"Hold on a second, you two. Enough with the ingredient talk. What do you mean we have been fooled, and that the Founding Father was not the person behind the whole plan? Then who the hell sent us all of the letters?" The Boss tossed another pig bone aside, as he had been stuffing his mouth while I had been chatting up the Jinn.
"Didn’t I tell you already? They were all obviously fake letters sent by Prince Qin Hongmu. He has been using everybody on the Ming side of the Brotherhood to do his dirty work for a while now." I replied with a convinced expression.
"What? No way! All of the letters had the Father’s own Blood Seal! How could have they all been fake?"
"And you’re 100% positive it was the REAL Blood Seal? Has anyone thoroughly checked? As with any known magic, anything can be circumvented, copied, altered, or bypassed. You should stop being so reliant on your magical tools. While these gimmicks do add an extra layer of protection, they are not infallible by any means." (Like I just fooled your Blood-oath orb-test only a few minutes ago, hehe!)
"Ugh...But...then...umm...NO! Hmm...but then again...AAAAARGH! I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING FOR SURE ANYMORE!"
Ah...the Boss just blew a fuse. His head is steaming and he is clutching his temples with both of his arms. I guess what I just told him went over his INT capacity.
"The girl might be right, you lunkhead," The spectacled lady added. "It's true that we have been relying too much on our magical tools as of late. The letters could have actually been fake. I’ve had a deep suspicion about this whole mission from the start. It smelled very fishy and it seemed quite suicidal. Compared to the other missions from the past, this endeavor has brought the Brotherhood no benefits whatsoever."
"In all honesty, I think you guys should simply try and contact the Main Branch," I suggested. "I think I can create an opening and lead one of you guys to the Weirdwood Tree near the Temple. Then you can simply use it to contact someone from the Main Sect and verify that everything I told you is real. I’m somewhat of a trusted figure around the Village of Piece because I’ve been healing the wounded soldiers who keep the Dungeon at bay by taking shifts at the village's Clinic, so I don’t think that the Guardsmen at the Temple will find my arrival too suspicious.
"I’ve already used the Weirdwood Tree in the past to contact some of the people that I know from the capital cities, so it shouldn’t be too hard to smuggle one of you Brothers or Sisters together with me so you can confirm my words with the Main Branch. It’s hard to explain the whole context, but if one of you is willing to wear this black robe and white mask, most people will just assume that you are one of my regular aides. I’ve also used this disguise to move Master around the village in the past and so far, nobody has seen through it." I pulled out Mr. Vacant’s regular Hollow outfit with the weird Bleach white mask that the villagers had already seen before.
"Yep, I’ve also seen the girl around the village during my scouting," One of the thiefling brothers confirmed. "From what I could see from her interactions with the other villagers, she’s quite a respected figure in that place. If she’s been healing people, then I can see why they would look up to her. People tend to respect Healers and Alchemists quite a lot, especially poor dumb folk like the ones from the Village of Piece, who tend to think that even a painkiller pill is a magic item."
"Erm...while going to the Weirdwood Tree is certainly a good idea, there's a slight problem. Our whole group...ugh...doesn't have the spirit stones to cover the cost of the call." The spectacled lady confessed with a bitter and embarrassed expression on her face.
"Ah...that’s not a problem...I can lend you some. I’ve been trading my Alchemy products for a bunch of spirit stones with the Guardsmen stationed at the Dungeon entrance, since the overflow of monsters that comes from the Old Monastery sometimes drops even low-level spirit stones. I was saving the stones for my own Cultivation, but since confirming what the real situation is with the Main Branch is of paramount importance at the moment, I can part with a few of them."
"Good to hear. Miss Wu, would you be willing to go to the Weirdwood Tree and verify what the girl is saying? You’re the most qualified person for such a job due to your teaching background. If what she told us is true, then a lot of things will get turned upside down. " The Boss began to plead with the spectacled lady.
"Sure, I can go, but what will you do if it turns out she’s been telling the truth all along? Since we already found out what happened with Team One, our mission here is basically complete, yet I am not sure that I want to return to the Main Base anymore. I personally think that we might have some traitors amongst our ranks back at Headquarters that have been feeding us some cartloads of bullshit."
"We...will see about that when we get there. First, go and confirm the true status with the Main Branch. And if everything is as the girl says...well...then, may the Gods have mercy on our souls."
Immediately, I handed the Bleach Mask and black robes to the spectacled lady, and she swiftly put them on. She was almost as tall as Mr. Vacant, so she wouldn’t have looked too suspicious or out of place to the Guardsmen if she kept following after me, but I did tell her to “try and walk like a man” more thoroughly and to stomp down harder with her feet while swaying her ass a whole lot less.
As she was changing in the Hollow outfit though, I was messaging both Lingfeng and Fung over our party chat. I told Lingfeng to rush back to the Weirdwood tree and contact Mina, as we now suddenly had a chance to track down the location of the Main Branch of the Blood Cult, at least if Mina could intercept and trace the communication lines back to the source. Also, I told Fung to alert the Guardsmen posted at the Dungeon entrance that I would be coming over soon, and that they should just “act dumb” and let me pass and do whatever I pleased.
Once lady Wu was ready, I parked Mr. Vacant in one of the bunk beds in one of the Fort's old rooms that were still usable, and I told the Hollow to take a rest until I came back. While the Hollow did not seem to require any kind of sleep for its own fake mind, its body could still get tired like that of a regular person.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
After that, I left the cave together with Miss Wu who was now wearing the Hollow outfit and was escorted by both of the thiefling brothers.
I had also changed my clothes from the Cultist robe back to my Monk kasaya before leaving the cave, but I still wore the chainmail underneath the whole outfit.
It took a while for us to trek through the darkness of the forest, and embarrassingly, we almost got lost even with the presence of the two thieves that were supposed to be guiding us. Fortunately, we finally made it near the village just as the fresh light of the sun slowly crept up over the horizon, ushering in a new day.
When we reached the Buddhist Temple, I was welcomed by a couple of Guardsmen who immediately told me that one of the newbies had made a blunder about 15 minutes ago and had been cut pretty badly on his hand by one of the overflowing Demons with a makeshift shank.
They wanted me to have a look at the victim, so I immediately went inside the main building and began performing first aid work on the wounded villager. The shank's blade had split apart the flesh piece connecting his thumb and the index finger, and the wound looked quite messy. I immediately grabbed some of the medicinal alcohol and I began disinfecting the wound since I did not want the poor villager to wind up with some sort of bacterial disease like lockjaw from just a minor wound.
"Mr. Vacant, please be a dear and hand me those bandages from over there." I urged the disguised lady in the Hollow outfit to give me a hand.
She was smart enough to comply and perfectly played the role of my assistant.
After disinfecting the wound, I was forced to stitch up the gash in a surgical manner with a few silk stitches, but the flesh also began mending itself back together as soon as I cast my regeneration spell on the patient.
After my medical intervention was done, I was now free to go and have a chat with the Weirdwood Tree. I told the other Guardsmen that I simply needed a small blessing from the Tree to ward off any further infections, so they immediately led both of us to the enclosure where the Tree was planted, then left us all alone to “commune with the Tree”.
Fortunately, while I had been bandaging the patient, I had also received a message from Lingfeng over the party chat that the Weirdwood Tree had been remotely "primed" by Mina for an interception job, and that any further communications would get copied and also reach the Ming Capital.
Miss Wu then took a few spirit stones from me and "dialed" the Blood Brotherhood's Main Headquarters from the Han Empire. It took a while until somebody finally answered, and then a lot of secret codes were sent back and forth between the two parties while also switching the destination target of the communication line from one place to another to prevent tracing.
But once the line was truly established and they got talking, I saw how Lady Wu began clutching her chest, and her hand started trembling.
Of course, I could not see or hear the communication between the two parties, so I could only witness Lady Wu's outside behavior as she dropped to her knees, but it was obvious that the betrayal of Prince Hongmu had been confirmed alongside with the manipulation of the Ming chapter of the Brotherhood.
[We got them. Trace complete.] Lingfeng also sent via party chat.
Good. That pipsqueak Mina was as reliable as ever. We now had a chance to uproot these fuckers altogether in the end. Still, even if we now had discovered the Brotherhood's location within the Han Empire, it would still be a long time before we would be able to do anything about them.
"Lady Wu...what did the others say?" I asked the still-shivering maiden.
"It's...it's all true...everything you said was true. The Han chapter has declared Prince Hongmu an enemy of the Brotherhood and of the entire World while issuing a very large bounty on his head. They said that they truly feel sorry for our own Ming chapter because we have been played for fools without even knowing it. A few of the communication officers at the Main Headquarters have been caught conspiring with the Qin, and have already been disposed of, but that means that a lot of the orders that we received as of late were not from the Founding Father himself. I...I think I'm going to be sick. What the hell have we been fighting for all of this time? What...what did we do? What madness have we unleashed upon the world?" Lady Wu dropped on all fours and began sobbing.
"I hope you at least took my advice and you didn't tell the Main Headquarters about the Ancient Evil. The last thing we need at this moment is for more people to know about its existence, especially since we have no idea if any of these communication lines are safe. At the moment, you never know who might be listening-in, and it would be quite foolish to alert Qin Hongmu about the location of the Ancient Evil, as it would only feed into his plans, because he wants to unite all of the three Empires under his rule with the excuse of hunting down the Ancient Evil. For now, the Beast is contained within the Dungeon, and the fewer people know about it, the better."
"I did not. I only told the Main Branch that one of our teams got wiped out while carrying out one of the missions we received, but I did not go into further detail. The Main Branch also told us not to trust anybody anymore, not even the people within our own Ming branch. They gave me a new set of codes for the transmission network and told me that anybody that is still using the old ones should be captured and interrogated immediately. It seems that I was sadly right, and we do have some traitors amongst ourselves. They told us that for now, my team should simply lay low and save as much of our strength as possible."
"Geh... this is simply one of those instances when I hate being right." I faked indignation back at the sobbing lady.
"No, it is better that we now know the truth. Thank you for opening our eyes, Sister. The Founding Father himself always pointed out that we should doubt everything about this world, including any pre-established notions that are considered "truth" and "fact" everywhere else, but we seem to have forgotten that. I'm glad that at least somebody out here is still able to see through all of the lies."
"I...thank you, but I did not do much. It's all thanks to Master's wisdom. For now, we should head back and confirm the sad truth for everybody else. What we will do from now on will depend on how hard the news is going to hit them, especially the assault team."
"Yes...let's go back." Lady Wu picked herself up from the floor.
While we marched back towards the Old Dungeon cave, I began fermenting a plan inside of my head as to how to get rid of the assault team, which was composed of about 11 people.
These guys were the only people that I could label as "unforgivable" inside of my mind, as they had been the only ones to get their hands dirty with procuring live sacrifices together with Team One and had been stained in the blood of innocents.
They had gone beyond my “sin tolerance threshold”, so I wanted them out of the picture, permanently. The rest of the Cultists were just a bunch of naive goofballs that had huddled up together in desperation, and did not deserve the capital punishment.
Strangely, the Boss and even the two thieflings were included in the "naive" forgivable category, as they have never really gotten their hands dirty with human sacrifices.
They were not innocent by any standards in the large sense of the word, as they had quite a large body count under their belts, but those "kills" had come from opposing other Demonic Sects or other illegal underground groups, which made the whole thing a whole lot more pardonable in my book.