Chapter 1617 - 97: Fox and Rat Game (7)

Chapter 1617: Chapter 97: Fox and Rat Game (7)

"You’re saying that dog of a spy just spilled everything right away?" After hearing Luosong’s report, Gessa asked in puzzlement.

"Yes," Luosong reported awkwardly, "before we could even use any methods, he just dumped everything out himself. And that guy, that guy kind of..."

"Kind of what?"

Luosong swallowed the words that had reached his lips. He hemmed and hawed, not daring to answer.

"Say whatever you’ve got," Skur spoke up.

With his old superior’s permission, Luosong steeled himself and gave his honest opinion: "He kind of seems... mentally ill."

The moment he said it, all three people around the round table turned to look at him.

"What do you mean?" Gessa’s face showed displeasure. "What did that Pretender Emperor’s dog of a spy ’confess’?"

"He confessed everything, absolutely everything," Luosong poured out his bitterness. "Starting from the very first thing he remembers—when he was four, his mom took him to his grandma’s place for the Fifth Month Festival to eat sugar cakes—every single thing he can remember, he confessed.

"That guy’s urge to pour his heart out is like—like a boar in heat. He’s desperate to drag out every sentence in his heart and every scrap in his head and tell it to someone else. We don’t even need to ask. He just sits there and can talk until we can’t get a word in edgewise, down to the tiniest detail—from his mom changing his piss-soaked diapers to him peeking at the neighbor bathing. We didn’t have enough scrap paper for shorthand."

"What kind of fucking nonsense is that!" Gessa flew into a rage, slamming the table and shouting, "That dog spy is playing you! You still can’t see it?"

"But that guy really was..." Luosong had known telling the truth would get him yelled at, "answering everything he knew."

"Answering everything he knew?" Gessa’s face went dark. "Then what did you ask?"

"We completed the original interrogation plan: his identity, his purpose, his relation to the Oath Breaker, whether he has accomplices."

"And he ’answered everything he knew’ to all that?"

"Yes."

"Interrogation record!" Gessa held out his hand.

Luosong immediately handed over a thick file folder with both hands.

Gessa took the folder, tore open the seal roughly, yanked out all the scrap sheets inside in one go. He gave them a cursory glance, then tossed the remaining thick wad onto the table, keeping only the first sheet. As he read, he started shouting aloud.

"Name—Marvey,

"Age—twenty-seven,

"Place of origin—the Imperial Free City of Cambre,

"Occupation—writer!

"Purpose in coming here—collecting material!

"Relation to the Oath Breaker, an employment relationship!

"Accomplices—none!"

The more Gessa read, the more he ground his teeth. When he got to "Accomplices—none," he actually let out a furious laugh.

Luosong stood in front of Gessa, legs together, his whole body taut. He didn’t even dare lift his head.

"None! None! None!" Gessa laughed as he tore the sheet into shreds, then slowly kneaded the scraps into a tiny ball. The little back courtyard was dead silent, until Gessa hurled the paper ball hard at Luosong and his bellow could be heard from the back courtyard across the road: "None???!!!"

Luosong no longer had any way to defend himself. The more he spoke, the worse his position got. He could only look pleadingly at the other two people around the round table.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Winters had worked with Luosong many times. He had a good impression of this upperclassman and didn’t think the latter would joke in a situation like this.

So Winters leaned forward, picked up the rest of the record Gessa had thrown onto the table, and began leafing through it quickly.

The contents were exactly as Luosong had said. Every sort of trivial crap was in there, and the time, place, and people involved were all recorded with absurd precision.

"Either this guy is very good at making up stories," Winters thought, "or he has a freakish memory."

Having reached a conclusion, Winters stopped reading further—partly because the useless content was overwhelming and he couldn’t possibly finish it right now.

He passed the record to Brigadier General Skur and, smiling, stepped in to help Luosong out: "This guy is actually kind of interesting—Major Moritz once said, [Spellcasters are easy to kill, hard to interrogate].

"How do you interrogate a bunch of people who are dangerous to even approach? Maybe the people of the Public Church can suppress them for a short while, but the time is too brief to get much out of them. Not to mention that the Court Mages, as long as they’re willing, can kill themselves at any time.

"So interrogating Spellcasters has always been a slow grind. You can only wait for them to start talking on their own.

"Looks like we’ve run into a rarity this time."

Skur took out his monocle and held the densely written sheet at arm’s length, frowning as he stared at it for quite a while before finally giving up on the idea of reading through it all.

"Have you tried ’cross-checking’ him?" Skur set down the record and asked in a low voice.

"We have," Luosong answered at once. "After he told an incident, we waited a while and then asked him about it again. The details were exactly the same. We also had him recount events in reverse order, and everything still matched up one-to-one."

The wrinkles between Skur’s brows deepened.

Winters commented, "So he’s a guy with a very good memory, and also very good at making up stories."

"I feel," Luosong hesitated a little, but still voiced his honest thoughts, "that he doesn’t seem to be making things up."

"What’s Major Moritz’s opinion?" Winters asked.

"Major Moritz also believes this man calling himself Marvey isn’t lying."

When someone is extremely furious yet extremely helpless, they laugh. That was Gessa right now.

"What’s that supposed to mean?" Gessa asked with a smile. "So we finally manage to nab a dog secret agent of the Pretender Emperor, and it turns out we’ve caught a useless piece of shit—oh wait, no, not useless... a [swear word] writer!"

"If this man who calls himself Marvey isn’t lying," Luosong answered with his head down, "then he really is a writer—and... and the very famous kind."

Skur’s eyebrows slowly rose as he asked, "It wouldn’t happen to be that ’Marvey’, would it?"

"If he’s not lying," Luosong was sweating now, "then he is that ’Marvey’."