Wang stared at Anthony walking back through the doorway, then looked down at the slowly dissipating corpse on the floor. For one brief moment, something like bewilderment crossed his face.
But it passed quickly. After a long silence, he turned his head and spoke.
"...What trick is this?"
"Stop staring at it — this body is about as sturdy as the last one. I figured that much would at least prove I'm not something the Sui Beast sent after you."
Anthony replied, his tone somewhere between weary and resigned, then continued.
"I'm something like a spirit medium. I have certain abilities that allow for... resurrection, of a kind. What you just saw — that's how I came back."
There was quite a bit Anthony was keeping from Wang.
The chat group, for one.
The main reason was simple: even if he brought it up, Old Wang wasn't going to believe him. It wasn't like he was Jie — Wang would listen to anything Jie told him, but Anthony was a complete stranger. The chat group itself wasn't something Anthony minded explaining, but the prerequisite was that Wang actually believed him first... so that could wait. He'd leave it for Jie to explain in person, when the time came.
As for right now — Anthony still had to figure out how to get Wang to trust him enough to follow along with his plan. The goal was to get things to the point where Jie could come out and speak to Wang herself.
He was quite certain Wang still suspected him. And honestly, if Wang didn't suspect him, that would have been the real red flag.
Unknown origin. Strange behavior. Unexplained resurrection ability. If not for the fact that he'd presented as genuinely, embarrassingly weak, Wang would have been convinced he was something the Sui Beast had dispatched.
As for the death just now — that had been part of Anthony's plan from the start.
The whole point was to get Wang to lower the probability, in his own mind, that Anthony was connected to the Sui Beast — enough that Wang would actually sit down and have a proper conversation about what came next.
And the resurrection itself? For Anthony in his current state, it wasn't particularly difficult. The essence of it was simply summoning the Avatar again. As long as he consumed a certain amount of Soul Force, split off another fragment of soul consciousness, and slotted it back into the form — the effect was instantaneous. Which was exactly what had just happened.
Though after coming back, Anthony had noticed something rather interesting.
The moment he'd announced the Avatar's name, every watching gaze in the surrounding area had completely vanished.
Even without being able to see them, Anthony could imagine with perfect clarity the sharp, strangled noise that had erupted from the Sui-Year Bureau operatives the instant they heard the name "Po" — followed immediately by the words "Jie asked me to pass along a message."
"...I'll provisionally accept your explanation for now."
Wang lowered himself slowly back into his seat across from the chess board. He fixed his gaze on Anthony, and after a long pause, finally spoke again.
"Then, Po — that's what you're called? Tell me. What did she ask you to say?"
"She said..." Anthony began, "remember to look after your younger brothers and sisters. Don't pick fights with your eldest brother all the time. And most importantly — stop carrying the whole world on your shoulders alone. Those were her exact words."
"...The tone is a fairly convincing imitation."
Wang studied Anthony's eyes, his expression utterly unmoved.
"Unfortunately, regardless of where you learned her name, or who you actually are, or what your true purpose is — you've about reached the limit of how far this is going to get you."
"Wang," Anthony interrupted him, his voice cutting clean through the sentence. "Don't you want to see her one more time?"
For one instant, it sounded almost as if a chess piece had been clenched hard enough to crack.
Wang raised his head and looked at Anthony. But Anthony simply kept talking, without waiting for an answer.
"You know, Wang — she's still alive."
"That is impossible!"
Even knowing in his bones that he refused to accept it — Wang still couldn't deny the reality he'd been forced to acknowledge.
"Don't rush. I'm not finished."
Anthony exhaled and continued. "She's still alive, in the form of a soul. That's how I know her — we met as souls. The reason I came here to deliver her message is partly because I had my own business to attend to in the first place, and partly because I was doing a favor for a friend."
"She did die — that much is true. There's no disputing that. But her soul persists, and she's maintained her own consciousness throughout..."
Anthony kept going for a while, but when he looked up and saw that Wang's expression had not shifted one degree from its prior gloom, he let out a sigh and simply said it plainly.
"Bottom line — do you want to see her soul again or not?"
"What exactly are you trying to say?"
"I can call her soul forth. Let her manifest for a short time. At that point, I think everything resolves itself — whether I'm a spy sent by the Sui Beast, whether she truly exists the way I say she does. All of it."
Anthony said that, then dropped into the seat across from where Jie would be, and added with barely concealed impatience:
"And after that — maybe then we can have an actual conversation about everything else. Sound good?"
"Can't we do that now — "
"And you'd believe me right now?"
Anthony shot Wang a flat look. "No matter what I say, you're going to suspect I've got ulterior motives. That's just where we are."
Wang was silent for a moment.
What is this guy's deal...
A strange feeling had begun to creep in. The person in front of him — there was a very real chance he actually did know Jie. That blunt, zero-patience tone just now had carried something unsettlingly familiar about it.
But the things he was saying...
"Either way — once you've seen her, all you have to do is make your own judgment. That's fair, isn't it?"
"After talking with her, you'll be able to sort out the truth from the lies. For yourself."
Anthony said it calmly, and Wang fell into silence again. When he finally spoke, it was only one question.
"What do you need from me?"
Finally.
The moment those words left Wang's mouth, Anthony let out a quiet internal sigh of relief, and immediately followed up.
"Give me something to work with... for instance — those black pieces. Could I have a few of those?"
"Take them."
Wang waved a hand with an air of complete indifference. Anthony reached out without ceremony and scooped up a handful of chess pieces from the board in front of him — and in the same instant, the chat group panel materialized before his eyes.
[Item Detected: Wang's Chess Pieces]
[Description: Chess pieces that have absorbed a certain amount of Wang's presence, and have thus been weakly influenced by his Authority... Items of considerable value.]
[Recycle Value: 6,572 Points total.]
Without even half a second of hesitation, the chess pieces in Anthony's hand were recycled on the spot.
Wang's pupils narrowed slightly as he watched them simply... vanish. A flicker of something — surprise, perhaps — crossed his expression.
Where did they go?
Anthony, for his part, moved fast — he opened the chat group and gave Jie a quick rundown of the situation: the Avatar he'd built named Po, and the current state of affairs between himself and Wang.
"What are you doing?"
"Hold on. We're ready to start."
Anthony closed the chat group unhurriedly, and answered in a composed voice.
Six thousand-odd Points — effectively freeloaded off Old Wang, so spending them now didn't sting in the slightest.
It should be enough to bring Jie back for... at least a few dozen seconds?
With that thought in mind — and a vivid mental image of the Sui-Year Bureau's collective blood pressure spiking into orbit — the main body of Anthony, far away on the Primordial River, swung the fishing rod downward without a moment's pause.
In an instant, over six thousand Points burned to nothing.
And Wang's pupils snapped tight.
He saw her.
Appearing in the space between Anthony and himself — a graceful, refined woman of quiet brilliance, taking shape in the form of a soul, drifting slowly into being in the air between them...
"Jie?!"
____
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