Chapter 128: Detestable Ghost Whisperers

After confirming their candidates, they gathered some additional information before returning to the rented apartment.

In Chen Ran's room.

The two sat on the floor, placing the collected information between them to examine it carefully.

First was the Mental Cultivation Method.

Of course, this only detailed the evolution of the Mental Cultivation Method, along with a few legends.

According to legend, the Mental Cultivation Method was created by the very first batch of players in Hell.

It was specifically designed to resist mood manipulation, Common Sense Deception, and Emotional Deception.

After experiencing certain events, a person's inner self would grow stronger, increasing their ability to withstand stress.

Thus, they compiled, categorized, analyzed, and summarized the events that could fortify the mind, ultimately developing a set of techniques to rapidly enhance one's mental fortitude.

In other words...

Discarding emotions, Common Sense, and sentiments.

However, they gradually discovered that a person without emotions, Common Sense, and sentiments was not a human at all, but a monster.

For example, after discarding Common Sense, a person's previously built conceptual framework would entirely collapse. They would comprehensively deny objective reality and the laws of nature. Simply put...

They believed in absolutely nothing!

It became a frequent occurrence for high-star players to discard their Common Sense on the first day, only to be tricked into a Common-Sense Lie by a low-star player and die the very next day.

At this point, they finally realized that the Mental Cultivation Method was flawed. But here lay the crux of the problem: any player capable of discarding their Common Sense had already discarded their emotions.

Unaffected by emotions, even if they discovered a problem with the Mental Cultivation Method, they simply did not care. They would continue Heart-Cutting to advance their Mental State.

This resulted in a situation where the earliest iterations of Hell could not produce players above seven stars.

When Newbies arrived in Hell and saw the high-star players practicing Heart-Cutting, they blindly followed suit.

Meanwhile, the high-star players who had discarded their Common Sense would get tricked into Common-Sense Lies by those very same Newbies.

Logically speaking, such a vicious cycle should have been easily noticed and broken.

However, there was a schemer who, right before discarding his emotions, uttered a Future Lie: "Within a year, if I cannot recover my emotions, I will lie to a random passerby. At the same time, during this period, I am forbidden from discarding Common Sense."

Without emotions, there is no motivation. But this Future Lie replaced his emotions, driving him to perfect the Three Corpses of the Spirit Terrace Mental Cultivation Method.

The reason this schemer was so insidious was that after perfecting the Mental Cultivation Method, he did not share it with the public. Instead, taking advantage of the fact that most players had discarded their emotions and Common Sense, he fabricated several Deceiver's Tongues. These Deceiver's Tongues effortlessly transformed into the Common Sense of Hell.

One of them was: All players must practice the Three Corpses of the Spirit Terrace.

He never released the complete version. Consequently, any player arriving in Hell had no choice but to practice the flawed Mental Cultivation Method.

As a result, even if a newcomer noticed something fishy about the Mental Cultivation Method, they were forced to practice it by the sheer weight of this Common Sense rule.

This schemer knew full well that his Deceiver's Tongues might eventually be deciphered, so he founded...

The Liar-Slayer Alliance!

...to maintain his own rule. During this time, countless players were led to their deaths by the incomplete Mental Cultivation Method.

He originally thought that with this setup, he would be able to rule Hell for at least ten thousand years.

However...

Just as Qiu Yinong had said, once a person refuses to grow, it becomes a terrifying thing.

Where there is a first schemer, a second schemer will naturally follow.

It took less than a century.

The second schemer appeared in Hell, and just before discarding her emotions, she uttered a similar Future Lie.

A person without emotions is like a car without fuel. But the existence of the Future Lie forcefully drove her empty-tanked vehicle forward to seek the true answer...

Very quickly, the second schemer also perfected the Mental Cultivation Method and made it completely public.

In an instant, the first schemer became the target of public wrath, experiencing what it meant to have The World As One's Enemy.

However, he had already prepared an escape route. Utilizing the Points he had accumulated from ruling Hell for a century, he distributed massive benefits to gather a group of newly arrived players and established...

The Deceiver Alliance.

The second schemer, having already overtaken the Liar-Slayer Alliance, was forced to inherit it completely, becoming its second leader.

The two alliances fought to the death. In the endless wars, new generations continually replaced the old, leaving their predecessors utterly crushed in their wake.

Both schemers ultimately died at the hands of rising players with greater talent and higher intellects.

Yet, Ghost Whisperers and Liar-Slayers mutually reinforced and countered each other. The war would not end simply because the two schemers died.

The two alliances continued their bitter struggle, and the war persisted to this very day.

...

After reading the legend, Chen Ran only believed about a quarter of its contents.

After all, there were too many plot holes, and much of it contradicted the facts.

'Still, it has some use. The current alliance leaders are only ten-star players, which is highly likely related to the fact that the Mental Cultivation Method has never been completely perfected.'

'Alternatively, there might be a fatal flaw in the final step of the Mental Cultivation Method—discarding sentiments. Ten-star players are completely immune to mood and Common Sense, leaving Emotional Deception as the only remaining method for Lie-Judgment.'

'That is to say, the ten-star players might have reached some sort of agreement, forbidding advancement to eleven stars before the Superego Mental State is perfected.'

'In short, there must be countless Deceiver's Tongues and Future Lies deeply intertwined in this mess, creating a convoluted knot that prevents the birth of any eleven-star players.'

'In other words, our predecessors only focused on fabricating Deceiver's Tongues without considering that these paradoxes would interweave into an impenetrable net, trapping everyone inside with absolutely no way out.'

He massaged his temples.

Both Chen Ran and Qiu Yinong felt like their heads were about to explode. Deciding to stop dwelling on this issue, they turned to the second batch of information regarding the Commercial District.

It was yet another legend, but this one pertained to a Death-Speaker.

The 18th Level originally had no Commercial District. However, a Death-Speaker sacrificed their life to write a single sentence in the blank space of the Common Sense booklet:

The 18th Level has a Commercial District.

And so...

The 18th Level gained a Commercial District.

Within the Commercial District, one still had to abide by the prohibition against lying, the Pillar Rules inscribed on the ten pillars, and the Common Sense of the 18th Level.

Furthermore, inside the Commercial District, there were lower-tier Common Sense rules, such as:

Forced buying is prohibited, forced selling is prohibited, stealing is prohibited, and blocking the pathways is prohibited.

Prohibited...

Anyone with the surname Shen, Liu, Li, or Chen from setting up stalls to sell items or food.

Chen Ran: "..."

'I suspect you're deliberately making things difficult for me, Fat Tiger.'

Reading further down: Anyone with the surname Lu is prohibited from appearing in the Commercial District altogether.

The use of Liar Hunter Skills is prohibited anywhere within the Commercial District.

Chen Ran was incredibly curious—how exactly were these bizarre Common Sense rules in the Commercial District born?

And the Death-Speaker...

The mention of them made him shudder slightly.

Still, he only believed a quarter of this story as well. It possessed too many logical fallacies.

After finishing all the collected information, both Chen Ran and Qiu Yinong felt an overwhelming headache from the mix of true and false data.

They suspected that these legends were likely spread by Ghost Whisperers. The logical errors within them were deliberate traps, inducing players to deny them and subsequently die from a failed denial.

'If cursing wasn't prohibited in the 18th Level, I would absolutely be swearing right now.'

'These Ghost Whisperers go to extreme lengths to manufacture Deceiver's Tongues, making it virtually impossible for Newbies like us to obtain genuine information.'

Their current state of mind was deteriorating. Realizing that the useless information was starting to affect their emotional stability, they immediately stopped reading and agreed to personally investigate the Commercial District the next day.

After Qiu Yinong left, Chen Ran lay on his bed, his head throbbing and his eyes numb.

'Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!'

'Detestable Ghost Whisperers!'