Hua's tone was full of helplessness. "Because Akivili said the potted plants on the train just won't stay alive."
Zero, "..."
So he took Shuhu along… to have the Abundance's Messenger help save the plants?
Apparently, his relationship with Akivili wasn't just some superficial "plastic best-friendship" after all.
In some ways, they were really quite alike.
Zero thought for a while, and an absurd guess came to mind.
Could it be that when Akivili used some kind of resurrection item, Shuhu got revived too?
'Akivili, stop reviving random things, please!'
'No wonder Hua brought up that Messenger specifically.'
If the little creature was resurrected through some strange item, what if it mutated?
And if even the colossi couldn't kill it, then it would end up being his job as the "High-Dimensional Invader" to take care of it.
Once he'd figured everything out, Zero was speechless for a moment. He didn't refuse, and simply accepted the mess Akivili had left behind.
"Fine. We'll talk about it when you've caught the fish. But it can't interfere with my work at the Divination Commission."
As long as it didn't disrupt his ordinary life, he didn't mind helping out a little.
Hua agreed without hesitation, saying she'd use Zero's name to lure the target onto some desolate, uninhabited planet.
Just before hanging up, Zero asked Hua for Jingliu's birth date and time.
Hua, without the slightest mercy, assumed the worst with clear malice. "What do you want it for? Casting a love charm?"
Zero, "...I want to have our birth charts matched."
He held back for a long while, then gritted his teeth. "That love charm you're talking about is not the same thing as what I'm doing, okay?!"
Hua asked, "Earlier, I said I'd grant you one favor. Are you sure you want to use it on Jingliu's birth chart?"
"Of course."
A promise made in the name of the current Marshal, naturally, the sooner Hua used it up, the better.
It was, without question, the most cost-effective choice.
Zero was very satisfied.
Looks like he'd trained a pretty decent successor after all.
Once Hua agreed, Zero hung up decisively, took leave from his superior in the archives, and then lay down comfortably and fell asleep.
Hua, who had originally been waiting for news from Luofu, had no hope of sleeping after that call.
Tengxiao had already told Zero the truth about Cangcheng. When Zero didn't reply for a long time, he immediately went to Hua to apologize.
Hua didn't say much, she comforted him a little, then waited for word from Luofu.
Just as she'd expected, Zero hadn't fallen into Mara state.
A man who could resist it for thousands of years, how could he possibly succumb now?
In most cases, it was everyone else who ended up suffering instead.
After the call, Hua finally felt relieved.
Zero was always perfectly gentlemanly toward women, that part she trusted. But if this was his first time falling in love… she wasn't so sure anymore.
On one side was the Swordmaster of Luofu; on the other, a guardian who had gradually regained his humanity. Even she found the situation difficult.
That was why she'd specifically mentioned "love charms", to stop him from acting on impulse and doing something he'd regret later.
Apparently, no matter how decisive a person might be in ordinary matters, when faced with someone they care about, even they could hesitate and waver.
As someone skilled in divination and a Divination Commission officer herself, how could he not know how to match birth charts?
Saying he wanted to "find someone to do it" was really just an excuse, he was subconsciously resisting a bad result.
Hua sighed, found the information she'd already gathered on Jingliu, and sent both her and Zero's birth details to the Diviners on the Jade Pavilion Xianzhou.
Late that night, she thought back on the past.
Akivili, the Aeon most sympathetic toward humans, had once avoided Zero and come to Hua instead.
The man with gray hair and golden eyes looked at her and said, "Aha says his goal is doomed to fail."
Hua looked into those empty eyes, so much like Zero's, and replied, "He also said that the words of 'Lord of Joy' are the least reliable of all."
"Aha... that guy just loves to have fun. What he wants to see is the look on someone's face after they've struggled for thousands of years, only to end up with nothing."
Akivili blinked, frowning slightly, speaking in a troubled tone.
"But… he'll die, won't he? He'll definitely die. But how could someone like him die?"
After thinking for a while, Akivili smiled warmly and said, "I could knock him out, and then you could use 'Featherdust.' How about that?"
Mara state, the problem that had plagued the people of the Xianzhou for thousands of years, also tormented Zero.
In a sense, Mara state came from too many memories, centuries of accumulated negative emotion that a person couldn't bear.
And Featherdust was an artifact that could manipulate consciousness, erasing memory.
The Aeon spoke as if this were the most casual thing in the world.
As if he weren't suggesting to deny that man his release.
Hua shook her head. "I don't have Featherdust."
The artifact was in his possession; Hua could only use it when he willingly handed it over.
Featherdust could, to some extent, solve the problem of Mara state.
He, as its holder, knew that better than anyone, he just refused to use it.
Akivili paused, then suddenly understood. "Right, he has it. Then there's no helping it."
When a body is wounded, there's always hope for healing, with medicine, doctors, time, it can be restored.
But when a heart dies… there's no saving it.
Both Akivili and Hua knew that truth well.
Only a few people knew that the fearsome Xianzhou Marshal was obsessed with one thing.
And that one thing was far more important than Hua, the Strategist-General, all his subordinates, or even the entire Xianzhou Alliance.
Yet he kept putting it off, waiting for his successor to appear.
Once he'd found a suitable one, he tried to teach Hua, to help her become a proper leader.
Of course, from Hua's point of view, he'd failed.
Who gives a ten-year-old child picture books meant for three-to-six-year-olds? Clearly, he was the one who needed basic education, to fix his moral compass!
He even gave her a jade transmitter with parental controls and spending limits…
And when he saw certain jokes online, he'd take them personally, project them onto Hua, and when she came home from school, he'd scold her in outrage,
"You can't date poor boys! And definitely don't run a Xianzhou with one! Don't you dare get tricked by some yellow-haired kid on a scooter!"
Ten-year-old Hua, "..."
A completely unqualified mentor, but, as a Xianzhou Marshal, an unquestionably qualified one.
He did everything he should and could do, and before leaving, he passed the torch to Hua.
Unfortunately, no one expected that after the news of his death spread through the Xianzhou and the obituary was published, over a thousand researchers would die the same day.
That group, the finest handpicked by the former Marshal himself, was gone.
Even now, the Xianzhou Alliance still hadn't fully recovered from that shadow.
In a way, he'd truly left her a colossal mess to deal with.
Fortunately, this Zero, in this life, finally had something anchoring him, a person who could hold him back.
Hua sighed and sent over Jingliu's birth details.
It seemed that as a strategist, she was destined to never get any rest.
———
When Zero woke up, the first thing he did was grab his jade transmitter.
He sent seven figures' worth of credits to Yingxing, urging him to hurry up and finish crafting the hairpin.
After pestering Yingxing, he saw Hua's earlier message with the birth details, and logged onto the forum.
He glanced through other users' post titles, then followed their format and posted one himself.
[Matching Birth Charts, Payment: 100]
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