After making a comment that caused Lythero and Zhong Wei to realize that Zhen Liu was incredibly comfortable with his identity as a whole and made Rianna and Jinju Ren fantasize a rather interesting what-if scenario, the group's time at the Carved Dream Auction house had come to an end.

After the auction house had made their cut, the group were leaving with a little over a million gold pieces.

The number would've been higher, but towards the end of the auction, there was a set of spatial storage bags that was up for sale, and Zhen Liu couldn't help but bid for them.

The spatial storage treasure he had picked up from the Cortez Family had served it's purpose well during Zhen Liu's time on the Dozing Salamander continent, but it was reaching its limit.

Even after selling off everything that they could from its storage space, there was still a fuckton of materials that Zhen Liu picked up on his journey.

Additionally, Zhen Liu had developed a brand-new paranoia in the form of being disconnected from the library and its capabilities...again. As such, he wanted to make sure that if such an event were to happen again, he would be well-stocked, well-prepared, and have a backup collection of materials, cores, and formulas in case shit went not just sideways but upside down.

Either way, now that everything was settled, Zhen Liu and his friends decided that the best course of action for the time being was…to go back to Axer's forge.

There were…a lot of things that had happened in a short timeframe that had to be addressed, which included but was not limited to dealing with Smoking Mirror's reappearance and his growing army of underworld warriors, which was accompanied by the fact that Smoking Mirror had hired Alice to help train those aforementioned warriors in military tactics, the very real possibility of Zhen Liu's old enemies coming together for some nefarious purpose or something else entirely; the fact that Axer was going to need help finishing up his commissions; and to top it all off, Jinju Ren's "date" with Alain.

Speaking of that latter issue, Jinju Ren still hadn't gotten the idea of Zhen Liu pretending to be a woman out of her head and had been…entertaining fantasies about it for a bit longer than necessary.

Zhen Liu felt as if a pair of rotten eyes were peering into the back of his skull, but he wasn't sure why.

Either way, Zhen Liu had work to do, people to spy on, and a whole mess of zako and kaijin to coordinate.

And funnily enough, he and his friends in Rainbowden weren't the only ones going through shit today.

'Hmm…now that I think about it, I wonder how the rest of my family is doing right now?'

…Meanwhile, in the Abyssal Lands…

[TRY ALL YOU LIKE YOU FLESHY FUCKS! YOU WILL NEVER BREAK MY BEASTLY SPIRIT!]

[We know…] Shellvalier groaned.

[You screamed that for twenty minutes straight!] Slug-at-arms cried out in annoyance. [Alright, that tears it, let me just smash his head in with a mace!]

[No!]

[Come on, it'll be quick!]

A little while back, Zhen Hai, Zhen Long, Zhen Xun Tian, and Zhen Shi had apprehended a Grafted warrior by the remains of the superweapon. They had initially wanted to kill the bastard outright and let his chum feed the cave sharks, but Zhen Liu's influence had rubbed off on them before they decided to deliver the final blow.

They needed information, and this guy was the only source, so they decided to bring him back and let the expert deal with him.

That expert being Jin Fang, the newly minted crown princess of the Undertow Kingdom.

Jin Fang hadn't been available when Zhen Xun Tian and the members of the Undertow court had gone about interrogating and torturing the last batch of Grafted Warriors and was mildly miffed over that fact.

Now that an opportunity had presented itself on a metaphorical golden platter, though, she was more than happy to abuse it for her own sake. Although, it was at this time that she realized precisely why people always got so frustrated when fighting her kaijin: nothing seemed to work on beings infused with [Chaos].

At this point in time, Jin Fang was looking over her interrogation tools with a critical eye while Wavebreaker was serving as her assistant/soundboard. Shellvalier and Slug-at-arms were busy acting as guards and beaters for the imprisoned Grafted warrior.

"I can't tell if I'm annoyed or impressed that this guy…what was his name again?"

[I believe he was screeching about being called…Blightwing or Plaguewing, it was something stupid like that] Wavebreaker answered her mistress, completely oblivious to her own naming convention. [To be honest, his buzzing accent makes my ears bleed and makes it rather hard to try and figure out what he's saying.]

"That's completely fair, but I can't make use of these quite yet, since I don't think he has vocal cords. Well, ones I can work with, anyways," Jin Fang retorted while lifting up a metal instrument that was labelled in the case as the "voice extractor."

Putting the metal instrument down, she moved on to to the others in her collection of tools.

"I could make use of this one, but I don't entirely sure if this Grafted weirdo has any balls for me to…hmmm. That's an odd thought."

[What is it, mistress Jin Fang?]

"For some reason, I imagined how Xiao Liu would look if he was born a woman and not a man," Jin Fang informed her confidant kaijin. "And I couldn't tell if I was overcome with jealousy of how she hypothetically looked or filled with yearning…odd."

Shrugging the odd feeling aside, Jin Fang brought her attention back to the present and the fact that she was going to be using what appeared to be a pair of iron pears that she began to infuse with [Chaos].

"Alright, let's see if this will make him talk."

[Don't…don't you only need one of those?]

"No," Jin Fang answered with a serious voice. "Because this man has two rears."

[...oh.]

…Alright, enough torture; let's go with melodrama in the Bronze Bell Kingdom…

A few nights ago, Zhen Yue and her fiancé, Santiago Ecaredies, had discovered that the latter's cousin had sent him a cursed aether treasure that was supposed to bring supernatural ruin to both him and his family's estate. However, that didn't come to pass.

Instead, through a combination of Zhen Yue's [Chaos] abilities and a special sealing treasure that had been in Santiago's family vault for decades, they had managed to seal the troublesome treasure and its curse indefinitely.

Mostly.

"Here you are, my dear, one cup of black tea brewed with lemon peel and sweetened with sheep's milk."

"Thank you, darling," Zhen Yue thanked her future husband with a sweet voice. "I must say, these go wonderfully with these cookies you bought."

"Yes, Mistress Bergamont knows her way around almonds and—"

"Duck."

CRASH!

"Thank you, darling."

"No problem."

[REEEEE!]

To be more precise on the turn of events that had occurred, after the couple had learned about the insidious nature of a gift statue that they had received from Santiago's cousin, they proceeded to try and dismantle it as soon as possible.

However, that turned out to be a trap of sorts.

The cursed statue, while mostly designed to stay in one place and release a constant stream of cursed aether designed to fuck with people's minds and aether flow, had a nasty little defense mechanism installed.

If the statue was ever discovered and was about to face the possibility of being destroyed, it would spring to life and attack the discoverers before scurrying away elsewhere to a new hiding place.

This statue, however, wasn't designed to deal with [Chaos] Shapers.

The moment the rambunctious statue attempted to eat Zhen Yue's face, the frontier woman simply kicked it square in the jaw with a [Chaos]-enhanced upwards kick that immediately followed by a guillotine kick.

She was incredibly tempted to simply destory the statue right there and then, but something inside of her head told her that it was probably a better idea to hang on to the statue and study it to see if there was any information that could be gleaned from it.

Making use of a cage-shaped aether treasure that was in Santiago's family vault, the couple threw the statue in there, laced the whole thing with [Chaos] and watched it to see if there was anything they could learn from the damn thing.

So far, all they've learned is that this stupid statue may have had a nasty curse installed, but the defensive formation used to animate it made it act like a monkey that had gotten drunk off of fermented fruits.

Which was, surprisingly, insightful to Santiago.

"You know, that I think about it… this is definitely not my cousin's style of cursing."

"Oh? What makes you say that?"

"He's a lazy git and a notorious regifter," Santiago answered. "I think someone else pawned it on to him."

"Ah."