Chapter 416: Wearing a God-Faced Mask, Dancing and Singing |
Zhang Yiyu crouched in a corner of the tent, her eyes fixed on Zhou Ke, who lay in the center. She was caught in an awkward limbo, unsure whether to lie down or remain seated.
Even if Zhou Ke were a normal person, being alone with a man in such a confined space would have been enough to make her uneasy. But he wasn't normal; he was a pseudo-human whose actions were impossible to predict.
Zhang Yiyu was terrified that if she closed her eyes, she would open them to some horrific scene, just like that time in Jiang City, surrounded by a mountain of flesh and severed limbs.
Fortunately, after years of being a ghost, she had long grown accustomed to sleeplessness. Although she now possessed a human body again, she could still manage a single night without rest.
She stared uneasily at Zhou Ke's form, lost in thought, when a faint crimson glimmer flickered in the darkness, pulsing with a strange allure.
Looking closer, she realized it wasn't a light at all. It was Zhou Ke. He had opened his eyes and was watching her with an unreadable, probing smile.
As their eyes met, Zhang Yiyu felt a pang of embarrassment and blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "Dong Xiwen went out."
The moment the words left her lips, she remembered that Dong Xiwen had asked for Zhou Ke's permission before leaving the tent. Her statement was completely pointless, only serving to betray her own anxiety.
"I know," Zhou Ke replied nonchalantly, rustling as he sat up. "I'm going out for a walk myself. If you're bored, you're welcome to join me."
Zhou Ke let out a soft chuckle, then lifted the tent flap and stepped out into the vast, swirling snowstorm. Zha Xi and the herd of yaks were gone. She scanned the horizon, but there was no sign of Dong Xiwen or Lin Jue either.
Zhou Ke arched an eyebrow, knowing full well the two had likely found each other.
An idealist with a Messiah complex, always ready to sacrifice himself, and a self-righteous, two-faced fool. They truly were a perfect match.
In truth, Zhou Ke held no particular malice toward Lin Jue. He merely found it remarkable that such a person hadn't yet been wiped from the face of the earth. And, well... he was quite useful.
Only those with morals could be held hostage by them. Compared to the blatantly self-serving, good people were far more convenient to use.
As for how deep Lin Jue and Dong Xiwen's collusion would go, or what methods they might employ against him, he wasn't particularly concerned.
Those who clung to a moral baseline were doomed to be at a disadvantage in a game of schemes. The moment Lin Jue activated the [Dark Judge] ability, the outcome had been sealed. The dark side of human nature never disappointed.
Fiddling with the recorder, Zhou Ke ambled forward without a destination, his leisurely pace making it seem as if he were a tourist on a scenic mountain trip rather than a player in the Weird Game's final instance.
Not far away, a goat stood upon a snowdrift. Its neck was pierced through, and blood gushed from the wound, matting the fur on its chest and pooling into a small, pale pink mound at its feet.
Despite this, it was still alive. Its horizontal pupils stared coldly at Zhou Ke, a detached gaze, as if looking at something already dead.
Suddenly, Zhou Ke felt that the goat looked remarkably human. He suspected it might be a vengeful spirit of someone he had killed, come to claim his life. Considering the known clues, it might even have been a goat he'd slaughtered in another timeline.
He strolled toward it. Halfway there, his intuition pricked, and he glanced back. The tent and the Ark Guild's camp had vanished. All that remained was a bewildering expanse of white. Besides himself, there wasn't another soul in sight.
"Have I triggered some mechanism? Or... entered some alternate dimension?" Zhou Ke mused with interest, continuing his approach toward the goat.
The goat remained a short distance ahead, watching him with its head cocked. As he drew near, it turned and began walking deeper into the snow mountain, like a patient guide leading him to some hidden place.
On the ridge at the edge of his vision, several gray shadows appeared, looking like another group of travelers. Zhou Ke paused. As the figures slowly approached, he recognized their faces. They were people he had killed.
The villagers of the Qi Family Village and the dead of Jiang City crawled out from beneath the ice one by one, until they covered the entire mountainside. Each was draped in blood, bearing the fatal wounds of their death, their eyes burning with venomous hatred as they stared at him.
"Why did you kill us? We had no quarrel with you. Why did you have to kill us?" the dead demanded in a chilling unison.
Zhou Ke tilted his head and thought for a moment, then burst into laughter. "A reason? ... I just felt like killing you, and I happened to have the power to do it, so I did."
The mountain of corpses let out a furious roar. A forest of mangled, bloody arms reached for him, smearing more crimson onto his already stained white shirt.
He walked on as if he felt nothing, even quickening his pace until he stood in the heart of the corpse swarm. He raised the recorder high and pressed the play button.
A bizarre, holy chant echoed across the mountainside: "Look at the Thighbone Trumpet, spurting blood... The so-called mandala, a gaudy mess... The so-called dance beads are beads of bone... The so-called messenger, his body naked and bright... Wearing a god-faced mask, they dance and sing..."
The sound wasn't loud, yet it possessed an incredible penetrating force, echoing relentlessly through the wilderness, reaching far and wide, seeming to pierce the very soul and command every sense.
The dead lowered their arms. Their heads turned with stiff urgency, searching for the source of the sound. The accusatory glares that fell upon the recorder transformed into a look of deep longing, as if it were the most beautiful hymn in the world, a symbol of redemption and hope.
"So it even works on these ghosts?" Zhou Ke's smile widened at the sight. He performed an exaggerated, magician-like bow that was almost comically deep.
He placed the recorder on the snow and backed away step by step. It was a gesture of caution, yet he executed it with an air of unhurried elegance.
The menacing ghosts paid no attention to his departure. In their world, only the recorder playing its holy song existed. They crowded around it, layer upon layer, and bowed their heads in quiet reverence, listening with rapt attention.
Zhou Ke nonchalantly pushed aside the corpses on either side of him and continued deeper into the snow mountain. The scale of time stretched, and soon he could no longer tell where he was.
A series of ice walls shot up before him, towering between heaven and earth, forming a chaotic maze that blocked his path.
In the nearest ice wall, he saw his own reflection—or more accurately, he saw Qi Si, his counterpart from another world line.
"Hello, Zhou Ke," Qi Si said.
Zhou Ke tilted his head. When the figure in the ice didn't mirror his movement, his smile grew wider. "Hello there, my other self. I didn't think I'd get the chance to speak with myself again after the 'Dialectical Game' instance. Quite interesting, isn't it?"
"I don't think so," Qi Si said, his gaze filled with pity. As Zhou Ke approached, he extended a hand. "I'm curious, do you truly know who you are? And if you do, what do you make of that answer?"
"What if I know? And what if I don't? For now, I possess my own independent way of thinking and acting. At times, I can even take your place in the game," Zhou Ke said with a smile. "Every identity card represents a choice at a crossroads. Some choose reason, others choose madness.
"At the last crossroads, you, the rational one, saw the negative effects of the [Foolish Trickster] card and decisively gave it up. But a version of you from another timeline—or rather, me—found the idea of dancing on a razor's edge especially amusing, so I bound myself to it. It's as simple as that." "Yes, you are my madness." The Qi Si in the ice sighed, a picture of helplessness. "I've heard of your deeds. Destroying a city on a whim, antagonizing Kyushu and even the Ark Guild with no semblance of a plan... Forgive me for being blunt, but you are destined to push things to a point of no return.
"You are impulsive, you are arrogant, you are reckless, and you are unrepentant. A fool like you will ultimately destroy the plans and schemes I have laid out over billions of years. From a purely pragmatic standpoint, you are a mistake. You shouldn't exist."
Zhou Ke sat down on the ground before the ice wall, resting his chin on his palm. He listened patiently for a while, then asked, "And?"
Qi Si stared at him coldly and continued on his own. "You have no desire. A person without desire should not exist in this world.
"Thirty-six years ago, I created the Weird Game. Twenty-two years ago, I cast you into the world, all for the sake of making you develop desire, to make you whole. But you failed.
"Only a god who has known desire can bestow it upon mortals. Only such a god can sleep through the apocalypse and reawaken in a new era. Only such a god can exist as the Ancestral God, the creator of all things...
"As you are now, you are no different from the straw dogs destined to die in the end. I am thoroughly disappointed."
It was a familiar manipulation tactic. Zhou Ke nodded sagely. "Funny, I'm not that attached to living, nor do I think desire is all that important. In fact, knowing your grand plan is ruined makes me want to laugh out loud three times to celebrate."
"Is that so?" Qi Si's pity vanished, replaced by a near-maniacal grin. "If you don't want to live, then why don't you just die?"
...
Meanwhile, Qi Si opened his eyes to the sight of the tent's canvas ceiling.
He was lying in his tent, as if he had been sleeping soundly here all along, never having left. But he knew with certainty that the events of last night were no illusion.
It was likely a mechanism of the instance. He had drifted into a dream without realizing it and had been confronted by those he had killed.
His cousin, his aunt and uncle, Liu Yuhan, Chang Xu... all he needed were those few unlucky souls from the Holy City to complete the collection, though their deaths could probably be blamed on Fu Jue.
What troubled Qi Si most was what Zhou Ke had said at the end of the dream.
That Zhou Ke, wearing his face, was far more insane than the self he remembered. He was like a version of himself stripped of all pretense and disguise, revealing the hidden urges of his heart.
Zhou Ke had claimed that he now possessed the desire to live, making him unworthy of the name "Qi Si." He considered this for a moment and concluded it was most likely a trap set by the Ancestral God. After all, he had just confirmed in Bai Ma's mirror not long ago that he was still missing a piece of himself.
And even if he did have desire now, it didn't matter. People change. Perhaps it even made him more complete, capable of finally opening the temple in the Sunset Ruins.
Far more important than such abstract questions was the message behind Zhou Ke's words: Zhou Ke held significant malice toward him and was capable of locating him across different timelines. That was certainly a nuisance.
Outside the tent, the sky was already bright. Milky morning light filtered through the gaps in the canvas, casting his face half in light, half in shadow. He sat up, draped his Tibetan robe over his shoulders, and stepped out of the tent, where he saw Bai Ma sitting among her flock.
"Did you find your goat?" Qi Si asked, counting the goats in the flock, already knowing the answer.
Bai Ma shook her head. "I didn't find it, but I know where it is now. I don't need to look for it today."
"Oh? And where is that?"
"In a place that can never be reached without a mirror," Bai Ma said vaguely. "It has its own mission. Every one of us who comes into this world has a mission to fulfill."
Mirrors, always mirrors...
Qi Si noticed that the goat carcass he had stabbed through the throat the night before was gone. The snow held no trace that it had ever been there.
Perhaps the fresh snow had buried the evidence, including the footprints and bloodstains. Or perhaps they had never existed at all, having vanished into some bizarre wrinkle in spacetime.
Bai Ma suddenly pulled a mirror from her bundle and held it out to Qi Si with both hands. "It is a new day. Please, look upon your destiny once more."
Qi Si didn't reach for it, but simply stared at the woman with a faint smile. "I already looked yesterday. I don't believe one's destiny is something that requires repeated viewings."
Bai Ma smiled back. "People change. The you of today might be very different from the you of yesterday. You may have grown larger or smaller, and your destiny may have changed along with you."
Different? As in, a person without desire suddenly acquiring it?
Qi Si thought of last night's dream, raised an eyebrow, and took the mirror, looking into its surface as she wished.
Just like the first day, mist crept in from the edges, covering the entire surface before gradually dissipating. The image revealed a scene at the foot of the mountain, where colorful prayer flags fluttered like vibrant strokes of oil paint.
Qi Si saw himself, dressed in a red suit and holding Poseidon's Scepter, standing in the middle of a vast crowd. A genuine smile graced his lips, as if he were deeply satisfied with this outcome.
What did this mean? That he had successfully escaped the snow mountain?
"Qi Si, admit it. You want to live," Zhou Ke's voice echoed in his ear, whether a regurgitation of memory or a phantom of his imagination.
Qi Si's expression remained unchanged as he handed the mirror back to Bai Ma. "I've seen it," he said flatly. "Nothing has changed."
The crunch of boots in snow sounded from behind him. Lin Chen was finally awake and had emerged from his tent.
Upon seeing Qi Si, his eyes widened in terror as if he had witnessed something incomprehensible. He pointed a trembling finger at the ground, unable to speak for a long moment.
"Lin Chen, what is it?" Qi Si asked casually, his gaze following the direction Lin Chen was pointing.
"I... I..." Lin Chen gasped for breath, finally managing to stammer out a complete sentence. "Brother Qi, I see... you have two shadows."
Qi Si saw it then, too. On the pristine white snow, two shadows stretched out from his feet. One matched his silhouette perfectly. The other twisted and writhed with a frenzied energy, as if it were trying to devour the first...
(End of this chapter)
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