Chapter 1037: It Was Them!? |
Fourth time.
Cheng Shi appeared in the west district again, called out Chen Yi, and used the same near-identical straight hook to bait the hunter into creating a disturbance.
Chen Yi took the bait — again. But staring at Cheng Shi's disappearing back, the hunter felt an eerie sense of déjà vu.
Then, under cover of the formation's thunderous assault, Cheng Shi slipped into the experiment ground, heading straight for his target.
His target was no longer Galusha. It was the two scholars in the reserve echelon — the ones whose faces he hadn't seen clearly!
But the small door beneath the departure platform was guarded. Cheng Shi wasn't even sure if the lone security scholar stationed there belonged to the Erudition Presidium or Galusha. So he had to use cunning.
He wove through the vast experiment ground, switching identities across multiple corners until he'd stolen a security scholar's uniform. Hood pulled low to hide his face, he approached the small door.
Before the guard could send him away, Cheng Shi struck first:
"Kadir, change of plans. The situation's shifted. I need to get inside and notify the commander."
'Fifty-fifty. Wrong pick.'
Cheng Shi was exasperated. So this one wasn't Galusha's man after all?
Fortunately, his reflexes were fast. He immediately waved him off:
"Relax — this is a new screening protocol. I'm conducting a covert inspection of all reserve personnel's loyalty before launch status.
Scholar Kadir, you passed. But now let me inside to accelerate the screening.
You can hear it too — the enemy's found this place and is attacking. We have to race against time."
Kadir's hand paused. It sounded like a cover story after a failed passcode exchange. But coincidentally, the moment Cheng Shi finished speaking, Volent's voice from the experiment platform announced launch-ready status. Hard not to believe now.
Along with the launch command came another order from Volent: Kadir was to open the small door and release the first echelon.
Kadir froze. He looked at Cheng Shi — meaning: 'You haven't finished your screening and we're releasing them already?'
Cheng Shi improvised on the spot:
"The situation above must be worse than anticipated. Then we follow the grand scholars' orders first.
Scholar Kadir, you've earned absolute clearance. I need your help. Screen the first echelon for me — I'll go in and screen the reserve. Deal?"
Kadir hesitated briefly, then nodded. He opened the door and released everyone inside.
Cheng Shi stood right beside the door, watching Galusha pass by him head-down once more. He stayed absolutely still, perfectly inconspicuous. Only after every first-echelon scholar had boarded the departure platform did he turn and step through the door.
But just as he was about to search for those two figures, Kadir called from behind:
"Sbora — if you find something abnormal, what do we do?"
"?"
Cheng Shi froze. He hadn't expected to be tested now.
Master of Deception told him the statement was false — and the only falsifiable part was the name. So even after agreeing to his request, Kadir was still suspicious?
'Tch. Scholars are cautious, huh.'
But Cheng Shi couldn't be bothered. Without turning: "First, I'm not Sbora. Second, I already walked in — what's the point of testing me now?"
He flicked a scalpel to keep the guard back, shut the door behind him, and hurried toward the reserve echelon's prep room.
Beyond the door lay two spaces: a large standby room at the front, and a prep room connected behind it. When the first echelon boarded the platform, the reserve echelon moved forward from the prep room to standby.
Cheng Shi met the moving scholars head on. His sharp eyes swept the startled crowd, scanning for the two figures he'd barely glimpsed twice before. Soon he locked onto the last two people at the queue's tail.
At that moment, Kadir triggered the alarm outside, alerting the entire experiment ground. Departure platform scholars erupted in chaos. Several shoved aside teammates and leapt down, rushing toward the standby room.
Galusha led the charge. She kicked Kadir out of the way, cracked the small door with her whip, and stormed in without hesitation, face dark.
She'd never imagined the plan would break down here. Under her arrangement, agents in other departments had deployed enough smoke screens. The Erudition Presidium's fools shouldn't have traced things back to the reserve echelon — personnel with absolutely clean backgrounds.
But the last thing she wanted to see had happened. When she burst back into the standby room like a gale, she found the unidentified scholar standing at the far end — each hand gripping a reserve member's throat — facing her from across the room, shaking his head with a soft laugh:
"No wonder I couldn't figure out why you were so interested in an experiment meant to save the Tower of Logic. The answer was here all along.
Well, well, well!
The assassination wasn't assassination — it was instruction! The prevention wasn't prevention — it was enlightenment!
With this one move, you've eliminated your own future worries and left the grand scholars with nowhere to turn. What a masterful Wise Man, thinking ten steps ahead!
But I wonder — when you altered their memories, did you ever consider that the person secretly scheming against you from behind... was your future self!?
Ga. Lu. Sha!"
Cheng Shi interrogated her word by word, his tone nothing but shock — because the two people in his grip were all too familiar.
The gravely composed man in his left hand was unmistakably the vice-captain who'd commanded the Iron Law Knights' Seventeenth Squad in Montelani — Grind!
And the woman in his right hand? Not hard to guess — the female knight who'd once served as young Galusha's personal guard — Melina!
Who could have imagined that these two scholars, who'd infiltrated the Grand Tribunal to purge traitors from the Tower of Logic, had been dispatched from here!
'The Erudition Presidium you serve isn't the one at its zenith — it's the one at death's door!'
'What — in the last second before this divine nation's collapse, you still won't give up trying to seize [Time]'s authority?'
The "you" here didn't mean Galusha and the Erudition Presidium — but the Benefactors rising high behind each of them: [Folly] and [Truth].
Cheng Shi was overcome with emotion. Thoughts raced — if the experiment's truth was this, then should it go forward or not? Because either way, [Truth]'s will seemed destined to be severed from this continent.
He looked at Galusha, wanting to ask what she had to say about the fact that the hatred she championed had been birthed by her own hands from the future. But the answer didn't come from Galusha — it came from the "Melina" his left hand was restraining.
"Melina" gripped his hand with both of hers, struggling upward:
"This... isn't... a scheme..."
"?????"
The instant Cheng Shi heard that voice, he was thunderstruck.
It wasn't the Melina he remembered. It was a voice he'd heard only recently — within this very trial — mere hours ago!
'Pe Laya!!!'
Could you imagine Pe Laya's voice coming from Melina's mouth?
Cheng Shi's mind went blank. He snapped his gaze to his right hand — and in the instant he saw those eyes swimming with panic, yearning, and an indescribable emotion — a vicious whip crack sent him flying.
Then, countless surrounding scholars swarmed in. Synchronized detonation. The blast hurled a grim-faced Cheng Shi back to the surface ruins of Tusnat.
Fifth time.
Cheng Shi's eyes opened again. He stared up at the blazing sun overhead and, for the first time, felt he didn't understand this world anymore.
Because he was certain that in "Melina's" — no, Pe Laya's — eyes, he'd seen something called love.
That love obviously wasn't directed at him. As for who...
'Hss—'
'I always said you could learn things from watching your neighbor. If I hadn't observed Xie Yang every day, who'd have known what that kind of look meant?'
...