Chapter 568 - 36: How Come My Fan Club Is All Spies?

Kroessel’s confession was utterly sincere, without a hint of falsehood.

He didn’t even wait for Su Zhou to ask before he began, in a remarkably orderly fashion, to lay out the purpose of his trip and the underlying reasons for his actions. After all, he was a cautious man, one who could be called cunning and wise. He knew full well that when facing Su Zhou, who held an absolute advantage in strength, it was better to confess everything willingly than to suffer the miserable fate of a Soul Searching Secret Technique.

In truth, this body was merely a clone, an artificial person created through a Secret Technique and controlled like a puppet by the Snake Attachment Skill. Although torture and a Soul Search would affect his real body, the impact wouldn’t be too severe. However, the process of confessing was also an opportunity to communicate with Su Zhou and Shao Qiming, and this was what he valued most.

A full retelling of Kroessel’s story would be a long-winded dissertation of over fifty thousand words, but the gist of it was quite simple.

The Holy Snake Spirit Prayer Association first found themselves unable to communicate with the Great Being—that is, Yara’s true self—at the exact time Su Zhou returned from the undersea Dragon King Ruins, his strength having reached the Extraordinary Peak.

However, the failures during that time were considered normal by the Continuous Prayer Meeting; after all, the Void Orbit was notoriously difficult to complete successfully.

Then, coincidentally, Su Zhou abruptly vanished for three months... and during that time, several Orbits were successful.

Publicly, Su Zhou was in seclusion in a Secret Realm, breaking through to the Commander Tier. But in reality, as both Su Zhou and Shao Qiming knew, he had traveled to the Reincarnation World.

The moment Su Zhou returned to Earth, all Orbits and rituals began to fail again, and no one could ever figure out why... Normally, even this wouldn’t have been enough for the Continuous Prayer Meeting to connect the matter to Su Zhou. However, just a short while ago, when Su Zhou was at the Kunlun Secret Realm preparing for a mission to the Beast God Realm, one of their experimental Orbits actually succeeded.

At that very moment, Kroessel had been remotely using his Snake Attachment on a mole whose identity as a spy was then exposed by Su Zhou. Combining this with the fact that Su Zhou was likely the one favored by the Great Being and had obtained the Undying Blood, Kroessel made a bold deduction: whenever Su Zhou was on Earth, his very presence interfered with all of the Continuous Prayer Meeting’s sacrificial acts toward the Great Being.

Theoretically, the most logical course of action for the Continuous Prayer Meeting would have been to kill Su Zhou. They should have gathered the full strength of their organization and launched a massive-scale assault...

Theoretically.

In reality, even members of a Mysterious Organization have to make a living... Go after Su Zhou, the strongest person on the planet, the official leader of Zhengguo’s younger generation, a Commander Tier powerhouse? If they were capable of that, would they still be a Mysterious Organization hiding in the shadows? They would’ve become the de facto rulers of the American Federation long ago!

So, Kroessel decided to take an indirect approach. As he had mentioned to Shao Qiming earlier, his plan was to infiltrate Su Zhou’s fan club. It sounded ridiculous, but in essence, it was an organization with a similar purpose. He would use this as a front to secretly leverage Su Zhou’s influence and ensure his own organization’s survival.

Besides, they never intended to be Su Zhou’s enemy. There was nothing wrong with simply remaining hidden in the shadows.

Su Zhou: "So, what you’re saying is, this guy actually plans to operate under my banner?"

Shao Qiming: "It’s more than that. In a sense, by using your Cause and Effect to communicate with the Great Being, they’re basically borrowing your name to get things done. It’s the classic ’fox borrowing the tiger’s might’."

Su Zhou: "Right, but not quite. It sounds more like getting a professional certification and then letting others pay to put my name on their business. Does this mean I can just kick back and collect royalties?"

Shao Qiming: "When you put it that way, there’s some logic to it."

Kroessel: "If you would agree to this, Mr. Su Zhou, it would be a fine thing for both our parties..."

’Yara, your followers sure have a peculiar way of thinking...’

Su Zhou, who stood to the side with a stern expression, using his Spiritual Qi to keep Kroessel suppressed and quiet, was suppressing a laugh internally. He then spoke to the Snake Spirit. ’A secret church for a Great Being, and my fan club? Now that I think about it, they’re basically the same thing. At least, they’re not that different.’

’But why does my presence cause their rituals to fail?’

’I’ve told you before. They built these organizations themselves, using my Continuous Prayer Book.’

At this, Yara could only sigh. It said, exasperated, ’Magic Guidebooks, at their core, are part of the way information is transmitted between worlds. In any given world, Classics, True Scriptures, and Magic Guidebooks related to powerful beings from other worlds can randomly appear.’

’For example, Su Zhou, if you left behind some Cultivation Method or philosophical text in the Divine Wood World or the Reincarnation World, then once you reach the Overlord tier or higher, the words and legacies you left behind will begin to spread to other worlds. You, in turn, could gradually begin to sense those who practice your techniques.’

’This is related to the specific nature of an individual’s cultivation. The path you walk is essentially that of the Wish Curse, a system that responds to wishes, which is why you would manifest this trait much earlier than others.’

As for why the Continuous Prayer Meeting’s rituals failed whenever Su Zhou was around, the principle was actually quite simple... He was Yara’s Contractor, making him a massive source of interference. Before he advanced to the Extraordinary Peak, it was still manageable, and some information could occasionally slip through. But after he reached the Extraordinary Peak, his very presence would scramble any ritual the Continuous Prayer Meeting attempted into a mess of garbled code. It would be a miracle if they got any response at all.

When he thought about it that way, it made a lot of sense.

In addition, Shao Qiming asked Kroessel a few more questions: were there other members of the Continuous Prayer Meeting in Su Zhou’s fan groups? And had he planted any other agents or attempted to slander Su Zhou’s image?

The answer was rather astonishing—Su Zhou’s core fan administrator group had only 28 people, and among them, not including Kroessel himself, a startling five were members of the Continuous Prayer Meeting! That was almost a one-to-five ratio.

As for secret plots, there were none. All of them worked with utmost dedication and were incredibly active—far more so than regular fans. Slandering him? That was out of the question. In fact, they were the ones who worked the hardest to run damage control for Su Zhou online.

As for why, that was obvious: to avoid raising suspicion. The best way to keep your identity as a spy secret is to not do anything a spy would do. To avoid being exposed, they did no undermining whatsoever. Besides, their primary goal was to ensure the fan group continued to exist, as they planned to eventually take complete control of the organization.

Good heavens. When Shao Qiming heard this, he blinked in confusion. "I just assumed those people were professionals sent by the government... I never thought it was you guys."

Su Zhou also blinked, just as confused. "Wait, by that logic, the Zhengguo government must have sent people too. I remember the Daoist Saint and the Literary Saint telling me about this... Doesn’t that mean nearly half of my admin group is filled with ’professionals’?"

After all, it was perfectly normal for other major powers to dedicate some resources and energy to monitoring a Commander Tier powerhouse like him. For all he knew, even the Spirit Summoning Association might have spies in there.

The Zhengguo government, the Continuous Prayer Meeting, the Spirit Summoning Association, the American Federation, the European Union, Ross Country, East Japan, Zhu Country... Because Su Zhou’s fan base was global, the spies infiltrating it were naturally global as well.

’How is it that most of my fan club administrators are spies, government agents, and members of mysterious organizations with ulterior motives?’

Su Zhou couldn’t help but mutter to himself.

But such a lament only showed his naivety.

After all, the world was a wide and wondrous place. There was the legendary case of one major organization’s entire intelligence department being staffed by spies from a rival intelligence department. There was also the astounding tale of a mysterious organization composed almost entirely of undercover agents from countries all over the world, which miraculously managed to operate for years without collapsing.

Having heard all this, Su Zhou still couldn’t detect any lies from Kroessel. He narrowed his eyes, staring at the man, who maintained a textbook surrender pose.

He then activated his Evil-Devouring Demon Lord Divine Technique and began to scrutinize his captive.

The Snake Attachment Technique, in essence, involved splitting off a part of one’s soul to inhabit another body. If the host body had its own consciousness, the technique could only share its senses. But if the host was unconscious, or a will-less clone—an artificial person—the Snake Attachment Technique could control the body like a remote-controlled puppet.

Since a soul was present, its Curse could be observed. Just as he had been able to perceive something amiss with the Continuous Prayer Meeting’s agent back in the Kunlun Secret Realm, Su Zhou could now use his Divine Technique to gauge the extent of Kroessel’s Curse.

And the result was rather peculiar.

"How strange. You’re wreathed in evil thoughts, so you’re definitely one of the Evil People, no doubt about it. But there’s surprisingly little dense Curse on you... Have you never killed anyone?"

"This level of concentration is more like the Curse you’d find on an exploitative capitalist boss who forces his employees to work unpaid overtime and constantly cancels their vacations... Truly bizarre."

Grabbing Kroessel’s ramen-noodle hair, Su Zhou rudely yanked his head up and stared directly into his eyes, peering straight into the structure of his soul.

Then, he lowered his hand, a thoughtful expression on his face. "The texture of this hair... it’s like tiny, scaled snakes... Your soul checks out, too. You are indeed a high-ranking member of the Continuous Prayer Meeting and a Cultivator of both the Gorgon and Feathered Serpent God lineages. And there wasn’t a single lie in what you said earlier."

"But a high-ranking member of a Mysterious Organization who’s never killed anyone? That’s really strange." This was his verdict.

"Killing is merely a means to an end. Killing indiscriminately only proves one’s methods are crude and one’s abilities are lacking."

Kroessel expressed no dissatisfaction with Su Zhou’s rough handling. He smiled and said, rather ’honestly’, "Besides, if the existence of a Mysterious Organization was just about killing, it wouldn’t be ’COOL’ at all—that’s precisely why I chose the Continuous Prayer Meeting over the Spirit Summoning Association."

"Moreover, the operation in Shan Country brought together nearly every member of the Continuous Prayer Meeting who was zealous about sacrificial rituals. As for the result, well, I’m sure you, Mr. Su Zhou, are the one who knows best... They all died."

"As a result, the Continuous Prayer Meeting of today is not only greatly weakened, but its former radical aggression and extremism have also vanished. It’s even gradually transforming into a sort of underground economic cooperative. This should be clear from the fact that it’s been two years since the Spiritual Energy Revival began, yet we haven’t made a single large-scale move."