Chương 14: Apparently, I’m Buying Another Foreigner

Gu Zhiwei handed the calling card to Gu Zhao. The front bore a single name, laboriously spelled out in Yong script: Oliver. No home district. No family standing. Not even a respectable pretext for calling. Gu Zhao couldn't see the English on the back. He looked at her instead.

"What do you make of it?" Gu Zhiwei paused.

"Nothing. I've never heard the name."

"Another outlander fishing for news, most likely." Gu Zhao pressed the card flat against the desk. His voice stayed gentle, his meaning did not.

"Father isn't cold in the ground and they're already lining up at our gate. Turn him away. We will receive no one tonight." Gu Zhiwei didn't argue. The gatekeeper went out with his orders and came back before long to report that the foreigner had left. Gu Zhao raised a hand and pressed the space between his brows.

"If he comes again, throw him out. Don't bother reporting it."

"Yes, my lord." Gu Zhiwei tucked the card into her sleeve. Somehow, he knew she was a player. Or he was simply casting a line to see what bit. Three hundred people hunting the same baleful star. Anyone could be a teammate. Anyone could put a knife in her back. Wait and see, then.

Gu Zhiwei went back to her room. Aglaya had already been dressed in the green silk skirt of a Gu household maid, her curls arranged into two coiled buns. She was sitting at the dressing table admiring herself in the mirror.

"You're back? Your maid's really good with hair, you know that?" Aglaya was the kind of person who adapted anywhere and enjoyed herself while doing it. The Myriad Worlds hadn't so much recruited her as comped her a vacation.

"What are your plans?" Gu Zhiwei genuinely had no idea what to do with her.

"Boss, can I ride your coattails? I can do anything! My skill is Top-Tier Persuader. I can get people to do what I say and they never notice."

"Sure. No problem." The next second. Gu Zhiwei's expression went flat.

"Hey. Do not use that on me." Aglaya turned scarlet and rubbed her hands together.

"Oy, I was only demonstrating..." Then she leaned in, curious.

"You're seriously strong, you know. For anyone else, it lasts at least half an hour." Gu Zhiwei caught what was buried in that sentence.

"You can control other players?"

"I swear I only ever use it to latch onto strong people. It works on the NPCs in the Myriad Worlds too. Better, actually." Aglaya latched onto her arm as she talked and started wheedling.

"I'm useful, I promise. Take me with you." Gu Zhiwei's scalp prickled.

"I don't even know what I'm doing. Why me?"

"One, you're the daughter of the Director of the Bureau of Astronomy, which gives you a built-in advantage when we're looking for a baleful star. Two, you didn't leave me standing in the slave market. Two matters more." Aglaya was working very hard to project sincerity.

"I know you don't trust me yet. Judge me by what I do first, okay?"

"You have a skill like that and you couldn't talk your way out of captivity?" Gu Zhiwei felt distinctly set up.

"Oy, I landed inside that caravan. There was a cart. Why would I hoof it to the capital?" Aglaya spread her hands and shrugged.

"But I really have nowhere to go now. Everything about this identity is true. Right now, I don't have a single relative in this world." Gu Zhiwei gave up and let her stay in the Gu residence for the time being.

"Get some rest. We'll talk about adding you to the party later. I have to check with my teammates first."

"Uraaaa!" Her partial victory secured, Aglaya went off to the side chamber to sleep, thoroughly content. Gu Zhiwei rubbed her forehead and opened the system panel to read the group chat. Matt had traced the northern-frontier trade route onto the sort of map foreign merchants used and posted it to the chat. Matt: The last pickup point for that armed group is north of Liangzhou. Not far from the garrison Wang Pu is stationed at. Wang Pu: Got it. I'll find an excuse to take a walk out there.

Matt: You'll have to narrow down the exact spot yourself. The caravan only hauled the salt and tea as far as the abandoned post station I marked. The men who took delivery had their faces covered and rode well. They paid without haggling and hardly spoke. Something in that caught Chen Li's attention. Chen Li: Did they look like regulars? Matt: From what I saw in the memory, their discipline was better than ordinary bandits. Their weapons were mismatched. Wang Pu: I heard today there's a bandit group out that way.

Comes and goes like smoke. The Northern Garrison Army has swept the area twice and never caught anyone. Wang Pu: Except my current identity IS a soldier in the Northern Garrison Army. If I ask around too enthusiastically, won't it look like I'm begging the boss for overtime? Gu Zhiwei: It'll make you look like a spy. I'd keep your head down. Chen Li: Start with who normally comes and goes at that post station. Everything else can wait. Wang Pu: Relax. My greatest virtue is that I'm very attached to my own skin.

Gu Zhiwei: I'm going to dig through the old Director's star charts on my end and see if he left any speculation about the baleful star. Chen Li: Thanks for taking that on. I'll see what I can do here. Gu Zhiwei: It's fine. I happen to have someone who can help with the grunt work. Then Gu Zhiwei summarized Aglaya's situation. Chen Li and Matt both said to observe her first, and if she checked out, bring her in. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Only Wang Pu remained as unhinged as ever. Wang Pu: Is she hot? Gu Zhiwei closed the system interface without hesitation and went straight to sleep.

At noon the next day, Gu Zhiwei took Aglaya to the Bureau of Astronomy under the pretext of bringing her brother a meal. The Gu carriage rolled along the broad street in the north of the city, its wheels crunching over patches of frost that had yet to melt. The clamor of market vendors drifted in through the curtain, and Aglaya kept lifting it aside to look out. They had barely entered the front courtyard when an argument broke out beyond the gate.

A young man in a gray robe was waving around a set of forged papers from the Ministry of Revenue, claiming he'd been sent to review the calamity archives. The Bureau registrar noticed the seal had been stamped in the wrong place and had him seized on the spot. Two bailiffs had him by the arms. He went on protesting at the top of his voice.

"I'm just running an errand for the Ministry! What right do you have to arrest me?" His accent was flawless. But as his gaze swept past, it snagged on Gu Zhiwei, held for a beat, then slid away fast. He'd been sizing her up. Gu Zhiwei knew that look very well by now. Player. One hundred percent. No man in this world had the nerve to size up an official's daughter that way.

Gu Zhao heard the registrar out, ordered the man's papers, writing brush, and waist token confiscated, had him marched out the side gate, and doubled the watch at every post in the Bureau.

"From now on, any request for the archives requires the seals of both the Secretariat and this Bureau." He stood under the eaves, mourning robes pressed flat against his shoulders by the wind.

"Anyone who tries to force his way in again gets sent straight to the Metropolitan Prefecture." The man in gray swore viciously as he was shoved through the gate. Less than an hour later, new threads went up on the Forum. 【The Bureau of Astronomy is impossible to get into. The new Director is checking everything. 】 【I just wanted to borrow a few books. Is that really necessary? The NPC hostility in this dungeon is way too high. 】 【Is the Gu daughter the way in? I just saw her go into the Bureau.

She's young, looks easy to fool. 】 【People staking out the Gu house say they're in mourning. She went out yesterday and bought herself a foreign girl. Probably just a sheltered noble girl who knows nothing about anything. 】 Gu Zhiwei stared at the words knows nothing about anything. She waited for a while. No one called her out as a player. Oliver had almost certainly seen the thread. Whatever his reason for keeping quiet, she wasn't about to waste the advantage. NPC credentials authenticated. Fine.

She'd let them keep believing it and make use of it.

The Bureau's archives never saw daylight. The moment the doors opened, the smell rolled out: old paper, dust, insect-repelling herbs, all braided together. Rows of wooden racks ran to the ceiling, bamboo slips and paper volumes arranged by year, the earliest reaching back to the founding of Great Yong. Aglaya tipped her head back and looked for a long moment.

"Is it too late to apply for a transfer?"

"Probably." Gu Zhiwei handed her a damp cloth to cover her mouth and nose, then hauled out the star charts from the first year of Chongjing onward. Remembering what that player at the gate had said, she pulled the calamity registers as well. The pages were brittle. Handle one too roughly and it would split. Aglaya read slowly, tracing her way through long sentences character by character with a charcoal stick.

She complained, but she searched carefully, copying down even the grain prices local officials had appended to their flood reports. They worked together the whole afternoon and found a handful of unremarkable entries. Rivers breaking their banks. The earth shaking. Red snow. Locusts swallowing the sun. Each had swallowed thousands upon thousands of lives in the year it struck, yet the register reduced it to a few short lines. Not one disaster lined up cleanly with the broom star Gu Yaozhi had seen.

And he had left behind not a single word about the baleful star. Quest progress: still 0%.

Before the archives yielded anything, Matt's caravan was preparing to move out again. His assigned identity in Great Yong was that of a guard for a Western Regions trading merchant. His contract and travel papers were both in the hands of the caravan's owner. If he broke away by force, he would very likely be dragged back as a runaway bondsman or hauled before a magistrate. The rules of this world still had teeth. One wrong step and the consequences were anyone's guess. Gu Zhiwei had no choice but to go to Gu Zhao.

Gu Zhao was in the study checking a roster, the almanacs Gu Yaozhi had annotated in his lifetime stacked at the edge of the desk. Two bad nights had left shadows under his eyes. He heard her out and slowly set down his brush.

"You want to buy another foreigner, and this one is called Matt?" Gu Zhiwei discovered she had no idea how to field that. Put that way, it did sound sort of monstrous.

"No. He's very capable. He got me out of trouble in the West Market. I want to recommend him for a guard post in the household." Gu Zhao looked at her for a moment.

"Zhiwei. How long have you known him?"

"Not long."

"Do you know whether he has a wife at home?" It didn't register.

"What does a wife have to do with anything?" Gu Zhao coughed lightly and shifted his gaze to the oil lamp on the desk.

"A foreigner isn't out of the question, provided his heart is with Great Yong and he treats you well. But marriage is no small matter. If you truly favor him, I can send someone to look into his origins first." The study went quiet enough to hear the lamp wick crackle. Gu Zhiwei finally understood what he'd concluded and froze.

"Wait, no. Nononononono. Brother. He just helped me out. I'm trying to find him a job!"

"Only that?"

"Really!" Gu Zhao studied her face, found nothing false in it, and picked up his brush again, dipping it back into the ink.

"Then it's easily done. Your cousin Jingchu is Commandant of the Assisting Garrison in the Left Imperial Insignia Guard. If the man saved you, making him a household guard would be something of an insult. Have this Matt put on the rolls at the garrison office and serve under your cousin in the Insignia Guard. He's short of men as it is."

"Thank you, Brother." Gu Zhiwei turned and left, fast enough that something might have been chasing her. Gu Zhao's voice followed her out, warm with amusement.

"There's nothing shameful in such things. If you ever do favor someone, you must come tell your brother." The young servant waiting outside the door ducked his head to hide a laugh.

Early the next morning, Gu Zhiwei had a carriage prepared and took Aglaya to the Yang residence. When Gu Zhao had mentioned "cousin Jingchu" the day before, the corresponding memories had loaded along with the name. Lady Gu came from the century-old Yang family of Lin'an. Her elder sister was the Empress. Her elder brother, Yang Chongli, was the sitting Chancellor.

Cousin Jingchu was the second son of that same uncle, and he was out with the Left Insignia Guard hunting the baleful star every single day, which explained the shortage of men. With that piece in place, everything else fits. Gu Yaozhi had defied an imperial edict at the cost of his life, and the Yong Emperor had done nothing to the Gu family. He had even allowed Gu Zhao to take office through hereditary privilege and succeed his father as Director. Gu Zhao's own ability was part of it.

The family name was what really counted. No wonder the eunuch bearing the edict had invoked the Empress when urging Gu Zhao to accept. At the time, she'd thought it was a threat. Gu Zhiwei shared this immediately with the group, and everyone was floored. Wang Pu: Sis Gu, isn't the identity the System gave you a little overpowered? Is there a complaints department? Chen Li: This is good news. If Matt gets into the Insignia Guard, we'll have an inside line on the whole investigation.

Matt: I didn't follow a single word of that family tree, but that's fine. Arrange it however you like. Wang Pu: Hee hee. That family tree is really putting our foreign friend through it. Matt: Picking on the foreigner, are you, kid? When you get to the capital, remind me to spar with you. Wang Pu wisely stopped typing. The Gu carriage had only just turned the corner into a narrow lane when a young vendor selling steamed buns pushed his wooden cart into its path.

"Miss Gu." He had the face of any ordinary Great Yong commoner, and he spoke the capital's tongue with a native's accent. Gu Zhiwei lifted the curtain. The vendor raised a hand and drew it down the side of his face, revealing sharp, unmistakably foreign features.

"I'm Oliver." He bowed with perfect courtesy, and while his head was lowered, his face shifted back into the vendor's.

"The card the other night was mine. Apologies for the trouble."