Intermission Two

  Diaochan A.I

  Don't worry, the terrace didn't collapse, and Master Lu Bu used his new Dash ability to make it across the gap and not fall to his death. It was all very dynamic. Iron Vanguard Assault propelled him through the air, and the reduction of incoming damage, along with his increased mass, meant he burst through the opposing wall in a cloud of dust and debris.

  My master and I had already discussed the locations of various grocery and convenience stores that we had passed on the way to the over-Surge: Purple foothold that had been allowed to blossom into what people colloquially called a hunting ground. I activated the navigation module in his HUD and projected a blue line that he could follow to the locations we had already planned for.

  My tasks accomplished and content in the knowledge that Lu Bu would alert me if he needed anything, I retreated into my analysis of his memories. Obviously, I had gone through them before in order to learn about my master and craft the Diaochan persona, but that had been the result of only a cursory scan. Which was why, when I'd had free time over these last few days, I had been going through his life again in far greater detail.

  You might think this was an inefficient use of my time, and I wouldn't blame you for that assessment. However, please understand my master was already attracting enemies from his old life, and was fully convinced that the CEO of WeiTech Dynamics, one of the richest men in the entire city, fell into that list. I still wasn't convinced on that front. Yes, Cao Cao had led a faction called the Wei, which was obviously the same name as CEO MG Eden's corporation. The thing is, though, in the history of Abeyance city, there have been dozens of companies and businesses of all shapes and sizes that have borne the name 'Wei'.

  Still, the master was utterly convinced that it was the man's true identity, and it was another reason to go through his memories in detail. It would be some time before I reached Cao Cao or adult Lu Linqi in this particular sifting of my master's past, but as I have said already, going through an entire lifetime of memories in detail takes time.

  [Accessing Memory Fragment: 19-4376584]

  [Subject Age: 19]

  I sighed as I realised what memory I was watching. This was the final few minutes of Ding Yuan's life. The man who had plucked young Lu Bu from obscurity and raised him up to act as his son and heir. From previous times I had spent analysing my master's life, I had already concluded this was a seminal moment. Had Ding Yuan not been murdered, I believe that the influence he would have had over my master going forward would have produced a far wiser, kinder, and more level-headed man. Sadly, the lord inspector did not survive this assassination, and perhaps most tragic of all, it was Lu Bu who was the assassin.

  Bu had been fighting a war of skirmishes across the imperial city of Luoyang for the better part of a year now, and while the conflict had made him even stronger than he had been, the continued stalemate was wearing on his already limited patience. Even more frustrating for my master was the need for subterfuge.

  As both Bu's adopted father and the opposing warlord Dong Zhou had agreed that if the greater empire realised they were in conflict over control of the Han emperor, powerful men from lands in all directions would fall to infighting as they either sought to gain favor with one side, or even worse, tried to position themselves to seize the capital instead.

  If that hadn't been enough to send my master over the edge, two other factors proved the perfect source of ignition for the bundles of dried grass that was Lu Bu's temper as a young man. He's better at keeping his cool now, though not by nearly as much as I would like.

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  The first was that Bu had done a little bit of research. I know, I know that is hard to believe when you hear me say it. However, you have to understand that while my master has always carried himself with a degree of arrogance, it didn't explode into the ridiculous narcissism he entered my world with for another couple of years at this point.

  Anyway! Lu Bu had done some reading and came to the conclusion that his adopted father was at the Nascent Soul stage of cultivation, and may even reach greater stages and greater power. That didn't bother our young hero; he was perfectly happy to be the adopted son of a powerful man, overly pleased by the fact, some might say.

  What bothered nineteen-year-old Lu Bu was the idea that Ding Yuan might very well live past the age of three hundred. Which would, of course, mean that there would be no inheritance of lands, warriors, and mystical halberds made of unknown metal for Bu until well into his own old age, and that was only if he managed to live that long.

  No one had been able to give Bu a straight answer about how long a physical cultivator lived compared to a traditional one, either, as apparently they all got themselves killed or retreated into the mountains never to be heard from again long before reaching even a century and a half.

  If you have been paying attention to my master Lu Bu's behavior up until this point in the story, I am sure you already know that it never occurred to him to perhaps air these concerns with his adopted father. Oh no, instead, he let them fester inside himself until he resented the man beyond any reasonable justification.

  I'm not sure if Dong Zhou had informants that told him of the disenchantment brewing inside the young warrior who had given his forces so many defeats and slain so many of his champions during the hidden war on the nighttime streets of the capital.

  If the warlord had no such sources of information, his timing was extremely lucky. Approaching Lu Bu discretely, Dong Zhuo slowly wooed my master away from his master with elixirs of surpassing rareness, treasures both natural and artificially crafted that would strengthen him even further, unbelievable amounts of coin, land, and even the offer of adoption by the equally childless Dong Zhuo, which would put Bu in line to inherit even greater treasures.

  He was tempted by all of it, but can you guess what it was that finally won my master over? I bet you can! Well, either way, it was the horse. Red Hare: The result of generations of selective breeding and training among the beasts of burden. The Red Hare was already famous in its own right as a horse that could run on water and vertically up walls and cliffs.

  Once he had witnessed it in action, master Lu Bu's defection was only a matter of time. He simply couldn't get the idea out of his head. If he had that horse along with the Skypiercer halberd, Bu believed he would be functionally invincible. So he had accepted the deal and set out to slay his second father.

  My master has some fairly odd ideas about how one should carry out an assassination. There had been no sneaking about, no effort to catch Ding Yuan unawares, and certainly nothing so cowardly as poison. You know what he did? He stormed into the mansion that had served as Ding Yuan's urban fortress for the past year and began slaughtering his way to the team room that acted as a sort of pseudo-throne room for the lord inspector.

  As such, [Memory Fragment: 19-4376584] began with an all-encompassing flash of white light. It wasn't a real flash of light so much as Lu Bu's perception of the world inflicted upon him by a huge amount of concussive force channeled into him by a technique called 'Earth-Shatter Convergence Lance.'

  It had come from the palm of Ding Yuan, desperately flung out to force Lu Bu back with the beam of invisible force after Bu had slipped past his father's defenses and come within a heartbeat of impaling the man. The memory fragment began there because Bu had actually lost consciousness for a split second after the energy-based attack flung him back.

  His body had been fortified over the years through relentless training, so he was awake and moving again so fast it would have seemed like he merely stumbled as he landed after the technique sent him flying back across the room.

  "Please don't do this, Bu." I pleaded, even knowing that it would make no difference. A memory fragment might be far more in-depth than a mere recording, but that doesn't mean I could use it to change the past or interact with it in any way.

  My master spat a mouthful of blood and a single tooth onto the floor of the mostly destroyed tea room.

  "If that is the best you can do, I will be inheriting even sooner than I thought." He said with a bloody sneer.

  I kind of like this format for the flashbacks better. What do you guys think?

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