“How did you know I was worried about one eye?” Josephine Wong asked with a smile, with her coffee cup still in her hand.

“In that fight, he was the only one who stood on the sideline and did not expend any effort and did not take any damage.” Jianmen shrugged: “Knowing him, he’s not exactly one kind of individual to let go of an opportunity like that to strike an unfair and exploitative deal. Since you are still here, and I sensed that your team is mostly intact, I would say that he’s not done anything egregious.”

“Define ‘egregious’.” Josephine Wong took a sip of her coffee shook her head with a wry smile: “Nameless and Pei were quite upset with the deal he proposed, so much so that they might have already bring one eye down with them if it weren’t for the fact that neither of them was powerful enough to do it at the time.”

“What did he propose?”

“He wanted to find other sites of clustered malice like the hospital.” Josephine Wong sighed and said: “And he wanted to have earlier access to the sites. And knowing him, it would not be a mystery what he intends to do with those sites. This deal is then sworn on True Words, so it is in effect and basically unbreakable for now.”

“Thus is the dreaded and disturbing lifestyle of the Omen Dragons.” Jianmen also sighed: “And what is he offering in return?”

“He is offering his assistance in studying and understanding the relic that surfaced from the hospital. We knew that it belonged to a powerful mage, of whom we have almost no information.” Josephine Wong took a frustrated deep breath: “They’ve been at work for all this time. But still, the information buried in it is either way too cryptic or just plainly shattered beyond any sense making.”

“For mages, it will take a pretty powerful one to leave a significant relic right?” Jianmen adjusted his position on his wooden wheelchair: “Is it possible for someone that powerful to go unnoticed? Or is it because there is something else at play?”

“I know what you’re getting at.” Josephine Wong frowned: “I can’t say that it hasn’t crossed my mind. But I think we’ll need more evidence. It’s definitely not a theory I want to put out lightly.”

“Paradoxically, the misuse of the Stone of Negation tends not to leave any concrete and consistent evidence. The more damaging the mistake, the harder it is to prove.” Jianmen chugged his cup of coffee in full, and struggled to pick up the coffee pot on the table. Josephine Wong simply picked up the pot for him and poured him another cup full of coffee. “Thank you, I hope these clumsy fingers can work someday soon.”

“That will happen soon enough if you are willing to divert some of your self healing power to them.” Josephine Wong chuckled: “But thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I think even at this rate it will take me no less than a week before I can be of any help to you.”

“But your access to the knowledge in your own head is unhindered, right?” Josephine Wong reached into her pocket and took out a small silvery grey metal tablet with the rough length of her palm and the width of half her palm and an arcane light brown symbol on both surfaces: “We DID pull SOME information from the relic, but it’s a hologram of - well, some kind of artifact, and we have yet to found out what it was about.”

“Happy to help. ” Jianmen nodded. And right this moment, Rash came into the diner from the back of the inn, while a fluffy and happy looking Snowball on his shoulder: “And you know what? Maybe Rash could help as well?”

“I am always happy to help.” Rash opened the fridge and took out a slice of chocolate cake, “But what do you need help with?” Then he scooped a small piece of the cake using a tiny energy spoon and fed it to Snowball.

“Deciphering a cryptic message embedded inside of a powerful mage’s relic.” Josephine Wong tapped the metal tablet three times with her fingers, and the arcane symbols on it lit up in bright blue. Shortly, a hologram of an orb was projected into the space above the tablet.

It was a mostly spherical orb, with a lot of parts seemingly intentionally carved or hollowed out in order to display a certain pattern to its interior surface. The sphere itself was not made of one single piece of material, but seemed to be carefully welded together using several smaller pieces of different material, which could be recognized from the different shades displayed on the orb. Right now, the hologram of the orb was spinning at a slow speed in the air as if it was a piece of art on display. 

“Okay I can’t tell anything obvious either, what have they tried?” Jianmen stared at the orb hologram for about a minute and asked.

“From what Blue and Pei told me, they tried everything obvious.” Josephine Wong tapped on the hologram to make it appear larger: “My team tried almost every known magical and non magical cipher and decryption method of complexity. Tze Cha tried several tricks of his own, even some of his Dragon Tongue spells, but none seemed to have worked so far.”

“The orb was stitched together with different pieces right?” Rash asked: “Have you tried breaking the pieces off and analyzing them one by one?”

“That’s what we are trying to do next, yes.” Josephine Wong nodded: “But this is only a holographic image buried within the relic, not an actual orb, so I’m afraid it will require more effort to do that.”

“The different pieces seemed to be made of different materials as well. ” Jianmen said, pointing at a gap between two pieces: “Are you investigating the possibility that this is a blueprint or a recipe?”

“We’ve considered that, but we’ve not paid much attention to this possibility.” Josephine Wong started tapping the table with her fingers: “Do you think this is the case?”

“It’s just a hunch.” Jianmen leaned closer with his eyes narrowed: “What else have you found beside this? I would imagine a ton of noise? Did you bring a recording of those?”

“Yes, I thought you’d wanna try that as well. It’s in this chip.”