Chapter 1384: The Audience · Despair

Audience Assembly · Despair

Didn't catch it!?

Cheng Shi was stunned. He had thought the greatest gain from that despair was that the God of Mischief had benefited from it, stealing a wisp of 【Primordial】 power.

After the audience with 【Death】, Cheng Shi had always believed this was the motive behind the God of Mischief writing this script!

But if even the God of Mischief gained nothing, then what did everything he had experienced amount to?

Does it count that I can take it? Does it count that I'm unlucky?

Cheng Shi fell silent.

For the first time, he felt such sympathy and hatred for going home empty-handed.

You have to know, this change that ended in tragedy wasn't as simple as just failing to catch 【Primordial】 power, because triggering the change also consumed the God of Mischief's original 【Primordial】 power — only outflow with no inflow equals a blood loss!

But listening to the God of Mischief's words, He clearly still needed 【Primordial】 power to do something, so how to resolve this deficit?

"Is there still a way?"

Cheng Shi raised his solemn gaze and met those equally solemn starry eyes.

"No." 【Fraud】 shook His head.

"......"

The light in Cheng Shi's eyes wavered.

Perhaps sensing that His believer was falling back into despair, those eyes suddenly shed their coldness and laughed.

"Just kidding."

"!!!!!"

Cheng Shi's scalp went numb, his eyes went wide, and he stared at those eyes in disbelief, thinking he had misheard. But upon seeing the corners of those eyes slightly rise, he darkened his face and raised his hand, saying:

"You......"

Forget it, He has it hard too.

For the sake of the Faction of Fear, the Clown ultimately held back his impulse, but the next second:

"... Damn it, still lying at a time like this!"

"......"

Cheng Shi's expression was a sight, his gaze shifted slightly, and he said nothing.

What Brother Mouth said has nothing to do with me, but this line absolutely deserves a like from Brother Mouth. He withdrew his hand and quietly gave a thumbs-up.

【Fraud】 saw everything, snorted a laugh, and instead of punishing the blasphemers, said in a drawn-out voice:

"What do you think I wrote the script of this change for?"

Cheng Shi was stunned, his brow tightly furrowed: "Wasn't it for 【Primordial】 power?"

【Fraud】 shook His head, then nodded:

"Yes, but that was a fallback measure improvised only after the Clown refused to become the predetermined."

I said it before, the fortunate find it hard to see the misfortune of others, so by the same logic, those who harbor hope find it hard to see the despair of others.

The Clown, as the protagonist of an era's tragedy, was full of despair during that closing performance, little knowing that one who is not in despair cannot write such a tragedy......

At that time, I was more in despair than the Clown."

"!!!"

Cheng Shi was stunned. He looked at those spiral-stilled eyes, and countless scenes of despair he had experienced surged back into his mind.

"【Time】, for the sake of stability, never allowed Me to leave this stretch of starry sky.

But confined to a single corner, how can one speak of resisting 【Primordial】? Without going to the real universe to see for Myself, how would I know what My other selves are doing.

Holding such expectations, I grafted laughter and mockery into the gaps of 【Existence】, and borrowed 【Time】's power to escape the cage. Yes, that was the time you had audience with 【Nurture】.

I thought I could find selves of the same will in the broader universe... yes, I did find them, but what I found more of were Their corpses.

I never imagined that after setting foot in the real universe, there would be no methods, no insights, no clues, no guidance, no answers... nothing at all. All I gained was endless fear and suffocating despair.

Every single one — I can't even count how many slice-universes I observed — the 【Fate】 of every slice-universe never survived past the beginning of the era!

I experienced the pain of losing Them countless times, yet still had to seek the answers I wanted within it, but there were no answers either... I only found countless corpses of Myself.

The Graveyard of Gods.

You have already been there.

In the graveyard, I discovered countless versions of Myself, and what was more terrifying was that I found a God Throne in the graveyard!

It was the one you secretly brought back. I knew you brought it back, and I, too, brought one back."

Saying so, 【Fraud】 materialized a God Throne before Cheng Shi's eyes.

Cheng Shi could no longer speak. He didn't know what to say, and only trembling, took out the God Throne he had obtained as well.

The two God Thrones were placed together like this, one high and one low, looking just like a "staircase" leading to the Creator's God Throne!

But unfortunately, this staircase has no beginning and no end, only a single segment......

"You may be very puzzled as to who exactly pieced together this God Throne, but I am not puzzled, because the moment I saw this God Throne, I knew that some 【Fraud】 had already chosen to give up!

Do you remember what 【Fate】 said? This is a will born together with Him. Within all of creation, besides Me and Him, no one knows what the true predetermined is.

Yet that God Throne actually appeared in the graveyard......"

Hearing this, Cheng Shi finally understood.

【Fate】 perished at the beginning of the era, and in the Corpse Field of Gods there were only 【Fraud】's corpses, which means this God Throne could only have been pieced together by some 【Fraud】 before death!

But Fraud is a god wholeheartedly wanting to resist Primordial. He loathed that God Throne to the extreme — how could He possibly piece together that God Throne?

So the answer is obvious: among the countless 【Fraud】s, not a single one of Them found the answer to resistance, and under despair, finally some 【Fraud】 could not bear the weight and pieced together that God Throne.

Perhaps He wanted to use 【Fate】's method to meet that Creator and question 【*Him】 why 【Void】 had to be treated this way; or perhaps He had long since submitted to 【Primordial】's pressure, no longer able to muster the strength to resist; or perhaps......

Regardless, that 【Fraud】 "yielded."

And this scene, for the Deceit who had gone to the true universe seeking answers, was unquestionably a heaven-shattering, earth-destroying blow.

【Origin】 cannot be defeated.

Those mere six characters were like a great mountain, pinning beneath it every foolish old man who had tried to move the mountain.

Cheng Shi could barely breathe; he truly could not imagine how desperate, how broken, that 【Deceit】 must have been.

True, the Predestined had always been the world's protagonist, the whole cosmos watching the Predestined — yet people forgot that gods too are living beings!

Even as They gazed down from on high upon the cosmos, in this creation experiment They were nothing more than one of the countless "weak" living beings trapped beneath the petri dishes, unable to resist.

They too had feelings, had beliefs, had will — and all of this was brutally crushed by a god-throne that appeared in a pit of corpses.

Those star-like eyes quietly closed — this was the first time 【Deceit】 had ever shown a closed-eyed posture before Cheng Shi.

"I have set foot there more than once, and I know that the god-thrones there will be 'produced' one after another without end......

Every time a flawed god-throne is born, it means another me, in the struggle, chose to give up.

The good news is, even those who chose to give up — not a single 【Deceit】 truly surrendered; that god-throne was merely Their most unwilling, most unresigned evil fancy before death.

The bad news is, I was broken by despair, and I too produced such an evil fancy.

After returning from the true universe, I began preparing the era's curtain call.

This endless, endless experiment must have an ending. I hope to write that ending myself — only this way will the countless 【Deceit】 and 【Fate】 no longer have to bear the pain of 【Void】, the suffering of the experiment.

So I activated the Authority of Change and wrote this curtain-call performance.

At that time I was still torn — never had a single 【Deceit】 chosen to yield. Should I really yield to 【Origin】, and offer up the final offering to 【*It】?"

"...... You didn't want to. You never wanted to yield. So you pressed this choice onto the clown's head!"

Cheng Shi laughed out loud, but the laughter sounded entirely like a sob.

"This is why the Outer God insisted on making me yield of my own accord, isn't it!

As long as I say yes, you will betray every 【Deceit】, and use this so-called Predestined to end this creator-experiment that obliterates both human nature and divine nature — isn't that right!?"

"......"

【Deceit】 fell silent. After a long while, They nodded and said, "Yes."

"But if the me back then had truly chosen to give up, chosen to become the Predestined — would you...... truly have forged me into that god-throne and offered it up to 【Origin】, in exchange for 【*It】's favor, or for the end of the experiment?"

Cheng Shi asked, word by word, his whole body trembling.

【Deceit】 opened Their eyes. The spirals within were nearly shattered. They looked at Cheng Shi and, with absolute resolve, nodded once more:

"I would."

"......" Cheng Shi clenched both fists tight; fresh blood dripped from between his fingers.

"As long as you agreed, I would.

But I knew you would never agree.

Because in all these countless universes there may be 【Deceit】 who yielded, but never a Predestined who yielded!

The clown saved his benefactor once — in that era-tragedy that had already drawn to its close."