49: Chapter 49 Are you the KP?

Xie Feng lay in the Tu Family tavern for three days.

The first day was spent entirely sleeping; Tu Ziguan brought up the chicken soup, brought it back down, brought it back down, and brought it back up again, but Xie Feng didn't even smell a hint of it.

Tu Ziguan squatted by the bedside to watch for a while, and found that this person was even too lazy to breathe, taking a breath only after quite a long while.

Sleeping until the evening of the second day, Xie Feng finally opened his eyes.

His spiritual power had recovered a little, barely able to flow a circle through his Meridians, but it still felt astringent when it flowed near his right eye socket.

Groping for the chicken soup on the bedside table, he picked it up and drank it until the bottom of the bowl was facing the sky, then set the bowl aside, rolled over, and fell back asleep.

After finally getting up, he sensed that Tu Ziguan was talking with Wen Yushu in the back courtyard.

Xie Feng leaned against the head of the bed, reviewing the ledger of these past three days from start to finish.

The veil of the Bloated Woman had been sucked away by the core of Tsathoggua, leaving his face empty.

Tu Ziguan had found him a plain black cloth to tie around the back of his head; the fabric was rough, rubbing against him and making him itch continuously.

One good thing was that his eyes no longer glowed, and the bad thing was that his lethal move was gone, meaning he would have to go back and Cultivate fiercely.

Untying the black cloth, folding it neatly, and placing it by the pillow, he heard footsteps coming up the stairs.

Tu Ziguan came up, followed by Wen Yushu.

"Awake?" Tu Ziguan sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Awake." Xie Feng's voice was still a bit hoarse; having slept for three days, his throat felt like it had been starched.

"Just in time. I have something to tell you." Tu Ziguan moved half an inch closer to him and lowered his voice. "The Qingyun Sect extorted the Tianque Sect."

"Extorted them?"

"Extorted them. The second day after Elder Wen went back, he sent people to the Tianque Sect. Meng Yi is dead. The case file was pieced together by the Penal Hall based on your testimonies."

"A thick stack, bound into a booklet, with the vermilion seal of the Penal Hall of the Qingyun Sect stamped on the cover."

"The messenger slapped the case file onto the table in the deliberation hall and uttered four words."

"'Your esteemed sect's affair.'"

"Meng Yi was the City Defense Honored Guest dispatched by the Tianque Sect to Cangyun City, a veteran of forty years. With something going wrong, the Tianque Sect cannot shirk responsibility."

Xie Feng leaned against the head of the bed, slowly tapping his fingers twice on the quilt. "How much did they extort?"

"The city defense rights of Cangyun City. The Tianque Sect has given up the position of the City Defense Honored Guest of Cangyun City."

"From now on, the city defense Cultivators of Cangyun City will be appointed by the Qingyun Sect. The new city defense officer arrived yesterday; he is a deacon of the Penal Hall, Fourth Realm Eighth Heaven, surnamed Sun. You've met him, the one who signed the Black Pine Forest case file."

"What about Ma Bangde?"

"He got a promotion," Tu Ziguan said. "Transferred to serve as the Vice Prefect of Qingzhou Prefecture, Junior Sixth Rank. Before leaving, he sent a plaque to the Tu Family tavern, with 'Zealous for Justice' written on it."

"My dad hung it in the main hall on the first floor. Do you want to go down and touch it?"

"Scram." Xie Feng let out a laugh, then withdrew his smile. "Wen Yushu, you helped me check the scriptures in the Scripture Pavilion, what did you find?"

Wen Yushu leaned against the window, holding his long sword in his arms.

"The book *cultes des goules*, after my grandfather brought it back to the Scripture Pavilion, he flipped through it for two days. The book was written in a very ancient script. Grandfather said that the stroke direction and structural method of that script do not share a common origin with any writing system in this world."

"What does it mean not to share a common origin?"

"It means it wasn't created anywhere in the Nine Provinces. It comes from elsewhere."

Wen Yushu shifted his long sword to the other hand, narrowing his eyes.

"Grandfather searched through all the texts on textual research of ancient scripts in the Scripture Pavilion, and only found a similar section of strokes in an Incomplete Manual."

"That Incomplete Manual was brought back from the Far North by a Cultivator about a hundred years ago. Only a few pages remain, and it records a lost script called 'Phantom Script'."

"Grandfather said the script on *cultes des goules* is seven-tenths similar in stroke structure to that section of Phantom Script."

Isn't that just Dreamlands script?

"What about the sculpture?"

"Not found. Grandfather scanned the ruins of the City Defense Mansion with his Divine Sense no less than ten times, and found no trace of any sculpture."

"The message has been delivered. You rest up."

The footsteps of the two went down the stairs one after the other.

The door opened again.

Xie Feng perceived a figure.

Pu Huai had reached the doorway...

He stood at the doorway without walking inside, the hem of his grey robe drooping to the tops of his feet, his hands folded inside his sleeves.

"Awake?"

The voice was not loud, carrying the slight hoarseness peculiar to an elderly person, with the tail end slightly raised.

Xie Feng swept his spiritual power over.

"What are you doing? Trying to play me to death?"

To be honest, having seen plenty of big storms, he was somewhat used to it.

"The matter of Cangyun City, I've heard about it," Pu Huai opened his mouth. "Meng Yi is dead, the Xie Family is gone, and the city defense rights belong to the Qingyun Sect. You did well."

Xie Feng did not speak.

"But not well enough," Pu Huai's voice remained in that same tune. "There are a few places you let slip. Ma Bangde. Have you ever investigated Ma Bangde? A magistrate who sat in Cangyun City for five years. Meng Yi raised a cult in the city for at least three years, and Zheng Youtian sent beef to the City Defense Mansion for over a year. Did Ma Bangde know? He knew. Why didn't he say anything? Because he was a man of the Tianque Sect? No, because he also read those scripture fragments."

Damn it, the vice prefect might turn into a Ghoul in two months.

Xie Feng did not take up the conversation.

"Zhang Kui," Pu Huai said. "Ox official Zhang Kui. Zheng Youtian sent beef for over a year, and Zhang Kui inspected the oxen for Zheng Youtian for over a year. Have you ever checked where Zhang Kui's oxen came from?"

"You didn't. You only checked Zheng Youtian. Once Zheng Youtian died, you thought this thread was broken. But the oxen weren't raised by Zheng Youtian; Zheng Youtian only slaughtered them."

"Where did the oxen come from?"

"Liushu Village, raised by the peddler Sun Dayou. Sun Dayou is one of the five believers of the Black Pine Forest. He raised the oxen, Zheng Youtian slaughtered them, and Zhang Kui inspected them. This entire thread was right under your nose from start to finish, and you failed to string it together."

Damn it, are you here to reveal the answers? After all this fuss, it turns out you made this module, huh?

"Xie Yuanqing," Pu Huai said. "Your half-brother. It led Ghouls to make way for you outside the City Defense Mansion, it told you that the meridian-blocking powder was administered by Meng Yi, and it told you that the mark in the Xie Family's Bloodline was brought back from the Dreamlands by your ancestor. Have you ever asked it how it knew these things? It's a Ghoul that transformed three years ago and lives in an estate outside the city—how did it know that Meng Yi's steward had put meridian-blocking powder in Xie Feng's dinner? How did it know the contents of the ancestor's handwritten notes?"

Damn it, can you stop? You make me look so stupid!

The light outside the window shone on Pu Huai's grey robe, and those ink stains on his cuffs gleamed with an old color in the light.

"You did well," Pu Huai repeated.

"Just not well enough. But that final moment, when Tsathoggua reached out its hand, you recognized it. You called out Formless Spawn. That point was better than I expected."

He withdrew a hand from his sleeve.

There was something extra in his hand.

A sculpture.

The shape of the sculpture was a crouching toad, but the proportions were wrong.

Its limbs were short and thick, and its torso was so fat it was almost spherical. The wrinkles on the surface of its skin were layered one upon another, and dense granules grew within the depressions of each wrinkle, seemingly growing out from the inside of the material itself.

Its head was extremely large, taking up almost a third of the entire sculpture. Its mouth was extremely wide, stretching from the left side to the right, the corners of its mouth slightly upturned, wearing an expression lazier than a smile.

Its eyes were closed, and the wrinkles on its eyelids merged into one with the wrinkles on its torso, making it impossible to tell where the eyelids ended and the skin began.

"A statue of Tsathoggua," Pu Huai said. "I picked it up at the city gate."

He placed the sculpture on the windowsill.

The toad crouched on the edge of the windowsill, eyes closed, corners of its mouth slightly upturned, its plump torso gleaming in the light with that moist, living sheen.

"It's for you."

"I don't want it!!"

Pu Huai stood up, the hem of his grey robe drooping to the tops of his feet.

He walked toward the doorway, stopped when he reached it, and tilted his head.

"Next time, if there is a next time. Look more closely at people. Weirdness doesn't grow cults on its own; cults are built by people, oxen are raised by people, and books are read by people. You look at us very accurately, but you're a bit lacking when it comes to looking at people. Think carefully; there are still clues in Cangyun City that you haven't dug up."

The door opened and then closed again.

The door hinges made no sound, and when the door panel closed against the door frame, it emitted an extremely faint friction sound.

Walking to the top of the stairs, he stopped and said a sentence, his voice not loud, like talking to himself, but loud enough for Xie Feng to hear.

"However, it's no wonder; you weren't a person of this world to begin with."

Footsteps went down the stairs. Step by step, lighter and lighter, further and further.

Then they disappeared.

"This damned Nyarlathotep! Acting as a KP for me? When I go back, I'll have someone draw doujinshi of you!"

From the moment he handed the veil of the Bloated Woman into Xie Feng's hands, this module had already begun. The name of the module was Cangyun City, and the main quest was to investigate the source of the Black Pine Forest cult.

Cthulhu TRPG, the KP gives clues, the investigators miss clues, and the KP reviews everything after the session ends.

Telling you where you missed something, and where you should have asked one more question.

Xie Feng picked up the blind stick from the bedside, tapped it against the windowsill, and slowly walked over to the window.

The Gate Guide on his right eye socket and chest gently twitched.

Xie Feng pulled his hand back.

"Tu Ziguan."

"Here!" Tu Ziguan's voice came up from the back courtyard.