It took an additional 15 more minutes before Liaowu departed the Kshiti Temple. The Elder and Senior Deng took most of this time examining Marcus, who was still asleep and had to stay inside the temple. They also decided to bring Yu along, the young man who was once serving the Kshiti Temple but found out to be a planted assassin.
Seeing that Marcus would not wake up anytime soon, Liaowu retold what happened with them in the Southmost site of the city - including rough paraphrases of their conversation. And how Bulu Wang decided to sacrifice himself in order for Marcus to destroy the site itself.
“I don’t know exactly what the implication of this destruction is. But I’d imagine it will be a vital step in ‘rebooting’ the array formed by the electric system.” Senior Deng shook his head with a frown when asked what Master Liaoran’s ultimate plan could be: “But - knowing how closely he worked with HIM, how much HE trusted him, I would say the answer lies in the temple - Temple of Forgetfulness.”
“We are planning to go there next. when Marcus is awake.” Gloria sighed, shaking her head.
“Then let’s keep in touch.” Senior Deng gestured to the group of three following him, the fully cloaked figure took out a small black cellphone and handed it to him. He then handed it to The Elder: “This one uses encrypted communication, our emergency contact number is in there already. Just call us when you need us - but please don’t try too many times if we don’t answer right away. No encryption is perfect.”
“What are you going to do after this? After you’ve visited HIS grave?” The Elder handed the cellphone to Gloria.
“We can’t tell anyone right now - well except for him, because he’s coming with us. ” Senior Deng gave Liaowu a quick look: “But it’s something HE would want. There were a lot of things HE wanted to do and figure out back then, and we’re going to look into some of them.”
“Well…” The Elder sighed: “Good luck.”
Senior Deng left with his crew and Liaowu. Liaowu left the keys to his van and a short note on how to operate it to Marcus.
“Hey.” Before Liaowu walked out of the gate of the temple, Kevin pulled him aside and asked: “Do you trust them? This is all - a bit out of nowhere.”
“No, not fully right now.” Liaowu shook his head with a wry smile: “But - they knew my father. So I’d give them a shot. It’s been so many years, probably time for me to pick up where I left off anyway.”
“Well.” Kevin nodded, then patted Liaowu on his left shoulder: “Good luck. And thank you so much for your help.”
“Don’t mention it. Just don’t forget to contact me if you guys find anything.”
Senior Deng’s group drove two vehicles - one was a plain looking four-seat car commonly driven by regular folks of the city, and the other was a van - also commonly seen in the city, used by smaller shops and restaurants. Senior Deng drove the small car and led the way with the fully cloaked figure, and the other two followers drove the van, with Yu locked in the back. Liaowu tagged along in the first car in the backseat.
“Do you know the way?” Senior Deng asked Liaowu as he drove into a wide road leading up to the main inter-district expressway.
“No - I don’t visit very often.” Liaowu shook his head: “I visited once, with Master Liaoran. And apparently someone was there waiting for me - so I stopped.”
“Never expected these people to stoop as low?” Senior Deng chuckled: “Yeah, plenty have made that mistake, you wouldn’t be the first one.”
Liaowu hesitated for a brief moment, then posed a question that had been on his mind for a while: “Did you know about the ritual? I’ve heard all about it, and - I don’t know how they even - ”
Senior Deng’s face turned stern, then let out a very long sigh and answered with pain and regret on his face: “Yes we know. It’s one of the - contingency plans. But it’s the worst one and it was never seriously considered.”
“Contingency plan? For what?” Liaowu almost jumped through the space between the front row seats: “And why was it even developed?”
“Because the array - the one destroyed by your friends, it had very obvious side effects, and one of which was it could slow and even stay the flow of Qiyun, and in order to alleviate this effect, they first must have a constant flow of people to control them - they would receive some benefits while being in those positions, but they would pay the price with their own Qiyun; additionally, the ritual needs a lot of energy, which means the connection of electricity was a built in design. And those rituals, they were only theorized, by those who were - with looser moral standards, an extreme method to - to use sacrifice to graft the flow of Qiyun to make sure the general flow is not frozen - ”
“And that’s what they were trying to go with?”
“That’s what they decided, yes. Because the benefits of being in that level of control, it’s intoxicating, and it’s corrupting, incredibly so. You could imagine.” Liaowu sighed: “And the cost was high from the start. That’s why they started driving us out - killing many of those who opposed them, taking almost everyone by surprise - ”
The fully cloaked figure knocked on the dash, then pointed forward at both sides of the road.
Two Black SUVs flipped on the street, one of which was caught on fire, the other had its window full of blood, smeared from the inside. One man in black was face down on the ground outside of the burning SUV, not moving at all.
“Okay. Don’t make a sound.” Senior Deng slowed down, flipped open a small containment unit on the roof above his head and pressed a button on his dash. tiny red lights attached to the frames of the windows lit up. Liaowu took a close look at one right by his face, the exterior of the light had symbols engraved on it.
They passed by the scene with relatively low speed. Temperature seemed to have dropped a little when they got close. Only when they were at a relatively long distance away, did they pick up speed again.
