Chapter 1131: The First Ever Hunter of Folly

The First Ever Hunter of Folly

Cheng Shi did not know what had become of the prison.

Having shed his prisoner's garb, he donned a set of common clothes he had pilfered from a guard in the corridor and walked out of the prison with a swagger.

Upon leaving the prison, he discovered that this place was a mountain city; looking out, he saw peaks surrounding it, much like the feeling of gazing at distant mountains in the Court of Kateruo.

But he was not yet certain if this was indeed Redikol, so he pulled over a passerby at random, squeezed out a professional fake smile, and asked in a friendly manner:

"Excuse me, what place is this?"

A passerby in a long robe held his head high, "looked down" at Cheng Shi's attire, then glanced at the prison behind him, and sneered with disdain:

"What, has the Folly-Prohibition Office failed to meet its quota this month, and you've already started using such clumsy means to 'solicit customers'?

Even if you need to generate revenue, you could at least find a better excuse.

Even if I were to respond to such a stupid question, it would only lead to you arresting me on the charge of 'knowingly committing folly,' so do you really think I would bother with you?

Idiot."

Having said this, the passerby walked away with an arrogant air, leaving Cheng Shi standing in the wind, bewildered.

No, brother...

If you weren't going to bother with me, who was it that just cursed me?

Cheng Shi looked at his attire with a blank expression, thinking that this place was quite interesting; law enforcement officers could be insulted to their faces, and it seemed that here, wisdom was held in higher regard than the law.

He did not believe it, so he asked several more passersby, only to receive countless looks of disdain.

Now he believed it.

The kingdom of 【Folly】 was truly miraculous; as long as one could stand on the high ground of wisdom, look down upon others with disdain, and leave them speechless, one could be exempt from punishment, or even replace the law enforcement officers themselves.

Because during the very conversation just now, a passerby had started stripping off Cheng Shi's clothes while cursing him, saying he was unworthy of being a Folly-Prohibition guard and that he should surrender his authority.

Could Cheng Shi let him get away with that?

The shadow Cheng Shi circled behind the man and knocked him out with a single chop to the neck, then dragged him into a small alley for a "heart-to-heart" talk; within minutes, Cheng Shi had obtained all the information he wanted.

This was indeed Redikol, a city built atop a high mountain.

Protected by a nearby Civilization Isolated Tower, the entire population here worshipped 【Folly】, and the city was quite famous for it, as it was the hometown of the first-ever Hunter of Folly and a place that produced many such hunters.

That was why the law enforcement agency here was called the Folly-Prohibition Office, and the officers were called Folly-Prohibition Guards, because the hometown of the Hunter of Folly did not allow any ignorance to exist, and all acts of folly were forbidden.

Hearing this, Cheng Shi could barely hold it together.

Did your patron, as the world's number one practitioner of folly, know that you were both worshipping and blaspheming against Him here?

Did forbidding all acts of folly not mean that even your patron was forbidden?

No wonder Wei Mu jumped off the cliff at the very start; it turned out he had long known that this place was not pious...

But that was just talk; Cheng Shi was certain that Wei Mu would not be eliminated so quickly, because from the perspective of a liar, when a person voluntarily disappears from the sight of others, that person has not disappeared at all, but has merely changed roles to return to the stage.

He just did not know why Wei Mu had come, and naturally could not guess where he was now.

But regardless of where Wei Mu was, it did not affect his own actions this time; Cheng Shi had only come to learn about the town of Redikol, and he had never thought of gaining anything from this trial, so his mindset was very relaxed.

Or perhaps not that relaxed...

The appearance of Chen Shu and Mo Shu still made his heart tighten; he had to handle his relationship with this unlucky Fire-Keeper while also guarding against whether the 【Annihilation】 believer would make a move against him. It looked leisurely, but his heartstrings were actually pulled taut.

That was why he had run out the moment he found an opportunity at the start, and now he intended to go to the center of the town to see that stone statue representing the first Hunter of Folly.

The man he had interrogated said that to commemorate the first Hunter of Folly, and also to express the people's piety toward the gods, Redikol had built a massive stone statue in the center of the town.

Whenever someone in the town committed an act of folly, these fools would be brought to the side of the statue and subjected to cruel torture, to comfort the pious will of the first Hunter of Folly.

And the identities of the players in this trial were those of prisoners who had been subjected to cruel torture just the day before; their crime was losing an argument with an executioner and then killing them out of jealousy, committing the crime of "knowingly committing folly."

Listen to that, how absurd; the reason they were sentenced was not because they had killed a law enforcement officer, but because of "knowingly committing folly"!

From this, it seemed that the people of Redikol held the rejection of ignorance in far higher regard than respect for the law.

The memories of the real prisoners had long since been lost with the arrival of the players, and Cheng Shi did not know what had specifically happened at the time; he only knew that when traveling abroad, one's identity was whatever one claimed it to be, so today, he was not a prisoner, but a Folly-Prohibition guard with considerable authority.

Cheng Shi followed the main road to the center of the town, and upon looking up, he saw the massive statue of the Hunter of Folly; the person carved in the stone was drawing a bow, gazing into the distance, and although the cloak behind him was stone, it was so lifelike that one felt the wind whistling at the heights just by looking at it.

It was just that the face of the statue was quite different from what Cheng Shi had imagined; he had assumed the first Hunter of Folly would be arrogant enough to have nostrils pointing toward the heavens.

But that was not the case; the face of the statue was not sharp or rugged, but rather slightly feminine, and even with those cold, upturned brows, there was a hint of sorrow in them.

It had to be said that the carving was exquisite and delicate, restoring the image of the first Hunter of Folly extremely well.

Cheng Shi studied it for a long time, feeling that if there were any secrets in this town, they must be related to this statue.

So, could the Eye of Mockery be hidden... inside?

As he thought this, he looked up at the eye sockets of the statue, only for the fake eyes of the stone carving to seem to react, rotating three degrees and suddenly casting a gaze down upon him.

Cheng Shi was startled; his pupils constricted, he took half a step back and looked around, and seeing that the worshippers passing by were not surprised, he realized that the eyes of the statue could move.

"It's the wind!"

Just as Cheng Shi was shocked by the movement of the fake eyes, a voice came from behind him.

Cheng Shi did not need to turn around; the shadow Cheng Shi told him that the person who had come was none other than one of his teammates in this trial, the Erudite Scholar he had once collaborated with, Ji Yue.

At this moment, Ji Yue had also changed her clothes, though she was more low-key, wearing a long robe common to this place; she walked over to stand beside Cheng Shi, looked up, and smiled:

"Such a design can be considered a stroke of genius.

The higher the mountain, the stronger the wind, and since the statue stands much higher than the buildings, one only needs to hollow out the eye sockets during construction and carve the eyeballs into lightweight spheres, and they will naturally move with the wind, creating the feeling of looking down upon all living beings.

It must be said that although 【Folly】 never shares, His followers have achieved great things in many fields."

Cheng Shi raised an eyebrow, casting a sidelong glance at this 【Truth】 scholar, wondering to himself why she was so deliberately approaching him.

She shouldn't remember what happened before, should she?