It had long since ceased to be any secret that the Son of Heaven, supreme leader of Wings That Shroud the Sky, was enamored of Liu Qiyue, and that he and the Divine Domain Pact’s Son of God had been contending over her both openly and in the dark, each of them convinced that beating the other was all it would take to carry the beauty home. And yet Wings That Shroud the Sky had released this Chamber of Commerce news hard on the heels of the July Chamber’s, with every appearance of setting itself directly against her — which left people marveling at the astonishing speed of it and, at the same time, unable to help wondering. If he was enamored of Liu Qiyue, then surely he ought to be showing her every favor, or helping and pushing her along openly or covertly. In the virtual games of the past that was exactly what the Son of God and the Son of Heaven had both done. Why the reversal this time?

While people wondered and argued, they also fixed rather more of their attention on Wings That Shroud the Sky’s No. 1 Chamber. Silver equipment. At a stage of the game where owning a single piece of Bronze gear qualified a man to swagger about, this was equipment of the very topmost rank, as rare as a national treasure, and no amount of money would easily buy it. At present most Silver gear sat in the hands of the great guild bosses, serving as a mark of their strength and their standing.

An auction of two pieces of Silver equipment was more than enough to bring every player in the Huaxia region swarming in… Wings That Shroud the Sky was, after all, an enormous guild power. It seemed unusually loose and scattered at present, because the Alliance-Guild System had not formally opened and there was no guild channel — but with membership on that scale it would have been strange indeed if they did not have a few pieces of Silver gear. Those two pieces would inevitably make their Chamber’s name.

By comparison, a July Chamber that had gone quiet looked considerably dimmer… What players were looking forward to more was laying eyes on the legendary immortal maiden of the Liu family.

As for the Divine Domain Pact, not a sound came out of them in the face of Wings That Shroud the Sky’s move. An alliance’s development cannot do without Chambers of Commerce of every kind, and the Divine Domain Pact had chosen to develop land of its own steadily — which took a comparatively long stretch of time, so they had not gone the renting route first, the way Wings That Shroud the Sky had.

The Son of Heaven lay half reclined in a chair in an indolent posture, one hand resting on the arm of it, the other swirling a cup of fragrant tea under a veil of steam… When the mood is good enough, steeping the heart in wine is a pleasure beyond any other; and since this world as yet had nowhere a man could buy wine, he had to make do with tea instead, with some regret.

This was a residence he had bought in the City of Stars at enormous expense, and today was his first day living in it. The intoxicating comfort of the place told him that he was coming to like it more and more; by comparison, he had rather lost any wish to go back and breathe the real world’s filthy air.

Creak…

The door of the room was pushed gently open, and a girl in a sky-blue outer robe came in without a sound of footsteps. Eyes like stars, lips like vermilion, skin the pink-white of lotus root. A snow-pale face beautiful very nearly to the point of the uncanny — and if one absolutely had to find someone to set beside her, then perhaps only Liu Qiyue, called the most alluring woman in Huaxia. Only, against Liu Qiyue’s beauty beyond compare, which knocked the soul out of a man at a single glance, what this girl had was a hazy beauty that made a man feel, the moment he saw her, that he was seeing something unreal — because of her eyes. A pair of eyes deep to a frightening degree, deep as a bottomless sea, as a limitless field of stars, deep enough to raise a terrible desire to sink into them and be lost.

Liu Qiyue’s name traveled on her allure and her methods. This girl’s did not travel at all, and even the number of people who had truly laid eyes on her was very, very small.

“Was it you who had the Chamber of Commerce news put out?”

The girl walked quietly up in front of the Son of Heaven and sat down in the chair opposite him, her movements light and graceful. No strong light came into that quiet room, and yet her eyes shone as though a brilliant play of colored light were falling on them, giving off a radiance that drained the color out of everything around them, so that when the Son of Heaven met them he wanted, without thinking about it, to look away.

“Of course.” The Son of Heaven wore an easy smile. He set the stemmed glass in his hand down on the table. “Would my sister like some tea? It is called ‘Star Foam,’ the finest luxury currently to be had anywhere in the City of Stars. This one small cup, with no more than a stray few flakes scattered in it, costs something over two hundred gold. It is extravagant, I grant, but it is also worth what it costs — a fragrance as intoxicating as this is, I would say, the most enjoyable taste I have known in my life.”

The girl’s expression stayed level, and she watched him without heat. “You are pursuing Liu Qiyue. So why deliberately set yourself against her? I cannot think of a reason that fits.”

“Very simple.” The Son of Heaven answered, smiling. “Sister… given Liu Qiyue’s character and her way of doing things, do you think she is likelier to yield to a man who chases after her at all costs, madly — or to a man who beats her outright, who can hold her down completely?”

The girl did not take up the question. She looked at him without a word and waited for him to go on. But there was nothing further to the Son of Heaven’s remark.

“That is your reason?”

“That is right, sister. What do you make of it?”

The girl’s fine brows knit very slightly. She sighed without a sound, and shook her head. “If you had responded this fast to suppress her Chamber for the guild’s sake, treating Liu Qiyue as nothing more than a commercial rival, I would have been gratified. But what you are actually doing disappoints me very much…”

The Son of Heaven: “……” Faced with that sighing, disappointed look, he did not answer back at once. He could defy his own parents; he had never once dared be disrespectful to his sister.

“This will have been a decision you made in a hurry after hearing Liu Qiyue’s announcement, I take it? In the end you are still too raw, and do not understand what it means to think a thing all the way through. Given Liu Qiyue’s way of doing things, conquering her from strength may well suit her better — but have you considered that if the Dugu family’s Son of God takes the opportunity to lend her a hand, you will have handed your greatest rival a perfect opening for nothing?”

“He won’t. I know him too well,” the Son of Heaven said evenly.

“If you know a man well enough, you can easily seize on every weakness in his character and defeat him with it… Now, do you still dare say you know him well enough?”

“……”

“I have never dealt with Liu Qiyue, and from what she has done over these years I can still judge, provisionally, that she is a frighteningly shrewd woman. As you are now, you are nowhere near a match for her. What you have done here will not only fail to get you what you want, it will make Liu Qiyue one more enemy of yours. Is that what you want to see?” The girl’s gaze slid away, and she sighed softly.

“Sister, you are putting it far too seriously.” The Son of Heaven gave an indifferent laugh, picked up the cup from the table, drank a little, and said, “Sister, you have never been in love, and I don’t imagine you have ever liked any man either. My experience in this area is a great deal wider than yours. When it comes to how a woman’s mind shifts and what a woman wants, I am rather more inclined to trust my own judgment. And at worst — even if Liu Qiyue really does become my enemy, my sister knows as well as I do how enormous Wings That Shroud the Sky is, while the hands Liu Qiyue has in the World of Fate number no more than a few dozen. The goods for our Chamber can come from Wings That Shroud the Sky’s million members, and Liu Qiyue… sister, is her Chamber really comparable to ours at all? Judging by the ‘July Chamber’ of the past, it looks rather more like a commercial game Liu Qiyue plays to pass the time.”

“In that case, setting the enormous ‘Wings That Shroud the Sky’ alliance on a Liu Qiyue who is ‘not worth the least concern’ — is that to invite other people’s ridicule?”

That one sentence from the girl froze the expression on the Son of Heaven’s face, and for a moment he could not say anything at all.

“And how much do you actually know about the Chamber Liu Qiyue has built? The July Chamber’s present site is the very center of the City of Stars, which gives it an enormous advantage over the Shroud-the-Sky No. 1, and its scale will exceed anything you imagine. Leave the scale aside — that position could not be gotten with the largest sum of money in the world. A woman who can put a Chamber like that together in so short a time, and who can complete every scrap of the preparation within the next three days… do you really believe Liu Qiyue is as unworthy of concern as you suppose?”

The Son of Heaven: “……”

“An angel’s face, a devil’s figure, a demon’s methods… Any number of men are besotted with how she looks. But at the level we operate on, how many men have died at her hands? That is not something you should be overlooking.”

The girl rose and left with a light, swaying step, her voice drifting back. “I hope I am only borrowing trouble. Your impulsiveness has already buried one calamity after another for you. There is a very small chance you succeed, and a very large chance that you find yourself under a double weight — Liu Qiyue’s, and Tian Moxie’s. As your sister, I hope you succeed… and I hope still more that you are crushed, because that would teach you a great deal.”

The door closed, and the silence came back.

The Son of Heaven laughed bitterly, closed his eyes, and went on drinking the half cup of tea that remained — though his mood was now something else entirely. Being lectured, and even scolded, by his sister was a very long way from a first. Every time, he had been unable to argue back. And the facts had proved it out, again and again: she had almost… never once been wrong.

Years ago, division and betrayal within the house had driven the Yun family to the brink — all of it planned across nearly ten years — and one person had turned the tide single-handed… a girl of thirteen at the time, blind in both eyes, paralyzed in both legs, and overlooked by everyone. She saved the whole Yun family, and not one of the traitors escaped. They would never know that every move they made had been in that girl’s palm long before, and that the moment they stirred, they would die without a grave to be buried in.

What that girl — the one heaven had discarded — put on display that day left even her own parents shaking. Only then did they learn that they had never understood this daughter of theirs at all: a girl who had grown up from infancy in silence and indifference.

The World of Fate does not inherit a player’s disabilities from the real world. So here, she could walk, and could see this world clearly — and the first time the Son of Heaven saw her eyes, her own brother though he was, he stood staring for a very long time.

They were eyes that seemed able to see straight through a man’s soul.

Only, once a thing has begun, it can no longer be halted or ended. If he went now and canceled the Shroud-the-Sky No. 1 Chamber’s opening three days from now, it would be no small blow to Wings That Shroud the Sky’s reputation — a man without trust cannot stand, after all, and still less an enormous guild alliance.

(End of Chapter 214)