Slap!
A crisp sound echoed in the basement as Cipher slapped Shen, sending him sprawling to the ground.
The slap worked quickly. Within a few seconds, Shen, lying on the ground, dizzily propped himself up.
He rubbed his left cheek and muttered to himself,
"Hiss... Where am I? Why does my face feel like it's burning..."
But soon, he realized he was still in the basement, and the person standing before him was the culprit who had kidnapped him, Cipher.
"What else do you want to know? I've already answered everything that other woman asked me. It's about time you let me go."
He rubbed his cheek while supporting himself as he sat back down on the chair.
"Do you know where the Reverse Current Alliance's headquarters is?"
Hearing Cipher's question, Shen was stunned for a moment, then immediately shook his head.
"I'm just a minor branch president of the Mercenary Association. How could I possibly know where the headquarters of an organization that basically blankets the entire Pit Bottom District is?"
"You're not lying? I have ways to detect lies."
Seeing how calm Shen was, Cipher felt a bit suspicious.
"I'm not," Shen shook his head calmly. "If you don't believe me, you can use your lie detection method right now, and I'll repeat exactly what I just said."
After hearing Shen's words, Cipher felt a slight ripple in her Trickery Divine Power, followed by the appearance of a golden thread within her body.
'Is this... Aglaea's golden thread? He actually believed it just like that?'
Feeling the ripple of the Trickery Divine Power and the appearance of the golden thread, Cipher was somewhat surprised.
She had been prepared to use her system functions to force-acquire a lie-detecting ability, but she hadn't expected the Shen in front of her to take her at her word so easily.
Does he really not have a single shred of wishful thinking... "Then repeat what you just said. I'm turning on the lie detection this time."
After staring into Shen's calm eyes for a while, Cipher made the request.
As she spoke, a golden thread emerged from Cipher's hand and slowly wound itself around Shen's wrist.
Although Cipher was basically certain Shen hadn't lied—at least not just now—she still intended to use the lie detection to listen again just to be safe.
Think of it as testing out how effective this lie detection actually was.
Hearing Cipher's request, Shen did not refuse. He simply glanced at the extra golden thread on his hand and then repeated his previous statement once more.
Just as he finished, Cipher felt a strange thought transmit from the golden thread into her mind—
After processing the meaning of this thought, Cipher's lips twitched, and she silently complained in her heart,
"...Even though I know the result is accurate, why does this golden thread say 'it reckons' whether he's lying? And 'probably'? Can this really be Aglaea's golden thread? It feels kind of unreliable, meow!"
"Um... Is the test done? Is there anything else you need to ask?"
Seeing that Cipher's attention seemed to have inexplicably drifted, Shen thought for a moment and then spoke up to remind her.
"Oh, yes."
Cipher snapped back to her senses and continued looking at Shen as she asked,
"Since you said this organization basically blankets the entire Pit Bottom District, then sub-bases must be indispensable, right? You should at least know the locations of some of their sub-bases?"
"Don't tell me that as a branch president who buys and sells intelligence everywhere, you don't even know where a few of their bases are."
After speaking, Cipher crossed her arms, adopting a posture of 'confess and be treated with leniency, resist and be punished severely' as she silently stared at Shen.
After a moment of silence, Shen spoke up.
"...Is my terminal still with you?"
"It is, but why are you suddenly asking for your terminal? Do you want to call someone to rescue you?"
"No," Shen shook his head. "You asked me where their sub-bases are. I know I've collected that kind of intelligence, but I can't remember every single piece of information. I need the terminal to look through the data. Don't worry, I won't call for help."
After Shen finished, he looked at Cipher, waiting for her to return his terminal.
Cipher, meanwhile, was staring at the golden thread on Shen's wrist, because she wasn't sure if he was telling the truth...
'I reckon he's probably not lying'
After a brief silence, the golden thread gave its answer.
'He really isn't telling a single lie. Why is he so honest? I actually wanted to see how the golden thread would react if he lied...'
Cipher sighed. Since Shen was being so cooperative, her conscience would actually feel a bit bad if she kept messing with him. She decided to let him off for now.
She took out Shen's personal terminal, conveniently swept away all the credit points inside—leaving only about ten thousand—and then handed it back to him.
After taking the terminal, Shen saw his personal account balance at a glance.
Seeing that the original balance of over three hundred thousand credit points had first dropped to over two hundred thousand and was now down to ten thousand, Shen's lips twitched. For a moment, he didn't know whether to feel sad or lucky.
He was sad that the credit points he'd saved for years were all gone, but lucky that she had at least left him ten thousand, so he wouldn't have to borrow money to maintain his cash flow later.
However, these two emotions only appeared for a brief flash before Shen returned to normal.
After all, he was still a prisoner right now; such matters would have to wait until after he was released.
Shen tapped around on the terminal, performing a series of operations that Cipher couldn't understand even while watching from the side. Then, he opened a hidden folder.
"Alright, these are all the base locations for the Reverse Current Alliance within a fifty-kilometer radius. Anything beyond fifty kilometers is outside my intelligence network's coverage."
As he spoke, Shen handed his terminal over.
Cipher took the terminal and looked at the information on it.
"In a fifty-kilometer radius, there are only seven sub-bases?"
After a quick glance, Cipher looked up and asked Shen in confusion.
One had to realize that a fifty-kilometer radius was not a small area; most cities in her previous life were only about twenty kilometers across.
"Correct. Because of the IMA purge eight years ago, the Reverse Current Alliance lost a massive number of bases and personnel. Even though eight years have passed, the organization still hasn't recovered its strength. That's why there are only those few sub-base locations currently."
Shen nodded, answering Cipher's confusion.