Chapter 849: Showdown
After speaking, he covered her head with a piece of item cloth, and her vision went dark. The light spots inside that stone suddenly brightened, looking almost like a starry sky.
"It's very beautiful." Xu Huo flipped the cloth off his head. "Where did you get this item?"
"Mr. Dong gave it to me." The Painting Woman clutched the new communicator in her pocket, grabbed the item, and ran off.
Picking up the stone, Xu Huo went to the study to check the ores stored alongside the Nüwa Stone. After testing them with an instrument, he found nothing had changed.
Ores near a primal stone would be affected and turn into Sub-Class Stones, but what kind of Sub-Class Stones they became, or how long it took, was unpredictable.
Xu Huo thought for a moment, then put the stone into the pocket inside his clothes.
He needed the Nüwa Stone to nurture the King Fungus, so he couldn't keep the stone on him at all times—he'd have to alternate.
"Sir?" Mr. Dong knocked on the door from outside. "The goods you ordered have arrived."
The wormhole flowers and items Xu Huo had ordered in the morning weren't rare high-grade items, so delivery was fast.
He placed one pot of wormhole flower on his desk and carried the other into the castle's inner space.
Taking out the green potion, Xu Huo dipped a cotton swab in it and dabbed it onto the wormhole flower's leaf. Sure enough, within seconds, the area where the potion touched shifted from purple to red.
So Dr. Deng hadn't lied about that.
To be safe, he tested an ordinary potion as well—what appeared was an unevenly colored blotch. Even the best quality evolution agent available on the market produced the same result.
This outcome showed that the information Dr. Deng had provided, along with his method for identifying the Perfect Potion, was genuine.
The question was how much stock Dr. Deng still had on hand.
Xu Huo had no plans to inject the potion right now. He tore off the wormhole flower's treated leaf and destroyed it, then placed the flower back into his luggage compartment. After exiting, he took the item with him to the annex.
As someone who supposedly "didn't have the Perfect Potion," he needed to rely on items to verify truth from falsehood.
Of course, he couldn't just lay the item out directly for Dr. Deng to see—it had to be half-hidden, half-revealed.
Dr. Deng certainly understood why Xu Huo had come to re-verify things and cooperated fully with the item "test." In the end, the results showed that both the wormhole flower's verification of the potion and the incompleteness of the information were, surprisingly, all true.
Xu Huo smiled at him. "You made a mistake."
"You knew I wouldn't believe you'd told the complete truth, yet the item showed everything as true. That means you have a way to evade the item's scrutiny. So tell me—was even one word you said actually true?"
Dr. Deng smiled without answering.
Xu Huo collected the item and stood up. When he reached the door, he said to Mr. Dong, "Keep him locked up a few more days. It's not like he doesn't have the time to spare."
Mr. Dong nodded.
Dr. Deng, who could neither leave nor go anywhere, quickly called out, "Are we still in a cooperative partnership or not?"
"As long as you stop trying to arm-wrestle me, our partnership will be extremely harmonious." Xu Huo waved and left.
Perhaps he was already used to Xu Huo's fickleness, because Dr. Deng, whose little dark room sentence had been extended, didn't feel too bad about it. Instead, he muttered, "As long as we can still cooperate, that's fine."
By dinner time, Bai Kou still hadn't returned. Xu Huo waited in the living room for a while, but instead of her, he got a communication from the Duchess first. The Duchess invited him to her residence, saying she had a matter she needed his help with.
Xu Huo's first move after hanging up was to search online for news—still those old stories from the Main City District, with no updates on District 011 players or the Enforcement Department.
After a brief moment of hesitation, he decided to go. Before leaving, he gave Mr. Dong a few instructions.
When he arrived at the location, he realized the situation might be more serious than he'd imagined.
Flight devices filled the area outside the Duchess's estate. Both the Enforcement Department's Black Epaulets and White Epaulets were present, along with government players. In addition, quite a few players in noble attire were on the scene.
The Enforcement Department and government players had surrounded the Duchess's residence, while the noble players stood divided into two opposing groups in the garden. Behind them were more players whose identities couldn't be discerned, but telling "friend from foe" wasn't difficult, because Serin, mixed in with one of the sides, was waving at him.
Xu Huo moved closer while observing the situation inside the castle. Nobles of lesser standing were outside, while those with recognizable names were already inside—among them Ahsis and others he'd seen before. However, they were seated across from the weeping Lady Lily, and the two sides appeared to be in a standoff.
"Curious about what's going on?" Serin used an item to communicate with him. "Lady Lily's younger brother is suspected of secretly colluding with the Holy Sword Society. The man is hiding inside the castle."
Xu Huo looked toward the castle. Though the gate was shut, the voices still leaked out.
Lady Lily wiped her tears as she spoke, "Is this how you bully a widow?"
"You didn't even say what happened—just brought the Black Epaulets straight to surround my residence... What's the point of me being Duchess? Are you all looking at me as a woman without a man to lean on, thinking I'm easy to push around?"
Through the glass of the gate, one could see the several nobles and senior government officials across from her wearing grim expressions. A white-haired elderly man in the center said, "Lady Lily, let's talk things through calmly. The government always acts by the book—they must have evidence to come here."
"What evidence?" The still-charismatic Lady Lily's eyes brimmed with tears as she said weakly, "My father, my mother, my two older brothers, my two younger brothers, five paternal cousins, three younger paternal cousins, four maternal cousins—all of them died for District 011."
"My parents died in the prime of their lives. One of my brothers left behind a child less than a year old; another had been married for only two months. Of my two younger brothers, one was about to get married when he died on the battlefield—his fiancée still hasn't remarried to this day. The other was captured by out-of-district players, tortured endlessly before being strangled to death, and his body was dismembered afterward... He was only twenty-five years old!"
"My paternal cousins and maternal cousins—which one of them even got a complete corpse?"
"Even my husband was killed by mistake on a ship..."
Her tearful, heart-wrenching recounting made the elderly men across from her show signs of reluctance. One of them sighed, "District 011 will never forget anyone's sacrifice..."
"No," the Duchess interrupted him. "For District 011's future, I accept their sacrifices. But half my family died on the battlefield, and still someone suspects me of having ties to the Holy Sword Society? Aren't you just forcing me to my death?"
"Or could it be that the real traitors are deliberately framing me to divert attention?"
"You elders all watched me grow up. Can you really stand by and watch me, a newly widowed woman, be pushed to this point?"
The several elderly men looked troubled, but Ahsis wasn't buying any of it. He said coldly and harshly, "We wouldn't have come without solid evidence. Lady Lily, it's best you have your brother come out and accept the investigation. Aside from him, you still have other family."
"Are you threatening me?" Lady Lily's gaze turned icy. "The Milael family was shedding blood for District 011 before you were even born. Now that the Milael family has declined, are we only fit to have our dignity trampled and serve as a stepping stone for a New Elite like you?"