Chapter 1368: The Audience Assembly · The Act

The Audience Assembly · The Act

"Those three have missions of their own, missions you lot can't access yet.

But since you had the courage to ask, I can let slip a little secret concerning our Patron."

Xiang Yu snorted a laugh, stretched out a white-gloved hand, flashed a V-sign, and pointed with his index finger and middle finger in turn:

"This is our world, and this...... is another world, completely different from the one outside ours."

Before he could finish, someone blurted out: "Parallel worlds?"

Xiang Yu shook his head. "Pretending to understand when you don't is the greatest deception you can play on yourself.

It's not the 【Time】 extrapolation you imagine, nor some parallel world under the eyes of the gods — it's another completely independent stretch of starry sky, so independent that within that sky there is also one of our Patrons.

Identical to our Patron, yet not a clone — 【Fraud】!"

"???"

"!!!"

This news was undoubtedly explosive for the swindlers who didn't know the truth of the cosmos; their pupils shrank, and their gazes at Xiang Yu brimmed with shock and suspicion.

When a sentence fits your understanding, it has a chance of being a lie; when it doesn't quite fit, it's very likely a lie; but when it doesn't fit at all, when it sounds like drunken ravings...... it instead feels like the truth.

"How could it be? How could there be another God of Fun?

Doesn't that mean every deity has an identical...... copy of themselves in that world?"

Xiang Yu laughed and shook his head. "No, the two worlds aren't copies of each other. They do look alike, but the developments within them aren't the same.

If you absolutely must drag copies into it, you could say they were identical at the moment of birth — but only for that single instant. After that, they were like two carriages, racing off in different directions."

"Then why did the God of Fun send the ones surnamed Zhen to the other world?"

The swindlers were burning with curiosity, but at that moment Xiang Yu pulled the topic shut.

He withdrew his hand and snorted a smile:

"I told you — these missions are beyond your reach.

You only need to know that devotion can lead you farther, and to broader worlds.

This world isn't as simple as you imagine, and neither is the 【Faith Game】. Enough idle chatter — now we begin the first segment of the Audience Assembly.

Flattery — oh no, devotion!

Or rather, you should show your devotion.

Although the Patron won't care about such details, as His most loyal follower, I too must put some thought into flat...... devotion.

And you, as the ones chasing behind me, naturally must also understand 'devotion.'

I'll give you a little time. In five minutes, move me with the memory that has left the deepest impression on you.

Mind you — move me with a 'memory.'

Everyone has memories; we can't use them alone to judge a 【Fraud】 believer's devotion, but their attitude toward memory is crucial.

Take the vanished Memory Traveler beneath my feet — when the Patron once planned to pull him into the 【Fraud】 camp, I voiced strong opposition. This mortal's devotion to 【Memory】 can't be converted into the drive to walk the path of 【Fraud】, so he will never believe in 【Fraud】.

Facts proved me right — even at the Audience Assembly, he went to the side of the opposing faith.

But that's just how the Patron is — the more you try to dissuade Him, the more rebellious He gets."

Xiang Yu smiled helplessly, that bitter smile seeming to tell everyone such a thing had truly happened.

"How to find devotion within blasphemy — that's a required course for every swindler.

Alright, I may have been a bit long-winded. So now — time starts.

You have left......"

He pulled out a pocket watch, glanced at it, curled his lip, and said, "Three minutes, fifty seconds."

"???"

The sudden drop in time left everyone dumbfounded.

Wait — does the time you were just talking also count toward those five minutes?

What kind of nonsense is that? The referee wasting the players' time?

At this, every swindler's brain began to spin; they started racking their brains, wondering what kind of "memory" could move this so-called examiner.

The word "move" was terribly hard to parse — it sounded like a demand for emotional resonance, yet also like a planted trap, luring them into over-reading the meaning of his words.

But the thing was, 【Fraud】 was exactly like this — His divine oracles were always riddled with ambiguity and traps, so as His herald, Xiang Yu's words actually fit the swindlers' understanding perfectly.

And so the players, whose emotions had been seesawing, slowly shed their suspicion of Xiang Yu's identity under the rhythm of "cast the nest, throw the bait, reel the hook," and gradually fell into Long Jing's controlled tempo.

Watching a few swindlers' faces turn solemn, Xiang Yu was overjoyed.

Both of them.

Xiang Yu on stage was naturally harvesting his own moment in the spotlight, while Cheng Shi watched Long Jing with keen interest, still puzzling over how he had kicked that naked-mask Number Four off the platform in a single strike.

After all, Long Jing wasn't the real Xiang Yu — an acrobat might be strong, but his agility wasn't necessarily greater than a victim's, yet Long Jing had done it, and it was precisely this show of force that made all the swindlers temporarily believe his identity.

Cheng Shi couldn't help linking this to Long Jing's second faith, 【Time】 — he hadn't forgotten that Long Jing had merged with 【Time】, nor that Long Jing had also obtained a longsword capable of rewinding opportunity.

But could Chairman Gong really have hands that fast — finding, in that split second, the moment the victim couldn't dodge, and kicking him down?

Or was there another possibility — that the naked-mask man who got kicked down was actually coordinating with Long Jing?

It didn't seem so, because right now the solemnity on the man's face didn't look faked.

Cheng Shi was full of doubts and could only keep watching. What he didn't know, however, was that this really was a coordinated act — a silent collaboration between 【Fraud】's Number Three and 【Fraud】's Number Four.

In fact, Long Jing and this naked-mask man had great chemistry — the clues were right there in their IDs.

From the start, when Long Jing drew up the plan, he never intended to hide it from this man; when he showed up impersonating Xiang Yu, he had already counted the man as part of this act.

When Long Jing leapt up to the first platform, his back was to the other swindlers — only facing the naked-mask Number Four. And the very instant he set foot on the platform, he made a face at the man.

As 【Fraud】's Number Four, the man couldn't possibly not know what that face meant.

The vanished Weaver of Fate he wasn't familiar with; Seeing Zhen Xin couldn't possibly do something so wild and grinning, and Did Zhen Yi even less so. Dragon King...... forget it, rule him out too.

So the one making that ghostly face could only be Long Jing. In that instant he knew the acrobat perched on his head had never actually left the venue—the other party had probably arrived long ago, just waiting for this moment to put on one hell of a show for all the swindlers!

He's lost his mind! How dare he play an Emissary here!?

The bare-chested masked man was utterly shocked, but what followed was an irrepressible urge to give it a try.

The madness in the swindler's blood had been ignited!

Since Long Jing dared to play the part, at worst he was only an accomplice—what was there to fear?

When he was the monkey being played for a fool, all he could do was curse Long Jing as a clown; but when he became the one playing the monkey... hey, you have to admit, President Gong sure has a fine eye for picking teammates!

So with just a single coordinated exchange, he was kicked down by Long Jing, and the two swindlers ranked third and fourth on the board managed to fool everyone present—even Cheng Shi behind the scenes.

But Long Jing had still miscalculated one thing: the intelligence he had gathered among the clowns far exceeded the current players' level of understanding, and combined with his too-thorough grasp of Foolery's identity, his performance was too convincing.

This gave the bare-chested masked fourth brother an illusion, and he was pondering:

Was it Long Jing who played Foolery to deceive the others, or was it Foolery who played Long Jing to deceive himself?

The fourth brother, his gaze complicated, looked up at "Long Jing," only to hear my lord Foolery snap his fingers and say in a low voice:

"Time's up. Who wants to go first?"