Kong Xiang declined the rich lady’s request for a duel, claiming he wasn’t physically up for a fight today.
Then, with a flurry of sweet talk, he sent her on her way.
Tomorrow was the day he would meet his contact. He naturally needed to conserve his strength, not waste it on pointless endeavors.
In truth, because of his desires, he had been forced to use a combination of physical and medicinal means just to keep his composure.
Otherwise, he would have been completely unable to refuse her.
His gaze discreetly flickered to a spot not far away, where someone was tailing him.
With his professional training, his counter-surveillance skills were not subpar, so he had long known someone would be watching him.
His observation was lightning-fast, and he instinctively retracted his gaze.
He had thought everything was normal, but in that instant, he realized something was wrong.
’Wait, he’s gone!’ The spot where the disguised watcher should have been was now completely empty.
A sense of foreboding crept into Kong Xiang’s heart.
The watchers wouldn’t retreat for no reason. He nonchalantly stood up and, in a natural manner, observed his surroundings again.
And then he discovered something truly terrifying: all the people monitoring him had vanished.
If one or two disappeared, you could say they were reassigned. But for all of them to disappear... that was definitely not normal.
And no replacements had been sent in. This meant something had gone wrong.
’Don’t tell me Old Xu was exposed... so they bypassed me and went straight for him?’
Even with his training as a spy, the thought made Kong Xiang’s expression shift slightly; he failed to maintain his composure.
He knew, of course, what this meant.
His contact had fallen into the hands of the Eternal United States—captured ahead of schedule. Everything was now spiraling into unpredictability.
If the plan failed, then their deaths would be meaningless.
"You must be Kong Xiang," a voice suddenly said.
A jolt went through Kong Xiang’s heart, but his face remained a placid mask. He showed no reaction at all, not even to his name being called.
He was professionally trained; he wouldn’t expose his identity over such a simple trick.
He then turned, a look of confusion on his face. "Who are you? There’s no Kong Xiang here. My name is Mark."
"If you’re looking for a Kong Xiang, you should try the Xuan Empire. People over there have names like that."
When Kong Xiang saw the source of the voice, his wariness grew even stronger.
A strange Iron Armor Man. But he was certain of one thing: there was a high probability this person was not from the Eternal United States.
This made him think of the survivors who had appeared not long ago. They were also incredibly powerful.
As Overseas Chinese, they were so ferocious they had directly beaten back two nations.
However, he didn’t know much about the survivors, his information mostly coming from the noblewomen he had ’dueled’ with.
So he only had a vague idea.
His intelligence-gathering mission in the Eternal United States certainly wasn’t focused on survivors.
Therefore, he only ever used the idea of survivors as a mental exercise.
And now, the pressing task was to figure out how to escape this unidentified Iron Armor Man, who was likely a survivor.
The man’s appearance had thrown a wrench in his plans.
Especially since the man had killed his watchers. The situation was now irreversible.
So he had to get away now, or everything that followed would be a complete loss.
"Whether you admit it or not doesn’t change the fact that I’m going to kill you." Qi Suian sized up Kong Xiang.
In Qi Suian’s eyes, Kong Xiang’s body was a wreck, held up only by potent aphrodisiacs.
He had used them so much that his body was already collapsing. Even if he didn’t die this time, he wouldn’t live much longer.
To say he was riddled with ailments would be an understatement.
"No, you can’t kill me! I’m not Kong Xiang! I don’t even know him." Kong Xiang’s acting was superb. He dropped to his knees with a THUD.
Especially the tears—they came on command, making him look like a pathetic, spineless pretty boy.
"My name is Mark, I’m a bard! Look, these are poems I’ve written, and gifts from my lovers."
"You’ve got the wrong person, I’m really not Kong Xiang! If you kill me, my lovers will avenge me."
"Their husbands are all high-ranking officials in the United States! You can’t handle their wrath!"
"Just let me go, and you can take whatever you want, be it money or treasures!"
"I’ll pretend it never happened afterward and won’t breathe a word of it." The words tumbled out of Kong Xiang’s mouth like machine-gun fire.
He was very skilled in his speech, constantly expressing his lack of ill will and explaining that killing him had all downside and no upside. It was better to just take what he wanted, and he absolutely wouldn’t hold a grudge.
Instead of immediately threatening him or boasting about his background, he was belittling himself to show Qi Suian that killing him would bring no benefits, only endless trouble.
Qi Suian actually agreed with Kong Xiang’s logic. A common crook, after hearing all this, would probably be full of contempt, but would still have to consider the threat of his lovers.
At most, they would just cripple him or beat him up, not deliver a fatal blow.
It had to be said, his acting skills were truly top-notch. No wonder he was valued so highly.
However, Qi Suian didn’t say another word. He simply acted.
He grabbed Kong Xiang by the neck.
In that moment, Kong Xiang was bewildered. He had no idea why Qi Suian wanted to kill him.
Especially how he had been exposed.
Being exposed to the Eternal United States was part of his planned operation.
But Qi Suian was a survivor. How could he possibly have obtained such classified information in such a short time?
This matter was a secret not only in the Xuan Empire but also within the Eternal United States.
Very few people had access to this secret.
Not to mention the survivors were newcomers; how could they have had the ability to plant spies?
Even now, the vast majority of survivors were still at the central battlefield between the two nations; few had ventured deep into either country.
After so many years of war, border defenses were naturally airtight. Getting inside was no easy feat.
"Your plan... I’ll carry it out for you," Qi Suian said softly.
Kong Xiang’s eyes flew wide. This time, he completely lost control of his expression.
"That’s right. The contact is dead, and I have the Plague Physician." After saying this, Qi Suian didn’t wait for Kong Xiang to react further and simply crushed his neck.
In his last moments, a terrifying thought surfaced in Kong Xiang’s mind.
What exactly was the survivors’ intelligence network? How could he know these things?
Besides himself and his contact, only three people in the Xuan Empire knew about this plan.
And those three were all high-ranking and powerful. Even if one of them was a spy, they couldn’t possibly be a spy for the survivors.
A spy for the Eternal United States? Then he and his contact would have been arrested long ago, not left alive until now.
So, even in death, he couldn’t understand how his plan had been exposed.
It was a good thing he died so quickly. If he had asked Qi Suian why and received "good luck" as the answer, he probably would have coughed up three liters of blood and died of rage.
After all, to be exposed in such a way was truly humiliating.
He could have accepted being found out or an enemy deducing his plan from clues, but not having it all ruined by some random person who popped out of nowhere purely due to luck.
Qi Suian, meanwhile, immediately started looting the corpse and quickly found what he was looking for.
[Eternal Love: Mutual Aid Necklace]
[Quality: A]
[Trait 1: Mutual Affection]
[Trait 2: Unbridled Debauchery]
"As always, the description doesn’t match the goods," Qi Suian said, glancing at the necklace’s name and traits.
He directly ignored these obviously strange words.
He didn’t try it out, because while searching the body, he had found an intelligence report that Kong Xiang had not yet managed to send.
The report contained some of Kong Xiang’s own notes, which mentioned the abilities of the sacred item, the Mutual Aid Necklace. It was precisely by relying on this sacred item that he had been able to build his connections so smoothly.
Compared to the fusion ability of the Ring of Unwavering Loyalty, the ability of the Mutual Aid Necklace was completely useless to Qi Suian.
The holder becomes the "white moonlight" or "love at first sight" for a target of the opposite sex. For Qi Suian, its usefulness was approximately zero.
His M.O. was always to kill, kill, kill.
So he unhesitatingly began to combine the two sacred items.
Then he tossed them directly into his Subspace Pocket, observing the changes as he retreated.
The combination wouldn’t instantly turn the two sacred items into a Jigsaw Sacred Item.
It required some time—an indeterminate amount, depending on their compatibility and the number of pieces.
So, his priority was to leave this dangerous place first.
To ensure no information was leaked, he had killed all the watchers monitoring Kong Xiang.
If too much time passed without them contacting their superiors, suspicions would certainly be raised.
Then Kong Xiang’s residence would go from being dangerous to extremely dangerous.
What Qi Suian planned to do, of course, was to strike now before the matter was exposed, catching them completely off guard.
It’s not like he was going to find a place to hide, was he?
As the saying goes, strike first or be struck down.
’The remaining sacred items might all be traps...’ Qi Suian suddenly thought of something.
What if the sacred items’ names weren’t wrong, but his own understanding was?
’If... the Ring of Unwavering Loyalty’s fusion ability isn’t the core power, then aren’t I screwed?’
What if the other sacred items are all focused on things like charming and controlling others? Wouldn’t that make them useless?
That would mean that even after forming the Jigsaw Sacred Item, the original fusion ability would just be an auxiliary to other powers.
The simplest example would be a shift in its effect. It could still fuse things, but perhaps the type of fusion would change—like fusing with the target of the charm, or its effect becoming a fusion of all the Eternal Love series sacred items’ effects, and so on.
Just like the Choir. In Harrington’s hands, it was used as part of the God’s Descent Judgment, completely losing its original independence.
The nature of its ability hadn’t changed, but it had shifted dramatically.