Free Web NovelChapter 257: Cognitive Otto: Ah, Celestial Jingwei!
"Pwah! Blegh!!"
The moment Ren dug Kiana out from the mountain of yellow sand burying her, she frantically spat out a mouthful of grit. Like a wet cat desperately trying to dry off, she violently shook her head, sending a spray of sand flying from her pristine white hair.
"Joker! This girl is an enemy, right?! She has to be an enemy!!"
Even after bending over and coughing for half a minute, Kiana could still feel the gritty texture of sand grinding against her teeth. freewebnovel.cσ๓
Recalling how Li Sushang had literally plummeted from the sky on a giant sword, kicking up a massive sandstorm that buried her right alongside the Shadow bandits she had been fighting... Kiana glared at the archaic girl, her blue eyes practically spitting fire.
Her hands gripped her dual pistols so tightly her knuckles were white. If she wasn’t so conscious of maintaining her image in front of Ren, she would have already fired two warning shots into the ground right by Sushang’s feet just to vent.
"I-I’m so sorry! Miss... uh, K-Kiana! I was entirely focused on Grandmaster Jingwei and didn’t notice you down there! It’s entirely my fault! I’ll absolutely learn from this and never make the same mistake again!"
Sushang scratched her head, her face flushing with pure embarrassment. Stumbling slightly over the foreign name, she offered an incredibly sincere and frantic apology.
"...Just this once. If you pull a stunt like that again, the great Kiana won’t go easy on you."
Seeing how genuinely apologetic Sushang was, Kiana forcefully swallowed her raging temper. She holstered her pistols with a dull thud, glaring grumpily at the brunette.
"If you’re done dusting off, Kiana, let’s move," Ren called out.
Interestingly, "Joker" was vastly easier to pronounce than "Kiana," yet Sushang had completely given up on trying to say his codename. Meanwhile, she was rapidly getting the hang of calling Kiana by her name.
Ren strongly suspected Sushang was applying a double standard between genders—or worse, intentionally giving him an exclusive, intimate pet name.
Seeing Kiana finish brushing off her outfit, Ren confirmed she was ready to go. He signaled Hare to lead the way to the first Will Seed.
As Ren turned his head to follow Hare, Kiana deliberately lagged behind at the back of the group. The instant he wasn’t looking, she violently hiked up her leg, yanked off her black boot with the orange heel, and furiously dumped a pile of sand out of it.
After shoving her black-stockinged foot back into the boot, Kiana let out a long, dramatic sigh of pure relief.
Watching from the side, Mei wore a subtle, profoundly speechless expression. Seeing her absolute best friend caring this much about her image exclusively in front of Ren always stirred a very complex, messy storm of emotions in the Herrscher’s chest.
"So this ’Will Seed’ is in this direction? But I don’t sense anything at all," Sushang babbled happily. "Young Master Zhou Ke, are you sure you have the right way? You said this stone is a crystallization of my desires. Since I’m the ruler of this domain, shouldn’t I be able to feel it?"
After apologizing to Kiana, Sushang had instantly tossed the white-haired girl out of her mind. Bouncing lightly across the soft dunes, she stuck closely to Ren’s side.
Having been trapped in a slumbering loop for five hundred years, the girl seemed desperate to expel half a millennium’s worth of loneliness. She chattered incessantly at Ren like a hyperactive magpie.
"Ah! More bandits blocking the way! Fear not, Young Master Zhou Ke! Allow I, the senior disciple of the Edge of Taixu, to clear the path!"
"My heart is a scabbard, nurturing a sharp blade!"
Perhaps because her true consciousness was in absolute control, the Shadow bandits spawned in this Palace completely ignored Sushang’s status as the Palace Ruler. They showed no hesitation or mercy when attacking her.
Of course, to a master of her caliber, these mundane, roadside-thug-tier Shadows were practically stationary targets. Sushang eagerly drew her blade to show off, effortlessly dicing through the mob before they could even attempt to struggle.
Ren didn’t stop her enthusiastic volunteering. Saving the team’s stamina was always a plus. If Sushang wanted to act as the Vanguard and obliterate the trash mobs for free, who was he to stop her?
"We’re here. This is the location of the first Will Seed," Hare announced, coming to a halt.
Ren and the others found themselves standing inside a sprawling desert bandit camp, specifically in its dungeon sector.
"...This is?"
Sushang looked around the gloomy dungeon. She seemed to recognize something, because the endlessly hyperactive girl finally, blessedly, went quiet for a moment.
Guided by Hare’s resonance, a small, golden, sword-shaped crystal slowly drifted out from the void, floating gently into Ren’s outstretched palm.
The memories inscribed within the Will Seed instantly flooded Ren’s mind.
Although Sushang looked and acted like a classic, virtuous martial artist from a wuxia novel, Ren hadn’t forgotten that this was, in all likelihood, the Palace of Lust.
He deliberately hadn’t told her that the Will Seeds recorded her deepest, most private memories, fearing she might attack them purely out of burning shame.
If they skipped gathering the Will Seeds and went straight for the boss fight, beating Sushang into submission would trigger the Palace’s collapse. Any uncollected Lust Will Seeds would be sucked into the boundless, chaotic abyss of Mementos. Trying to fish them out later would be literal needle-in-a-haystack torture—virtually impossible.
Ren refused to accept that outcome.
Thus, even if he was about to witness some incredibly spicy, R-rated content starring this archaic girl, Ren had mentally braced himself. No matter what played out in the memory, he had to keep a straight face. He absolutely could not act weird and tip her off.
However, despite being a Will Seed of Lust, the memory inscribed within the first crystal contained no extreme, rated-R scenarios.
It was merely a memory of Sushang meeting and conversing with a blonde-haired, green-eyed man inside this exact dungeon for the first time.
The contents of the conversation itself were mundane. The only detail that caught Ren’s attention was the power the blonde man casually utilized during the exchange...
Having attuned to the Keys of the Void, Ren could immediately identify the energy signature. The power the blonde man used in the memory belonged to the Void Archives.
A timeline five hundred years ago... A blonde, green-eyed man... The power of the Void Archives... And a deep connection to Li Sushang’s Palace.
This cannot be treated as a simple coincidence.
Kallen. Do you recognize this man?
Having been explicitly led to this Palace by Ai-chan, Ren knew this clue couldn’t be meaningless. He silently reached out to his Persona, Kallen, transmitting the image of the blonde man from the Will Seed’s memory into her mind.
[Ah! That’s Otto! Why is he with Miss Sushang?]
As expected, the moment Kallen processed the image, a shocked gasp echoed in Ren’s mind.
Although the Otto in the memory looked a few years older and more mature than the Otto in Kallen’s memories—and was dressed in traditional Shenzhou white robes while lugging around a bizarre, oversized coffin—she recognized her childhood friend instantly.
So that man really is Otto Apocalypse. To appear so prominently in her Will Seed memories... it seems Li Sushang and Otto shared a very close relationship.
His suspicion confirmed, Ren maintained a perfectly calm exterior. In reality, he quietly bumped his internal threat assessment of Li Sushang up a few notches.
"Fu Hua, memorize the energy signature of this Will Seed. From now on, you and Hare will jointly handle the tracking," Ren said, casually tossing the golden sword-crystal to the martial artist.
He framed it as a long-term assignment, but in truth, the only original sin Will Seeds he was missing were the Lust Seeds from this Palace and the Vanity Seeds from the Elysian Realm. Fu Hua would only get to team up with Hare two more times at most.
"Understood. I have recorded the Will Seed’s signature."
Fu Hua seemed incredibly accustomed to—and entirely content with—following orders. She didn’t show a shred of resistance or reluctance toward Ren’s command.
Under Sushang’s utterly baffled gaze, Fu Hua swiftly scanned the golden crystal’s energy signature, then stepped forward to hand it back to Ren.
As she offered the crystal, Ren subtly shot her a sharp look, entirely out of Sushang’s line of sight.
Fu Hua blinked, her face entirely blank. Maintaining her posture of handing over the crystal, she merely extended her hand a little further toward him.
Right. She’s historically dense, and we haven’t built any team synergy yet.
Ren sighed internally. He wordlessly took the golden crystal. As their hands met, he subtly but deliberately scratched the soft palm of her hand twice with his index finger, before smoothly withdrawing his hand.
Feeling the lingering phantom sensation of Ren secretly scratching her palm while hiding it from everyone else, the confusion in Fu Hua’s eyes only deepened.
Fortunately, while she was rigid and somewhat oblivious, she wasn’t a complete lost cause.
Noticing the exasperated, urgent prompting in Ren’s eyes, a spark of realization finally hit her.
Illusory crimson feathers drifted down silently. Like a phone line suddenly connecting, a telepathic link was established directly between their minds.
[Is something wrong, Joker?] Fu Hua’s confused voice echoed in his head.
She hadn’t cast a wide net to link the entire Phantom Thieves group, creating a private channel exclusively between the two of them.
[Fu Hua, manage your facial expressions first,] Ren commanded. [Do you know the exact nature of the relationship between Li Sushang and Otto Apocalypse?]
Ren could sense they were the only two on the network, which was perfect.
The more people on a telepathic link, the higher the chance someone would react physically and expose them to Sushang. If Fu Hua had randomly dragged Kiana into the chat, Sushang would have instantly noticed the entire team acting weird.
[Li Sushang was indeed acquainted with Otto,] Fu Hua replied naturally, following the team as Hare began leading them out of the dungeon toward the second Will Seed. [Five hundred years ago, it was Otto who acted as her patron and backer. He supported her journey, ultimately helping her track me down for our final duel.]
[If you knew that, why didn’t you tell me from the beginning?]
The good news was that Ren could confirm Fu Hua had no intention of deceiving or hiding things from him. She was just a textbook "squeeze-the-toothpaste" informant—if you didn’t ask the exact right question, she wouldn’t volunteer the information.
[I didn’t believe the information was relevant to our current situation,] Fu Hua admitted. [Although Li Sushang’s consciousness has manifested before us using a Shadow as a vessel, her actual, physical status remains unknown. Five hundred years have passed. I assumed it was highly unlikely we would ever encounter the real Li Sushang in reality. This meeting is merely a fleeting miracle confined to the Metaverse.]
Despite her phrasing, Fu Hua had practically written the real Li Sushang off as a corpse.
[Regardless, keep your guard up,] Ren pressed. [Given her bond with Otto, a cognitive version of him from five hundred years ago is likely wandering somewhere in this Palace. Do you know how strong Otto was back then?]
[The Otto of five centuries ago...] Fu Hua paused. [While his intellect and schemes were already far beyond human limits, his personal combat capabilities were still within the realm of common sense. With your current strength, Joker, defeating the Otto of five centuries ago would be incredibly easy.]
Even if the current Fu Hua fought the modern-day Otto Apocalypse, who had spent five hundred years accumulating power and resources, she wasn’t completely confident she could cleanly secure a victory against the treacherous Overseer.
But if the target was the incomplete, centuries-younger Otto? Even the currently weakened Fu Hua was confident she could punch him into the dirt with one strike.
"We’re here. This is the location of the second Will Seed."
Under Hare’s guidance, the team arrived at the second destination much faster than expected.
The environment was still the sun-scorched, barren desert. However, instead of a bandit camp, the structure standing before them was a simple, rustic wooden cabin, the kind an ordinary civilian might live in.
"This... isn’t this where my Master and I used to live?" freёweɓnovel.com
Sushang scratched her head in utter bewilderment, staring at the cabin she was so intimately familiar with she could navigate it blindfolded.
She had grown up here with her Master after leaving her parents. She had never seen anything resembling a golden Will Seed lying around this place.
"Now that I think about it... right before I set out to find Grandmaster Jingwei, I was staying in this exact cabin with my Master!"
As if struck by sudden inspiration, Sushang violently clapped her hands together, excitedly turning to share the revelation with Ren.
As if responding directly to her words, the dilapidated wooden door groaned faintly, slowly pushing open from the inside to reveal a figure.
"O... Overseer?!"
Rita, who had been strolling at the back of the group with her perpetual, polite smile as if she were on a casual sightseeing tour, suddenly froze. Her eyes widened in genuine shock, the title slipping past her lips before she could stop it.
Despite wearing an archaic, white Shenzhou-style robe, the devastatingly handsome, blonde-haired man standing in the doorway was unmistakably Overseer Otto Apocalypse.
His eyes were incredibly hollow. He radiated zero vitality, looking more like an empty, animated husk dragging itself through the motions of life than a living human.
"Who are you?"
Even five hundred years ago, Otto was already the Overseer of Schicksal. Seeing Rita’s blatantly foreign, non-Shenzhou features, and hearing her address him by his modern title, Cognitive Otto furrowed his brow slightly.
"I am merely an ordinary, unremarkable Valkyrie of Schicksal. It is only natural the Overseer does not remember me," Rita replied seamlessly.
Her shock had lasted barely a fraction of a second. The ever-adaptable maid swiftly smoothed over her expression, elegantly brushing a strand of ash-blonde hair behind her ear as she answered the cognitive construct with flawless etiquette.
For a split second upon seeing him, Rita legitimately thought her omniscient, ghostly Overseer had actually tracked her into the Metaverse. Given Otto’s terrifying reach and capabilities, him hacking into cognitive reality wouldn’t have surprised her in the slightest.
But the moment the gasp left her mouth, she realized the truth. The man before her was absolutely not the real Otto Apocalypse.
It wasn’t just the sheer difference in their presence and aura. If the real Otto had infiltrated the Metaverse, there was zero chance he would casually stroll out the front door and expose himself to Ren and the Phantom Thieves in broad daylight.
Cognitive Otto didn’t pay much attention to Rita’s smooth excuse. He merely shifted his indifferent gaze across the group.
Until his green eyes locked onto the martial artist standing quietly by Ren’s side.
"You... Celestial Jingwei?!"
