Chapter 427: Zhou Ke |
Qi Si couldn't remember how long he had been lying in the ice and snow. Perhaps it had been a single night, perhaps half a century. It no longer mattered.
He felt cold, a deep and penetrating cold. The bone-chilling frost pierced his skin, seeping into his marrow, as if it could freeze his very soul. A thick layer of ice encrusted his thoughts, rendering them sluggish.
The ghosts that had attacked him had been lured away by Lin Chen, but their wounds ran deep. Blood streamed from his body, carrying away his warmth and vitality. The moment it left him, it froze, turning into crimson ice crystals that coated his skin. Without him realizing it, his own blood was building him a tomb of crimson and gold.
His strength had evaporated like mist. Even his most desperate struggles were useless; his limbs would rise but a few inches, limp and weak, before falling heavily back onto the ice.
His vision faded in and out as his consciousness teetered on the brink of blackness. His body was paralyzed. Though he knew the path to victory, he was powerless to walk it.
His thoughts drifted. In this state, he mused, if no one intervened, he could do nothing but lie here and wait to die.
Lin Chen was gone for good, leaving him utterly alone. No one would be coming to help him—or be used by him—anytime soon.
Nearly all the soul leaves had grown dim. The souls he controlled through the Insomnia bacteria and the Colosseum had all been sacrificed to the altar. Just as the rules dictated, he had been left with a single believer: Lin Chen. And now, he had none.
Qi Si considered this with a dark sort of humor. Even in Qi's most reckless days, when he might kill a few followers on a whim, he had never been so utterly abandoned, so completely alone.
He pictured it: the world in ruins, disasters striking one after another, humanity collapsing in droves. The thought actually cheered him up—a twisted sort of consolation in his misery. A shame he was trapped in the Final Instance, unable to witness the spectacle firsthand. All he could do was sift through the dregs of his dead followers’ final memories, tasting the remnants of what they saw before they perished.
Then again, is a god without followers still a god? An interesting question. Hmm. A god simply *is*, his existence not subject to the will of his followers.
Within the sanctuary of his mind, the once-thriving crimson plant was now nothing but withered branches. The soul leaves of Lu Li and Xu Yao were still vibrant, but the former was completely inaccessible. He could, however, contact the latter. Through her soul leaf, she chattered incessantly, "Qi Si, I ran into Lin Chen! He's a ghost now, with a whole legion of spirits trailing behind him... Something's not right with me. I have this irresistible urge to follow him..."
It dawned on him: Xu Yao, strictly speaking, was one of the undead. She would be susceptible to the influence of the Undead Shepherd. It looked like he couldn't rely on her for now.
The solution was so close, yet hope dwindled with every passing moment. Every possible path forward was missing a single, crucial link. Perhaps this time, he truly wouldn't escape the mountain.
Qi Si didn't exactly welcome the thought of death, but he didn't despise it either.
Mortals die. Gods fade. Why should he be an exception? Besides, there was nothing left for him to desire.
Still, he had his regrets.
All his scheming, all his intricate plans, and in the end, he was still a pawn of the rules.
His eons as a god, his twenty-two years as a man—the experience of unleashing his malice upon the world had been, on the whole, rather pleasant. And now it had to end.
He had entered the gods' wager as a player, only to lose before the final move.
He'd wanted an interesting death, yet here he was, forced into this pathetic end on a frozen mountain.
He'd rather have died at Rose Manor, he thought.
But the journey had been so long, so tedious, so exhausting. To stop here, to let the glacial cold of Shangri-La freeze him solid... perhaps that wasn't such a bad end after all.
The world was about to be reforged by the rules anyway. Since he had no desire to become the Ancestral God, he was doomed never to see the next epoch. What difference did a few days make?
Qi Si closed his eyes. He could feel his blood pooling on the ice, a gilded liquid flowing to the lowest point, gathering in the grooves to form a churning river. It was just like eons ago, beneath the World Tree, when the corpse of the Ancestral God fell and its divine power bled into the earth, becoming the world's rivers.
The pain was sharp at first, but it slowly faded to nothing. Even his senses of hearing and smell dissolved as death crept in, slipping beyond his grasp.
Through the haze, he felt something wet and warm lapping at his cheek. Qi Si managed to pry his eyes open a sliver. He could vaguely make out the black dog he'd fed back in Jiang City, somehow here beside him. Its wet tongue softly licked his face. When it saw he was awake, it snuggled against his chest, its skeletal frame radiating a faint warmth.
But how could there be a dog on a snow-capped mountain? Qi Si mulled it over, his sluggish mind unable to find an answer. Instead, an image of the dog digging through a trash can surfaced. He whispered, "Get away from me. You’re filthy."
The black dog lingered for a moment, circling him before finally trotting away, glancing back with every few steps. Qi Si closed his eyes once more. After a long while, footsteps crunched in the snow.
The proprietress of the pancake stall staggered toward him, leaning on a bamboo cane, the roses sprouting from her eyes and mouth a shocking, vibrant red. She struggled to bend down and patted his cheek. "Son, wake up. What are you doing sleeping out here?"
*Can't you see I'm dying?* Qi Si wanted to snap, but then he remembered this was just a hallucination, a product of his dying mind. There was no point in getting worked up about it.
He thought for a moment, then said glibly, "It's performance art. My project is to document how many people ask me that exact question in a twenty-four-hour period..."
The woman rambled on, muttering about how the ground was cold and bad for his health, and how she'd never understand the youth of today. When it became clear Qi Si wasn't going to respond, she finally sighed and walked away.
Qi Si closed his eyes, an irritable thought crossing his mind. *Why aren't I dead yet?* He'd lost enough blood to paint the ground, but he was still conscious. Was he supposed to lie here while it summoned everyone he'd ever known for his own funeral?
The thought had barely formed when another set of footsteps approached—footsteps that sounded disturbingly familiar. He was forced to open his eyes yet again, turning his head toward the sound.
A young man in a red Tang-style suit stood there, his hair tied in a short braid. His sunglasses were flecked with snow, giving him a weary, road-worn air.
Hmm. Not just the footsteps, the face was familiar too.
Qi Si stared for a long moment until the face clicked with a memory, dredging up the man's identity from the depths of his mind. He began to smile.
Things were taking a turn. It seemed he wasn't going to die today after all.
Now, Jin Yusheng carried Qi Si on his back, trudging toward the glacial settlement. "Old Qi," he asked, unable to hold back his curiosity, "what the hell happened? How did you get yourself into such a mess?"
"See? I told you I was a good fortune-teller. I warned you before the year started not to leave Jiang City. I said you'd run into trouble the second you left, and here you are. You've been in this godforsaken place for just a few days, and you're already a bloody mess." Qi Si lay limply on Jin Yusheng's back, blood trickling from his wounds, forming a crimson veil that trailed behind them like a long red ribbon.
He replied wearily, too drained to elaborate. "It's nothing. Just payback for a life of misdeeds, I suppose."
"You believe in payback?" Jin Yusheng exclaimed in surprise. "I'd have thought with your track record, a tour through every level of hell wouldn't be punishment enough... Don't tell me you're having a deathbed change of heart? Finding your conscience?"
Qi Si fell silent. One couldn't find a conscience one never possessed. Jin Yusheng had a habit of spouting nonsense, especially when he was on edge; it was his way of defusing the tension.
A strange thought occurred to Qi Si: he knew Jin Yusheng so well. But did Jin Yusheng know him? By his count, the man walking beneath him had known him longer than anyone else still alive...
Jin Yusheng didn't seem to need a response and just kept talking. "Old Qi, the things that have happened these last few days have completely shattered my worldview. I mean, I've had my run-ins with ghosts, but I never imagined things could get this... weird."
"The other day, I'd barely stepped outside before I was being chased all over Jiang City by these monsters covered in roses. I prayed to Buddha, the Taoist Trinity, Jesus Christ—I prayed to everyone. Threw holy water, slapped on talismans... none of it did a damn thing."
"Come on, Old Qi, don't keep me in the dark. I know you know what's going on. Just tell me. What happened after we went our separate ways yesterday?"
Qi Si's head was spinning. He couldn't tell if it was from Jin Yusheng's endless chatter or from the blood loss.
He shifted on Jin Yusheng's back, trying to find a more comfortable position. "The short version," he said casually, "is that I was on the verge of being promoted to Creator, but I turned it down at the last second..."
"That's insane!" Jin Yusheng blurted. "Why would you turn that down?"
"Because it was boring," Qi Si said calmly, his gaze fixed on the path ahead.
Ahead of them rose a forest of ice walls, their surfaces reflecting like mirrors. They had reached the glacier. The key to his salvation was here, waiting for him to test his theory.
The corners of Qi Si's lips curled into a smile. "If you really want to know what happened, put me down in front of those ice walls. Then be quiet and listen. How much of it you grasp will be up to you."
"You're being awfully cryptic. The more you talk, the more I'm convinced you've lost it," Jin Yusheng grumbled, but he did as he was asked, carrying Qi Si to the base of the most reflective ice wall.
He slid off Jin Yusheng's back. Weak from blood loss, his legs gave out the moment they touched the ground, and he crumpled before the ice wall. Behind him, the river of his crimson-gold blood stretched into the distance. Before him, the ice reflected his pale face, giving him the appearance of a malevolent spirit about to crawl out of the mirror.
"You look like you're at death's door," said the Zhou Ke in the reflection, his smile dripping with malice and schadenfreude. "I don't recall ever getting myself into such a pathetic state."
"Oh, you will," Qi Si also smiled. "Once you become me, you'll get to experience it all. Besides... now that I see you, I realize I'm a long way from dying."
"Oh?" Zhou Ke's expression grew intrigued. "It seems you've discovered something."
With a faint smile, Qi Si began to explain. "The core of this instance is quite simple: How does one achieve eternal life? By continually reverting to a child. In other words, by repeatedly rewinding oneself to a past timeline."
"The same person in different timelines is both oneself and another. We share similar experiences, a similar soul, the same origin—but at countless forks in the road, we branched out. Faced with the same predicament, our alternate selves might find different solutions."
"Our interests are identical. Our lives are intertwined. We have a bond stronger than any other. My current predicament is trivial for you to solve. And you need me to survive, so that your own future isn't extinguished here and now."
"What happened with Lin Chen proves it: a person can swap places with their counterpart from another timeline through a mirror. So, Zhou Ke... are you willing to trade places with me?"
Zhou Ke tilted his head, his smile widening. "A clever proposal. In my timeline, all I have to do is kill Lin Jue to win. In your timeline, the sins belong to you, not me. As a temporary 'innocent,' I'll face far less karmic backlash. It sounds like the perfect arrangement for both of us."
He raised a finger and tapped the ice, his tone shifting. "But are you certain? Those who retreat to the past are ultimately trapped by it. Those who falter are destined to lose their chance to write the final act. So, Qi Si, you're willing to forfeit your role in this Final Instance... and trade it all to me? Is that it?"
"I don't have another choice, do I?" Qi Si replied, raising his own finger to meet Zhou Ke's through the icy barrier. "Better to choose a different path and hope for a sliver of a chance than to wait for certain death."
"Hahahaha! So predictable! I suppose it's just like you, Mr. Rational, always choosing the safest path." Zhou Ke doubled over, roaring with laughter. "Back in the Grand Performance instance, you weighed the risks and chose not to bind with the Foolish Trickster card. And in that moment, I was born."
"Ever since, you've become even more cautious, meticulously calculating the odds of every move, exhausting yourself with schemes. Frankly, living like you must be agony. If I were you, I would've slit my own throat long ago to end the misery."
"I don't like to lose. It's that simple," Qi Si's voice was serene. "Coming here, swapping you—my madness—into this shell... it's all part of my plan to wrench a victory from this hopeless stalemate."
"I need you to win. I'm betting on you to win."
A blinding white light erupted from the ice. Crimson and black crow feathers materialized from the void, showering down around them. Scarlet beams and gilded motes of light converged at the surface of the ice, shattering into fine dust upon contact.
Jin Yusheng stood frozen, watching in stunned silence as the half-dead man on the ground rose to his feet as if nothing were wrong. The man tilted his head, and his gaze was at once familiar and utterly alien.
"Jin Yusheng, from now on, you can call me 'Si Qi.' After all, that's the name that goes with the Scarlet High Priest card someone was bound to."
The young man's wounds began to heal before his very eyes. A soul from the past had yet to commit so many sins; it was only logical that the wounds inflicted by vengeful spirits would vanish.
Qi Si trusted no one but himself. He was willing to entrust the chance of victory to another version of himself, just as Qi had once entrusted the final move in the divine wager to him.
After straightening his disheveled red suit, Si Qi surveyed the terrain, his gaze finally settling back on Jin Yusheng.
He raised a finger and tapped his chin. "Jin Yusheng, now we need to get serious about finding a way off this mountain. After all, I did just make a promise to... myself, didn't I?"