Chapter 407 - Epilogue 1 - The Thief That Wasn’t (Patreon)

COOOOOOOOOOOONSISTENCY, BAYBEEEEEEEEE

IT IS WEDNESDAY MY DUDES AND YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS?

CHAPTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER!

First epilogue is up as we trek into Arc 10!

________________________________________________________________________

Banditry is a mostly forgotten trade in this day and age. The era of wandering killers and thieves remains in the dim, distant past of pre-Imperial ages, and such barbarism has been replaced by the rigid order and steady guiding hands of the great Emperor and its infinite wisdom.

This is not to say that criminal enterprises have vanished entirely. It is mortal to sin and to be flawed, and we must accept that such is the lot in life of all those unmotivated and who turn away from the Empire’s light. It’s simply to say that any such violence or antisocial activity is the purview of a few lone wolves, who possess little connection in ideology or behavior and can be addressed on such individual bases. 

Only the outer reaches of the Empire, within the third ring, hold any sort of consistent crime, due in large part to their lack of education and underdeveloped social norms. Many cities can be considered dangerous to those in the Qi-Gathering realm who act unprepared, but with proper awareness and an understanding of how best to navigate such still-developing parts of our great nation, even these places possess little in the way of dangerous, backwards-facing bandits, thieves, or other assorted malcontents. 

The era of stability that the Empire has ushered in glows for all to see, from the very tip of the Wall, into the wilds of the fourth ring, on down from the vaunted heights of the First ring and into the lives of us citizens. This golden age of safety, security, and calm could only be brought about through the wisdom and peaceful might of beings we can all admire and aspire to!

-Introduction to an Academic Dissertation from a Core Formation realm student of the Scholar’s Academy, Second Ring, Imperial Core.

__________________________________________________________________

Running a subversive terror / bandit / spy organization is a lot of work. 

Like, a lot of work. Enough work that if Hao Nera had known about it beforehand, he would’ve done almost anything else. 

Except maybe join the military. There is no mountain of paperwork or logistics or bureaucracy that is high enough for him to be that desperate. 

He is, in fact, aware of the irony. 

He sighs, and that is enough to startle the bandit beside him so bad that they make it almost a foot off their chair. 

“Heaven’s fat tits, since when have you been there?” screams the altogether too well-dressed thief whose shoulder Hao Nera was looking over. 

“Long enough to see you think about stashing some of those letters in your pockets,” Hao Nera replies, tilting his head to indicate the pile of papers that have been spread across the minor noble’s desk. They juxtapose the gaudy, ostentatious mess that is the rest of the room, bedecked in awkwardly placed statues, old vases, and other signs of wealth that would be better on display in a museum. 

Or in Hao Nera’s pockets. Or in a landfill. Pretty much anywhere other than someone’s main home office. 

“I respect the gumption,” Hao Nera says, rolling the syllables, affecting a bit of a cadence. He falls into the now-vacated chair that the minor noble just leapt from, lounging and kicking his feet up onto the expensive wood of the table. “Honestly, I admire your… blind, desperate greed. It’s like seeing a little kid stick his head into an oven to get at the sweets faster. Funny, but also sort of scary in how stupid it is.”

He focuses for a second, clenching his abs and tightening up his cheeks.

With a flex of Dao and Intent, he vanishes. 

The nobleman looks around, confused, wondering why he leapt out of his seat in the first place-

Hao Nera holds him in place this time when he tries to jump, leaning his massive, muscled frame on the more slender man’s shoulder. 

“Seriously, it takes balls like fists or a head emptier than mine to think you can steal from the guy you’re stealing for. It’s one thing to steal, but when I know what I’m asking, know what I want, and know what you got, then really, what’s the point of trying to rob me? Without even a lie to make up for it?”

“Shadowed one, I-”

“Shhh, shh shh shh shh.” Hao Nera places a finger on his lips, then pats him on the head, wiping off some of the man’s fear-sweat with the action. “No talking. I’m not done monologuing. You be quiet.”

The man nods feverishly, looking like a poorly made wind up toy more than a man. Hao Nera can actually smell the fear stink coming off of him, rolling like an animal about to piss itself. 

It is wildly funny, true, but it’s all just so boring. All this fucking work, just to come crack down on this little nobody? Ugh. 

Worth it, though.

Hao Nera plucks one of the aforementioned letters off the desk, waving it under his nose as if smelling it. “Aaah, see, that’s one of the letters that I knew would be in his coffers, knew would be there, and told you to get, and then you still were going to lie to me about it! Me! I’m the lie-guy here, and I dare say I’m an expert at it- what was even your plan?”

“Honorable ghost, I-”

“Ah ah ah,” Hao Nera says, patting the poor, terrified little nobleman on the back. “I’m not done monologuing. Next time you talk out of turn, I turn you inside out. Got it?”

The poor mortal gives a desperate, horrified nod, bobbing his head up and down. 

“I’m so glad you understand! I really appreciate a good listener. See, when my organization approached you, they made clear that this was a test, right? They told you, directly, about what they were asking you to get. And you did get it! Good job, little buddy. I liked how you did it, too! Really fucked around with that estate sale. The way you talked about it, you almost convinced me about how much your dearly estranged uncle would have wanted you to have those old landmarks of his. And then you tied it into the documentation? Genuinely delightful. Top shelf bullshit, and coming from a bullshitter like myself, that’s high praise.

“But then you got greedy! Like a needy little bug, more eager to gorge yourself stupid than to bring things back to the nest. It’s not like I ask for much, is it? A few letters from the sorts of ill-gotten gains you wanted for yourself anyways, and which neither of us has any real right to. You almost had it! You got so close! And then… well. Here you are.”

Hao Nera stops talking, looking expectantly at the much shorter figure staring at him with wide eyes. 

“Well? I’m done monologuing. What do you think? I was working on it the whole time I was watching you.”

“I- your most- I mean-”

“You can call me the Faceless Man.”

“I… but you have a-”

“Yes, obviously, and an excellent one at that. It’s not literal. I would say to have some imagination, but you’ve disappointed me on every other level, why not this one?”

“Most wondrous and honorable Faceless Man, this lowly Wan Heng-”

Hao Nera sighs, almost explosively, the force of the wind actively pushing back the lower-realm nobleman, making him stumble a bit. 

“No, no, no, I don’t need to know your name, damnit. Do you know how many people I have to keep straight in my head as it is? I know where you live, what you look like, your Qi, your family, where your money is, you think I want to add your damn name to that list?”

Wan Heng pales further with each item listed, his face almost completely flat by the end of it. If Hao Nera didn’t know his type as well as he does, he’d be pretty sure that the poor bastard would be about to weep. 

More likely, he’ll piss himself, but Hao Nera doesn’t intend to be around for that part. 

“Alright, Wan Heng. Here’s the deal. I’m going to take a piece of you. It’ll be like it healed over years ago. You’ll remember having it, but you won’t remember how you lost it, or who took it from you. You’ll just remember why it’s gone, and then, hopefully, you’ll learn better.”

“No, no, please- Faceless one, I beg of you-”

He’s begging to an empty room. There is no one else present. 

Wan Heng lets out a breath, and his heart is thundering. There’s a flood of adrenaline in his body, running violently through every part of him. He’s never been so terrified, never been so afraid- 

And as he hyperventilates, looking desperately around the room, he finds nothing there to be afraid of. 

His statuary, his ornate vases, the collection of antique swords hanging on his walls, his desk with all the right paperwork on it, signing over to him his uncle’s land interests, at least the ones of any real use. And the letters, the letters he was encouraged to take from the estate sale by that strange, lowly figure, that beggar that knew too much and-

The letters. They’ve gone. 

Wan Heng reaches out a hand- 

There is no hand. 

Someone took it from him. 

Someone he doesn’t know. Someone without a face. Someone who isn’t- who isn’t real, who isn’t here, who was- 

His hand is missing. 

And there’s no one here. There was never anyone here.

Hao Nera watches as the desperate little nobleman falls into a ball in the corner, sobbing. 

He can’t quite find it in himself to laugh- but he’s certainly not crying. Not over this piece of shit. 

He tosses the severed hand onto the floor, where it’ll rot, undetected and unseen, for the next few months. By the time it starts eating into the carpet and through the floorboards beneath, the poor bastard will have lost his damn mind trying to find it, as will anyone with a weaker cultivation or comprehension of Dao than Hao Nera himself has. 

The Dao of the Unseen is a hell of a drug, and the Intent that he packs alongside it sure does help. 

He leaves the house the same way he came in- through a hidden tunnel, meant to be (obviously, hilariously) unseen. The spaces between the walls, between other places, where people could but don’t look, are more comfortable than anywhere else now, tied perfectly to the concepts he’s making a part of himself. 

Honestly, with a bit more energy, he’s pretty sure he could make the tunnel as Unseen as the hand left behind. It’s not about being hidden or secret, it’s more… like people notice things, but don’t see them. Their brains just don’t quite get what the big deal is. 

It’s an ironic sort of Dao to get, maybe, considering how Hao Nera dresses, looks, acts, presents himself as, etc- but he thinks that makes it all the more fitting.

Sighing, he pulls at the core inside himself, the pearl of existence that is at the center of his being. The energy of existence itself rises up, clad in stolen furs and impossible angles, and with a push, he sacrifices some of it into a technique, imbuing more realness into the act of traversing the Unseen passageway.

Faceless Technique: Rats In The Walls Know The Shortcuts

He emerges out the other side in an entirely different house, in a different city, in a different ring. 

The real fancy stuff is locked down tight, but the ones below? The leeches who feed off of the big sharks, thinking they’re protected, that they get how the world works?

Yeah. There’s a lot of noblemen, clans, and mid-tier cultivators in the world who think the only dangers out there are the ones they can see. 

Hao Nera leans over the shoulder of a tall, waif-thin woman as she works on some sort of engineering project. An expert, technically, but one of dozens, each of them fabricating their own part of the machinery in the vast hangar bay. 

Three days ago, one of his guys, a former bandit turned “professional”, pinned a note to her bed with needles. Wrapped around it was a very well-drawn picture of her, carrying pieces of jade far too expensive for anyplace but her workstation, away in her pockets. 

She’s not as vile as the nobleman was. Not nearly as gross, either. But she now has a very good reason to do a very minor thing which no one will notice.

Except the Thief That Wasn’t. 

He likes that name. It’s got a ring to it. People come up with cool names for you when they’re a good mix of terrified of and idolizing you, he thinks, and considering the fact that he just walked from the third ring all the way into the heart of the second with a technique, a Dao, some Intent, and the sexiest swagger this side of the Empire. 

Running a subversive, half-anarchic, quasi-terroristic spy network is a lot of work. 

But it beats joining the army. 

And this way, he can get someone he trusts to do things right. Himself. 

Fuck knows he ain’t trusting the bull-headed dickhole to get the job done. 

He sighs. 

The engineer lady is doing… fine. Slight hitch in three of the panels she’s constructing, which click into place just well enough to be hard to notice. Until something hits that part.

Turning, Unseen, Hao Nera takes the long way around, circling the catwalks so he gets a slow, leisurely stroll along the outside of the cannon’s main barrel. 

It takes a few minutes to walk from one end of it to the other. It would take longer to walk around the thing behind it, worked on by far more competent and powerful figures than the little engineer he’s subverted, which looms over the metal cavern, hundreds of feet high. 

He turns a corner, and-

Faceless Technique: Rats In The Walls Know The Shortcuts

He’s facing a small alleyway, and watching as two poorly armed thugs circle around a man hustling through the streets, carrying a satchel. 

Hao Nera watches, Unseen, as the two men do the job they’ve been paid to do, tripping, beating, and then robbing the running figure, his academic’s robes coated in mud that matches the color of the bruises he’ll have. Thick chemical runoff stains the satchel before it’s yanked away, damaging the scrolls and intricate spellwork inactive inside it.

The man will be looking for those documents back, and will be able to purchase them- at a premium, of course. The two thugs, on the other hand, will find themselves decently rewarded and then sent on their way, where one of them will probably go get drunk, and the other will be knifed to death in an alley much like this one.

He beats his wife. Hao Nera doesn’t like that, and neither do any of the people he trusts with the actual work of revolution. 

And it is revolution. Of some kind. The bull-headed beastkin keeps cards under his fur, they’re so close to his chest, but now and again, he plays on. Figuring out the shape of the game is more possible than finding out what he’s holding, if only just. 

Hao Nera walks, Unseen, down a half-built little corner, a pile of garbage acting as a wall on one side and the dark, half-rotted edge of a crumbling ruin the other. The cities of the second ring seem shinier than the third on the surface, but beneath the machines and the shine, they rot just the same.

He comes out from between the trash and ruins into a place that smells of incense, perfume, and sex. 

He nods and smiles as he passes through the hallways of Johns and Janes, faceless and nameless just like him. A dozen lives put on hold so they can put masks on and take them off, losing themselves to what they need or want. His Dao feels so comfortable, so calm here, that it’s like he could be anywhere. 

Like he could be anyone.

He keeps that thought close as he puts a small purse on the desk of the madam, alongside a note that puts the blame for it on an anonymous gesture for services rendered. On his way back through another hallway, down the stairs and into the bordello’s main floor, he places a coin on a musician’s stand, marking a page for their music, and slips a few additives into the opium and smokeables that are reserved for a repeat customer. It won’t kill them, but it will make them violently ill, which should keep them out of the way long enough for an entirely different plan to come through.

The other stuff is mostly just fucking around. Good to have a few misdirects. Even better to have some fun where he can. 

Keeping all these spinning plates in the air is exhausting. A little recreation is essential to keep one’s sanity. 

He takes a corner into a little cubby under the stairs, and-

Faceless Technique: Rats In The Walls Know The Shortcuts

-emerges out into a room that almost glows with power. 

Not every place that’s Unseen is small, or minor. In a place as fucked as the Empire, where the rich feast on delicacies that can bankrupt cities like they’re candy, there’s all kinds of big, scary places with big, scary things, left to rot. 

Sometimes, the scariest, most important places are the ones no one thinks about.

He takes a seat on the chair, left here by someone scary enough to leave a chair made of solid gold and magic in a place they literally don’t even notice.

Five pillars of jade rise a hundred feet high around a central space. Each one glows and crackles with power, formulae carved in minute detail smaller than a mortal eye can read flaring with light and heat. Lightning, colored with all seven aspects of comprehension of Dao, crackles between each pillar, dancing and forming into intricate patterns that surround the figure chained in the center of the room. 

Each chain is made of carved pearls, gold and more jade, each link connected to the next with a solid hunk of lead, titanium, tungsten, and circuits of bismuth. Just one of the seven chains would be enough to set Hao Nera up with a mansion, servants, and a private army of Core Formation realm cultivators for the rest of his long, long life. Enough resources to buy his way into the Nascent Soul realm.

They don’t seem like enough.

Each and every one is held taught by the force exerted from the figure chained in the center of the room.

Hao Nera sighs, taking out a little gourd of alcohol and taking a swig. The minute formations intricately tattooed onto the furs and leathers he’s wearing hum with power, augmenting his cultivation and techniques. A gift, and not one he trusts, but fuck it, the great “Runemaster Boriah” knows his shit, and until he needs to rely on it, he’s happy to use them. 

Even with all his Dao, his advancing cultivation, the way he’s created something almost unique of himself… even with the advice of his resident lover and cultivation genius, he can still feel the defenses of the room looking towards him. Turning. Trying to See him. 

He takes another swig, then raises a toast up to the figure in chains. 

“Luck, pal. Your kid’s doing craaaaazy shit out there. A little while longer and he’ll be busting his way in here.”

The “eyes” of the chamber keep turning, rolling in their metaphorical sockets, feeling that something is wrong but not yet knowing what. The formation on his clothing starts to hum hard enough to tickle. Too much longer and the furs might start to combust, and after that, it’s not long before the room sees him and makes of Hao Nera a very handsome smear of atoms drifting apart.

He shakes his head, getting up from the chair. As the attention of impossible things seeks to find him, his Dao strains, pulling at itself, threatening to come undone in the face of something dedicated to its inverse.

He takes two more steps, reaching one of the pillars, taking out a small golden pin, enchanted with runes so small their shape is impossible to determine.

He lightly scratches some of the microscopic runes on the pillar.

The room turns to See him.

There’s no one there.

If there ever was, they were no more than a rat in the walls, scurrying away.

Behind him, another bit of the order of things gnawed away at. 

In the chains, a man with no limbs, one eye, and so very many, many missing pieces, continues to struggle. 

The chains remain taut.

One of them, connected to the pillar opposite the one that a little rat gnawed on, trembles very slightly.

In the chains, a thing of sunlight and stone and flowing waters and turning dimensionality continues to struggle. 

And the rat goes to its next destination, scurrying on and away.