Chương 38: Taking Pearls from the Swine

There were many ways to explain the narrative of a heist. Most started at the beginning. The charming and roguish protagonist travelled the country to gather his highly diverse, competitive and skilled team before introducing the plan and then cutting to black. The point, of course, was that a plan could not be introduced all at once, or else there would be no suspense as to its execution.

All the best heist movies in Jin's previous life had the same feature, in that they kept some important strategies in reserve until it was time to unveil them. This drove the tension by not showing everything at once, which could also shock the person experiencing the story. Now that it was him considering the act of theft, however, he would, of course, not follow such narrative necessities but simply get down to business. Of course, he first still needed a team regardless.

-/-"Thatsss," Hashimi started, drawing out her answer to what Jin had just proposed. The man awkwardly rubbed the back of his head, hoping that he hadn't crossed some sort of cultural barrier again. He didn't need another moral lecture, especially one based on facts. He could only come up with so many plans that got disrupted by outside factors before he gave up.

"Awesome!" Hashimi exclaimed, jumping up in Jin's room and throwing her hands in the air, almost touching the ceiling. She then did a twirl and gave him a double thumbs up.

"You're devious," she complimented. Person 1 was on board. -/-"You made me take time out of my day to ask for something this simple?" Elder Flower asked with some annoyance in her voice. She was standing in front of Jin in the clearing where they usually met, tapping her foot impatiently on the ground. For his part, Jin didn't know what she was so fussed about. She probably hadn't been doing anything important or strenuous anyway.

"Yes, I would need an Elder in this case, and you're the only one I could think of asking."

"Asking me to interfere in the inner ring," Elder Flower muttered, then huffed. Jin gathered his bravery.

"You are the one who told me to participate in this competition," he elaborated while leaving the actual pressure he was exerting with the unsaid part of the sentence hanging in the air. Elder Flower simply crossed her arms over her black top and glared at him.

"Also, imagine the look on his face if it works," Jin hastily added. It was this final appeal that finally found success. Elder Flower cracked a rare smile, at which point Jin knew she was in. Person 2 was on board. -/-"I'll want something in return for this, you know?" Francis asked as he met Jin next to the lake two days after their first conversation there.

"Of course," Jin said and nodded.

"That was never in question. I can offer spirit stones if you're interested. Or if it works, you can also put your name on it." The old man shook his head.

"There's only one thing I want at this point," he started before hesitating.

"I want enough sect points to merit getting a servant. These bones are starting to have issues keeping up with everything." Jin nodded seriously. Getting a servant in the inner ring was considered to be the last step to getting promoted to core disciple. It implied that the sect valued your output enough that they put someone at your disposal 24/7 so that you could concentrate completely on work. Most of the disciples whom Lung Junior had bribed to not collaborate with him had servants.

"If I ever get one, then I'll simply tell them to work with you instead," he thus offered. He could still handle these simple things himself. Even after becoming rich back on modern Earth, he'd still done his own cleaning and cooking. He didn't need someone to do it for him, and he was a big boy. If he won this competition, in addition to his upcoming donations of Ornstein and Outlast to the library, he had a reasonable belief that he could advance far enough to get one assigned to him.

Francis looked at him doubtfully, obviously not knowing of those potential upcoming achievements. You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"I'd rather we collaborate on a big project after this. I'm almost there, but if I work alone, it will take too long, similar to if I wait for you to get one," he proposed alternatively. Jin meanwhile was thinking of how helpful it would be to have someone with a significant amount of experience help him put the finishing edits on Ornstein and Outlast, maybe even The Last of Us, before it joined the library after having hopefully also been selected by the army.

The finishing touches could be exchanged for a small percentage of revenue for each. Additionally, if after this competition, Jin had the freedom to pick his own project for once, he could invite Francis to work on… Well, suffice it to say, he had something in mind.

"It's a deal," Jin said with a nod. The two men, one young and one old, locked eyes and shook hands. The last person had joined the team.

"So what's the plan then?" Francis asked curiously. At this, Jin leaned back on his wooden chair and steepled his fingers together.

"It's quite simple. It's going to start with a simple necessity and then continue with the following scene." -/- How to lie properly was a very interesting subject that most people didn't pay enough attention to. A teenager would tell their parents that they hadn't been out drinking with their friends while their breath smelled like alcohol and their legs wobbled as they walked up the stairs to their room. This was called smothering your mouth while spewing shit.

Students with a bad academic record were utterly surprised when, upon cheating to achieve a higher grade, they were faced with suspicion from the teachers. This was called, 'a lack of preparation insures shit performance.' The issue in the latter case was that the student had not set a precedent for them to suddenly shift their fate.

If they had simply made the effort of being caught pretending to study by a teacher before the exam, the figure of authority would have more likely concluded that the student had finally started putting in the requisite effort. It was according to this principle, that every successful operation involving more than just one party had to start before the actual main event to control the perceptions of those involved.

Seeds needed to be planted, Hashimi needed to be overheard saying in a public space how she had seen Jin work on an Illusion Room with which he wanted to compete in the upcoming challenge. The fact that he'd told her that everyone else didn't stand a chance after was just the cherry on top. -/- After the information had been planted, it was time to look at how many scams started with a sort of provocation.

'I bet you can't find the ball under these cups after I shuffle them around,' the well-dressed gentleman would tell you while you were trying to cross the bridge.

'No way you can find the right card out of these three,' the aristocrat of the modern age would challenge as you stood in a tourist spot minding your own business.

'I do have a job at the moment; however, are you up for it? Show me proof of your creativity first,' the shitflinging HR monkey disguised as a human would say as they harvested the ideas of what would have otherwise been highly paid professionals only to never give them a reply as to the position that they had been applying for. Different countries and different classes had different sorts of provocations that led to the aggressed party needing to respond due to their innate pride.

What Jin had to do to evoke the pride and anger of those that he had singled out as targets in this case was comparably quite simple. He just had to sit in a place, minding his own business and exist with the Illusion Room that he was currently working on in his hands. It was because of this that two days after he had gathered his team, he went to the food hall, the artefact holding his currently unfinished scenario in his hand, got a bowl of food and sat down to eat.

There wasn't anything particularly special about an inner disciple of the Illusion Room Sect carrying around an Illusion Room. Sure, most people didn't do it when there was a currently ongoing competition, and they most certainly didn't bring it to the dining hall. But, considering how tightly interwoven the artefact was with the life of the sect, no one thought twice about it.

The only ones who did were, of course, those whose arrogance had reached the level at which other people simply existing in their proximity became an insult. Thankfully enough, the cultivation world had many such prolifically obtuse and useful idiots. That was why, only a minute after Jin had sat down in the food hall with a bowl of noodles...

An old man who had previously been bribed by Lung Junior helpfully scurried to the young master to tell him that the person he was seeking to sabotage had been so brazen, so disrespectful, as to bring the project that he was currently working on into a public space. Lung Junior's face, upon hearing this, naturally ran red as it had been his inherent dominion and authority, which had been challenged in such a courageous way by someone whom he considered to be lower than trash.

This, in addition to the fact that he had recently overheard gossip about how the disciple in question had been bragging about how he was going to win the competition, naturally made him want to intervene and assert himself. He and his group stood up from their seats in perfect synchronisation, more than used to such manoeuvres. Lung Junior and his posse quickly made their way through the food hall towards the table that they had just been told about.

Other disciples dodged out of their way with knowing looks, at most giving perhaps a perfunctory sigh of relief that it was not them who were going to be the victims of unpleasantness.

It was as such, due to the previously described combination of events, that Jin, slurping on his bowl of noodles, Illusion Room glowing a faint blue by his side, found himself accosted once again by the rather irritating combination of Lung Junior and his 3-5 indistinguishable followers whose faces seemed to change every time that he saw them as they blended perfectly into the background to remain nothing more but characters that didn't even deserve two adjectives.

"Young master," Jin exclaimed, putting down his chopsticks and trying and failing to protectively put his hand on his Illusion Room as he made a face of deep regret at having brought it out in the first place.

"How is the competition faring?" he asked as if to distract from the potentially awkward position that he'd been caught in. Lung junior, for his part, simply swayed his long ponytail encrusted with spirit stones and shook his head.

"My day would have been going much better were it not for wastes like you occupying public space as if they deserved to even exist," he said harshly before slapping down a hand on the top of the Illusion Room that Jin had been steadily tugging back to his side of the table. Jin cringed back as if struck before promptly, standing up and trying, not very hard, to rip the Illusion Room from underneath the grip of the would-be bully.

"Well, then, don't mind if I just get out of your hair," he said quickly.

"Not so fast!" Lung Junior growled, locking eyes with a few disciples who had gathered around as an audience to seek affirmation for his actions. Most people simply avoided his gaze, which, from his perspective, probably counted as a silent approval.

"I heard you've been telling other people how you're going to easily beat me in the competition and how you can't wait to see my face when I end up as a runner-up," he said threateningly. Jin shifted his eyes and unconvincingly rejected the notion that he would have never ever done such a thing.

"Of course, I would not. I mean, why would I even do it?" he stammered.

"Let's see if your confidence is founded on anything other than delusion then," Lung Junior quickly interrupted before flexing the hand that was clasped on top of the cubic Illusion Room and entering it without permission. Jin stepped forward to push the boy away from his creation, but now that Lung Junior had blanked out, his 3-5 followers stepped up to push Jin away before he could interrupt the scenario interaction.

It was like this that Jin found himself being shoved around in a circle and belittled by men probably four times as old as him, while their leader interacted with a scenario from which he would gain no benefit. It was just as he was starting to grow annoyed that the voice that he had planned before the beginning of this entire charade suddenly entered the scene. The disciples, who had been excitedly watching his humiliation, suddenly froze.

"What are you doing?" Elder Flower asked with a tone of voice that could have curled up the erection of even the most avid viagra taking teenager. The cavalry had arrived.