Chapter 346: The Heroes of Navoli
Not long after, at the Presidium Resistance Headquarters.
This was once a historic temple. After the invasion of Noxus, the believers became resistance fighters, and the temple naturally became a resistance barracks.
The high-level meeting of the rebels was about to be held, and the leaders of the major sects and families in Navoli, which constituted the main , gathered here as scheduled.
Among them are:
“Face the gale!” Master Yi stirred up a strong wind with a sword, and the air flow rushed up with the force of a soaring dragon and turned into an invisible barrier.
Suddenly, the sword's momentum subsided, but the wind became stronger. The wind wall was dozens of meters high, and the air flow was as solid as water, and it lasted .
"This divine sword skill that seems to be blessed by the wind spirit is truly breathtaking!"
"The Gale Sword Sect has a successor!"
After seeing Master Yi's superb "Swift Wind Sword Art", the top leaders of the Presidium Resistance Army immediately believed in his identity as the "Swift Wind Sword Master".
As for the other two...
"Cuo Yuqie..." Yongen casually slashed out with the sword, proving his identity.
"Face the gale!!!" Yasuo gathered all his strength, and desperately used his sword energy to drive the gale, as if he wanted to cut out a wind wall that was taller, thicker and more durable than Master Yi's.
Then, the senior leaders took a serious look and turned back to Master Yi and said:
"Master Yi, are these two your disciples?"
Yasuo: “…”
"No." Master Yi explained modestly: "They are my fellow apprentices."
"I see ." The senior leaders ignored Yasuo's resentful look and turned to communicate with Master Yi.
Perhaps everyone saw Master Yi's amazing talent and bright future, so they all showed extraordinary enthusiasm for this young man.
After all, the last person who could be respected as a master based on his strength at this age was, apart from Karma who had the reincarnation cheat, the leader of the resistance, the great hero Irelia.
So, all the excitement came to Master Yi's side.
Yasuo stood with Yongen boredly, watching them socialize there.
During the conversation, as newcomers, they also followed Master Yi to get to know many high-level leaders of the resistance army:
“This is Master Jama, the leader of the Lotus Temple;”
"This is Master Qingxia, a warrior monk from the Shuoji Monastery;"
“This is Master Ravi of the Sharma family;”
“This is Master Desai of the Tividi family;”
“…”
The top leaders of the resistance are all heroes who dared to take the initiative to resist the Noxian Empire and have survived to this day.
Those who can be heroes are certainly not weak people.
Whether in terms of their background or personal strength, they are worthy of the title of "Master".
There were so many masters gathered together that Yasuo felt a little dizzy.
But he always felt...
The masters before him seemed to be different from the masters he had in mind.
In his mind, all masters should be like Elder Su Ma, free and easy, indifferent and lofty, devoted to the way of the sword and not swayed by external things.
However, from what we saw, the contents of conversations between these masters and Yi mostly showed that they were trying to show goodwill to Master Yi and win over the Gale Sect to serve their own ends.
They always make Yasuo feel:
"Just like a businessman at a drinking table." He curled his lips and muttered softly.
Mercenary, hypocritical, enthusiastic but without a trace of sincerity.
Yasuo inexplicably had this feeling.
And it's not that Yasuo is being overly sensitive. He's not the only one who feels this way.
Master Yi, as a young boy from the mountain village who was inexperienced in the world, was surrounded by these experienced people who were good at socializing. He was very embarrassed and had a hard time coping with the situation.
His stuttering and clumsy performance... was like a socially anxious person who had been locked up indoors for years, being arranged to sit and drink with a table of strange uncles at a wedding banquet.
Just by seeing Master Yi's embarrassed look, Yasuo could inexplicably empathize with him.
He felt annoyed, so he took out the wine gourd from his arms and wanted to leave here to get some fresh air.
“Yasuo,” Yongen said. “Be rude.”
"Courtesy?" Yasuo took a sip of wine and replied disdainfully: "I just don't want to live in the same room with mercenaries. How can you say it's rude?"
"It's rude to talk about people behind their backs without understanding them," Yongen taught him bluntly.
"I..." Yasuo was about to retort.
Yongen interrupted him seriously, "Yasuo, you only met them once in a social setting, and you cynically called them philistines. But the question is, do you really understand these masters?"
"Have you ever paid attention to their names before?"
Not really.
Yasuo was obsessed with swordsmanship. Even when he later followed Elder Suma to join the war against Noxus, he basically only cared about the small piece of land where his own sword school was located, and rarely tried to understand the information of the entire Navoli battlefield.
But Yongen is different.
Because of his erratic personality and inability to handle heavy responsibilities, Yasuo was assigned by Elder Suma to guard the dojo. However, Yongen followed his fellow rebels and was active in the entire Navoli battlefield.
So he knew these masters:
"Master Jama of the Lotus Temple, he took the initiative to stay behind to protect the civilians during the evacuation. He fought to the death against an enemy that was ten times his size. After a fierce battle, he was wounded dozens of times and was seriously injured but still refused to retreat. If the friendly forces had not arrived at the last minute, he would have died heroically to protect the civilians."
"Master Ravi of the Sharma family, all 73 members of his family were taken hostage by the enemy during the war. The Noxians used them as bargaining chips to force him to give up resistance and betray his country. But in order to prevent a gap in the resistance line and to protect the lives of the millions of people in Navoli Province, he..."
"And Master Qingxia from Shuoji Temple..."
"Master Desai of the Tiwedi family..."
Almost every master present has an awe-inspiring heroic story.
Because those who can take the initiative to stand up in this extremely cruel anti-invasion war, fight tirelessly against the desperately powerful Noxian invaders, and persist all the way and survive to this day... cannot be without a story.
They are all Navoli’s heroes.
There's nothing wrong with that.
"This..." Yasuo blushed suddenly.
He never expected that those hypocritical and mercenary villains in his eyes were actually heroes who resisted the Promise and whose moral achievements were a hundred times greater than his.
Yasuo suddenly realized his own youth and shallowness.
Perhaps, being materialistic was not as wrong as he thought.
Even if he is not a highly respected master, but just a mercenary businessman, it does not prevent him from being a hero when it comes to the major issues of protecting the land of our birth!
"etc……"
Yasuo suddenly realized a problem.
If the top leaders of the rebels, these masters in front of them, are real heroes.
Then...how could anyone among them be willing to be an undercover agent of the Brotherhood, and even take the initiative to participate in such a dirty and shameless conspiracy to assassinate Master Irelia?
"Heroes, can they change?" Yasuo murmured, "Or is it that Master Yi's intelligence is wrong? The undercover agent is not among them?"
Yongen was silent for a while.
He thought for a moment and replied, "People are complicated, Yasuo."
Yasuo: “…”
He fell silent and said no more.
After a while, Master Yi finally recognized all those dozens of masters during the social gathering, ending the torture he had experienced.
The high-level meeting of the resistance army will not officially begin until a while later.
Irelia, whom they wanted to protect, had not yet appeared in public.
So, Yi avoided the enthusiastic approaches of these masters, using the excuse that he was mentally exhausted from the long journey and needed to rest, and took Yasuo, Yongen and the other two to rent a room in the rebel headquarters to meditate and rest.
"Hey, Master Yi!" As soon as he entered the room and avoided outsiders, Yasuo couldn't wait to ask him: "You just met with those masters, so did you recognize who the undercover Brotherhood is?"
"Of course not." Master Yi said, "I can't read minds, how can I recognize who is the undercover agent after just one meeting?"
"Then how are you going to find the undercover?" Yasuo was puzzled.
"And..." He paused and asked, "Are you sure there is an undercover agent among them?"
"Huh?" Master Yi was stunned for a moment: "Of course there is."
The fact that there is an undercover agent in the upper echelons of the resistance army was said by Master Ku Shuo himself. There is no doubt about it.
"Why do you ask?" You're already on the battlefield, and you're still asking whether the enemy is an enemy?
"I..." Yasuo hesitated.
Perhaps it was because of the heroic stories Yongen had told him. He instinctively didn't want to believe that the protagonists in these stories could also fall.
"We will know soon whether it will happen or not," said Master Yi.
"Oh?" Yong En heard the hidden meaning in his words: "Master Yi, do you have a way to find the undercover immediately?"
"Almost." Master Yi nodded.
Master Ku Shuo simply summoned Jie back to his side and told him to follow him, and he did not reveal any more details about the assassination to Jie.
Jie is more like a tool he carries with him. He only needs to be used and doesn't need to know too much.
This results in the fact that the intelligence in the hands of the leader is far from sufficient.
All they knew now was that there were undercover agents in the upper echelons of the resistance army, and that the undercover agents would coordinate the assassination operations of the Brotherhood. Apart from that, they did not have any specific information related to the undercover agents.
So how do they find undercover agents?
Master Yi asked Guild Master Riven for help with this issue, and while thinking, Riven reported the situation to Guild Master Levi, who had been paying attention to the Ionia battlefield.
After learning about this, President Levi immediately helped them come up with a convenient solution:
"Please help Mr. Tam."
"Who?" Yasuo and Yongen looked confused.
"A mutated magic frog that masters powerful magic." This is how Levi introduced Tam when they met last time.
"But..." Master Yi hesitated.
Although Levi defined Mr. Tam's race as a swamp frog, even though Master Yi had never seen a swamp frog in Zaun in his life, he instinctively felt that this guy did not look like a swamp frog.
Because he is more like a catfish, ahem...
Because he is so strong, so strong that he can cast super long-distance teleportation magic that almost ignores distance. This is not at all like the legendary ditch frog that is eaten as a snack by the people of Zaun.
But that doesn't matter.
"In short, Mr. Tam has the ability to sense the 'breath of corruption'." Master Yi said.
"Breath of Corruption?" Yasuo and Yongen became more and more confused.
"That's it..." Master Yi recalled the explanation Levi gave him: "Mr. Tam has a special sense for greedy souls, especially pure souls that are gradually corrupted by greed."
Tam loves corrupted pure souls.
The top leaders of the resistance army were all once great anti-Trump heroes.
If any of them betrayed the rebels and chose to join forces with the Navoli Brotherhood, or even assisted in the assassination of their leader for the benefits promised by the Brotherhood, then...
There is no doubt that this man's soul has fallen.
And the fallen heroes are Tam's favorite delicacy.
Tam would definitely be able to accurately select those fallen souls from among the dozens of masters present at the first opportunity by using the "fragrance" in the air.
"Just wait and see. I will summon Mr. Tam now and ask him to help us smell out the scent of those fallen ones." Master Yi said.
"Wait..." Yongen felt that something was wrong: "Mr. Tam can only help us find people with corrupted souls."
"But even if a person is corrupted by greed, he won't necessarily become a traitor, right?"
Yongen's doubts were absolutely correct.
Indeed, a fallen person is not necessarily equivalent to a traitor.
For example, corruption and amassing wealth can also be considered a form of depravity.
Is the soul of a traitor necessarily more corrupt than that of a corrupt official who sells military supplies? Is there such an accurate quantitative standard? No.
However, these Ionian masters are not like Lina, weak mortals who can be easily manipulated by demons.
Even someone as powerful as the demon Tam cannot silently break through the mental defenses of these masters and read their thoughts.
And these masters will certainly not open their souls to others just because of a few words from outsiders or a piece of news that "there may be a traitor within the resistance army".
Facing a spiritual mage, letting go of mental defenses and opening up soul memories is actually a very dangerous thing.
Because if the other person can read your mind, he can easily hurt your soul.
Levi only dared to let his guard down when facing Seraphine.
These masters who have experienced battlefield experience will obviously not easily put their lives in the hands of a stranger, or even a strange toad.
so……
If the Leader wants to rely on mind reading to quickly identify the undercover, he must first fight a battle with the Presidium resistance.
And if mind reading is not possible, then the fallen souls that Tam found by "scent" alone may not necessarily be undercover agents of the Brotherhood.
"But at least it helps us narrow down the scope of our investigation, doesn't it?"
A fallen person is not necessarily a traitor, but a traitor is definitely a person with a fallen soul.
"These people are all heroes of Ionia. There must not be too many people with corrupted souls among them," Master Yi thought.
"It is much easier to find the traitor among the small number of fallen ones than to search directly."
As Master Yi said this, he took out a small, cute blue bird from his arms.
He whispered to the blue bird incarnation, and soon...
Under the shocked gazes of Yasuo and Yongen, a strange puddle of water appeared out of nowhere on the ground.
Then there were ripples on the water surface, and a huge, fat, black toad, like a gopher, poked its smooth, round head out from under the puddle.
"Hello, Mr. Tam?" Yi greeted him tentatively.
"Bullshit!" The fat toad spoke in Zaunese with an accent: "I've already told you that I'm not a handyman for you Wind Leaders. You made me run to Ionia for such a small matter. Didn't you say that happiness depends on yourself and you don't need a savior?"
"Let me tell you, Levi made a promise to me this time, saying there must be delicious food here, so I came here."
"If there weren't any..."
"No..." Suddenly, the demon was speechless.
Master Yi was a little nervous. After all, he knew how strong this toad was.
"What's the matter, Mr. Tam?" he asked cautiously.
But Tam did not answer. He just opened his bloody mouth with an intoxicated look on his face, sweeping the air with his thick tongue, greedily devouring the invisible "delicious food" in the air.
"I smell it..." Mr. Tam drooled.
"What?" Master Yi asked anxiously, "Do you know who the Fallen One is?"
"Yeah, yeah." Tam nodded frantically.
"Who is it?"
"Hahahaha." Tam just laughed with drooling mouth.
He jumped out of the puddle and patted Master Yi on the shoulder gratefully: "Swordsman, how did you find this?"
"What did you find?" Master Yi was still a little confused.
“Canteen!” Tam smiled from ear to ear: “This is simply a canteen built for me!”
"All of them. Almost all of them!"
"These once pure souls have almost all fallen! Hahahaha..."
