"…"
Pin-drop silence.
Nobody spoke.
They'd just watched Xiang Nan, in barely any time at all, cleanly delete two nightmare-tier cursed spirits. Cheadle and Mizaistom were stunned; for a moment it felt like they had to be hallucinating.
"Is it just a power gap?" Kite muttered, brow furrowing beside Ging.
"You could say the gap is massive… or say it isn't about raw power at all," Ging Freecss said with a small smile.
If we're talking straight head-to-head strength, Xiang Nan would absolutely lose to those two. Both special-grade cursed spirits can pop that bizarre Domain technique. Forget Xiang Nan—even Ging didn't like his own odds.
And yet Xiang Nan won. Not just won—steamrolled.
The "gap" here isn't surface-level combat stats. It's the gap in intel.
Hunters don't really understand the Cursed Spirit world.
Cursed Spirit doesn't really understand the Hunters' world.
Xiang Nan sits in the middle. Whether he's up against the enemy or coordinating with the Hunters, he has a ridiculous advantage.
That's how he could run circles around both Pariston and this Cursed Spirit Squad. The info edge is only part of it. He also inserted himself into every role on the field, read everyone's psychology to the hilt, controlled the tempo step by step, and executed without blinking. Even with better intel, if you can't read how the fight is evolving and who's likely to do what, the ending can still flip on you in an instant.
Because he knew Jogo's temperament, saw that the Cursed Spirit' knowledge of Hunters was shallow, and felt the pressure spike when Netero appeared, Xiang Nan chose that moment to step out and "surrender." If the enemy hadn't been Jogo—if it were someone else—doing that would've been suicide.
So yes, the intel edge was key—
but it wasn't the whole story.
It's also why, from the start, Xiang Nan was 100% sure that whatever trump card Pariston held, he was still going to die.
Xiang Nan then reduced Jogo and Hanami's bodies to scraps. Only when he felt their energy unravel did he relax.
Special-grade Cursed Spirit don't die just because you take their heads. At best, that's a serious injury.
"Huh?"
His eyebrow ticked up.
The system pinged him: as a main-world player, he'd successfully repelled intruders—and got dimensional coins for it.
Not a lot, but a few hundred.
That didn't happen after the Zaban City mess.
"Because this was a First-Kill Squad? Special case," he thought, and it clicked.
Honestly, if Ging hadn't been here, Xiang Nan had planned to keep one alive, open them up, and extract more Multiverse intel—mainly from the three player-Cursed Spirit. But with Ging watching, he shelved it.
And to keep Jogo's big mouth from blurting about their deal, the cleaner move was to wipe them fast.
"Xiang Nan!"
Mizaistom finally snapped out of it, stepped in, and stared him down. "You leaked our position, didn't you… told them about our Nen—and how to read aura mid-fight…"
Here we go.
Xiang Nan smiled to himself and turned.
"The intel did come from me—but not because I volunteered it. They used a 'Curse Technique' to rip it from my memory," he said, calm as ever.
Cheadle had caught up too.
She glared through her lenses, teeth clenched. "You obviously knew those two could warp space. Why didn't you warn us earlier? What else are you hiding?"
"As you saw, I was captured—off the grid. I only knew because they beat me with it. They didn't kill me right away; they wanted intel, so they kept me as a tool. I was passive the whole time. You're not pinning that on me too, are you?" Xiang Nan looked at her, amused.
"You—!"
Cheadle was furious.
She could feel he was lying. After all this, the delayed realization hit: Xiang Nan probably used the enemy to get rid of Pariston.
That was his real objective.
Her gut said so.
But with how tasks were split and timing lined up, she hadn't had a god's-eye view of the field and had no idea what exactly went down between Xiang Nan and the Cursed Spirit.
In that setup, whatever Xiang Nan said became "the truth."
She and Mizaistom had no proof.
And since they didn't fully grasp the Cursed Spirit toolkit, Xiang Nan could make up whatever he wanted.
"Ging Freecss… your take?" Cheadle pivoted to him immediately.
Ging showing up had shocked both her and Mizaistom—they hadn't known he was even in Yorknew. By now it was obvious his appearance had to do with Pariston.
If anyone had seen through Xiang Nan's "plot" in advance, it'd be Ging.
He was the only potential witness who could call Xiang Nan out.
"I don't know either," Ging said.
Cheadle and Mizaistom's expressions shifted at once. Even Kite looked over at his teacher in surprise.
A faint curve tugged Xiang Nan's lips.
He glanced toward Netero's battlefield. Over there… things seemed to have gone quiet.
The cursed miasma was gone.
Alive or dead, Jed was never Netero's match.
"Let's go see the Chairman."
Unruffled, Xiang Nan blinked out first.
Illumi fell in behind.
Cheadle shot Ging a vicious look—clearly slotting him in as Xiang Nan's accomplice—then headed off with Mizaistom.
"Why not call him out, Teacher? Worried about how the Republic of Padokea reacts?" Kite finally asked once the others were gone.
"That's why I said… this is going to get messy. We shouldn't have come," Ging sighed, a hint of regret in it.
Then his eyes cleared, cool and steady. "Pariston is dead. That's a fixed point. For Xiang Nan and Pariston, this 'game' was never just about killing each other. This battlefield ties into the secrets of the Multiverse—and whether our world can withstand a mysterious incursion."
"Pariston wasn't just plugged into the Association. He had V5 behind him—plus a tangle of national interests. He meant to use that web to strong-arm Xiang Nan. If Xiang Nan had killed him himself, then Xiang Nan, the Republic of Padokea, the Chairman, the Association—everyone—would be staring at a chain reaction."
"But now Pariston died to the enemy—to Cursed Spirit—and Xiang Nan wasn't the killer. In fact, Xiang Nan killed the culprits. That makes him a contributor."
"We both know it's Xiang Nan's play. He moved fast to keep Cheadle and Mizaistom from learning his secrets."
"In short, their beef with each other was incidental—not the real objective."
"Pariston wanted to stir the pot and entertain himself. Xiang Nan wants to prove his value and force V5 to bend."
"Value?" Kite asked, still puzzled.
"Xiang Nan has made one thing crystal clear to everyone: when it comes to the Multiverse—the unknown crisis bearing down on humanity—humanity, the Association, the nations, V5… can only rely on him. Among all members of the Nameless Town, he's the most informed. He's betting the fate of the whole species against V5 to make them compromise. To do that, he's willingly 'exposed' his value—Zaban City back then, Yorknew now. What we can confirm is that enemies from the Multiverse have the means to threaten our world."
"And Xiang Nan is the only savior on offer—and the only 'channel' we have to understand the Multiverse."
"There's too much unknown, too much occult. Without him, we can't even begin to parse it. Pariston's death already proved that."
"He also counted on me keeping my mouth shut," Ging chuckled, then turned to amble off.
"Still… kind of exciting, isn't it? The Multiverse. Looks like we might get to visit other worlds too…"
"Huh?" Kite blurted, startled.
Only then did he grasp just how scary Xiang Nan's and Pariston's minds and methods really were.
Everything was interlocked. The goals he thought mattered were just pieces the two of them had casually tossed on the board—
not the board itself.