled like a ball of yarn a cat had clawed apart.
Wait, had this god of slaughter actually turned over a new leaf?
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