Chapter 1435: Chapter 1435

=To be more precise, milord, Pathos and I have been going over old records we have on Rainbowden and cross-referencing it with the records you acquired from when you took over the [Mines of Malevolence] from Dante,= Logos explained. =Apparently, people from Rainbowden were regular importers of this mine's products.=

Zhen Liu was about to make a statement that went along the lines of, "why would a bunch of noble houses be interested in cursed metals?" but then he realized that was an incredibly stupid statement to make.

Hell, in another lifetime, he'd probably be a purveyor of cursed accessories to these aforementioned noble houses.

Brighter lights tend to lead to darker shadows...or something like that.

'Huh. Where did that thought come from?'

Either way, this small revelation of dealings would actually serve as an excellent means of getting into Rainbowden without having to come up with a complicated backstory, as well as bypassing any random security bullshit that may occur.

"Okay...what familiar faces are you talking about? We're talking like...those guys who fucked off with Smoking Mirror?" Zhen Liu asked while remembering Duke Diamoro, that Silver Jungle Dragon bastard, and Abbot Longhorn.

<=Yes, but not just them,=> Logos and Pathos answered simultaneously.

To better explain themselves, Logos and Pathos manifested multiple holographic windows depicting images of the people Zhen Liu was going to be colliding with while heading to Rainbowden.

Needless to say, while all of these faces were familiar to Zhen Liu, absolutely none of them were friendly.

"Ya know…seeing all fo their faces…really makes me rethink my policy about not killing my enemies," Zhen Liu muttered as he reviewed all of the unfriendly faces before him.

<=We know you don't really mean that.=>

Immediately, Zhen Liu could see that several of the panels depicted the enemies he had made while on Dozing Salamander.

On one panel, he saw a picture of Duke Diamoro accompanied by several boxes of texts that detailed that the man and his faction, the House of the Golden Sabertooth, had established a base in Rainbowden a little over a decade ago and had profited immensely from this one little building. On top of that, they were one of the top five purchasers of [Malevolent Gold]...which made a little too much sense given everything that Zhen Liu had learned.

Either way, it was safe to assume that the moment Zhen Liu rolled up to Rainbowden, Duke Diamoro was probably going to be one of the first to know about his arrival.

"Is it safe for me to assume Alfonzo, Abbot Longhorn, and Lord Smoking Mirror are probably accompanying the man as we speak?"

The leader of the Silver Dragon Shipping Company, one of the foremost Buddhist masters, and the fragment of an ancient god from his old life made for very strange bedfellows alongside a probably corrupt duke, but that was jsut one of those things about life that made it interesting: the sheer fucking randomness of it all.

=That…would be mildly speculative, but also a rather safe assumption to make.=

Pathos explained. Thɪs chapter is updatᴇd by Nove1Fire.net

=We'll address it later. Please focus on your enemies for the time being.=

Immediately after looking over the warriors from Dozing Salamander, Zhen Liu was caught off guard as he saw a name he hadn't seen since the first time he and his family buried the hatchet with the main Zhen Clan of Roaring Tide.

"Venus? As in that psycho mask bitch who was part of that group that almost turned the kaijin into living nightmares?" Zhen Liu asked for clarity, as his memories of that fight replayed in his head.

The holographic window containing Venus's picture explained that the bitch of a trafficker had been regularly offloading troublesome slaves to the [Mines of Malevolence], while exchanging them for the bare minimum amounts of [Malevolent Gold] and [Sinister Silver].

The criminal organization she swore her loyalty to, The Shadow Garden, had apparently embedded themselves into the black market of Rainbowden, while rumors suggest that they had a base in the underground portions of the city.

Which was right where Zhen Liu needed to be in order to find the Rainbow Smith's inheritance.

Comprehending that now he had to deal with enemies that were of both of orthodox and unorthodox natures, Zhen Liu let out a sigh as he rubbed his temples.

"On the one hand I want to ask if this could get any worse," Zhen Liu sarcastically stated. "On the other, I am fully expecting you to tell me something awful. So what is this something awful?"

<=These next few are a little weird actually. And not really enemies...maybe=>

"Weird how? Also, why maybe?"

With a gesture, Pathos brought before Zhen Liu not just one holographic window, but three.

=We'll update them once we get the information we need.=

Noticing the amused tone, Zhen Liu focused on parsing through one of the windows before focusing on the other, just to see what was so funny to the curator of [Emotional Chaos].

He didn't make it past the last name before realizing what was up.

"Ecaredies? Wait...as in Bellona's Family?! What the fuck?!"

When Zhen Liu became romantically entangled with Bellona, one of the first things he had learned about the sheep Bloodliner was that the kingdom she hailed from was undergoing a bit of succession crisis, and that her cousins were travelling abroad in order to secure allies and weapons to tip the war in their favor.

Quickly parsing through it, he soon realized that this particular member of the Ecaredies family was someone he hadn't met yet.

Back during the Zhen Clan tournament, he had met one of Bellona's cousins, who was looking to recruit the Zhen Clan to assist in her succession war. Needless to say, this was a similar story but a different cousin entirely.

=Evidently, your fiancee's succession war has undergone some interesting developments since she had last mentioned it to you. Because only someone truly desperate would want to acquire that much [Malevolent Gold].=

"Interesting, my ass!"

When Thomas Lee became Zhen Liu, one of the first things he ended up doing under his new name, was exposing the fact that his ass was almost assassinated by the machinations of a rival local family at the time known as the Wolfe Family.

A lot of things happened, a war broke out, and the Zhen Clan became the only and one hegemon in Stone Claw City after kicking out the Wolfe Family and securing an alliance with the Corrada Family through marriage between their eldest scions.

The last time Zhen Liu had checked with Zhen Hai about how that relationship was going, he was told that they were doing well.

But back to the matter at hand, Zhen Liu quickly tore through the window describing the Wolfe Family member and realized it was actually pertaining to the de Howlite household from which the Wolfe Family was an offshoot from.

If his memory served him right, the survivors of that family war went running to the main family in search of refuge and was more or less accepted.

Whether their names appearing in the mines' record indicated internal strife or something else entirely was unclear.

This was also case with the third and final unexpected data entry.

"Jinju Zhong Go? I don't think Jinju Ren ever mentioned this guy," Zhen Liu commented to the two curator spirits.

"A direct bloodline son of a literal dragon emperor is working as a middle class bureaucrat...by choice?" Zhen Liu repeated as soon as that information fully digested in his head. "Okay, that's suspicious as fuck."

From what Zhen Liu remember about Jinju Ren's family, it was a bit of nepo baby hellscape.

A lot of her half siblings had official government jobs in the empire, decently high ranked ones too, but not all of them were actually that accomplished or memorable.

As such, one of these Pearl Scale descendants being this low on the totem pole was a bit suspicious.

Maybe he just wanted a simple life, maybe he was planning something devious, either way the fact that this guy was in the ledger was... suspicious.

"And all of these faces are going to be in Rainbowden...great..."