Zhen Liu and Alicia were just about to join the line to enter the Zhen Clan compound, when the former suddenly stopped in his tracks.
Noticing her companion's sudden lack of motion, Alicia turned to see why he had stopped in place.
"Are you alright?,"she asked in a somewhat worried tone.
The two of them had spent three days together with no one else to talk to but each other and a pair of aether hippos,so at this point she considered themselves to at least be friends.
Zhen Liu didn't answer, but the pensive look on his face made it clear that something was on his mind.
"Yeah...," Zhen Liu answered in a weird tone, "Just had a...weird thought. Nothing you need to worry about."
"Are you sure? Because it sounds like you think something sinister is going on," Alicia retorted in a somewhat joking manner. Evidently, she had hit the nail on the head with that joking answer.
"Uhh...maybe? You go ahead and line up, I need to go use the bathroom," he said as an excuse for himself.
Zhen Liu proceeded to walk off in a random direction, giving Alicia no time to ask any follow up questions.
"Oh...okay," Alicia said deflated. She watched Zhen Liu walk away a few moments before lining up to enter with the other well-wishers.
"You know I could've probably helped, right?," she thought to herself.
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After walking a few more feet away, Zhen Liu turned back to see whether or not Alicia had lined up and was no longer looking in his direction.
Once he confirmed that Alicia wasn't looking his way, he proceeded to duck into an alleyway adjacent to the compound.
"Apologies Alicia," Zhen Liu mumbled to himself, "But I get the distinct feeling that my death wasn't as random as I had initially believed it to be, and I would rather this next part give you some plausible deniability."
Out of sight from the crowd, Zhen Liu formed a strange hand seal with his left hand and began to channel his aether into the ornate red jade bracelet on his wrist. The bracelet began to glow an ominous color as more and more aether flowed into it.
"Ugh. I really hope I start to get used to this feeling at some point. This nausea is driving me nuts," Zhen Liu grumbled to himself as his stomach began to feel ill. Despite having practiced the [Chaos Body Forge] a bit more on his way home, he still hadn't gotten used to the feeling of actually expending aether.
In the three days it had taken Tiny to cross the Wasting Sands, Zhen Liu had made sure not to waste any of it by lamenting his current predicament of being pronounced dead. Instead, he used that time to be productive and practice, practice, practice!
During that time he learned how to summon and dismiss Nepherage as needed as well as communicate with her telepathically. It took a bit of time and he definitely needed to practice more, but it was a start.
[From the edge of reality, come forth: Nepherage!]
At Zhen Liu's command, the glowing jade bracelet shattered into a shower of light particles. The particles began to swirl in the air like a swarm of bees before condensing into a vague humanoid form that had taken a kneeling position before him.
Moments later, the humanoid form transformed into the familiar sight of a red demonic woman with downward horns.
"What are your orders my lord?," Nepherage said in a dutiful tone the moment she was summoned.
"Alright Nepherage," Zhen Liu began to say,"I need you to-"
*CLANG!* *CLATTER!*
"The hell?"
"Zhen Liu? You're alive?!," a voice called out in surprise.
Turning to face the source, Zhen Liu was ready to just book it until he saw who the owner of the voice was.
"Oh shit...hey...Jin Fang...," Zhen Liu said in a weak manner.
Evidently, Zhen Liu had forgotten that the alleyway he had duck into happened to be the same alleyway which the family servants used to dispose of food scraps.
Standing before him, with a fallen pot of vegetable scraps at her feet, sun-kissed skin and black hair in a long braid, was his childhood friend and (former?) attendant, Jin Fang.
She was simultaneously the first and last person Zhen Liu wanted to see at this moment.
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Back when Zhen Liu was a little kid, (and before his body got taken over by Thomas Lee), he would spend his youth walking alongside his mother as the two of them wandered the streets of the city. Being a young master of the Zhen Clan, not many people dared to touch him and anyone who had plans to had to deal with the family guards who made it a point to do their duty of his line of sight.
It was during one of these strolls that he came across the sight of a little girl about his age in tattered rags and swollen dirty feet laying passed out on the ground of a filthy alleyway.
Zhen Liu pointed out the little girl to his mother, who in a moment of compassion, brought the girl back with them to the family estate. He didn't know understand why his mother did so at the time, but he did remember thinking that the girl seemed as frail as a baby bird.
A couple days after that particular moment, that little girl showed up before Zhen Liu again, looking much healthier and in much better clothes.
His parents informed him that the little girl was named Jin Fang and from that moment onward, she was to be his attendant. Of course he was a little too young to understand what that meant at the time, so he figured it meant new best friend.
From that moment onward, Zhen Liu and Jin Fang grew up alongside each other as childhood friends and as attendant and attendee.
Granted, that's what Thomas could gleam from the memories he had fully integrated. There were still a few that hadn't been absorbed yet.
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"Hey Jin Fang. Long time no-"
But before he could say anything else, Jin Fang clocked him in the gut.
"Why the hell did you leave me behind?!"