Chapter 206

Chapter 206

After finalizing some details of the subsequent transactions with the mayor and ensuring the wish-incense soaked into his sleeve had been fully absorbed by the other party, Lorca skillfully ended the conversation.

He had heard enough nonsense by this point; staying any longer would have annoyed even him.

Besides, perching in a tree for too long was quite uncomfortable.

On the way back from the mayor’s residence to their own courtyard, Yan Ning kept glancing back suspiciously several times before finally unable to hold back her question: “Why do I keep feeling like someone is following us?”

“You can drop the ‘feeling’,” Ludwig murmured without turning his head, “Someone is indeed following us, and they aren’t even trying to hide it.”

A group of cloaked figures walking down the street was far too conspicuous. So, right after leaving the mayor’s house, Eve bought a gold-red silk cloth with a gold coin from a roadside stall and, following local customs, draped it over her head. The hanging fabric faintly obscured the Acolyte mask on her face.

Yan Ning, who could clearly see through this hasty disguise but asked out of politeness anyway: “......”

“Alright then,” she twitched her mouth, “I really don’t get what you First Empire people are up to with all these antics.”

If this were their Capital People's University, they could’ve just found any alley to talk—no need for such pretentious stalking.

A month ago, Lorca had already been sent on a mission from hell to develop influence in the human world. Initially, he rented a room long-term at an inn, but later, with Ludwig and Yan Ning joining him—Yan Ning being a girl, it wasn’t quite appropriate for her to share a room with boys. Moreover, as the Divine Birth Festival approached, more merchants and travelers arrived in Li City, and the inn became too crowded and inconvenient for their operations.

Since Lilith only cared about the effectiveness of infiltrating the human world and looked down on the petty profits from wish-incense, Lorca bought a private courtyard in Li City for them to rest.

As soon as they returned to the familiar residence, the two younger ones, wearing expressions as if they’d seen a ghost, wisely retreated to their rooms, leaving only Lorca leisurely carrying two cups of tea and a few plates of rough handmade pastries to the marble beauty couch under the corridor. Moments later, the dense leaves outside rustled, and a gold-red figure dropped down headfirst: “Why did you come ashore?”

Lorca nodded: “Anthony was forced out by Zhou Huixue. He was worried there weren’t enough hands on the ship, so he asked both me and ‘Lu Qing’ to come down.”

After confirming each other’s identities in a few words, Eve didn’t stand on ceremony. She reached out, grabbed a sugar cake, and began munching on it—to prevent divine envoys from starving due to being unable to remove their masks outdoors, the silver mask only covered the upper two-thirds of the face.

“This round’s disguise in the door world is really strange; it even altered our appearance settings,” she asked, “Your race is a demon, right? From my perspective, both you and that little girl have white hair, and your looks have changed too, though your horns are much sharper than hers, and your eye color remains the same.”

In her upside-down view, the green-eyed demon with one long and one short antelope-style sharp horns was leaning on the beauty couch, cheek propped on his hand. Though his face was dramatically attractive, perhaps because she had recognized him, staring longer revealed traces of his original handsome features.

A bit unfamiliar.

The head-down position clearly wasn’t ideal for normal digestion. Eve gripped the eaves, swung down, and smoothly took a seat.

“Really? But people from the same faction should be able to see our true appearances. This is the first time I’ve heard someone describe my changed looks,” Lorca touched his hair. Demons in hell all had an albino appearance from lack of sunlight, so he was mentally prepared for his looks to be altered. “Yan Ning’s horn was broken artificially. Her landing identity is the lowest-tier little demon slave. Ludwig’s too—what unfortunate kids.”

So that little demon was Yan Ning, no wonder her skills were so outstanding. Her tragic background sounded like she drew a bad identity after entering. Remembering what she’d done to her earlier, Eve felt a pang of guilt: “Then you’d better not tell her my real identity. Just use some other name for me. I bear some responsibility for her ending up in this identity.”

“She already thinks you’re Lu Qing, and your current appearance isn’t much different from Lu Qing’s anyway.”

Lorca almost laughed as he said this—who describes someone else as looking like themselves? Yet Eve nodded seriously: “Then just treat me as her. Since she assumed first, it’s not our fault for deceiving her, right?”

“Mmm... of course. But were you suddenly changed to look like this because you drew a special identity too?”

“I’m now an Acolyte of the Holy Mountain. It’s a bit different from what I imagined—I thought there was only one god on the Holy Mountain, but it turns out there’s a whole bunch of divine envoys,” Eve rubbed her nose. “Speaking of which, I have a companion who hasn’t arrived yet. Probably another student in the league, just don’t know who’s coming so late. As for why I traveled all the way from the Holy Mountain to Li City...”

She briefly explained the whole story. There wasn’t much to say—an Acolyte thrown into high-risk tasks not long after arriving on the Holy Mountain was, at best, a peripheral cannon fodder there. How much intelligence could she be expected to know?

Even the knowledge about the Divine Birth Festival came from the uncle driving the donkey cart.

“Better to hear what intel you have,” Eve awkwardly cut off her pointless details and asked instead, “Your horns are quite nice. Your status in hell must be much higher than Yan Ning’s, right? Have you gathered any useful information? I saw you chatting with Li City’s mayor earlier—what were you talking about? Do you know what’s really going on with that divine envoy hanging incident I’m here to investigate?”

Her questions came out in quick succession, one after another. Lorca sighed helplessly and rubbed his forehead: “Hold on, too many questions. Let me think where to start.”

“When I first arrived, my status wasn’t much better than Yan Ning’s. It was only because I proposed the wish-incense idea that I earned Queen Lilith’s appreciation and reward, gaining this current respectable appearance,” he quickly explained about the wish-incense and his cooperation with the mayor, then finally said, “Hell plans to launch an invasion into the human world and the Holy Mountain during the Divine Birth Festival. The wish-incense is just our first step. Later, hell will open a portal between realms in Li City, so that on the day of the Divine Birth Festival, large numbers of demons can enter the human world through the passage and cause trouble at the Holy Mountain.”

Eve suddenly understood, yet found something odd: “So our task this round is to stop the demon invasion? But I feel like the Holy Mountain wouldn’t surrender so easily. Judging from the previous two door entries, the Holy Mountain doesn’t seem like good people either. And if that’s the case, wouldn’t students aligned with the Holy Mountain and hell be destined for one side to win and the other to lose?”

Compared to confrontational matches, Ghost Ship’s style has always been more role-playing mission-based. Such clear faction division feels quite out of place for it.

“Indeed, it’s not that. If I’m not mistaken, the Holy Mountain must have defenses against hell too. Based on the story background and Ghost Ship’s context, this should reference the Ark and the Great Flood setting.”

As eras changed, those legends about the Old Era had long faded in the new interstellar age. Knowing Eve hated tangents during serious discussions, Lorca skipped the useless summary and went straight to the point: “To punish humanity for various sins and losing pious faith in the gods, the gods sent a catastrophic great flood. With the flood comes the hope ark preserving life’s seeds. No doubt, Ghost Ship corresponds to this hope ark in the door world.”

“I know that story,” having after all lived in another world, the Old Era in the interstellar age wasn’t too different from her pre-transmigration world. Eve wasn’t surprised by the famous ark story. She pinched her chin, mused briefly: “Fuqiu... Fuqiu. In the story, the hope ark was built by a devout family under divine warning. Though that Fuqiu family doesn’t seem entirely normal either, in this story, to find the final ark, we’ll have to start with them, right?”

Lorca never lacked timely praise for Eve: “So clever, connecting all the previous clues at once.”

Is this guy treating me like a child? Speaking of which, Lorca earlier referred to Ludwig and Yan Ning as ‘unfortunate kids’ too.

His parental attitude is too strong. Eve rolled her eyes at him and continued: “Finding the ark is clearly our Holy Mountain faction’s task. Your hell faction must have another mission. Besides selling goods, did Lilith assign you any other tasks?”

“Apparently not. Even if there were, she wouldn’t tell a recently advanced demon like me. Probably need to keep investigating around her.”

“With the Divine Birth Festival approaching, the demon army will surge up from hell. Whatever hidden schemes there are will come to light then. Just bother you three to keep an eye out,” Eve said, as if remembering something, and took out the pink heart-shaped stone from her pouch: “By the way, I picked this up under that tree. What is it? Why did you throw it to me?”

Lorca curved his lips into a smile, his gorgeous face overflowing with charm: “It’s my heart.”

“...Be normal. Yan Ning’s condition’s infectivity shouldn’t be that strong yet,” Eve shuddered at his act, goosebumps forming on her arms. “Who would throw their own heart on the ground? Besides looking pretty, does this stone have any other use?”

Lorca’s smile stiffened slightly.

Use use use, always asking about use. Might as well have thrown it on the ground instead of giving it to you.

“This is a demon heart stone—each demon only has one in their lifetime. It contains the demon’s lifelong power and is connected to their soul,” after a good while, he collected his expression and said calmly, “Holding this stone means you and I are emotionally connected. People from different factions in the door world can’t even communicate through wrist watches. This provides an extra way to communication.”

Sounds useful. Eve instinctively lightly squeezed the small red stone and asked: “Then with your heart stone with me, does it affect you much?”

“Not much. At most, use of magic might be hindered over long distances, but I don’t have much magic to begin with. Due to some racial advantages, we aren’t like other demons who can only condense one heart stone.”

Saying so, Lorca used his sharp long nail to cut open his palm and produced another gleaming pink heart-shaped stone: “Want to take one more? Consider it a backup.”

“Can I give one to someone else? This seems really useful.”

Lorca’s withdrawn hand and instantly slit light green vertical pupils directly conveyed his attitude.

“Okay, okay, I promise not to give it to anyone else,” Eve finally worked the pretty stone loose from his palm with difficulty. Before leaving, she asked one last question: “But there’s more than one type of demon in hell? I thought at most they’d be categorized into queen-level, lord-level, slave-level, etc. Yan Ning and them are little demons—what kind of demon are you?”

“You really want to know?”

“After all, it sounds like a powerful race that’s hard to kill.”

“Mmm, distantly related to the queen, I suppose. In a way, indeed quite powerful.”

Lorca struggled to hold back but failed, finally leaning against the railing, leaning sideways and burst out laughing: “Powerful race... hahaha... I’m an incubus!”

Incubus—two shocking words.

Eve stared with an expression like she’d seen an actual ghost, directly eyeing the heart-shaped tail that had poked her arm.

Even incubi are here... Organizing committee, do you remember this is a league event that's supposed to be appropriate for all ages?!