Chapter 169: Two-Way Run

"Two-Way Run"

Cheng Shi once again became an infinitely extending spider web.

He was quite curious about this image of himself, so he tried to follow the Fun God's train of thought and figure out whether this spider web was merely for amusement or carried some deeper meaning.

But he thought for a long time and still couldn't come up with an answer.

Eventually, his attention was drawn instead by the images of the few people behind him.

Ji Yue was the first to come down; with the Heart-to-Heart Bureau having developed to this point, she had almost let down her guard against Cheng Shi.

In fact, setting aside the heart-to-heart, the mere feat of opening the entrance to 【Merriment and Derision】 alone was enough to make a scholar devoted to studying the Void cast aside all reservations and jump in.

After all, for them, research is greater than everything.

The moment she jumped down, she immediately began looking around, the thick interest and desire for research in her eyes impossible to conceal.

Of course, in Cheng Shi's eyes, it was not like that at all.

He only saw a black gauze veil dripping with fresh blood trembling continuously, and as it trembled, the blood dripped faster.

A veiled gauze!?

Cheng Shi was stunned for a moment; somehow this image made a word pop directly into his mind:

Thief!

He felt Ji Yue was a thief?

A thief dripping with blood?

That made sense too, after all, scholars of the Void Mass-Energy System, under the protection of 【Truth】, ceaselessly studied the Void.

And the ownership of the Void belonged to Him—er, Them.

So calling these scholars thieves was not unfair.

But what was the deal with the bleeding?

Because she had been tainted by 【War】?

Mm, that seemed to make sense too.

Cheng Shi instantly understood in his heart:

Hiss—

The images of all beings within 【Merriment and Derision】 did not seem so hard to understand after all.

Then his own spider web...

Could it symbolize his identity as a slacker?

Waiting by the stump for a rabbit?

After all, spiders also catch prey by letting flying insects throw themselves into the net.

Wtf, thinking about it this way, it's very reasonable.

Not long after, the three Torch Bearers also jumped down.

Cheng Shi looked up and found that Thigh was a torch with blazing flames, Seeing Bai Ling was a small black bird whose white spots almost covered its entire body, and Cui Cui Qiushi...

Was even more outrageous than Yan Chun—he had actually become a stone, a neatly square-shaped stone.

As for the Prisoner who jumped down last, he was a rusted, rotten French horn.

Cheng Shi surveyed all this with great interest, searching for the point of correspondence between each person's image and their character setting, trying to understand 【Deception】's understanding.

But not everyone was as composed as he was; every player who jumped into 【Merriment and Derision】 was stunned by everything before their eyes.

Seeing Bai Ling especially flapped her wings and chirped:

"What is this? So amazing, I really turned into a bird, ha, I can fly!"

"I... why did I turn into a stone?"

"The black gauze veil is... Ji Yue?"

"Doo... doo... doo..."

"A little bird? A stone? A torch? A French horn?

Gauze veil... fresh blood...

Interesting, so those old experimental records really did tell the truth."

Listening to the rising and falling sounds of astonishment around him, Cheng Shi not only did not show that previous look of "I'm very familiar with this place," but instead stood there dumbfounded, completely spaced out.

Huh?

Why could he hear others talking again this time?

Shouldn't 【Merriment and Derision】 distort people's voices?

Can even the mechanism be changed?

Patron my lord, you wouldn't be peeking from the side, would you?

Cheng Shi's eyes quickly swept around; finding nothing, he scratched his head in bewilderment, and this action of his, in others' eyes, was a strand of the spider web that had spread out being re-laid back onto the web's pouch.

But he quickly regained his "composure," looked at Ji Yue with great interest, and opened his mouth to ask:

"What did the records say?"

Ji Yue did not conceal it.

"Grand Scholar Setafman, the seventy-fourth student of Grand Scholar Glo, once wrote in his Void experiment records:

He carved out a kingdom within the Void, named 【Merriment and Derision】; everyone who enters this kingdom becomes a foreign joke, used to amuse the natives of this kingdom.

Although this record resembles a fairy tale more than an experimental discovery, it still circulated for decades within the archives sealed in the Tower of Reason and Matter.

Every student of the Void Mass-Energy System has heard of this kingdom, but few have ever entered it.

Until the hundredth anniversary after Grand Scholar Setafman's death, his student of a later generation, Bruno, stepped into it once more, proved the Grand Scholar's discovery, and corrected the form of 【Merriment and Derision】.

Because he discovered that this place was not a kingdom, but a river—a river that... could traverse the Void.

The scholar Bruno shattered a mirror in this river choked with reality, and then he appeared in the northernmost land of Canrivale—a place he had never been in his entire life.

"So, Cheng Shi, you intend to use this method to bring us into the 69th Void Experimental Field, the one cut off by the High Wall of True Knowledge?"

"......"

Sister, you've finished showing off— what can I even say?

Cheng Shi pursed his lips. Apart from nodding, he had nothing to say.

"But it's said that mirror appears without pattern, and the destination it teleports to leaves no trace. How can you be sure you'll find it, and how can you be sure it leads exactly where we want to go?"

The black gauze veil trembled even harder. Seeing the trembling frequency brimming with longing and the desire for knowledge, Cheng Shi was delighted.

So you didn't know, huh? Then don't blame me for giving you a little lesson.

"Ahem......"

Cheng Shi cleared his throat and said:

"Peeping Mirror, the mirror you speak of is actually His Peeping Mirror.

Le...... 【Fraud】 keeps a constant eye on the Void, on every interesting thing within the Void. To watch these interesting things, He fabricated countless Peeping Mirrors.

Each mirror corresponds to one interesting event in the Void.

And I......"

In truth, what Cheng Shi was thinking was:

And right now, we are the greatest interesting event in this Void.

Because for Him, letting His own devotee, three Fire Bearers, and that scholar from the Department of Void Mass-Energy together enter the High Wall to fight over that one and only fruit—perhaps that is the greatest spectacle in this stretch of history.

He surely won't miss this feast; he might even open the back door leading onto the stage right beside Himself.

Just to make sure the clown in this show doesn't go missing.

The thought had only just reached this point, the words not yet finished, when a Peeping Mirror silently appeared behind Cheng Shi.

Black light flowing toward the void swirled across its surface like a spiral, and before long gathered into a bottomless rotating staircase.

Cheng Shi watched the sudden freezing of the figures before him, and an inexplicable jolt ran through his heart. He turned to look back.

"......"

Didn't I say so.

The Spectacle God is forever and ever on the front line, showing up to watch the drama unfold.

Especially when that melon involves Himself.

Cheng Shi was numb.

Although this round he had even factored in 【Fraud】's temperament, putting on a show of strategic mastery and inscrutable mystery before his teammates, he had also, without surprise, fallen into my lord's trap and willingly become the spectacle in His eyes.

So-called "mutual pursuit"—we'll call it close enough.