The latest manipulation, embedding a digital tripwire for the Naga, left Elias with a fleeting sense of mastery, quickly overshadowed by the relentless ticking of his two-month deadline for the Sutra Corps. He immersed himself in the Bureau's oldest records, delving into historical judgments from the time of the Ledger's very inception. Scholar Yan's words echoed in his mind: "The Ledger was never perfect. It was designed to favor certain factions." Elias needed to find evidence of this inherent bias, to understand its true origins.
He filtered the ancient cases, focusing on those involving the foundational houses of the Grand Council, disputes that shaped the early Realm. He sifted through centuries of data, looking for the tell-tale signs of subtle manipulation, of karmic outcomes that defied pure, unbiased logic. It was a needle in a haystack, but Elias had developed an eye for the unseen.
And then, he found it. A land dispute, nearly 300 years old, involving a remote mining claim. The judgment, etched into the Ledger's earliest protocols, had decisively favored a minor noble house that, records later showed, rose to immense prominence and eventually secured a seat on the Grand Council. What shocked Elias was not the judgment itself, but the signatory.
The digital signature, meticulously preserved in the ancient code, belonged to High Sage Theronius, a revered figure, still an active member of the Grand Council, celebrated for his unparalleled wisdom and his centuries of service to the Realm. Theronius, even then a Sage of considerable power, had overseen and approved a judgment that was, in hindsight, clearly skewed by the Ledger's inherent biases. But what truly sent a chill down Elias's spine was the faint, almost imperceptible trace of manual override within the judgment's metadata, a subtle re-weighting of variables that Elias now recognized as a precursor to his own techniques.
The implication was staggering. High Sage Theronius, a pillar of the Realm, had been manipulating the Ledger for centuries. He wasn't merely benefiting from its biases; he was actively shaping its outcomes, ensuring the rise of certain factions, the fall of others. The Grand Council wasn't just aware of the flaw; they were wielding it.
Elias slumped in his chair, the weight of the realization pressing down on him. He wasn't the first to exploit the flaw. He was merely a latecomer, a small-time player stepping onto a stage where giants had been performing for ages. He had stumbled into a game older than Jadeheart itself, a clandestine power struggle for karmic dominion that stretched back through the very foundations of the Realm. His own manipulations, his struggles, his very existence felt insignificant in the face of such ancient, profound control.
As Elias stared at the screen, the weight of centuries of deception settling upon him, a faint whirring sound broke the silence of his cubicle. His personal Sutra AI terminal, dormant for hours, suddenly activated on its own. The screen, usually filled with case files, flickered once, twice, then solidified into a single, stark phrase, glowing with an eerie, knowing light:
"The Accountant is observed."
Elias froze, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs. The message wasn't from the Naga. It wasn't from the Guild. It was too precise, too chillingly omniscient. It implied a watcher, a level of awareness beyond anything he had conceived. Someone, or something, knew his deepest secret, his clandestine identity as the "accountant" of the Ledger's hidden truths. And they were now making their presence known.