Three days after the assassination operation ended, sowhere near the border between Antu City and Beixing.
Guan Tong handed a data USB drive to Uenoshi.
"This contains the local data stolen by Mask's Trojan program. You can forward it to Mask for analysis. If there's information about your parents in the local data, retrieving it is just a matter of ti."
His agreent with Uenoshi was mutual assistance.
After the assassination of the Divine Child ended, Guan Tong took advantage of the internal chaos in Sakura Prayer Country to infiltrate the administrative building again. He implanted the Trojan program developed by Mask into the internal local area network and stole the local data.
"Thank you." Uenoshi took the USB drive, her face showing a hint of hesitation.
Seeing her like this, Guan Tong asked, "Do you have sothing you want to say?"
"Did you really... kill the Divine Child?"
"I completely destroyed his head."
To ensure a one-hit kill, Guan Tong specifically didn't choose other body parts, but targeted the head.
He didn't believe soone could survive after their brain was completely devoured by the small space.
Moreover, the subsequent chaos in Sakura Prayer's administrative building, with all Peace Officers mobilized for a city-wide manhunt, also seed like the behavior following the death of the supre leader.
"What? Do you feel sothing is off?" Guan Tong asked.
Uenoshi shook her head. "I just feel that the Divine Child was always very cautious, yet now he died so simply..."
Simple? Not necessarily.
Guan Tong thought to himself, his Body Swap
small space attack was practically a sure-kill against enemies who didn't know the intelligence.
No matter how well defended you were, facing an enemy who could almost instantly teleport to your side while carrying an attack that could destroy any defensive item would make anyone extrely passive.
However...
Guan Tong rembered that ninja-like Divine Child guard who could turn invisible. That guy's performance at the ti was indeed sowhat strange.
"Anyway, thank you for your help," Uenoshi said. "I'll communicate with Mask later and commission him to search the data. If I find information about my parents, I'll go confirm it myself."
"Mhm." Guan Tong nodded. "Do you rember what I said before about an opportunity?"
Uenoshi rembered. It was a topic Guan Tong briefly ntioned before the assassination of the Divine Child but didn't elaborate on.
"I rember."
"This opportunity is related to my ultimate goal."
"Ultimate goal?"
"That is to explore the truth behind this series of mysteries: the Doomsday Rules, the Fire Thief, Mind Power, Doomsday Operations, and so on."
Guan Tong added in his heart: And my transmigration is included as well.
At this point, he didn't believe his transmigration was without cause. His transmigration, including his body "rejuvenating" back to eighteen years old, and even the [Wordless Book] he possessed that could to so extent resist the Doomsday Rules—these must all be for so reason.
This reason was very likely connected to the truth about the Fire Thief.
"...Your goal is quite ambitious."
"I don't know if I can achieve this goal by myself alone," Guan Tong said. "Especially as ti progresses and the rule difficulty increases, humanity will beco increasingly passive. So, not long ago, I had the idea of finding so like-minded people to work toward this goal together."
"Exploring the truth must also be sothing your Beixing officials want to do. Why don't you join them? With your strength, you'd definitely receive the most favorable treatnt," Uenoshi asked.
"I believe in the collective of the official organization, but that doesn't an I believe in every individual within that collective."
Guan Tong said, "In any organization, there will be good people, bad people, and people who consider their own interests. My personality is quite straightforward. I don't want to participate in overly complex collectives. I just want to find so people I can trust and move toward the goal."
People like Jiang Lanying wouldn't be the first nor the last. Rather than joining a massive, bloated large organization and having to identify such people's existence and outwit them, Guan Tong preferred to build a small organization from scratch himself.
Given the characteristic of this era where individual power was gradually growing, this small organization didn't need many people. It didn't even need every mber to be incredibly strong.
Guan Tong only had two selection criteria.
First, the person must be trustworthy, with a fundantally good rather than evil character.
Second, the person must have the determination to explore the truth. Only with aligned goals could everyone's efforts be directed in the sa direction.
Facing Guan Tong's expressed invitation intent now, Uenoshi shook her head.
"If you think I'm such a person... I'm sorry. I haven't thought about exploring the truth. What I want to do is just find my parents. If they're still alive, I want to ask them face-to-face why they abandoned ."
"And then?"
"And then..." Uenoshi looked confusedly at the USB drive in her hand. "I might die. There's nothing in this world I'm attached to."
"..."
Guan Tong was silent for a mont. The shadow covering his face slowly dissipated, revealing his true appearance.
Uenoshi looked at his face, sowhat surprised that he would do this.
"My real na is Guan Tong. If you change your mind in the future, you can send
a private ssage on Ascendant Ho."
Seeing Uenoshi's expression, Guan Tong shrugged. "Don't look at
like that. Since you told
your real surna 'Uenoshi,' I think before what might be a permanent farewell, letting you know my real na isn't a big deal."
"Aren't you afraid I'll leak it? Shadow's true identity... many people in the world would want to know, right?"
"My identity will definitely be exposed sooner or later. But I don't think you would do that. It wouldn't have any aning for you, right?"
Guan Tong understood clearly that if Uenoshi coveted benefits, she wouldn't have defied Sakura Prayer's official arrangents in the first place, and none of this would have happened.
"...Thank you for your trust."
"So, is it ti to say goodbye, or should I say farewell?"
...
Once the news of "Ascendant Shadow assassinates Sakura Prayer Divine Child" was made public, it unsurprisingly beca headline news worldwide.
Sakura Prayer officials made comprehensive statents, strongly condemned the act, and stated they would definitely use the nation's full strength to pursue the matter to the end.
Additionally, they proposed that all Human Consortium mber countries issue a global warrant for Shadow under the charges of "war cris" and "cris against humanity."
Sakura Prayer officials believed that no matter how powerful Shadow was, facing the comprehensive encirclent and suppression by the Human Consortium—the current world's dominant force—he would gradually be driven into a corner with no way out.
However, after this proposal was put forward, it had not yet passed the Human Consortium's collective decision-making.
mber countries had differing opinions.
Among them, only Black Flag Country explicitly responded to Sakura Prayer's call.
Black Flag Country officials stated that Shadow's assassination act was "world-class cri" and absolutely intolerable.
But several other major countries were currently being evasive.
Beixing officials stated they were investigating the situation and would make a public statent after all circumstances were investigated clearly.
Although the Suroma Empire condemned Shadow's actions, they had not yet decided whether to issue a warrant.
The Kingdom of Xisiya stated they would wait for a detailed investigation report before making a decision, aligning with Beixing's attitude.
This incident was also widely discussed among the public. The first few pages of the Casual Chat section on Ascendant Ho were filled with related posts.
Among them were condemnation posts and angry rants from Sakura Prayer people, as well as posts from those who enjoyed watching the chaos and stirred the pot without caring about the consequences.
In one post titled "Rational Analysis of Shadow's Assassination Operation," most discussions were about the reasons.
"Personally, I think Shadow God must have had reasons for doing this. Judging from Shadow God's previous actions in several incidents, the one assassinated definitely wasn't a good person."
"You can tell from the attitudes of various countries, right? If Shadow really carried out a senseless assassination, he would have been wanted by the entire world already."
"That's not necessarily true. Shadow being able to single-handedly assassinate the Divine Child shows his strength is unimaginable. Anyone wanting to issue a warrant for him would have to weigh whether they might get assassinated too, right?"
"Other countries aren't clear, but Beixing definitely won't participate in the warrant and should even provide protection. Don't forget, without Shadow God weakening the earthquake rule disaster, how many more people would have died in Beixing? Just based on this one achievent alone, Shadow God has a get-out-of-jail-free card in Beixing."
"Get-out-of-jail-free card... Brother upstairs, what era is this, still playing that 'rits offsetting faults' ga? I advocate rewarding rits and punishing cris separately. Shadow saved many people, that's true, but it doesn't an he can do whatever he wants because of it."
"No era can truly punish cris separately. According to Beixing's newly enacted Ascendant Managent Law, just casually using an ability on the street is illegal. Then how much has Shadow violated... And the result? Officials can catch those Ascendants who use Fire Control to burn wooden boxes, but can they catch Shadow?"
"Do you think maybe Shadow God was controlled by spores? That's why he did this? I heard those addicted to spores see hallucinations."
"How could an Ascendant of Shadow's level be controlled by spores..."
"That's not necessarily true. I read what professional researchers said—spores deeply excavate human potential. The more capable a person, the higher their potential, the greater the enhancent! So the stronger the Ascendant, the more prone they are to addiction."
"Still talking about spores here? I think you all want to enter the training room."
The discussion around this incident was much larger than when Shadow caused chaos in Andai State before.
Although the nature of both incidents was similar—even the Andai State incident was more severe, with Shadow blowing up Prince Lado's entire palace... But the level of discussion wasn't on the sa scale.
This was because Sakura Prayer Country was originally a world power. Even after the earthquake rule caused its national power to plumt—not just halved, but cut off at the ankles—at least the country hadn't collapsed.
Plus, Sakura Prayer was a mber country of the Human Consortium organization. This posed a test for the Consortium: How should the entire organization respond when one mber country suffers a decapitation-style assassination attack?
Especially when the attacker is a top-tier Ascendant like Shadow. An Ascendant of this level could go anywhere in the world and was almost impossible to restrain.
If pushed to desperation, he might even run off to the chaotic region of the Tulip Federation like Lucifer did and beco a warlord leader.
Just as people were heatedly discussing the assassination incident, another major news story broke.
The Administrator of the Kingdom of Xisiya, Gutman Konya, publicly announced: The new generation Administrator of Xisiya would be succeeded by his daughter, Yelanka Konya.
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