Outside a one-way mirror interrogation room.
The Divine Child looked at Suzuki sitting on a chair inside the room answering questions, his expression exceptionally cold.
The Director of the Peace Officer Headquarters stood stiffly beside him, his body slightly bowed, not daring to look directly into the Divine Child's eyes.
"...In short, she also doesn't know why the Shadow let her go. Moreover, she didn't obtain any valuable intelligence. Her [Profiling] ability completely failed when used directly on the Shadow, likely because the other party's Mind Power Upper Limit far exceeds hers..."
"Are you sure she's not lying?" the Divine Child asked.
"We used lie-detection type items during the interrogation process, there shouldn't be any issues. I speculate..."
The Director hesitated, unsure whether he should speak.
"You want to say it's because the Shadow was rciful and let her go."
"Well... after all, she has no combat power, just a support personnel. Even on the battlefield, roles like 'dics' would receive preferential treatnt after being captured, right."
"Wrong. Anyone within the enemy camp, regardless of gender or age, must not be spared." The Divine Child glanced at him. "With such thinking, you are no longer suited to manage the Peace Officer Headquarters. Take a rest for a while, I will arrange for soone else to take over the Headquarters."
"...Yes."
The Divine Child stripped the Director of his position with just a single sentence. This was not strange; he wielded such imnse power.
After the Director left, the Divine Child spoke, "Shin."
"Master."
A voice sounded from beside him, and then a masked person materialized out of thin air, kneeling on one knee before the Divine Child.
This person actually possessed the ability to beco invisible.
"Once the questioning here is finished, take the person back to my official residence. You will interrogate her again."
"Yes."
"Even if we can't dig out useful intelligence from her, at least one thing can be confird... the enemy is indeed the Shadow. Hah." The Divine Child let out a cold laugh.
"Now Beixing can't pretend they don't know. They just enacted laws targeting Ascendants, and imdiately after, their own country's Shadow cos to a Human Consortium mber state to plunder and kill... At the next Human Consortium eting, let our representative directly question them. I want to see how Beixing tries to explain this."
The Divine Child had already decided that even if he couldn't deal with the Shadow for now, he could redirect the trouble elsewhere.
The Human Consortium's charter is about unity, mutual assistance, and non-aggression. Now that Sakura Prayer Country and Beixing are both Human Consortium mber states, a Beixing person coming to Sakura Prayer to kill provides the perfect leverage to attack the Beixing authorities.
"I'm going back."
"Yes."
The masked person called "Shin" vanished into invisibility.
...
"According to the confession of that Action Team Commander, the place where the Divine Child lives is called the Falling Sakura Official Residence."
Guan Tong and Uenoshi were currently sorting through the intelligence obtained from the previous interrogation.
A tablet displayed a map of the entire Banzhen City.
"Its location is west of Banzhen, converted from a temple that originally belonged to Andai State."
Guan Tong found the specific location and zood in to view the picture.
It was a three-story small building constructed from brown wooden logs. The main gate was carved with intricate, intertwined serpent patterns. Just looking at the picture made it seem very eerie.
"Speaking of which, I've been curious about sothing before." Guan Tong looked at the serpent patterns on the gate and asked Uenoshi.
"In your Sakura Prayer myths, isn't the Yamata no Orochi an evil existence? Why would this Divine Child, as your leader, have serpent patterns carved on his residence's gate? And why did he make you use the 'Yamata' surna?"
Uenoshi said, "The serpent pattern is the family crest of the Divine Child's clan. As for making
use this surna... it's probably because of the scales that appeared on my body."
"I can understand the forr. But the latter... what kind of person gives a subordinate an evil na from mythology?"
"...I don't understand either. He seems to believe I have inherited the bloodline of the Yamata no Orochi, but the na of this bloodline is clearly [Yoroi]."
Uenoshi had ntioned this before. Guan Tong nodded.
"Forget it. Judging by this Divine Child's actions, perhaps their family really are descendants of the evil great serpent—of course, I don't believe there's a real legendary great serpent. The 'Yamata' surna is likely just the na of an extrely vicious murderer or bandit from ancient tis."
Originally just a person's na, but through repeated misrepresentation beca the na of a mythical creature—this situation has occurred in many countries.
Uenoshi looked at the picture of the official residence. "What do you plan to do?"
"The residence is definitely protected by a barrier that defends against Mind Power intrusion. Infiltration is unlikely."
Guan Tong could infiltrate the administrative building because that place was crowded and chaotic. But a family residence like this, where everyone knows each other—a stranger appearing would trigger an alarm imdiately.
"We can only assault it head-on."
"..."
Although Uenoshi hadn't interacted much with Guan Tong, she felt this didn't seem like his style.
Indeed, Guan Tong usually preferred to utilize the Shadow's characteristics, engaging in infiltration-style asymtric warfare. He would secure victory before the enemy even understood what was happening.
This ti was different.
He believed the Divine Child would definitely be on guard against infiltration. Attacking head-on at this ti would actually be more likely to catch the other party off guard.
"I'll handle breaking in. After entering, you deal with the miscellaneous personnel. I'll handle the Divine Child personally."
"When do you plan to act?"
"Tomorrow night."
Uenoshi was slightly startled. "So soon?"
She originally thought Guan Tong would plan carefully, with the action taking place in a week or even half a month. She didn't expect him to act tomorrow.
"For sothing that must be done, I don't like to delay." Guan Tong looked at her. "Rest well today and prepare."
He finished speaking and walked out of the room.
Uenoshi sat down, thinking about the events of the past few days, feeling everything was moving too fast.
Moreover, she truly admired the Shadow's courage.
Even though Sakura Prayer Country's holand sank due to the earthquake rules, and aside from personnel transfers, various advanced equipnt, weapons, and ammunition sank to the bottom of the sea, causing the national power to plumt... it still hadn't collapsed; the state system remained.
Under these circumstances, for the Shadow to dare to take action against the Divine Child, the person with the greatest power in Sakura Prayer, completely disregarding the consequences... not many would even consider it...
She felt that even the Divine Child himself probably didn't think the Shadow would dare to attack his residence.
What the outco would be, she didn't know. She only knew that since she had made an agreent with the Shadow, she could only see it through to the end.
...
Alone in his room, Guan Tong considered the details of tomorrow's operation.
Since it was a frontal assault, he couldn't conserve Mind Power.
Directly use the small space to break through the barrier defense, then release the Shadow to find the Divine Child in the shortest ti possible.
Then...
"Use Body Swap to go over and finish him off directly."
Guan Tong believed that the more complex the plan, the more prone it was to errors and failure.
Therefore, his plan was extrely simple: once he confird he found the Divine Child, imdiately use Body Swap to "teleport" over, then utilize the destructive power of the small space to instantly kill him.
Many characteristics of his Shadow ability might have already been exposed.
But the "Shadow Domain small space" had not yet had any intelligence leaked.
Without sparing Mind Power expenditure, using this killing move in conjunction with Body Swap could completely achieve taking an enemy's life in an instant.
"If things go smoothly, the fight should end very quickly. As for the consequences..."
Whether it was subsequent large-scale pursuit by Sakura Prayer, or whatever asures the Beixing authorities might take against him because of this, he didn't really care.
If he worried about these things and let an enemy who wanted to kill him go unchecked, that would violate his true nature. He would no longer be himself.
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