Free Web NovelChapter 371: Chapter 371 The Unparalleled Tai Bao_1
Rose Iron Prison, after Aiden finished his routine work, he poured himself another cup of tea and sighed with relief.
Recent days had been rather unremarkable; nothing major had happened in the prison, nor had any strange incidents occurred outside. Even Qiqimora, who had gone to Gistas, had not made any significant progress—which wasn’t surprising, considering that this was a plan that had taken Mr. Blood-cloak nearly two years to fail to accomplish. Even though Qiqimora was somewhat skilled in intelligence gathering, it probably wasn’t going to be easy to make headway.
At first, Aiden had been inquiring with some regularity from Abigail, but he soon stopped initiating contact—if Qiqimora really had any major developments, she would likely reach out proactively.
For Aiden, his days had become the sort that one could sum up with "Nothing happened today" in a journal entry, which was not much different from his past days... No, actually, they were even more mundane, as the prisoners in the core area had become much more submissive than before, causing far fewer problems.
However, now that he was aware of his true situation, he couldn’t enjoy these mundane days as obliviously as before.
With no news from Qiqimora and no visits to Melissa and Melifilia, Aiden still had to push forward with his plan to protect himself and escape the clutches of the Goddess’s chessboard.
Not long ago, he had probed Sophie Carter for information about divine words. Now, the "Order" and "Existence" domains seemed the most suitable for him to approach, and he held one power in each of those domains.
The advantage of the "Order" domain was that he had the Wordless Code in hand, but this path was paved by the conspiracy goddess herself, who likely had countermeasures in place. It might not be wise to walk this road to its dark end in order to break free from the conspiracy goddess’s chessboard. By contrast, the powers of the "Existence" domain might offer more breakthrough opportunities.
But the intelligence regarding the "Existence" domain was almost non-existent in Sophie Carter’s possession. The little information she had was not only vague but also outdated.
Her ignorance did not mean that the Smile Scale organization was uninformed. Naturally, the Smile Scale would not want those affiliated with the "Existence" domain’s powers to seek that domain’s strength on their own—according to Sophie, this was prohibited by the organization’s orders. If any of these affiliated individuals pursued these benefits without permission and were discovered, the organization would place them on a list to be dealt with by the clients.
Therefore, it stood to reason that even if the Smile Scale did come into possession of intelligence related to the "Existence" domain, it was unlikely to share it with every affiliated individual, and would instead likely do its utmost to restrict their access to such information.
Without intelligence, there’s no direction to move forward; and so, even if Aiden wished to tread the path of the "Existence" domain, it would be like a blind man groping in the dark and difficult to pursue at this stage. freewebnoveℓ.com
Then there was another theoretically viable path for Aiden: the domain of "Balance"—according to the rules of the domains, having touched the superior domain of "Existence," he could next only engage with the intermediate domain adjacent to "Order."
Regarding this, Sophie provided a rather interesting but ultimately unhelpful piece of intelligence. More than a decade ago, a batch of Divine Artifacts, which had been bestowed with divinity and recorded the powers of the "Balance" domain, was brought by an explorer to a self-governing region to be sold. These Divine Artifacts were also recorded in ancient texts and embodied the concept of "fixation," making them perfect sealing artifacts.
When the Smile Scale got wind of this, they planned to buy them from the explorer, who was clueless about the significance of the domains. However, before the deal could be completed, the explorer was killed by an S-class wanted criminal, and the artifacts were stolen. Shortly after, the criminal was captured, sentenced to death, and those artifacts... never surfaced again.
Aiden immediately understood that the artifacts in question were the Holy Nails the Heresy Tribunal was using to seal Melifilia; he naturally had no intention of meddling with them.
In the end, the only clear direction he could see was still for the "Order" domain.
Aiden continued to recall the intelligence about the "Order" domain provided by Sophie in his mind.
There were three pieces of intelligence that Sophie had provided, all of which the Smile Scale was allowed to share directly.
One was related to Duboman, a legendary bounty hunter active from eighty to fifty years ago, who was reportedly a saint of the "Order" domain. The somewhat famous "Hound" mercenary group was organized by him, and fifty years ago Duboman boarded a pioneering ship bound for the Northern Continent in pursuit of a fugitive, and was never heard from again—whether he’s still alive is among the uncertainties.
The second piece of intelligence was more vague: a mysterious witch who operated along the border between the Empire and Gistas one or two hundred years ago had obtained an artifact related to "Order." Her place of retreat was unknown—this was a truth Aiden knew more clearly than Sophie did.
The third piece of intelligence was clearer and concerned a noble family of the Gistas Kingdom.
It was said that this family passed down three secret techniques from generation to generation, which only the Family Head could learn. The first technique could cause mental derangement, the second inflicted excruciating physical pain, and the third could turn air into solid walls, trapping people within them.
Many wizards, bounty hunters, and assassins had attempted to pry and learn these secret techniques of the family, only to return empty-handed; some even lost their lives in the process.
The Smile Scale assessed that these so-called three secret techniques held by the family were actually all effects of a single divine word—the mental derangement was admittedly a result of instruction by the divine word, while inflicting excruciating physical pain and creating invisible prisons fell under the effects of the "Order" domain’s divine word of "Punishment."
Aiden quickly formed a notion of this divine word—it was probably the same effect as the corporal punishment and imprisonment executed by the Wordless Code against those who violated its rules.
The noble family bore the surname Hofman, with the Family Head holding the title of Earl. Generation after generation had served as officials in the Gistas Kingdom, and although their specific positions had changed over the years, they were generally part of the King’s personal guard. Some generations were captains of the royal guards tasked with protecting the King, while others were officers of the penal service... The current Earl Hofman was the Chief of Police of the Gistas Royal Secret Police, also loyal to the royal house.
The secret police of Gistas differed in details from those Aiden knew of from his previous world, but they shared no fundamental differences—common tools of authoritarian states that maintain centralized power, akin to historical organizations like the Jinyiwei or, from more recent times, the Gestapo.
