Chapter 1313: Trial Cleared — A Bewildered Daze |
[Special Trial (Curtain Call Performance — Deceit) — Challenge Successful]
[Scoring and calculating rewards...]
[Player: Cheng Shi — Performance Score: S]
[Item obtained: Curtain Call Performance Participation Certificate (C) x1]
[Item obtained: Clown Nose (C) x1]
[Item obtained: Clown Setting Mirror (C) x1]
[Item obtained: Match of the Flame of Hope (C) x1]
[Item obtained: Fate's Denial (C) x1]
[Item obtained: Deceit's Praise (S) x1]
[Ladder of Ascent +3]
[Current Road to Ascension score: 2333 — Global Ranking: 330,713]
[Current Ladder of Ascent score: 196 — Path Ranking: 18]
[Trial cleared. Exiting now.]
"..."
When the trial-cleared notification popped up before his eyes, Cheng Shi experienced a moment of disorientation.
He thought he had been resurrected — and the only being capable of resurrecting someone when the era had ended and the world had collapsed was... the Creator, seated high above in the Real Universe. There seemed to be no other possibility.
In that instant, Cheng Shi was both shocked and elated.
Shocked that the Origin had actually descended. Elated because — if He had truly come — then the Outer God's scheme had nowhere to hide, and Fate had truly stumbled into a detour!
But when his five senses returned in full and he opened his eyes to find himself not in the Void or the Real Universe, but on the rooftop of the Rest Area, Cheng Shi froze.
He looked at his hands. No more scalding flames. He touched his eyes. No more boiling blood...
His entire body trembled. Eyes wide with disbelief, his shaking hands reached for his mouth — and then he felt it: a startled, bewildered little twitch that he hadn't initiated.
The Fool's Lips were back!
They weren't dead!
Then everything before...
Cheng Shi's mind exploded. He staggered back two steps and dropped onto the ground, his lips moving for ages without producing a single word.
Only when he slowly accepted that all that despair had been nothing more than a trial — only when he slowly digested the memories he had never truly lost — did he finally recover. With a resounding "thud," he collapsed backward onto the rooftop, stared up at the sun hanging high in the sky with vacant eyes, felt the warmth of sunlight and the temperature of the living world, and cried.
This was absolutely not out of emotion — anyone who stares at the sun will cry!
Two lines of tears fell. Cheng Shi smiled through them, then doubled over pounding the ground, then erupted into something resembling delirium.
He leaped up from the ground, yanked the mask out of his coat, and smashed it against the floor. Not satisfied, he stomped on it viciously and jabbed a finger at it, cursing:
"Screw you!"
Where one leads the charge, another follows.
"Screw you!"
When the Fool's Lips — for once — were on the same side as him, especially when it came to cursing the Fun God, Cheng Shi felt every pore on his body open in bliss.
This was the feeling!
Without the slightest hesitation, he pulled out the Tongue of Eating Lies, the Secret Peeping Ear, and even popped out the Eyes of Mockery — dumping them all on the ground, just to hear those few words:
"Screw you!" x3.
Hm?
Wait, that wasn't right.
The tongue, ear, and eyes were three separate entities — but the eyes came in a pair. Why were there only three voices?
Realizing something was off, Cheng Shi and the gang immediately turned their gazes toward the "traitor" among them — the Secret Peeping Ear.
The Secret Peeping Ear was silent for a moment, then murmured:
"While the mask is His token, in your hands it represents Fate.
If you want to curse someone, you should really be cursing at the dice...
Otherwise, knowing His personality, all those greetings you just sent to the Origin will get forwarded to Fate instead."
The Tongue of Eating Lies instantly froze mid-wriggle in its post-resurrection revenge squirming. It said stiffly: "What does the Origin have to do with anything?"
Both Eyes of Mockery spoke in unison: "Idiot. Deceit's mother is obviously the Origin."
"..."
Cheng Shi's head was buzzing.
In that moment, he felt as though the trial rewards — the Clown Nose and the Clown Setting Mirror — had materialized before him, invisible, and the mirror was reflecting a classic clown right back at him.
His face twitched uncontrollably. He pulled out the Dice of Fate and stared at it blankly for a long while, then laughed in self-mockery, dropped the die on the ground, and snarled through gritted teeth:
"Bitch. Everything in Void is a bitch!"
The Fool's Lips followed up instantly:
"Bitch. Everything in Void is a bitch!"
Cheng Shi laughed — then grew suspicious: "Brother Mouth, the whole era-ending apocalypse in the trial didn't scare you into becoming a parrot, did it?"
The Fool's Lips blinked in confusion, then reverted to their true nature:
"Moron."
"..."
Cheng Shi blinked. There it was. That felt right.
That was Brother Mouth! Perfect.
He stopped paying attention to the chattering gang on the ground and walked to the edge of the rooftop, beginning to think about the meaning behind this unthinkable and spine-chilling Trial of Deceit.
Clearly, the experience that players had accumulated over time was correct: the hints in a Deceit trial — even the title itself — could not be trusted. Not a single word.
Curtain Call Performance?
Bah!
This was never a curtain call. It was a full-blown circus act!
And the clown hadn't been just him — every living being in the universe had been made an actor on that stage!
But the stage had been too real. The crushing despair, the searing Authority, Fate's cruelty, the Pact's response... Could all of it really have been nothing more than an illusion?
Or had it all already happened once, and he had simply lived through another time reset?!
Time?!
No, no, no — the trial-complete notification made it clear that the timeline had advanced past the Deceit trial. The Pact's rules were still processing the settlement, which meant the experience had been a trial — unrelated to present reality.
It was definitely not a reset. It was more like... a projection?
Time wasn't the savior — Time was the accomplice?
Cheng Shi faltered. The words nearly slipped out: "I think Time is also a..." He caught himself. "Ahem."
Until he was sure, he would still guard his devotion.
But "unrelated to reality" did not mean the Outer God didn't exist. The current state of Void still needed to be reassessed. But before that, Cheng Shi had to confirm one thing first — something that made his blood run cold and his scalp tingle just thinking about it:
'Am I truly the real me?'
'Is the current me someone who has just finished a shocking trial — or am I nothing more than a fragment of memory living inside some broken world?'
'Or... have memories from another world contaminated this one, causing me to inherit a different Cheng Shi's past...'
If all cause and effect were confined beneath this starry sky, Cheng Shi would never have had to think this deeply.
But after personally experiencing the realities of the Real Universe, he had no choice but to ponder — in a world where anything was possible — whether "I" was still truly "me."
Cheng Shi stood at the rooftop's edge, gazing into the distance, his expression a complicated mess as he murmured:
"Brother Mouth — are we... still us?"
The Fool's Lips felt the turmoil of emotions within Cheng Shi. It retracted its hostility and hummed softly:
"No matter what's happened to you and me — at the very least, His aura hasn't changed.
He's not dead. I have a Benefactor again."
"..." Cheng Shi froze, then suddenly smiled. "Yeah — your Benefactor's come back. I hope my Fear Faction... comes back too."
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