"How... did you find out?"
The Mechanical Dominator looked at Richard, his voice suddenly becoming incomparably calm. Black asphalt-like slime seeped from his wounds, repairing them completely in the blink of an eye.
Behind him, Richard's true body, entwined around Shanhai, wore an utterly unruffled expression.
"Two reasons. One was the Mechanical Race itself. The Mechanical Race is easily corrupted, and although you are a race, fundamentally speaking, they are all your sub-individuals. You can read and write their memories, so naturally, you could plant Curse Memes within them."
As he spoke, a trace of mocking laughter appeared on Richard's face.
"I hadn't forgotten those unlucky Star River Mayflies. Because of the Mind Network, their Great World fell with almost no resistance."
"And the second?" the Mechanical Dominator asked.
The chains around Richard moved without wind. Surging energy coursed through them, while the complex rules contained within the chains skipped past the stage of Runes altogether and directly altered the form of energy.
"The second was that my people saw with their own eyes your Mechanical Race placing contaminating devices beside a World Tree offshoot."
At those words, a trace of confusion flashed through the Mechanical Dominator's cold black crystal eyes.
"Just that? Aren't you afraid you guessed wrong? The Flourishing Merchant Guild has every kind of creature within it. Perhaps Xi Ling arranged it."
Richard smiled. "I did suspect Xi Ling. However, I happened to know a piece of gossip. Someone said that the Mechanical Race's chieftain was exceptionally keen on researching relics of the Previous Civilization, and that several years ago, the Mechanical Race discovered a massive Previous Civilization ruin.
"The various creations within it would be of enormous benefit even to Dominators.
"And I happened to have proof of that gossip."
As he spoke, the Dominator of