Chapter 2935 - 1392: Necessary Setbacks (2)

After saying that, she shot Motan a slightly aggrieved look, but it really was the kind of look you just couldn’t bring yourself to hate.

"So can I take it to mean that this whole time you’ve actually been hanging around me and Hei Fan?"

Motan gave no response at all to Jiawen’s little sorrowful expression, just said blandly, "For the sake of observing us in detail."

Jiawen nodded, then said somewhat helplessly, "You can see it that way, but this kind of thing sounds simple and is actually really hard to pull off. I sort of have a side job that lets me Summon a few little things, and every now and then I can share my five senses with those Summoned Creatures I stationed near the Shady Grove Inn. But your perception is way too sharp—you practically spotted me instantly the first two times."

Motan frowned and asked tersely, "Magician? Sulfur bugs?"

"That’s right, so afterwards I could only watch you from a distance. But that actually wasn’t all that hard—after all, I’ve got [Thousands of Postures] for disguise."

Jiawen tugged at her smooth, springy cheek, and then her expression suddenly turned gloomy. "The most troublesome one is the Black Vatican Priest. He spends most of his time in that inn called [Favor], with the Holy Church Union as its backing. My Summoned Creatures have absolutely no way of blending in there, and with their strict shift system inside, it’s really hard for me to impersonate a server or something and get close enough to observe him."

Motan raised a brow and reminded her, "But you played the part quite well today."

"Mostly thanks to the dueling tournament and the Warfire League. Places like that are public venues, at least they let me observe enough to get the mannerisms right. I did study performance in a proper program after all. Even if I don’t even count as third-rate in the industry, I’m still more competent than those so-called top-tier stars from decades ago, the jokes who didn’t even know how to act."

Jiawen grumbled angrily, then shrugged. "And I don’t think I did that great today, to be honest. I don’t know if it’s just my imagination, but the Forget Language Saintess seemed to be intentionally keeping her distance from me..."

"Maybe."

Motan replied casually, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, then after a brief pause asked, "So your mission has basically failed, right? Or is there some other mechanism I don’t know about?"

Jiawen pursed her lips in a resentful pout, then shook her head. "It’s not to the point of straight-up failure. But when it’s tallied up, the completion rate probably won’t break fifty percent. If nothing unexpected happens, I’m going to be super miserable for a while."

As for what kind of misery exactly, Jiawen didn’t go into detail, and Motan didn’t ask. The two of them just sat there in mutual silence for a few minutes, then simultaneously broke into grins.

"Looks like my answers were acceptable enough?"

Seeing Motan re-hang the Longsword at his waist, Jiawen knew she’d finally managed to ’clear the stage’. She let out a long breath of relief, then playfully blinked at him. "If you need, I can keep cooperating with you and keep this act going. Though the completion rate probably isn’t coming back anymore."

But Motan simply shook his head and said calmly, "No need to trouble yourself. I’ll handle the rest myself. You can go."

"Mm, I’m very grateful. Then let’s part ways he—"

"I’ll see you out."

"Eh? If you’re trying to show some Gentlemanly manners, isn’t it a little late for that?"

"If you’re fine with getting grabbed again, you can leave on your own."

"Silent Brother, you’re clearly a very Charming man, but you’re really not good at winning people over, are you? Isn’t this when you’re supposed to say something nice to go with the flow?"

"Depends on the person."

"Haha, got it, got it. True enough—anyone who’s got Miss Yege tagging along every day wouldn’t spare a glance for a bit-part face like mine anyway. Then I’ll trouble you to escort me, Silent Brother."

"Mm."

And just like that, the two didn’t say anything more, but walked side by side toward the mouth of the alley, soon running into Ya Ya, who was squatting on the wall, looking bored out of her skull.

Relying on her extremely excellent sense of smell and feral intuition, Ya Ya didn’t even ask the questions they’d agreed on beforehand, just ran straight over to Motan and wrapped herself around his arm, completely ignoring Jiawen walking behind them.

And Jiawen, for her part, was very tactful. She bent down to give Motan a formal bow, then left at a light step, showing not the slightest sign of brooding over this unexpected failure.

After all...

[At least I managed to bluff my way through.]

Back out on the street again, Jiawen silently let out a breath, then altered her appearance at the instant she blended into the crowd, becoming a very inconspicuous, bald instructor, her hands clenched tight inside her sleeves.

In the end, she’d still been careless.

She’d originally thought this was just a relaxed mission with a personal flavor, but she’d almost gotten herself flat-out killed in that alley just now. Even though she’d ultimately gotten away, the sense of humiliation in her heart hadn’t faded in the slightest—if anything, it was growing stronger.

The mission had failed. Just like that time in the Violet Empire. She’d clearly had the situation under control, and yet in the end somehow still lost for no clear reason.

A certain kind of agitation and frustration was beginning to spread through Jiawen’s heart, but she forced it down with an icy rationality so cold it bordered on Suffocation.

No matter what, she had still managed to find the optimal solution in the shortest time, preserving her own life while keeping the secret. That counted as maximizing her timely loss-cutting.

This setback was certainly vexing, but it wasn’t without gains. At the very least, she wouldn’t be taking that ridiculous confidence from before back to the Southwest, back to her boss’s side.

It had to be said, ever since she completed the mission to assassinate Arthur, successfully broke away from Griffin, and returned to the Shaven Empire, something subtle had indeed shifted in her mindset—a faint superiority, a delusion born in her heart, unnoticed, as various resources—[Thousand Faces] included—were piled up around her.

A delusion of ’I can do anything.’

Although in most cases it was actually a fairly objective self-assessment, Jiawen still disliked this mentality that, even if the odds were minuscule, could still end up causing her trouble.

The real Bai Fu Jin didn’t need to worry about this sort of problem. After more than a decade of patient hibernation, she’d long since built up her own System for getting things done. Whether it was a thorny problem that could give countless high-quality merchants a headache, or something so simple even a cook could sort it out, she could use that System to handle it in the most appropriate, most optimized, most reliable, and most cost-effective way.

But the Jiawen in [The Realm of Innocence] was different. Even though her Ability and qualities hadn’t been nerfed at all in the game, she still hadn’t truly entered her best state. Even with an overpowered item like [Thousand Faces], even with abundant resources and manpower, even with a trusted confidant like Ah Qing at her side, she still couldn’t fully exert her Ability until she’d completed her adjustment period.

So for her current stage, failure and setbacks weren’t necessarily a bad thing.

But looked at from another angle, given Jiawen’s current status within the Sin Knight System, she was the one who could least afford to fail. The reason was simple: everything that needed to pass through her hands was just too important.

In summary——

[Could it be that the real reason the boss gave me this mission wasn’t his own needs, but to let me gain, at the smallest cost, from this... hold on!]

The instant the Glaze Pavilion came into view, Jiawen—who had already switched appearances three times on the way—felt her pupils contract violently!

She’d oversimplified it!

To that man, anything that ’might cause a bit of trouble’—how could he possibly let her get through it so easily!

Damn it, she’d fallen for it!

Chapter 1392: End