Chapter 120: Distinguished Guest

At the entrance of a shack cluster with several stone houses hung a sign reading “Lord’s Articles,” which was the name of their compound.
The clan leader, Jue Zhongjue, was picking his teeth when he suddenly received a Mental Link from an esteemed person, immediately breaking into a smile:
“Minister Shang.”
{How many times have I told you? It’s just a town—don’t call me “Minister” all the time; it only invites ridicule.}
“Not at all, Shang…”
{Stop wasting words. I’ll tell you something good. Yang Zicang, the one you know as Jiazi Jian, now owns many newly formed territories. Find a chance to curry favor with him; he should be building a decent faction in the future. Also, he’s under Deputy Town Chief Zhuyin, so don’t try any clever tricks on him, or the fate of the Wasteland Cart Freight Convoy will be yours.}
The person on the other end pointed at the large, oil-painting-like realistic artworks and a map behind him, then quickly severed the Mental Link.
“Wasteland Cart?”
Jue Zhongjue paused, a glint flashing in his eyes.
“The freight convoy has been wiped out. That’s a great chance to get the wasteland cart, but I sure won’t be able to snatch it myself.”
The small flame that had just flickered to life was quickly extinguished, then he thought of the painting and map he had seen moments before.
If he wasn’t mistaken, the scene in the painting featured at least several dozen different backdrops—how could one place possess so many distinct settings?
Could it be that all those people had brought back the land from elsewhere? What an enormous undertaking that would have been.
“Hurry, hurry, hurry! Prepare the goods for me. I need to go out in person.”
Jue Zhongjue rushed out of the stone room and shouted.
A voice rang out: “We’ve only just arrived, and you’re already thinking of leaving?”
The sky suddenly brightened as a patch of blue sky appeared amidst the perpetually gray and overcast heavens.
The shed master and the others outside were taken aback, turning to look across the courtyard.
There, several figures in crisp suits emerged. At the front of the group stood a gray-clad boy with pale lips, golden glints flashing in his eyes, and a side-parted hairstyle.
The air around him shimmered subtly, like heat waves, with blurry scenes of various landscapes constantly flickering into existence and vanishing in the undulating distortion.
Suddenly feeling an inexplicable pressure, Jue Zhongjue forced a smile, his voice trembling slightly:,
“My lords, where might you be coming from?”
A man to the right and behind the boy, wearing a suit but with heat-branded, inflamed marks on his face, opened his mouth, his voice as deep and rumbling as a dragon’s:
“Before you stands a distinguished guest from the ‘Lost Illusion Company: Valley Breeze Illusion District,’ the renowned officer known as Master Xiao.”
An attendant on the left interjected:
“At the same time, Mr. Xiao is also the ‘Editor-in-Chief’s second pen,’ the ‘index finger’ of the honorable Editor-in-Chief.”
Jue Zhongjue was utterly bewildered. He felt the words ‘Lost Illusion Company’ were intangible and ethereal, and the term ‘Editor-in-Chief’ grew as chaotic as the memory of a dream after waking up—soon he couldn’t recall whether he had just said ‘the cook’ or ‘the knocker of bamboo clappers.’
The Boy let out a light laugh, the golden glow slowly spinning in his eyes. With a sharp and pressing demeanor, he spoke slowly:
“Um, this shed owner, can you recount for me the part of your rise to wealth that you consider the most glorious?”
“I…”
Jue Zhongjue’s mind raced to decipher the Young Boy’s words. Suddenly, he found himself involuntarily thinking back to when he first arrived here.
With a slightly dazed look, Jue Zhongjue recalled: “At that time, I was still a virgin…”
……
Two days later, Luo Bin received a message from the Odd-Frequency Tavern: there were already leads on that Grade A lost-frequency area.
Late at night, Yang Zicang and his companion came to the Odd-Frequency Tavern once more, and this time both of them stepped inside.
“Jingle.”
The wooden door was pushed open. Catching sight of a two-man figure who was ninety percent similar to the legendary one who had wiped out the Desert Cargo Freight Team, the bartender approached them with noticeable excitement.
He was now certain that this bloke who had sold intelligence last time was none other than the particularly ferocious second-in-command among those who had destroyed the freight team!
“Two distinguished guests.” The bartender lowered his voice. “Our Boss Zhuang is upstairs. Please come with me.”
“Mm-hmm.” Luo Bin nodded foolishly.
With that, the bartender turned to lead the way. Though the two men behind him looked ordinary, he dared not be careless. According to exclusive, top-secret information known only to a few, a formidable individual who had taken on a mission to assassinate this very man at the inn a few days ago had since vanished without a trace. It wasn’t a case of hiding his identity—his companions had even put up a high-priced missing person notice.
And now, the target of that missing man strolled in boldly, which said a great deal.
After going upstairs, the two were led into the living room of a suite. Behind a large desk, a tall, black leather office chair faced away from the three.
“Boss, I’ve brought the people you wanted to see.”
A dignified voice came from the other side of the chair. “Two of them?”
“Yes.”
“Leave.”
The bartender turned and left, closing the door behind him.
“Still calling him Boss?” Luo Bin muttered under his breath, staring at the chair.
With a rustling sound against the floor, the black leather chair slowly turned around, revealing a short, skinny man with a small mustache.
His eyes scanned Yang Zicang briefly before he suddenly climbed onto the big desk, waved at the two, and whispered, “Come over here, quick.”
“What’s this all about?” Yang Zicang stared at the man, a little speechless.
He looked at Yang Zicang with a helpless, tearless face: “Quick, quick, quick, if we’re any later, it won’t work. I’ve already been watching you for ten seconds.”
“What’s wrong?”
Yang Zicang and Luo Bin both stepped forward. The owner Zhuang, who was less than one meter fifty tall with a panicked expression, kept staring at the room’s door. Only after the two arrived did he breathe a sigh of relief.
“Ah, saved again tonight. Good thing you made it to the desk within thirty seconds.”
Luo Bin stared at him in confusion.
Boss Zhuang said sternly: “I’m cursed. Only when there are more than two people here can I turn around to face the door; otherwise, I’ll lose a thousand years of my time sequence.”
“Isn’t that simple? Just have your employees come in.”
“No, if the same people come for three consecutive nights, the time sequence gets deducted too. And they can’t repeat within the curse’s effective period.”
“Curses like that exist?”
Yang Zicang looked at this seemingly mentally unstable owner of the Unifrequency Inn with curiosity.
The boss looked embarrassed.
The model on Luo Bin’s chest flashed. He paused, then looked at the owner in front of him: “You liar, you haven’t been cursed.”
“Your model can tell truth from lies too? Oh, alright, the effect is the same anyway.”
The boss sat cross-legged on the large desk, becoming arrogant and looking particularly shameless.
“Looks like us getting you through tonight is the greatest value we can offer, right?” Yang Zicang pulled a chair over, sat down sideways.
“Haha, you jest, my guest. If you can come again tomorrow night, I’ll let you stay for free—though late-night snacks aren’t included.”
“So, is that mission you mentioned for a thousand sequence marks real or just bullshit?”
When receiving the invitation, the staff at Solitary Frequency Inn had already informed Luobin that there was a task they wanted him to pass along to Yang Zicang for help, with a reward of a thousand sequence marks.
“Oh right, I almost forgot about that.”
Manager Zhuang crawled from the desk to his office chair, stretched his toes to touch the floor, turned his body to face the desk properly, and pulled out several documents from a drawer.
“Mm, found it. Here it is.”
He tossed the items in front of the two people on the other end of the desk.
“Collecting a corpse for some unlucky bastard, a thousand sequence marks. This is a job he left behind. I haven’t received his Mental Link for two days, so the task’s activated—he really went and got himself killed.”
Luobin picked it up, glanced at it, and handed it to Yang Zicang: “This looks like something only you can handle.”
Then he squinted at Manager Zhuang: “So you already knew the location of that A-grade intersecting point all along.”
Manager Zhuang’s eyebrows drooped, and his eyes darted left and right guiltily.
“It’s Crimson Moon-level, after all,” he mumbled.
After reading through the contents, Yang Zicang understood why that person had left a thousand sequence marks here—to have someone retrieve his remains if he met an untimely end.
For the place he was heading to was similar to those where I had encountered psychic entities last time, but far more dangerous.
It was the very Grade-A Falling Out-of-Sync Convergence Zone I had been searching for, the one that had plummeted here.
“He was trying to seek a psychic-type ability, wasn’t he?”
“That’s right.” Boss Zhuang nodded.
Luo Bin looked at him and said, “Why exactly do you deduct one thousand chronos every night just for watching the door alone?”
Boss Zhuang glanced around, let out a snort, and said in a low voice, “What are you planning to use to trade for this intel?”
Like hell I’d trade, Yang Zicang muttered to himself.
Luo Bin pulled up a chair and sat down:
“I only sold a small part of the information about the Jiazi Space before. I can trade more of it with you.”
Yang Zicang looked at Luo Bin as if he were an idiot.
Boss Zhuang shot a glance at Yang Zicang. He had never seen someone willing to sell their own information, much less sell stuff that was actually real. This guy’s off his rocker.
“This must be Mr. Jiazi Space,” he said.
A ring lit up on Yang Zicang’s chest, the numbers inside, visible only to himself, rapidly decreased, and his appearance transformed from around fifty years old back to about thirty.
“That’s right, I am Jiazi Space, the current head of the Dajia Construction Transport Crew, and a supplier for the Deputy Mayor of Hub Town.”
“The, the Deputy Mayor!”
The short, thin boss scrambled off his chair in a flash, standing on the floor, his perspective looking so suddenly low.
“Sorry about that.” He hopped back onto the chair.
“You’re actually supplying the Deputy Mayor? That guy is the big shot of the city ranked twelfth for three consecutive years, you know.”
YangZicang was eager to learn more about Zhuyin, but at this moment, he pretended to be profound and said, “So what’s wrong with that?”
“N-no, nothing.”
Boss Zhuang waved his hand and continued to ask:
“Which city did you come to the Zone of Lost Frequencies from? Is it also the twelfth-ranked city?”
In the past, YangZicang might have unhesitatingly revealed everything about himself. But now, he mimicked those two guys and said:
“What are you going to trade for this information?”
Boss Zhuang showed no sign of displeasure; instead, he sank into thought.
YangZicang couldn’t help but be inwardly surprised. Is it really okay to make demands like this? Is this how intelligence agents operate?