Situ He carefully listened to the words of the monster, eh, no, the ancient god, who was standing before him.
The truth about history, undisclosed secrets, perpetrators behind the curtains...?
Situ He's temples throbbed violently.
His breathing accelerated.
"He knows!
"Does he know...?"
As a high official in the Blackguard, Situ He certainly was aware of lots of secrets.
What's more, he was also aware that although many rumors and secrets may seem absurd, they were actually true.
For example, there had been speculation on the Internet that the Federal Empire had a secret base somewhere in the northwestern desert.
Inside that base, it was said that they had accumulated many alien spacecraft, much alien technology, and even some alien remains that they'd collected from all over the world.
The Federal Empire naturally denied the existence of such a secret base.
But the truth was: it did exist.
It was just that what was hidden inside was not alien spacecraft, futuristic technology, or alien corpses...
It was…
Various kinds of monsters and diabolical items that the Blackguard had either captured or invited to stay from all over the world.
Another example of a conspiracy theory that was actually true concerned the suspicions and speculations of people who had always thought that there was a spy agency similar to the Embroidered Uniform Guard of the former dynasty in the current Federal Empire.
That was also very true.
However, this spy agency didn't target people, but transcendent beings and foreign species.
And it went by the name of the Blackguard.
This was the institution that Situ He was serving, and he was ready to lay down his life for it.
In addition to these, there were many other more deep, sensitive, and dangerous secrets.
Many of these secrets had always been the subjects of speculation by people.
But there was no hard evidence to back up the speculation.
Now, Situ He heard the being in front of him talking about these secrets right to his face.
It was impossible for him to suppress himself any longer.
He asked cautiously, "What is it that you know?"
...
"What is it that you know?" His customer had bitten the hook within one second, just as Ling PingAn had imagined he would.
This instantly made Ling PingAn very excited.
"That's more like it!" Ling PingAn chuckled to himself. "This is the correct rhythm!"
With a smile, he invited his customer to sit down on the couch.
Then, he said in a whisper, "Good sir, do you know that…
"Taizu of the Federal Empire doesn't belong to this world…
"To be more precise, he doesn't belong to this time and space."
Ling PingAn started talking about some wild gossip of a conspiracy theory that he'd read in some book.
Situ He swallowed with difficulty.
His heartbeat abruptly hastened.
Of course he knew that!
Emperor Taizu of the Federal Empire of Xia wasn't from this space and time.
This was a top secret of the imperial family!
It was also a secret that only the imperial family and certain high-ranking Blackguard officers should know about.
What's more, since the revival of the Spirit Aura, the royal family and former masters of the Blackguard have placed this secret out of bounds.
In theory, any possibility of a leak had been closed off.
How did this guy know about that?
Situ He became flummoxed.
He had no idea whether this entity had learned this secret via some kind of ability he possessed or whether there was a traitor among the Blackguard's high officials.
"It couldn't be betrayal!" Situ He thought.
There were no more than five people in the Blackguard who knew this secret.
Aside from the Governor and him, the other three people were all federal loyalists who could absolutely be trusted.
Even for him, he had only been able to learn this secret because he had come into contact with the tip of the iceberg of this secret.
In order to prevent him from imagining wild things, after the Governor had consulted with Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Rouan, he had allowed Situ He to look up the top-secret files. Only then did he learn all about the top secrets regarding the origin of the Federal Empire.
And then he had finally acquired a reasonable explanation for the shocking turn of events that occurred 300 years ago.
Someone from the future had altered the fate of the country, which should have fallen.
Since it couldn't be betrayal...
It could only be that this person who was standing in front of him, or, he should say, this otherworldly being...had gained insight into this top secret with his supernatural powers.
Thinking about this, Situ He forced himself to calm down. Then, carefully organizing his words, he asked, "What else do you know?"
...
Ling PingAn heard what his customer had asked him.
The smile at the corner of the mouth could no longer be contained.
"As expected...," he thought, "just as I speculated!
"This guy is a big *ss conspiracy theorist!"
As for the so-called secret...
The novelist inventors of history had long written about it in various novels.
Especially since the dawn of the era of the mobile Internet and the rise of free media...
Taizu of the Federal Empire of Xia and two other historical emperors were addressed by Internet people as the Three Time Travelers!
This was inevitable.
Because these three were simply a bug.[1]
Especially the story about the life of Taizu of the Great Empire of Xia. He literally was a cheat code.
When the Empire of Xia was about to topple and was at the brink of collapse, Taizu stepped forward, swept over the world, cleaned up the mountains and rivers, drove away the Da Lu people, and established the Great Empire of Xia.
Subsequently, he spent ten years populating his family, ten years educating himself, and another ten years building an armada.
When he was 75 years old, he published the famous Aiding our Brethren of Shang.
And so, a mighty fleet sailed out of the empire's ports, full of soldiers of the empire. They sailed across thousands of miles of sea, rushing to aid their enslaved, slaughtered, and exploited brethren of the Shang Empire.
When their brethren in the northern and southern continents of Shang were in dire straits, 75,000 men arrived along with 3,000 cannons.
The people of Shang were elated as they welcomed the emperor's army with baskets of rice and vessels of congee.
In comparison with Taizu, the other two emperors seemed so weak.
These other two were part of the Three Time Travelers.
How could Taizu of the Great Empire of Xia escape the prying eyes of the netizens?
If it hadn't been for the relevant departments in charge of culture and publishing, as well as the imperial family, no one could possibly imagine how many novels about Taizu's time-traveling would be available online.
Even so, in some small private forums, some writers who were looking for trouble sneakily opened up some areas that might get themselves in trouble.
Ling PingAn was one of them. He had no choice. In the face of such a bug, no author could possibly shut their eyes to it.
Therefore, despite knowing that they were asking for trouble and the possibilities of lawsuits, they continued searching.
There was a steady stream of people who were digging and filling up holes in stories, one after another.
But novels were novels, and speculations were speculations.
Ling PingAn had never taken these strange ideas seriously.
But this customer was different!
Ling PingAn smirked and answered mysteriously, "I am afraid that what I know will overwhelm your imagination…
"I know everything you know…
"And I probably know everything you don't know…"
He was correct.
When it came to surfing the Internet, collecting material, and finding jokes, how could the middle-aged and elderly compare to Ling PingAn, an online author who spent most of his time on the Internet every single day?
Adults had to accept that the times are different now.
The previous generation of people had to go to the library and spend an infinite amount of time to find out facts about history. Now, one could find them online at the touch of their fingers.
What had belonged to the imagination of a few, and items that had circulated within small circles of people in the past, were now spread all over the Internet by a vast population of youngsters.
Narratives that ordinary people would never have had access to or use for in their entire lives in the past have now become a source of inspiration and creativity for many online authors.
O Swallows, in the great halls of the lords you used to nest, into the commoners' homes you've all flown!
******
[1] bug: a.k.a. loopholes in games that are exploited to gain benefits. Helps overpower a player.