"Banquet?"
"Yes, Mr. Altos. Lord Joel of the Nation on Ships wants to hold a grand banquet to thank you and the others for your help. He hopes, well..."
"Not interested."
Ye Qiyan refused the invitation outright.
"There... will be quite a few other guilds attending. It would be a great chance to publicize the Emperor's Order's prestige, and to clear up any misunderstandings the guests may have..."
"Misunderstandings? What misunderstandings?"
Listening to Poppet, Ye Qiyan lifted an eyebrow and regarded her with a faintly playful smile.
"Miss Poppet, perhaps you are mistaken about one thing?"
"Please, do tell..."
He snapped his fingers.
The swarm returned to its hive, the mech-soldiers re-entered storage.
The demons returned to the Card Sequence, the cards went back into the Void Card Repository.
"When the last nano giant sting bee came back,"
Ye Qiyan placed his hand on the train's door.
The matrix activated, the train sank into it.
His gaze and Poppet's complicated eyes met and exchanged looks.
"Whether they destroyed cities, or damaged everything for their own gain, all of that is true."
His voice was quiet.
But loud enough for Poppet, several hundred meters away, to hear clearly.
Even more people watching heard it.
Explain that the Emperor's Order is not an evil organization?
Ye Qiyan couldn't be bothered to do something so pointless, and completely unnecessary.
An evil organization suited him just fine.
At least no one would call him a savior.
He walked straight ahead, and when he passed Poppet he murmured softly,
"Can you tell me when the train system's chat permissions will be restored? After all, this was your doing, wasn't it?"
"...Soon..."
Poppet bowed her head and fell silent.
Only when several black feathered lights drifted down from the sky and Ye Qiyan's figure vanished did she look toward the spot he had disappeared from, her expression complex as she whispered,
"This... must be... true freedom..."
————
The four starships gradually joined forces. The Alphart was not the most badly damaged of them.
Even after taking fire from the other three, it still did not suffer catastrophic damage.
Although the city itself was torn up, at least the ruined parts were just residential sections. The Alphart's main body, though attacked several times by self-destruct units, held together as long as it kept operating.
In short, this sudden battle did not destroy the city.
Five hours after the train system's communications had been cut off, Ye Qiyan's private chat interface beeped again.
The first message came from Shaya.
["Finally restored. Really, the chat cut off mid-sentence before... I wanted to ask you to go sightseeing, but whatever — you'll be at the Guild Tournament tomorrow anyway, we'll talk after it's over. Oh, and don't attend those banquets. They're terribly boring."]
The second was Zhao Xi.
["You're not hurt, right? I asked people from the Nation on Ships — the Guild Tournament will proceed as scheduled tomorrow. Do we sit together?"]
.....
Ye Qiyan felt that maybe he was a bit too busy lately.
After a few replies, only one person remained.
Zhu Xingshu, that charlatan.
["Bro Ye, tomorrow you'll receive a gift~"]
A gift?
Standing in the bathroom back at the hotel, Ye Qiyan smiled dumbly at the light screen.
He tapped out a message with a languid tone,
["Are you going to sell me all your Fate Cards? One hundred each, how about it?"]
["Ah~ no way, too cheap, and I'm not selling them — not kidding."]
["Hey, didn't you used to be unable to see my fate? What happened, got stronger?"]
["Nope. Everything about you is still infinite blanks, so this isn't fate — it's my judgment as a Top-Tier Train Conductor!"]
["Oh, so impressive.jpg"]
Despite the playful tone, Ye Qiyan didn't think this woman was idly joking.
A gift?
Who would give him a gift?
Fine, let them send it. If it affects his train's future upgrade options, he simply wouldn't accept it.
With that thought, Ye Qiyan remembered what the two Abukado mercenaries had said earlier that day.
After a moment's thought, he asked Zhu Xingshu,
["Miatira — do you know this thing?"]
["Don't know."]
The answer surprised him.
Zhu Xingshu's decisive reply was very different from her previous self.
["I'm healing, can't hear much. But if Bro Ye really wants to know, I could pay a small price~ hmm, as long as you next time can still..."]
["Forget it, suddenly not that curious any more."]
["(ˉ▽￣～) tch~~, then at the next event, I can still be the first to invite you, right?"]
["Goodbye."]
The interface closed.
Ye Qiyan stared at the ceiling, beads of water clinging to it, and closed his eyes.
He reclined, sinking his whole body into the water.
Gulp, gulp...
Warm water wrapped his body.
Every sound disappeared at once.
His gaze fell into a darkness like the one used when navigating with the Anchor.
That darkness soothed him.
"Ha..."
How long passed, he did not know. Ye Qiyan rose out of the water and lazily stretched. The idea of resting and entertaining himself in the city felt dull at the moment.
"Miatira, super void, hmm... the second stop on the Crossroads of Fate — I kind of want to go."
The Guild Tournament would be held tomorrow, but truthfully, he wasn't as interested in this kind of competition as people assumed.
After all, even three years ago among that batch of conductors, the strongest should have been Achuan.
The tournament also restricted participants to below Level 20.
By that measure, he also qualified.
Too bad the rewards were mediocre. Even the champion would only be allowed to pick one item from those held by the legion commander of the Goblin Legion, which he had sold to Aleph.
Those things were meaningless to him.
After nearly ten days of play, Ye Qiyan felt a desire to enter the next Station World.
But before that, the most appealing things left in this Station World were Miatira and that strange demon man who made him feel unsettled.
"Come to think of it... it's not impossible to trigger the Crossroads of Fate again."
Ye Qiyan rubbed his chin, remembering how, in Eris's Stellar Core Arena, when he had sublimated the train, he forcibly left that Station World — and after sublimation, the train would re-enter it.
"Why not give it a try?"
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