After dealing with Scott's side of things, Aurum Alley returned to normal operations.
Afterward, the chairman of Aurum Alley's Merchant Guild had once considered whether letting Aurum Alley continue developing this way would make it lose the flavor it used to have.
But after hearing that Nero strongly supported this direction, he decisively abandoned the idea.
Civilizations and lives are swept forward by the tides of the era, but most of the time, those tiny individuals caught within it never notice.
To them, the things pushing them onward are merely other things that seem just as small and immediate.
As for Scott, after that day of barking like a dog, he seemed to have left the Xianzhou. At the very least, nobody in Aurum Alley heard anything about him anymore.
He probably left early.
After all, he had suffered such a huge loss and gone through so much humiliation there.
What a pity. Scott probably never would have dreamed that even after returning to the company, disaster would still be waiting for him.
Using Stelle's evaluation of Nero to describe it, "Every person who stands against Nero comes away from it feeling like they've finally sobered up once everything's over, but none of them realize it's only the beginning."
"The way he arranges things feels exactly like those old Xianzhou ghost stories. The end of the farce never means everything is settled. It's only the warning sign before the storm arrives."
"Almost everyone who opposes Nero ends up facing some unexpected punishment afterward. Without realizing it, every single one of them has already had their future neatly arranged by him."
After finishing things on the Xianzhou side, Stelle and Nero stayed a while longer, waiting for the Astral Express to return.
The days passed rather leisurely.
Nero basically spent every day supervising Yanqing's training. After the training sessions, he would occasionally spar with Yanqing, and during the rest of his free time, he went around eating, drinking, and having fun with the others.
Once the Astral Express returned, Nero would be taking Phantylia and the captured Mirror Holders to Belobog.
Partly to send them to Nero's Fragmentum factory, partly to find Argenti and retrieve Black Cutter, and of course because they had also been invited to attend Belobog's grand celebration. Apparently, a wealthy man named Giovanni was funding it.
Speaking of which, Topaz had previously mentioned that Giovanni planned to cooperate with Nero's Fragmentum factory to update Aetherium Wars.
Nero was looking forward to that quite a bit.
At this very moment, Nero and Stelle had already returned to the train and were on their way to Belobog.
Worth mentioning was that, under Nero's intense insistence, Jing Yuan waved his hand and gave the little ones a vacation. So Yanqing and the others were also on the train now.
Nero felt that since there was finally going to be a festival, the more people who went together, the better.
Life aboard the train was a fresh experience for the others, though they adapted quite well.
Also worth mentioning was that Phantylia and the other Mirror Holders had each been sealed inside gourds, and those gourds were currently under Huohuo's care, since she was from the Ten-Lords Commission.
After combining Xianzhou arts with the strange Imaginary energy flow that the Luofu had used to imprison Phantylia, the Ten-Lords Commission developed a brand-new spell specifically designed for capturing people.
The technique gave Nero an extremely familiar feeling,
"I call your name, do you dare answer?"
"Why wouldn't I?"
"Sun Wukong! Wukong Sun! Kongwu Sun!"
"Your grandpa's right here!"
Something along those lines.
Of course, aside from his anticipation for the festival, Nero also had another expectation for this trip to Belobog.
In the original storyline, this should have been the arc where Topaz went to Belobog to collect debts.
But because of his butterfly effect, that part of the game's plotline on Blue Star had changed.
Due to the establishment of Nero's Fragmentum factory and the cooperation agreement reached with Bronya, a portion of Belobog's profits would be deducted and handed over to the IPC as debt repayment. These payments would stop once the debt was fully repaid.
This agreement had already been discussed and finalized when Topaz went to Belobog's factory to oversee operations. Tingyun had also been present at the time and later explained the entire matter to the Express crew.
In other words, there would be no debt collection incident on this trip to Belobog.
That issue had already been resolved long ago.
While Nero was lost in his imagination, Huohuo quietly tiptoed over and sat beside him. Then she leaned close to his ear and whispered softly, "N-Nero... I-I thought about it for a long time, and I still think I should tell you all about this."
Nero could hear the fear and unease in the foxian girl's voice. He turned to look at her.
"Hm? What is it?"
Huohuo's paw-marked eyes darted nervously left and right. She acted extremely cautious, as though there was something lurking in the carriage.
Only after confirming there weren't any strange gazes or invisible entities lingering nearby did she whisper, "Y-you felt it too, right?"
Nero looked at Huohuo in confusion, waiting for her to continue.
"I... I sensed something invisible inside the carriage. I don't know if it's an evil spirit or something else..." Huohuo spoke nervously before glancing toward the mirror in the observation car.
"R-right there in front of the mirror. I could feel something there. But... the feeling came and went. Sometimes it was there, sometimes it wasn't. Recently, I haven't been able to sense it at all."
As she spoke, Huohuo's expression gradually became more terrified.
Nero knew her well enough to realize she had definitely scared herself with some terrible thought again.
Sure enough, the next moment, Huohuo's trembling voice sounded, "I-it's not some kind of space ghost... right...?"
"Space ghost, space ghost... stop scaring yourself. But if something like that really exists, I'd actually like to see it," Tail said.
After thinking briefly, Nero finally realized what Huohuo was talking about.
He grabbed Huohuo's hand, signaling for the foxian girl to relax a little, before saying, "It's not a space ghost."
"What you sensed was a Memokeeper from the Garden of Recollection. She's been living on the train for a long time already."
"She probably didn't expect you'd be able to sense her. Once she realized that, she actively manipulated the memetic matter in the surrounding space to hide herself, which is why you couldn't feel her anymore afterward. She's actually still standing there."
"R-really?"
"Of course. If you don't believe me, you can ask Stelle. She goes over to the Memokeeper whenever she has nothing to do, says it's training or something."
"Oh, right, Yanqing might actually like this too. Memokeepers should be able to use certain methods to pull people into their memories."
"We've fought plenty of enemies before, so Yanqing would probably enjoy that kind of trial. The only question is whether the Memokeeper would agree to help..."
Nero began muttering to himself.
Meanwhile, the Memokeeper standing inside the carriage looked over in their direction with a complicated expression on her face.
'The Astral Express is way too strange.'
Stelle, whom she had approached herself, was one thing. But that guy called Nero seemed capable of seeing her from the very beginning. And now even the foxian girl who had recently boarded possessed astonishing perception...
Also...
'Is there something wrong with that Nero's personality?'
'I know all about your Nero Fragmentum factory, you know.'
'Not only do you squeeze every ounce of usefulness out of Fragmentum creatures, but now even while casually talking about me, your first instinct is figuring out how to squeeze usefulness out of me too, isn't it?'
'That guy is terrifying!'