Chapter 831: Someone Died |
The gale couldn't scatter the fog, and it certainly couldn't scatter the doubts in the Players' hearts.
The Devout Land was indeed anything but simple — far more treacherous than the scavengers let on.
Halfway through the fog, Zhang Jizu had completely lost all sense of direction. He couldn't confirm whether he was still heading toward the Faith Theater.
To stay on course, he calibrated by the howling wind, maintaining a fixed angle relative to its direction as he pressed forward.
But direction was the least of his problems. The real problem was...
Cheng Shi had vanished.
Cheng Shi had been close behind him, yet somehow — while both had their eyes wide open — they'd separated. Even the trail of firefly lamps scattered along the way had been snuffed out and swept away by the wind. In this eerie fog where visibility barely reached a dozen paces, all contact was severed.
Zhang Jizu couldn't tell whether the fog had severed their link or Cheng Shi had deliberately slipped away. Regardless, he was alone now, advancing toward the Theater by himself.
The distance shouldn't have been long, yet he walked and walked and walked — until he stopped mid-stride, brow furrowed, increasingly convinced that merely progressing in silence would never reach the other side. There had to be additional rules hidden in this twisted fog.
Ai Si!
That towering wine-red ponytail swayed through the mist like a beacon.
But the War Supervisor wasn't walking toward him. She was approaching him backwards — in a thoroughly absurd reverse-walking posture.
She'd been watching the sides, paying no attention to what was behind her. Only when a powerful arm pressed against her back did she jolt, hoisting the great sword in a reflex slash.
Zhang Jizu squinted. A single small scalpel caught the savage chop.
Seeing that cold-glinting scalpel, Ai Si's eyes flew wide. She spun around.
'Surname Cheng!?'
'Oh — Zhang Chosen. Also good.'
She was about to open her mouth to express relief — then snapped it shut, blinking furiously, apparently telegraphing her anxiety through some kind of eye-code.
Strangely enough, Zhang Jizu deciphered the random blinking. He decided she was saying: 'We can't get out.'
He didn't respond. Instead, he studied her with guarded eyes, and wrote a number in the frozen snow with his toe: 30.
The question: the thirty seconds are long past. Why do you still have the Silence effect?
But Ai Si had no idea what he meant. She dragged her blade across the ground, writing:
?
Seeing the question mark, Zhang Jizu smiled. He'd identified her.
She wasn't the fake Ai Si — she was the genuine War Supervisor. Because nobody else in this team would be reckless enough to walk backwards through a fog with zero guard up.
Her logic was easy to guess. 'If walking forward doesn't reach the end, try going backward.'
Not wrong, exactly. Just... not brilliantly right. Classic War-follower thinking.
But encountering an Ai Si beat encountering a Cheng Shi. So he smiled, erased the "30" and the "?", and wrote instead: Where's Long Jing?
A flicker crossed Ai Si's face. She didn't dare reveal Lord Yu Xi's involvement. So she wrote what she could.
"Couldn't beat him. But he deliberately staggered his timing from yours. After he entered, I followed."
The written word wouldn't trigger the Master of Deception. But Mi Laozhang's sharp eyes had already caught the momentary tension on her face. He filed it away silently.
'The War Supervisor and the Acrobat have struck some new deal. The question is what Long Jing promised her.'
Zhang Jizu didn't dwell on the minutiae. Staying alert, he and Ai Si exchanged notes — but both were equally lost, only cross-referencing paths they'd each already walked.
Before long, their expressions turned grim.
The endless fog was a dead end. Everyone was trapped.
Seeing Zhang Jizu motionless for too long, Ai Si had a flash of inspiration and scrawled on the ground: "Let's find Surname Cheng. He has more tricks."
Zhang Jizu read it and smiled. True — Cheng Shi wanted that artifact badly enough that there was no chance he'd simply give up halfway. So where was the Fate Weaver now? And how would he break this deadlock in a fog that defied all orientation?
'Silence. Deceit. Truth...'
'Fog. Secret Peeping Ear. No-Faith Experiment.'
If the fog existed to bar outsiders from the Theater, and the "Wild God" holding the Secret Peeping Ear was hiding inside, then the current situation was clear: "It" had rejected every Player's visit.
What could convince "It" to open the door? What was the ticket for admission?
Zhang Jizu fell into contemplation again — but not for long. He suddenly looked up, eyes narrowing as though struck by an idea. He wrote in the snow at their feet:
"I might have a method. Are you brave enough to try?"
'Am I brave enough to try?'
Ai Si froze, realizing he probably wanted her as a test subject.
Expression shifting, her hand behind her back quietly closed around a vial of... Never-Falling potion.
Truthfully, she didn't want to try. Whatever he had in mind was almost certainly dangerous. But she was more afraid he'd force her — in peak-tier games, strong-arming weaker teammates happened all the time.
Zhang Chosen had been perfectly normal until now. But here and now was different — because no one was watching.
Order never sprouts in fetid soil.
So the War Supervisor's nerves pulled taut. She even held the suspect potion Cheng Shi had given her in her other hand.
But Zhang Jizu read her hesitation. He was no monster of cold logic. After a thoughtful nod, he wiped his writing away and wrote something new:
"Then we wait."
'Wait? For what?'
'For the answer to walk in on its own?'
Ai Si was baffled. But she learned what the Death Chosen was waiting for almost immediately.
Because that same distorted voice — the one that had shrieked "God Concubine" — exploded in their ears without warning.
And this time it carried a line that was utterly confusing yet instinctively chilling.
"So it's afraid too..."
'Afraid?'
'Who's afraid!?'
'Who is "it"?'
Ai Si stood stunned — then her eyes went wide. She stared at Zhang Jizu in horror, pupils quaking:
'Someone... died?'
Indeed. Someone had died.
And not just one — because the moment that secret was broadcast, a second one followed immediately.
"I think it's lying to me, but I still want to know what's inside."
The voice faded. Zhang Jizu squinted hard, face grave, mulling over whose deepest secret each statement could be.
And he confirmed one thing: someone had finally arrived at the same conclusion he had.
The ticket to open the Theater's doors might be surrendering your greatest secret.
Why else would the specter roam the fog, harvesting invaders' lives?
It didn't want the lives themselves. It wanted what those lives carried — the secrets no one else knew.
Someone had found the key to breaking through.
But the question was: who were these two trailblazers?
...
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