Pov: Vik
By the time Lina finished her tenth lap around the artificial pond, her tongue was practically hanging out like a dehydrated dog's, while Chintu—still in his chubby, three-foot-tall toddler form—happily waddled past her for his eleventh lap without breaking a sweat.
"Master... my legs... have lost connection to my soul sea..." Lina wheezed, collapsing face-first onto the soft emerald grass beside Noah's neatly stacked pile of split iron-bark logs.
"Your soul sea is fine; your cardiovascular endurance is just pathetic," I replied mildly, walking out of the western branch with Pushpa draped lazily across my shoulders. "Get up and wash your face. Your physical class is over. Now it's time for your practical homework."
At the mention of "practical homework," Lina's head snapped up from the grass, her exhaustion magically vanishing as her silver-tipped hair bounced. "Are we testing the plasma capacitors on my spear?!"
"Better," I said, gesturing for Noah, Roman, and Lu Xiaoran—who had just walked out from the dining hall—to gather around the stone courtyard table. "We are going to write three letters."
Lu Xiaoran blinked, leaning against his broadblade scabbard. "Letters, Master? Like ransom notes? Because if we're extorting Governor Vance for Luther's return, I think we should ask for at least ten million spirit stones and a new hover-car."
"Only small-time thugs extort money for hostages, Xiaoran," I sighed, taking a seat on the stone bench and setting Pushpa down on the tabletop, where she immediately curled into a neat black loaf. "A scholar uses hostages to shape public discourse."
With a flick of my wrist, I pulled seven unconscious figures out of my spatial storage and the holding cells, dropping them onto the grass in a neat row.
Six of them were the blood-aproned rogue alchemists Roman had bound with spirit-suppression cord down in Ruby's sewer laboratory. The seventh, dressed in wrinkled, sweat-stained silk clothes, was our dear blonde acquaintance from the continental cruiser: Luther.
Noah's crimson eyes narrowed slightly as he looked down at Luther, though his breathing remained as steady as bedrock. "Master, how do we use Luther to bait three other Chosen Ones?"
"To bait a fish, you have to use the specific worm it likes to eat," I explained, holding up three fingers. "First, let's look at Ye Xiao—the 'Rising Dragon' of the Heavenly Sword Pavilion. According to the underground records, he is a righteous-path sword fanatic who hates inner-sect corruption and 'false fairies' who practice demonic arts. Right now, the Heavenly Sword Pavilion's elders are protecting Ruby because she bribes them with high-tier manuals and puts on the act of a pure, untainted genius."
"So if we send the six lab technicians and Lina's video recordings of Ruby's flesh-forging vats to the Heavenly Sword Pavilion..." Roman rumbled thoughtfully.
"The corrupt elders would just bury the evidence to protect their golden goose," I interrupted, shaking my head. "Which is why we don't send it to the elders. We drop two of these rogue alchemists, along with a physical projection crystal of the human dissection tables, directly into Ye Xiao's private sword cave—and we make sure the delivery happens right in front of the outer-sect disciples who worship him."
Lu Xiaoran's eyes lit up with a wicked grin. "If the righteous protagonist gets handed undeniable proof that his sect's newest 'Prismatic Fairy' is cutting open mortals in a sewer, his hero complex won't let him sit still! Even if the elders tell him to back off, he'll storm West Oak City himself to 'cleanse the sect's honor'!"
"One tiger baited," I nodded. "Now for the second one: the Gu Master in the southern marshes. A ruthless insect cultivator doesn't care about justice or dead mortals. If you tell him Ruby is evil, he'll probably applaud her. So, what does a Gu Master care about?"
"Resources," Lina answered instantly, adjusting her wire-rimmed glasses. "Specifically, high-density biological essence and mutated bloodlines to feed his insects."
"Correct," I smiled. "So we take two more of Ruby's alchemists, plant a slightly altered memory in their heads using the basic illusion layer of my Maya Manifestation technique, and dump them at the border of Blackwater Province. When the Gu Master's bugs catch them and he searches their minds, he won't just learn about Ruby's lab—he will 'discover' that Ruby's obsidian ring contains a half-refined Immortal-Grade Blood-Devouring Mother Gu that she stole from an ancient ruin, and that she is currently weak after suffering a backlash from a failed experiment."
[System: Host, that is pure evil! A Gu Master hearing that a weakened 5th-circle mage is holding an Immortal-Grade Mother Gu is like waving raw steak in front of a starving piranha!]
'Shut up, chatbot, I'm not finished yet,' I replied mentally before turning my gaze to Lina.
"And finally, the third target," I said, my voice dropping half an octave as I looked at my youngest disciple. "The boy on the four-legged mountain behemoth who destroyed the Rosewell estate."
Lina's small hands tightened into fists at her sides. The playful mad-scientist sparkle in her eyes vanished, replaced by a cold, focused determination. "Master... how do we lure him to West Oak City?"
"That boy is arrogant," I said calmly, recalling the vision of the black-haired, red-eyed youth standing atop his moving castle. "When I devoured his Mind Flayer inside your soul sea, his system notified him that an 'unknown entity' severed his control over your fate. Right now, he knows someone ruined his curse, and his pride won't let him ignore a rival who can erase his monsters."
I nudged the unconscious Luther with the toe of my boot.
"Luther here is the young master of a wealthy family in West Oak City that works closely with Governor Vance and Ruby. Tonight, I am going to rewrite Luther's memories of the last three weeks. In his mind, he was never captured by us on a cruise ship. Instead, he was secretly hired by 'Sect Master Ruby' to transport a captured girl named Lina Rosewell to West Oak City—where Ruby personally devoured the Mind Flayer inside Lina's head using her obsidian ring, mocked the 'pathetic monster-creator' who made it, and bragged that her Apex Flesh-Forge Protocol will soon dissect his mountain behemoth to turn it into a handbag."
Silence fell over the courtyard.
Lu Xiaoran slowly took a step backward, looking at me as if I had just grown a second head. Roman coughed into his fist. Even Chintu stopped chewing on a stray piece of iron-bark wood and blinked his giant amber eyes at me.
[System: ...Host. Turning a man's prized mountain behemoth into a handbag? Do you have any idea how fragile a Chosen One's ego is?! The moment that monster-boy intercepts Luther and reads that memory, he is going to march every colossal giant he owns straight through the gates of West Oak City!]
"That is the general idea," I said pleasantly, adjusting my spectacles. "Lina, attach three microscopic untraceable signal relays to the hems of their clothes so we can watch the fireworks from here. Roman, prepare the long-range spatial catapult on the Great White. We have three special packages to mail before midnight."
"Yes, Master!" Lina and Roman answered in unison, their faces glowing with ruthless efficiency.
"What about me and Xiaoran, Master?" Noah asked, stepping forward eagerly. "Should we set up ambushes along the highways outside West Oak City?"
"Ambush?" I looked at Noah as if he had just failed basic addition. "Noah, when three rabid tigers are charging toward a wolf's den to tear each other apart, why on earth would you stand in the middle of the road?"
I picked Pushpa up from the stone table, cradling her warm, purring body in the crook of my arm.
"Once the packages are delivered, nobody sets a single foot in West Oak City," I ordered firmly. "You four are going straight into the gravity chambers to cultivate. When Ye Xiao's flying swords, the Gu Master's insect tide, and the mountain behemoth's giants crash into Ruby's flesh-lab, we are going to sit right here, eat Roman's lotus soup, and watch their luck halos beat each other into critical condition on the big screen."
Pushpa let out a soft, sleepy mew, resting her chin on my forearm as if she couldn't agree more.
"After all," I smiled, turning back toward the glowing doors of Anonymous Hall, "the hardest part of being a mastermind is knowing when to sit back and let the protagonists do the heavy lifting."