Chapter 608: The Dragon King and Zhen Yi—A Story That Must Be Told |
(Warriors, hold the salt!)
The examiner's scholarship was vast. After all, this was the helmsman nurtured by an entire organization's resources. Her torrent of eloquence—quoting extensively and citing broadly—was so commanding that even Li Jingming, the Chosen of Memory, nearly conceded defeat.
But the Dragon King held his own. At minimum, in the breadth of his knowledge of the Land of Hope's history, he offered equally thorough research and incisive commentary.
And so the two fought to a draw, seemingly developing a mutual appreciation born of their respective historical foundations.
But what the Dragon King hadn't expected was that she flipped on him almost immediately. This capricious helmsman of the History School used the Dragon King's "failure to win" as grounds to reject his membership—and decreed that the History School was henceforth forbidden from ever having dealings with him.
Honestly, having believed he'd found a kindred spirit, the Dragon King spent quite some time puzzling over this baffling rejection. But he was merely puzzled—he didn't consider it a loss. After all, compared to the histories he'd shared, what he'd heard from the School's helmsman was far more voluminous and staggering.
No matter how he calculated, it couldn't be called a bad deal.
But as he later came to understand the Land of Hope more deeply, the Dragon King discovered that every piece of those unfamiliar histories the School's helmsman had told him... was fake.
Only then did he realize he'd been conned. And his swindler was Zhen Yi.
In this moment, two people who'd been played by Zhen Yi found perfect empathy.
'What rotten luck!'
But...
'That counts as not losing?'
'Dragon King, you lost everything down to your shorts!'
'If you call that breaking even, then when I went up against that unlucky thing, I practically turned a profit!'
He studied Li Jingming with furrowed brows and a peculiar look. The Dragon King seemed to read the doubt, and smiled:
"Memory may be the surface of Existence, but what it records isn't limited to the surface.
In that fraudulent memory exchange, I didn't manage to record a single genuine piece of Hope's history. But I did record a person—vivid, fully fleshed out, with a personality that was... interesting.
That was my greatest gain. A harvest no less magnificent than any spectacular memory."
"..."
Cheng Shi was done. He didn't understand Memory's logic, but he was fairly certain the Dragon King had gained absolutely nothing from his encounter with Zhen Yi. This was pure cope—a spiritual victory, nothing more.
In this moment, the Dragon King's halo began to dim, and the shadow of Ah Q slowly merged with his image.
But setting all that aside, one thing Cheng Shi had definitely guessed right: the Dragon King was always recording people.
'Called it. Memory can never change its memorizing ways.'
He chuckled to himself, then put on a straight face and looked at Li Jingming:
"Dragon King, that's not very sporting!
We're exchanging memories, yes, but outside our deal you've been silently recording my current self. I've given away my image for free without any compensation—and back in the day, that was called invasion of privacy.
I don't particularly care, of course. But as a beneficiary of memory exchange, shouldn't you...
Show some appreciation?"
"..."
Li Jingming froze. While the logic wasn't wrong per se, no one had ever thought like this before. Memory exchanges were inherently part of conversations. Being able to record someone more thoroughly was simply a natural talent of Memory followers—how could that count as part of the deal?
But he'd more or less figured out Cheng Shi's temperament by now. The Clown's sharp tongue and apparent greed might just be a deliberate distortion of his own image.
Deceit was also a mask. Li Jingming never forgot that.
"Fine. What do you want?"
"I think you didn't finish the Zhen Yi story. Otherwise, given Zhen Yi's personality—if she'd truly gotten one over on you—she'd have broadcast it to the entire world by now. The fact that this never came to light means she didn't win.
And the reason definitely isn't your 'spiritual victory' nonsense.
What did you actually get from Zhen Yi?"
"Sharp and perceptive.
Cheng Shi, you're impressive. Most people would've accepted the story at face value by now. It's rare for someone to dig deeper.
But the rest involves Zhen Yi's memories. What are you offering in exchange?"
Cheng Shi's eyes spun: "I'll lay out that condition—my condition—clearly, right now."
"That was part of the previous round's exchange. Chips can't be spent twice."
"But I could also make it vague. Let you carry that burden while you walk your path of Memory.
I've noticed—you're a man of your word. You don't like unpaid debts.
Lucky for me, I'm not. I'm a con artist. I have thick skin. Welshing on a deal doesn't keep me up at night." He spread his hands in a shrug: 'I'm playing dirty—what are you going to do about it?'
"..."
Li Jingming's eyelid twitched hard. He stared at the man for a long time before finally convincing himself to eat the small loss.
"Zhen Yi back then was too young. She loved showing off."
"Showing off?" Cheng Shi blinked.
"Yes. The histories she told were largely correct in their broad strokes, but many of the details were wrong—and the more important the detail, the more severely she'd twisted it. That's what I mean by showing off.
She was deliberately muddying the true turning points of history.
But truth is truth. Once I gradually reassembled these distorted histories, thanks to her 'guidance,' I could reverse-engineer the logic to locate the real key moments and core information.
That's how I managed, from one memory to the next, to excavate truths that I'd once overlooked—truths only the History School possessed.
So her showing off inadvertently revealed even more hidden history to me.
When the increasingly savvy Zhen Yi eventually found out, her annoyance with me naturally... intensified."
"..."
'The two of you really have brains within brains. Combine every follower of War and Chaos together and their collective intellect probably wouldn't match yours.'
Cheng Shi clicked his tongue appreciatively. The Dragon King really wasn't inferior to Zhen Yi.
"All right, I've explained everything. Now you, Cheng Shi—what exactly is your condition?"
At the prompt, Cheng Shi's eyes lit up. He finally got serious. Looking at the Dragon King, he flashed a mysterious smile, then leaned in close and said quietly:
"I think you'd be a perfect fit for us. So I'd like to invite you to... join us."
"?" Li Jingming frowned, sensing that the "us" in Cheng Shi's mouth wasn't some ordinary organization. "Who is 'us'?"
Cheng Shi produced a mask and placed it over his face, offering an elegant bow:
"The Jokers.
A group of... liars who tell the stories of Void through the art of absurdity, all to entertain the entire world."
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