“Captain, thank goodness for your warning, otherwise we nearly—” Cheng Xubo started to speak, but he cut himself off the moment he realized Shen Jiyue was sitting right there.

Having only seen Shen Jiyue once before—and back then, half of the man’s face had been a cluster of blistered eyes—Cheng Xubo didn’t have a strong impression of his true features. Assuming he was just another ordinary Energy Zone employee, Cheng Xubo fell silent, terrified of leaking intelligence.

Chi Lian, however, had a much sharper eye for faces. She studied Shen Jiyue’s profile and leaned in to whisper in Mu Sichen’s ear: “Is he…?”

“Yes,” Shen Jiyue said plainly.

With the three of them being so blatantly suspicious, Shen Jiyue would have had to be deaf and blind not to notice their “secret” huddle.

“Is… is what?” Chi Lian asked, sounding guilty now that her whispering had been caught.

“I am Shen Jiyue,” he said with a small smile. “And though I can hardly believe my eyes, I assume you three are Mu Sichen, the ‘Fake Doctor’ Ke Yi, and the ‘Family Member’ Cheng Xubo.”

Since he was being so forthright, Mu Sichen saw no point in maintaining the charade. He nodded sheepishly. “I can’t believe you recognized us.”

“When you were sitting here alone, I thought you seemed like Mu Sichen, despite the face. I just wasn’t sure,” Shen Jiyue explained. “But when the three of you gathered… well, this combination is far too unique. Anyone familiar with you would spot it instantly.”

Cheng Xubo leaned toward Mu Sichen, whispering in a volume that Shen Jiyue could definitely hear: “Captain, is this pretty boy stalking us? First the sanitarium, now the factory. Why is he everywhere we go?”

Shen Jiyue looked exasperated. “Let’s be reasonable. There is such a thing as ‘first come, first served.’ Whether it was the sanitarium or this factory, I was here long before you.”

“Captain, I don’t think we can trust this guy,” Cheng Xubo muttered, eyeing Shen Jiyue’s thick, enviable head of hair with a hostility that suggested his suspicion might be slightly personal.

Mu Sichen agreed that they shouldn’t hand out trust easily this time. However, their previous collaboration had been successful, and he couldn’t be as bluntly rude as Cheng Xubo.

Shen Jiyue, ever the pragmatist, spoke up: “I won’t be working with you this time, Mu Sichen. I originally thought you and Yao Wangping were from the same town, sent here to destroy the Pillars for Xiangping. But in the end… you took the Pillar for yourself. Which town are you actually from?”

“I can’t say,” Mu Sichen replied. “How is it that you aren’t on the wanted list?”

“Given the circumstances back then, I wouldn’t have been seen as your ally,” Shen Jiyue said.

Strictly speaking, Shen Jiyue’s only act had been transferring the Blister-Eyes to Mu Sichen to help him drain Big Eye’s power. To an outside observer, his actions looked like those of a model patient: sacrificing a family member to ensure his own safety.

“True enough,” Mu Sichen nodded. “Then we’ll go our separate ways. Farewell.”

He stood to leave, but Shen Jiyue called out: “Wait. Even if we aren’t allies, I’ll give you a warning for old time’s sake: do not touch those Energy Pods again. This is your first day, right? If you’ve only pressed the button once, you’ve lost something, but it’s still salvageable. Just don’t do it again.”

“Did you press it? How many times?” Mu Sichen asked.

Shen Jiyue paused, a look of realization dawning on him. “Ah, judging by your tone, you already know the pods run on emotion. I suppose I don’t need to worry about you after all—in more ways than one.”

Mu Sichen halted. He felt there was a hidden layer to Shen Jiyue’s words. He sat back down and said, “We might not be partners, but we can still trade. Tell me what you know. You can ask me what I’m allowed to say, or I can do a favor for you.”

“A trade works,” Shen Jiyue agreed. “I’ll ask my question first, then give you the intel.”

Mu Sichen nodded. “Go ahead.”

“I initially assumed the three of you were only able to walk around freely because you’d pressed the button and sacrificed a minor emotion,” Shen Jiyue said. “But you seem too composed for that. How did you evade the work? And don’t give me some lame excuse about knocking out the supervisors. This factory is the domain of the Double-Pupil Apostle. The underlying logic here is that under the gaze of the ‘Sky Eye,’ all are equal. By that rule, no matter how strong you are, your power is split in half and shared with your supervisor. You shouldn’t have been able to win a straight fight.”

Mu Sichen considered this. At the sanitarium, Shen Jiyue had already seen his pickaxe, Chi Lian’s “Cut and Paste” ability, and Cheng Xubo’s spatial manipulation. There was no harm in revealing a bit more.

“I stole the supervisor’s emotions,” Mu Sichen said, then gestured for the others to explain their methods.

Chi Lian spoke first. “My ability can only ‘cut’ surface-level things, nothing as abstract as a feeling. But I can cut buttons.”

Mu Sichen looked at her, surprised. He had been worried about how they would manage to ambush their guards, but Chi Lian had been clever.

“The ‘Inject Energy’ button looks just like a button on a game controller,” she continued. “I secretly cut the button off the pod, then asked the guard to bring me a game console. I pasted the pod’s button onto the controller. I told him I’d work, but only if he showed me how to play first since I wasn’t allowed to touch the console until my shift was over. He ‘demonstrated’ the controls for me, pressed the button a bunch of times, and ended up totally mindless.”

It was a far more elegant solution than Mu Sichen’s brute-force robbery. He gave her a thumbs-up, ignoring the dull throb in his broken arm.

Chi Lian beamed, then leaned in and whispered, “I still had to use your… you-know-what.”

Mu Sichen sighed. Right. His energy points were draining again.

Then it was Cheng Xubo’s turn. He looked a bit worse for wear—bruised and swollen from what clearly had been a messy brawl. “I couldn’t beat my supervisor in a fair fight, but I managed to trap him under a cart. He was struggling like crazy and almost escaped in thirty seconds. But then my ability leveled up. I can now swap a tiny, tiny amount of space from inside the cart to the outside—just about the size of a finger. It’s pretty useless, usually.”

“I swapped the supervisor’s finger out,” Cheng Xubo explained. “I lay in the pod and let his own flailing finger press the button for me.”

Naturally, he had let the finger keep pressing until the supervisor lost the will to fight.

Shen Jiyue looked impressed. “Your abilities are quite unique. Displacement… transfer? I don’t know of any Lord in the known towns who possesses power like that. Which town did you say you were from?”

Mu Sichen dodged the question. “We have our own faith. I’ve answered your question; now, how about that intel?”

“I feel like I’m getting the short end of this deal,” Shen Jiyue sighed. “But since you purified me last time, I’ll give you a bonus. Since you haven’t lost your emotions, I don’t need to warn you about that. But remember: we didn’t come here to stay safe. we came for the Pillar. And if you don’t lose your emotions, you’ll never get close to it.”

Mu Sichen listened intently. Shen Jiyue understood the Pillars better than anyone; he was the one who had explained that the sanitarium’s Pillar fed on despair.

“The Pillar here is actually easier to find,” Shen Jiyue continued. “Just think about the flow of energy. Where does it all end up?”

“The energy flows to the Assembly Zone,” Chi Lian said. “Is the Pillar there?”

Shen Jiyue shook his head. “That’s all the free info I have. You’ll have to find the rest yourselves.”

“I’ve got it,” Mu Sichen interrupted. “It’s in the Breeding Grounds.”

Shen Jiyue’s eyes sparked with genuine admiration. “I didn’t think I’d given away that much. How did you guess?”

“You said you didn’t need to worry about me ‘in more ways than one,'” Mu Sichen explained. “I assume one way was me being corrupted, and the other was me stealing the Pillar. That implies that if I don’t lose my emotions, I can’t get near it. The factory’s hierarchy goes Energy-Assembly-Breeding. In the Energy Zone, you lose your feelings. In the Assembly Zone, you lose whatever’s left—your soul. Therefore, the Breeding Grounds must be the final destination for those souls. That’s where the energy is harvested. That’s where the Pillar is. By refusing to press the button, we’ve effectively locked ourselves out of the lower levels.”

Shen Jiyue sighed. “I really didn’t mean to reveal that much. You’re far too good at connecting the dots.”

“Just analyzing the evidence,” Mu Sichen said.

“Most people can’t analyze like that,” Shen Jiyue said with a trace of regret. “It’s a shame we can’t work together.”

“But if we have to lose our emotions to reach it,” Chi Lian said, sounding hopeless, “even if we have the mental strength to resist corruption, would we even have the will to fight if we end up like those hollow workers in Assembly?”

“That is the problem you have to solve,” Shen Jiyue said, adjusting his badge. “Yao Wangping was assigned to Assembly the moment he entered the plant. He should be reaching the Pillar very soon.”

Mu Sichen looked at Shen Jiyue’s mosaic-like badge. He guessed the man had intentionally partitioned his own emotions just to gain access to the lower levels. Shen Jiyue had chosen the path of self-destruction once again.

As for Yao Wangping—the man was so cold and devoid of natural emotion that he hadn’t even qualified for the Energy Zone. It had saved him a lot of time.

“Wasn’t Yao Wangping wanted too?” Cheng Xubo asked. “How did he get in? Did he get a new face?”

“He didn’t need a new face,” Shen Jiyue said darkly. “He just destroyed his old one.”

“Even then, they’d recognize him,” Chi Lian argued.

“Not if you destroy every identifying feature on your body,” Shen Jiyue said.

“Wouldn’t a mangled person attract more suspicion?” Cheng Xubo countered. “If I were a guard and saw a man with no face, I’d investigate him twice as hard.”

“Not if he grafted someone else’s eyes into the wounds,” Shen Jiyue countered.

Chi Lian gasped. “People would just think he was a fanatic follower of Big Eye. No one would suspect a ‘Depraved’ soul of going that far. But who’s eyes did he use?”

“Many,” Shen Jiyue sighed. “From fallen comrades, from townspeople… even from those who hid in their rooms until they went mad. People like that usually end up with quite a few extra eyes.”

Mu Sichen suddenly thought of the room he had first spawned in—the diary of the man who went mad waiting for a God who never came, only to vanish into thin air.

He realized he still didn’t like the cold, sacrificial way Qin Zhou’s followers fought.

Author’s Note:

What Mu Sichen said: He still doesn’t like the cold, sacrificial way Qin Zhou’s followers fight.

What Qin Zhou heard: He still doesn’t like Qin Zhou.

The Octopus is currently sobbing; it cannot be consoled.