Chapter 1061: [Truth] Has Long Since Entered the Fray

【Truth】Has Long Since Entered the Fray

The moment those words fell, the variable Cheng Shi no longer had a future.

An experiment is, after all, an experiment; no one cares whether a variable disappears or not, unless that variable is tied to the experiment's success or failure.

But unfortunately, the variable Cheng Shi clearly was not that kind of variable.

He stared at Cheng Shi in shock; the next second he felt his own body being torn apart by an endless, colossal force, beginning to crumble to pieces—and crumbling along with it was Cheng Shi himself. No, it would be more accurate to say every player in this experiment was crumbling.

Cheng Shi was horrified. He hurriedly jumped out of "Qin Xin's" perspective and, through the Creator Mode of Truth's Limit, saw the entire experiment collapsing at a speed visible to the naked eye. Yet he clearly hadn't operated Truth's Limit, nor had he planned to reconstruct another experiment—so why was the experiment suddenly beginning to dissolve as if it had lost its support?

Could there be some outside force influencing his experiment?

Yes, of course there was!

【Truth's Trajectory】!

Truth's Limit is, after all, merely the reflection of 【Truth's Trajectory】; the real 【Truth's Trajectory】 is still in the hands of the Great Scholars. If they activated 【Truth's Trajectory】 to forcibly interfere with this experiment, they would certainly be able to snuff out the experiment he was presiding over.

But the question was—why did they choose to act now, of all times, neither earlier nor later, but precisely after he had finished his experiment?

Even if 【Truth's Trajectory】's second activation required time, it couldn't possibly be such a coincidence that it finished cooling precisely after his experiment was complete.

Besides, the experiment was already done—what would be the point of stopping it?

If it wasn't to stop it, then right now...

Thinking this far, Cheng Shi's brow tightened, and his expression soon changed, because he suddenly realized the timing of the Great Scholars' move was far from simple. The fact that they could tolerate him completing the entire experiment must mean they, too, had expectations regarding the experiment's completeness!

In other words, the Great Scholars might have been waiting precisely for him to finish this experiment!

These cunning old foxes must have had their eyes on something on him, which was why they so perfectly cast a giant net to scoop up his experimental results as their profit.

But that didn't make sense either...

The result of this experiment was nothing more than meeting another version of himself; everything Scar-Cheng Shi had said was in his own mind—how would the Great Scholars go about extracting that memory?

Or perhaps, what they wanted wasn't the memory?

At this moment, although Cheng Shi's body was disintegrating, his consciousness was not muddled. He clearly remembered that this experiment had been entirely on a whim of his own; before obtaining Truth's Limit, he had never once planned to conduct an experiment of his own within the 【Truth】 trial.

If the experiment's existence was a matter of chance, then how could the Scholarly Presidium have calculated that this experiment would definitely occur?

They hadn't calculated it—they were simply adapting on the fly?

No. A liar's instinct told Cheng Shi that what was unfolding before his eyes could absolutely not be a coincidence. These old things must have been waiting for something all along. Coupled with those few "there's no time" urgings they had thrown at him when he didn't even yet know the trial was an experiment, Cheng Shi's pupils contracted sharply, and a terrifying thought rose in his mind.

Could they be stealing "time"!?

As believers of 【Truth】, when 【Truth】 intended to seize the authority of 【Time】, saying that His believers were stealing time didn't seem wrong—but that wasn't what Cheng Shi meant. What he meant was that the Great Scholars were using him to steal time!

Although the method of theft was unknown, Cheng Shi held evidence sufficient to prove this conjecture: the effects of the Time Battlefield were growing weaker and weaker!

Was this the Great Scholars' doing?

If so, it meant the Great Scholars were not only surveying the whole situation from outside the Time Battlefield, but were also expecting him to keep resetting time within this reconstructed Tusnat experimental field. They were stealing the power of 【Time】 from him, and he, it seemed, had become a window through which 【Truth】 plundered 【Time】!

Damn it!

Cheng Shi's expression changed again. He suddenly realized why the Great Scholars had waited for the experiment to end—it was because they had long since guessed he would conduct such an experiment.

Of course, even if the long-sunken Scholarly Presidium knew of the existence of Drifters, it would be absolutely impossible for them to be so familiar with any single Drifter—such as himself.

So the one who guessed he would run an experiment couldn't be the Great Scholars facing him directly; it had to be their benefactor—【Truth】!

【Truth】had not only informed His believers of the players' existence, but had most likely also laid out his temperament in exhaustive detail!

So this was never a scheme of NPCs stealing players' identities in the first place—this was a goddamn scheme targeting me, Cheng Shi!

【Truth】's calculation against 【Time】had reached all the way to him, and had even calculated the greed that would arise in him after obtaining Truth's Limit. Every step had been calculated to the death, all for the sake of waiting for him to break through the spacetime barrier and make contact with some existence in another sliced universe.

That existence didn't have to be him; it could be anyone—【Truth】wouldn't care. He only needed to know that the power of 【Time】had guided him to vanish from the present and appear in a parallel spacetime He could neither watch nor perceive. This way, 【Truth】might be able to verify what was in His heart and perceive the truth of the cosmos!

After all, His seizing of 【Time】's authority was most likely also for this very purpose!

Moreover, He already had conjectures about the truth of the cosmos; otherwise this experiment wouldn't have been so deceptive, using layer upon layer of nesting to lead him into the trap!

Good, good, good—what a fine 【Truth】, what a fine continuation of 【Civilization】!

It seems some clown has long been your reserve experimental material, hasn't he? Otherwise, how could you understand his greed and desire for revenge so well!

Cheng Shi was furious. He felt that, at this moment, he truly was like a clown—not the profession, purely the pejorative.

But he had no time for complaint or self-reproach. He knew he had to act immediately—while everything before him had not yet completely headed toward collapse, to save himself and his teammates from this soon-to-be-reconstructed identity experiment.

The question was, what should he do?

【Truth's Trajectory】was different from Truth's Limit; it hung outside the experiment, and as an external force that altered the experiment, it was unaffected by time resets. So even if Cheng Shi activated the Time Battlefield again now and dragged the node back to the starting point, all it would affect was the collapsing experimental environment.

The flowers, trees, buildings, and structures would probably just change form and position while continuing to collapse, doing nothing to help save the players.

At this moment, the survivor seemed to have run into a dead end; in the shadows, a man-devouring python called Conspiracy was waiting to strike.

It would be a lie to say he wasn't panicking—Cheng Shi right now was terrified.

However, he certainly wouldn't just sit and wait for death. In a trial where a true god had entered the fray, the Great Scholars carried too much of 【Truth】's will upon them, causing every contingency he had left for dealing with mortals to directly lose its effect. At this point, Cheng Shi knew that relying on his own strength alone could no longer achieve a turnaround; at this moment, he could only pin his hopes on the contest among the gods.

As the sole underling of the Fear Faction and the "Tribute of Fate" of the Proximity Faction, Cheng Shi absolutely refused to believe that the two benefactors of 【Nihil】had no reaction whatsoever to 【Truth】's actions. They must have "come to blows"—it was just that all of this was happening in dimensions he couldn't see.

Moreover, 【Truth】must have found an ally; otherwise, He alone could never have withstood the offensive of the two 【Nihil】 sovereigns.

And this also meant the two benefactors had been held up.

At this moment, in order to steady his mind, Cheng Shi once again took out the 【Corruption】vessel, and as the fear receded like a tide, his thought processes became exceptionally clear.

When waiting for rescue had become utterly hopeless, all he could do was take the initiative—by calling out in prayer to attract the attention of the benefactors outside the trial, thereby adding a sliver of hope to this dead end.

But how to attract their attention was another problem. Cheng Shi thought and thought, and suddenly came up with a last-ditch measure.

Time Has Its Own Origin!

Remember that snap of the fingers he cracked when he took out the key in Fang Yuan and called down the meteor fire-rain?

At the time, Cheng Shi had activated Fate Also Has Its Crossroads, yet the experiment showed no reaction, so he guessed that 【Truth】had cut off all external forces capable of disrupting the experiment from outside. But looking at it now—could it be that Fate's Crossroads hadn't caused the meteor fire-rain to fall, but instead brought about the dire situation before his eyes?

So if he activated Time Has Its Own Origin once more, could it roll everything before him back to that moment when everyone hadn't yet found Truth's Limit!?

After all, what was confined to taking effect within the experiment was only the Time Battlefield; whether Time Has Its Own Origin could affect the entire trial was uncertain even for Cheng Shi as its user. But at this point, who cared about certainty or uncertainty—try it and be done with it; if it didn't work, move on to the next plan.

Thus, with a solemn gaze, Cheng Shi, just before his body completely disintegrated, snapped his fingers once more, activating the 【Time】 talent of his Absolute Likeness 【Fate】 talent:

Time has its own origin.

After the fragile sound of the snap, everything......

Remained utterly unchanged.

"...... #￥%@……"

Cheng Shi's suspended heart quietly died.