Twenty-Two

The mansion was extremely majestic, reminding him of his Taichen Palace, but had been cold and silent, in the absence of its master. Dijun walked about the mansion, finally stopping at a secret room.

In this room, laid the preserved, lifeless body of the actual Lyrid, Dijun faced Lyrid's body and recited an incantation, before blowing his magic on it. It was a protection and invisibility spell merged as one.

"You need to wait a little longer."

He then moved to another secret room, where the soulless, resting body of Fengjiu lay on a bed. He had magically transformed this body into an exact resemblance of the room that she had previously resided in Taichen Palace.

He looked down at his palm, where little flames subsided after a few minutes. It had been just as Siming said. Every time he cast a spell in the mortal world, it had a chance of 80% success. Due to the amount of power he had, the resulting pain from the spell backfiring on him had been minimal and close to none. Furthermore, the cost of using the spells he had used, were but an insignificant amount of his power as they were but minor spells that did not alter any form of reality or interfered with the forces of balance of the mortal world. On the other hand, the amount of power he used would have been 70% of the power of a normal immortal or deity, and the effects of backfiring on the immortal would have been close to fatal.

........................................

In the comfort of his office, Lyrid browsed the photographs of Altria that he had taken during the Sagada-da volunteering event, which he had transferred to his laptop. Apart from the group photographs they had taken together, a number of these photographs had been secretly taken of the girl. As he was engrossed in scrolling through the photographs, the Star Lord of Destiny, dressed in corporate attire, suddenly materialised inside the room.

"Greetings to Your Highness Dijun."

The Dijun looked up from the laptop and received a fate book from Siming. It was the fate book of Altria. Apart from some notes containing her personal details and life, most of the pages of the book still remained blank.

"Altria Xi Ziyu aka Al

-24 years old, an archivist in Archives of Samsara with 2 years career experience

-from a middle class family

-her aunt and uncle live in the province, while she and her cousin Astrid Yang Zihua

live in the metro

-mother died after she graduated from college

-loves to travel and performing volunteering works

-multilingual, can speak English, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic and many other languages"

Siming returned the fate book of Altria into his sleeve and produced another book, this time of Dong Yun's fate. Siming had made the necessary additions to ensure that following the Dijun's return of Lyrid's corpse, Dong Yun would success in his future endeavours and bring prosperity to Dong Group of Companies, eventually taking Lyrid's grandfather's place as the sole heir of the group. The Dijun nodded to indicate his consent, and Siming replaced the letter inside his sleeve.

"Lord Xie also sent a letter."

"Oh?" The Dijun said coldly, and took the letter from Siming. The letter certified the identity of Dong Yun as the present lifetime of Zhang Xu, the grandson of the rich family that had taken in Seventy-Three's mortal incarnation Zhang Ya and allowed him to become Zhang Xu's study companion. Zhang Xu had reaped many good deeds when attaining position as the scholar (government officer) after Zhang Ya's death, and this had allowed him to be born into a rich family as its heir, for a vast number of generations. Dong Yun was his seventeenth lifetime. Realising that Dong Yun was Zhang Xu, the Dijun seemed particularly delighted, but did not express it emotionally on his face, and merely smiled for a few seconds, before resuming his browsing of the girl's photographs.

Siming watched the Dijun as he was obsessed with the photographs, and grudgingly showed him a pile of papers that he had brought from Taichen Palace. "Fine, I'll look at them. You may send my Seventy-Fourth and Seventy-Fifth junior brothers to pick them up from me tomorrow."

"Then I'll take my leave, Your Majesty." Siming disappeared as the Dijun kept the papers in his bag and ignored him.

Meanwhile, Altria was lying on her bed, lost in thoughts as a memory of the volunteering event flashed back in her mind.

Goodbye to the Village

The warm villagers bid goodbye to the volunteers and escorted them to the entrance of the village, after a breakfast and sighting the promising sunrise. Despite how Altria was reluctant to leave, all good things would come to an end.

As they walked together, the volunteers made a promise among themselves to return to the village someday for another visit. Altria was glad she did not make a detour that day as she considered this was money not wasted. She had learnt much from the trip and performed some charitable deeds. The suffering and hardship she had gone through during the trek was but a test for her perseverance. Seeing the villagers' smiles had been very satisfying to her, compensating the hard efforts she had made in getting to the village.

On the way back, the vans stopped over for refuel and for the volunteers to take a necessary break. Altria alighted the van to buy some food and drinks, and as she pulled the cash out of her wallet, she failed to notice that her Archives of Samsara business card had dropped out of her wallet.

Unknown to her, Lyrid had picked it up as she walked into the convenience store to make her purchases. She's an archivist? he thought silently in his mind, and placed the card in his pocket.

Following the volunteer event, Altria had resumed working at the Archives of Samsara, only to hear that in her absence, gossip had spread regarding her and her reporting supervisor, Huang Jingyu. Understanding that her supervisor was a good person and had been kind to her and her team members, she had never suspected him of having malicious intentions on her.

Little had she known that it had been Mr. Huang's wife who was the mastermind behind these attacks. Aside from being insecure and often jealous of his female co-workers, she was also paranoid and suicidal. During a visit by Mrs Huang to the office, where she had witnessed Altria hand a folder containing a report she had prepared to Mr. Huang. This misunderstanding had been backed up by Altria's unrivaled beauty, and the fact she had most of the male co-workers captivated. This had resulted in a misunderstanding, and jealousy for Altria had stemmed off from the incident.

The rumours had depressed Altria, as she had regarded the office that she worked in to be her second home. Furthermore, the job had been very convenient for her due to the fact that they would only work on weekdays and she had also made a few friends in her co-workers. It had been unfortunate that she had to be transferred out of the department she worked in temporarily due to the rumours.

While the top management investigated the issues of the circulating rumours, they had hoped that transferring to the research facility department led by Mrs. Silva would lessen the rumours, while eliminating contact between her and Mr. Huang. However, their efforts were fruitless as the rumours were still going around. In the meantime, Altria had submitted her resume to a number of companies in her efforts in seeking a new career opportunity in the market.

Note: While working in the Archives, the use of smartphones or any gadgets that may be used for photo-taking is strictly prohibited, like in the Singapore Armed Forces. (Not sure if the army in your country has similar rules). Visitors who require use of the research facilities in the Archives are allowed a locker to store their personal belongings.

Altria was on duty one day when she came across a research facility application submitted by a Mr. Lyrid Dong seated at Table 9, who required materials on the Galleon Trade between the 1850s to 1900s. Due to the familiarity of his name and in her curiousity in knowing whether the requester was the same Lyrid she had known during the volunteer event, she decided to handle the request personally.

Despite her excitement in identifying Lyrid as the said applicant, she acted professionally. She informed him that she had ran a search on the online database earlier, only to find that Galleon Trade was a hot research topic by most visitors, and thus the digital copies of the materials were unavailable. However, if he required the materials urgently, she had access to a microfilm copy, which could be viewed inside its respective gallery. Should Lyrid wish to view it, she required him to sign another form to indicate his consent to use the microfilm reader. Nonchalantly, Lyrid agreed and signed the form without a single word in objection.

In fact, the Dijun was here to see Altria and couldn't be bothered about the materials. With his powerful sense of hearing as a god, the Dijun had overheard the gossip about Altria and her former supervisor that had caused her to be transferred to the research facility department.

As soon as the paperworks were completed, Altria called Lyrid and escorted him into the microfilm gallery. Lyrid noticed that the room was much colder than the digital records gallery that they were previously in, but having a cold personality himself, he wasn't bothered by the cold at all. He watched as Altria put on a pair of disposable gloves and obtained the microfilm copies of the materials he had requested for. As she placed them into the reader, she informed him that a microfilm navigator application was used to view the microfilm and asked if he knew how to use the application.

Without thinking, the unbothered Lyrid gestured that he is unaware of how to use the application, so Altria attempted to explain to him slowly on the various functions and how to navigate through the slides by using the respective buttons in the application. However, the man appeared to be not listening to her and was just smiling as he watched her talk.

"Did you get me?" Altria asked Lyrid, but Lyrid just said "Pardon?" and asked her to repeat herself continuously, causing her to feel slightly annoyed at having to explain herself repeatedly to someone who simply wasn't listening. Yet, as she was a professional worker, she could only do as he said, containing herself from scolding him. This man was definitely testing her patience, she thought silently to herself, sighing deeply in her mind.