How can a retired savior be considered retired if his price drops to 40,000?

Chapter 356 What does my method of trying Jianqi have to do with you, Jianqi?

"To all the demons, banshees, or whatever you prefer to call them, who live in the mirrors," Ritsuka Fujimaru clapped his hands and paced forward in the Hall of Distorted Mirrors to attract the attention of all the malicious creatures around him, "Hello? Do you need me to introduce myself?"

Countless distorted crystals flashed in an unphysical way around him, and the indistinct whispers of the banshees were faintly heard from all directions. Mephiston's instinct still told him to be alert to the unusual movements around him, but in fact, his senses, which were currently suffering from "cognitive pollution", could not detect any kind of "unusual movements".

In Fujimaru Ritsuka's eyes, part of the Temple of Pleasure was even more in line with the laws of physics than his personal secret room in the Alchemical Sphere.

Although such a cognitive filter can obviously effectively protect the sanity of even mortals, preventing them from being driven mad by Slaanesh's domain, or spending too much energy fighting against mental erosion, it is still not a good thing, because this seemingly safe cognitive filter will undoubtedly weaken the person's perception of danger.

Realizing this, the Great Thinker instinctively began to examine himself with his psychic powers: he was obviously the kind of person who would choose to struggle to survive in a burning house rather than suffocate quietly in his sleep. But at the same time, he had to divide his energy to try to stop Fujimaru Ritsuka from doing something irreversible right in front of him.

But at least from now on, she was only talking to the servants of Slaanesh around her:
"As we all know, Shalis is the god of indulgence and pleasure in the warp. He knows the most unspeakable darkness or unbearable desires in the hearts of intelligent beings. However, as one of the creatures with knowledge and self-awareness in the universe, I am limited by the limits of what my brain with fixed computing power can understand. I really doubt - is this true?"

Mephiston narrowed his eyes and warned in a low voice: "Seeking such blasphemous forbidden knowledge is itself a matter of depravity. Moreover, the person you are asking is extremely unsafe."

"This is not an 'inquiry', this is a 'provocation'." Knowing that it was useless to lower his voice in this area, as the demons with strong senses would hear him anyway, Fujimaru Ritsuka simply responded generously, "I bet the Lord of Lust also has desires that cannot be explored and satisfied, just like these mirrors around me can't find out what I desire most."

Mephiston's two hearts skipped a beat almost simultaneously, and the screams of the banshee, which could not be blocked by the cognitive filter, sounded angrily all around. The think tank grabbed the baffle at the back of the neck of the Ortenaus spirit base exoskeleton before thinking, and dragged Fujimaru Ritsuka to his side. Amid the confused and surprised voice of the person involved, he used his psychic power to ignite a colorful but non-lethal pure light, trying to cover the little girl's figure and interfere with the surrounding mirrors' imaging of her. This was more like a reflexive stress behavior, because when the ball of light appeared at the same time as Fujimaru Ritsuka's loud protest, Mephiston himself realized that this method of disposal would not work.

The twisted mirrors that host the Slaanesh do not reflect light. They reflect the souls of their victims.

He had not yet cracked the cognitive filter that Fujimaru Ritsuka had given him, so he was not sure that he still had the ability to correctly grasp the surrounding situation. But from his perspective, Fujimaru Ritsuka's distorted figure still appeared in many mirrors around him - under the premise that they were almost stuck together, those images did not include Mephiston's own shadow.

For a few seconds, the mirrors only reflected the struggle of Fujimaru Ritsuka, who was held in his hands, to land in a strange way. Then, no one knew which one started first, but the mirrors reflecting the figure of the Master of Chaldea began to dim, tremble, and crack.

——Then, there were the sounds of dying screams and breaking glass one after another.

The mirror cracked. Purple and pink smoke screamed and drifted away from the hole in the mirror frame. Winds carrying rich fragrance and the smell of blood began to swirl violently in the hall like a natural disaster. The remains of the failed lifeless were once again transformed into etheric energy in these air currents.

In less than half a minute, the thirty-six mirrors shattered because they instinctively peeked into Fujimaru Ritsuka's heart. The demon, unable to successfully project the victim's mental image onto the mirror, became the victim instead, and was unconsciously shattered by a higher will in shame and frustration.

"I told you it's okay!!!" After the storm subsided, Fujimaru Ritsuka, who was hanging in the air, shouted in dissatisfaction, "I'm not stupid, of course I did this because I had the confidence! Put me down now!!"

Mephiston couldn't keep up with the development of the situation, but he still followed suit. The mirrors under their feet had been shattered in the previous death storm, revealing the white and soft "ground" underneath, which looked like a living creature. As soon as Fujimaru Ritsuka landed on the ground, she realized this problem and got goose bumps all over her body. To be honest, she regretted it a little, but people have to save face after all, and she couldn't turn around and ask Mephiston to pick her up again...

"What the hell is going on?" The Great Think Tank didn't receive the part about Fujimaru Ritsuka's aversion to the floor, or maybe he was just more concerned about what happened before, "Did you use any magic?"

"It's not a spell, it's literal. I challenge them to dig into my 'deepest desires'. At most, I use meditation and self-control to prevent them from really digging to the bottom." Fujimaru Ritsuka replied, "But normally, if you dig halfway with this purpose and suddenly see a super grand proposition, your first reaction will definitely be 'this must be it', right? If the mirror wants to project this scene, it will be stuck with a self-destructive bug - so I said this is Tzeentch's method, they are completely killing themselves."

This is irrational. This was Mephiston's first reaction, but right before his eyes, thirty-six mirrors had shattered, and a large hole had been opened in the wall of the Twisted Mirror Hall, which was open for passage. The broken and groaning wall was wriggling and growing blood vessels and flesh, like the overlapping branches of a tree canopy, weaving an arched door, and the lavender gauze slowly floated down from the sky like smoke. The exit had appeared, and the facts spoke louder than words, and Mephiston could not help but "not believe it".

"This may be offensive, but what is your vision that would even allow Them to self-destruct?"

"Nothing. It's just the galaxy after Chaldea's projects on Baal were completed and put into operation." Fujimaru Ritsuka replied, "The Lord of Desire does not exist in that galaxy, and the Lord of Desire himself cannot allow his subordinates or fragments to project this... I don't think this is replicable. If I weren't a bug in this universe, Sally would certainly not care about this illusion. But the subject of the mirror projection is me, and I naturally have a mystical connection with the corresponding illusion. After all, he is a subspace god, and before he realizes what is going on, the corresponding self-defense mechanism will be activated."

"why?"

"By the Emperor's Dream, I am very good at making the dead alive and the fake real. As long as He dares to 'show me' this possibility, I will dare to 'use it as material'."

As Fujimaru Ritsuka said this, she tried hard to imagine that the ground she was standing on was actually a solid marble floor. Unfortunately, this self-deception did not work quickly, so she could only endure the tingling sensation on her scalp and move step by step towards the arched door that was being formed:
"Well, let's take this opportunity to run away--"

Before she finished her words, a huge, brilliant purple eye peered down from the broken wall. It was on a soft, delicate face that was difficult to tell whether it was male or female, but a thin, snake-like tongue that was being swallowed and spit out made this delicate beauty abrupt and inharmonious.

"Mr. Mephiston, help me. I can't defeat the Great Secret Keeper, ahhhhhhhhhhh—"
-
"The one just now should be just an ordinary lust demon."

After the battle, Mephiston kicked the blood scattered on the ground without any care and said calmly: "It's just a little big."

"I don't know. Each of them is different, but overall they all look similar." Ritsuka Fujimaru, who was hiding further away to assist, slowly emerged and cautiously stared at the corpses of the Unliving that naturally dissipated in the unattended Palace of Pleasure. "Do you think it's possible that we haven't been discovered yet?" Mephiston shook his head honestly. "Unlikely. Sir, how fast can you run?"

Obviously, this was a euphemism for questions like "Can I just carry you and run?" The Blood Angels' Chief Librarian tried to show a high EQ, but unfortunately, in Fujimaru Ritsuka's eyes, it wasn't very high. She unhappily drove her magic power, puffed up Medea's cloak, and made herself float a little above the ground to show "I can fly", and replied: "By the way, my maximum speed for short-distance sprinting is 120 kilometers per hour."

She emphasized "Don't underestimate me" in her words, but for Mephiston, the scene of her screaming for help when she was scared by the succubus when she poked her head at the door, and the scene of her exploding thirty-six distorted crystals with just two words, both had a very strong impact and were unlikely to be erased from his memory for the time being. The two extreme performances were superimposed on the same person at the same time, so he really couldn't measure the scale of his treatment of this imperial saint - so he simply nodded in silence, chanted a spell, and transformed the blood wings commonly used by the Blood Angels think tank behind him, and took Fujimaru Ritsuka into the air before more enemies gathered.

"Uh... do we have a direction?" In the whistling wind in the air, Fujimaru Ritsuka asked anxiously, "We should leave this 'divine realm' first, right?"

"No, just think about leaving." Mephiston answered with great confidence, or perhaps he forced his tone to sound very credible. "According to the records, Shalis's domain is composed of six different concentric 'rings' surrounding the Palace of Pleasure, and He welcomes visitors to challenge Him. Therefore, based on the nature of the warp, I infer that as long as we firmly believe in our goals and overcome the traps and tests in between, the goals will come to us on their own."

"Got it, it's a challenge to break through the divine realm." Fujimaru Ritsuka said confidently, "I happen to have quite some experience."

——The confidence that she felt she was “quite experienced” immediately collapsed in the first round. When Fujimaru Ritsuka tripped and fell on the soft sand for the third time because of the uneven force of her legs, she could only yell in exhaustion and collapse: “Why is the first round so difficult!!”

"Because we are heading outwards." Mephiston answered the question rigidly, which actually did not need an answer. "Theoretically speaking, this is the last level."

He knew that this was just Fujimaru Ritsuka's personal complaint, but he did need to say something every once in a while to maintain or prove that he was still sober.

As soon as they entered the ring, their flying abilities were restricted. Perhaps there was an invisible rule that required all travelers to measure the distance they walked with their feet, but it was more likely that a sense of fatigue that came with the venue itself made it impossible for them to concentrate on using spells.

Don't ask what happened, just ask the power of Slaanesh.

Fortunately, it is obviously easier for two people to pass this level than for one person to walk alone - long-distance bus drivers would like to have someone sitting in the passenger seat to chat with them. Fujimaru Ritsuka first stopped the think tank from trying again, because according to her experience, it is obviously a thankless task to confront the rules set by the gods in their own domain. The golden sunlight shone warmly on them, and the regular and soft sound of the waves not far away was like hypnotic white noise to their ears. It seemed that there was a choir somewhere singing a soothing lullaby in harmony - but they couldn't sleep!

This literally means "if you fall asleep you lose", and your body will remain forever on this warm and gentle beach - as a small part of the soft and smooth sand that Fujimaru Ritsuka had previously secretly praised and complained about in his heart.

"What kind of suffering is this?" Fujimaru Ritsuka was so sleepy that he was talking nonsense. "I didn't even have to endure this when I was preparing for the entrance exam in high school - no, I don't think I've ever prepared for the entrance exam..."

Before the school organized the voluntary investigation, she had already decided on a whim to do something good for the society, and boarded the pirate ship of Chaldea from a blood donation vehicle. Thinking of this, she couldn't help but suddenly feel sad, and with a little fantasy with a filter, she sighed the kind of sigh that only high school students would make:

"...I don't know what college is like yet...I want to go to the University of Tokyo even if it's a crappy major...clubs give you extra points..."

These things were too far away from Mephiston, and he didn't even understand some of the related concepts. But in order to find a topic that could keep both parties awake, he still chose to speak and picked a topic that was roughly similar to the above:

"This makes me curious about your previous education." Mephiston was not curious, he just needed to get his brain motivated by something else. "Considering your 'magic', is this a small-scale secret method passed down in a family or master-apprentice education model?"

"That's right in the definition, but I was an ordinary student until I was fifteen." Fujimaru Ritsuka answered, then she slowly remembered that the Imperials might have a very different understanding of the concept of "ordinary students" than she did. "I mean the kind where students simply think about their own future, not about going to the battlefield to fight... It might be more like a grammar school... Ah, my brain is not working..."

Mephiston could understand this kind of exhaustion, after all, he was also feeling the same way. But after hearing this, he still urgently asked: "What about you after you turned fifteen?"

Fujimaru Ritsuka paused. Just as the think tank was seriously thinking about whether he needed to pick up the little girl and shake her to confirm her sanity, she spoke in time: "After I turned fifteen, I was selected by Chaldea and went to Antarctica. In a sense, you can say that my studies were interrupted."

——South Pole is of course a general term for most habitable planets in the Empire. But if "Antarctic" is used in Low Gothic, it refers to the Antarctic region of Holy Terra, the headquarters of the Inquisition.

Under this premise, a deduction will naturally arise: "If so, why did your organization leave the Inquisition and be moved to the Astronomican Court?"

"Hmm? I don't... not... what does it have to do with the Inquisition?" It took Fujimaru Ritsuka ten seconds to understand the whole story. "Oh, I understand. But I went to Antarctica in 2015 AD."

Mephiston was a little confused. When his mind also turned to the true meaning of this sentence, he even felt that he was awakened a little from the curse of laziness of Slaanesh.

She paused and emphasized, "There is no missing zero, and no strange dating method. It is the Terran Gregorian calendar, 2015 AD. At that time, humans had not yet set foot on the Earth, and Antarctica was also covered in ice and snow. Seals and penguins lived on the nearby ice sheets... I signed a contract with Chaldea because I thought I could see penguins, but it turned out that there were blizzards on the mountains in Antarctica for most of the year, and I could only stay indoors on the rare days of rest..."

After she was sure that she had cleared up some misunderstandings, Fujimaru Ritsuka began to complain about the cold and dry weather outside. But she didn't expect that after Mephiston combined some of the knowledge he had observed, this passage caused other misunderstandings from another perspective:
Could the primitive humans around 2000 AD ignore the chaos pollution through cognitive filters and easily run around with the Star Torch in their souls?

(End of this chapter)