Chapter 305: The Clue He Left Behind Is...!

The clue he left behind is...!

Cheng Shi felt his future self's hesitation as well!

Because he truly did not know — he firmly believed that each had his own fate, yet he did not want all his memories of Old Jia to simply vanish into smoke in another misfortune.

So...

Cheng Dashi used such a covert method to give himself a hint — or perhaps, a choice?

Then what was that choice?

Regardless of what that choice was, the information deduced today alone was enough to shock Cheng Shi.

He stood in Epuska's flower garden, brows tightly knit, his face solemn.

Because Cheng Dashi seemed to have passed him an extremely extraordinary and extremely ominous piece of information — namely... this "dream" of reality, in the future, seemed to have shattered...

Another tragedy!

Perhaps the entire world in the future became a tragedy — a tragedy even Cheng Dashi, who could deceive 【Them】, could not avoid.

So this is why you came back, my future self!

You and I are so alike, so you felt our futures were on similar paths.

So it turns out that in this life of ours, we kept pressing forward through one tragedy after another, and then suddenly vanished in the final misfortune.

Heh, so is this why He favored himself?

Fated. Fated.

So this is what "fated" means!

Fate...

XXXXXXX!

Well played.

Cheng Shi had stood frozen for too long — so long that Hong Lin thought something was wrong with him, so the giant bear suddenly raised a paw and slammed Epuska, sending her retreating, then dropped to all fours and galloped back toward him.

When she charged to Cheng Shi's side, she let out a roar, scooped Cheng Shi and Amir up in her hands, and then quickly broke through toward the outer edge of the flower garden.

Cheng Shi was pinched into a start, snapping awake, and blurted in astonishment:

"You lost?"

The giant bear froze, then instantly changed expression and roared:

"Cheng! Shi!"

The fierce roar even sprayed droplets of saliva onto Cheng Shi's face. Cheng Shi suddenly realized Hong Lin had not lost at all — she had only retreated because she thought something was wrong with him. He too froze, then scratched his head and laughed awkwardly:

"My bad! My bad this time! But retreating is fine too — I happen to have some thoughts, I need to find a quiet place to think them through carefully. Let's pull back first."

Hong Lin was still fuming over that "you lost," but seeing Cheng Shi's increasingly serious expression she assumed he had figured out the key point, so she grumbled resentfully: "Where to? The Fog Gate has already disappeared."

Cheng Shi took a deep breath: "The Void — we're going to the Void!"

Although the shadow had already lost its liveliness, and entering the Void now might have long lost any trace of the "future," he still wanted to go scout it first, to see if he might discover some clues.

Hong Lin's brows knit, and she said in a low voice:

"Going through the Void is no better than going straight through the Sighing Forest — at least there we have reference points, while the Void has no sense of direction at all.

Or do you have a way to fix our position?"

"No." Cheng Shi shook his head.

"?" Hong Lin's eye twitched again, and she wished she could just crush this infuriating Fate-Weaver to death on the spot. But in an instant she realized Cheng Shi only seemed to want to get out of Epuska's line of sight, not return to the mushroom-folk tribe. So she wrinkled her nose and said resentfully, "You'd better have actually found something!"

With that, she stretched out a bear paw and slammed it heavily into the air. A wave strong enough to tear reality apart exploded outward, and by sheer brute flesh-and-blood force she smashed a Void rift open right in front of Cheng Shi.

Cheng Shi stared dumbfounded, and before he could react he was roughly tossed inside by the giant bear.

Hong Lin followed right after, then turned and sealed the Void shut. Epuska was hot on their heels not far behind; watching the aura of 【Prosperity】 vanish before her eyes, she could not help but roar wildly, growing ever more violent.

But this was nothing more than impotent rage — utterly useless.

The Void.

The Void, once more.

If a trial didn't include a trip to the Void, then for Cheng Shi that trial was surely incomplete.

Home again — this time, truly home.

This was his first return to the Void since becoming a child of 【Nothingness】, but gazing at the endless darkness before him, Cheng Shi was not one bit more relaxed than before.

Because the instant he stepped into the Void he had begun searching for Cheng Dashi's traces, but after looking all around, there was nothing here but boundless blackness. So Cheng Shi's brows knit tightly once more.

Seeing Cheng Shi's grave expression, Hong Lin — who had reverted to human form — frowned slightly, gave a cold snort, casually kicked the bothersome Amir aside, and said with displeasure:

"Out with it. What did you find?"

"..."

A slaver is a slaver — really won't let a person rest for even a moment?

But... it seems he truly missed his chance with that prophecy?

Cheng Shi sighed inwardly, but on the surface shook his head and laughed wryly: "Don't rush — I'm almost there, just a little more and I'll have it."

With that, he closed his eyes, sat down on his own, and continued thinking.

Hong Lin saw him like this, frowned, and said nothing more.

Cheng Shi felt that if he himself wanted to go back to the past to send a message, he definitely would not have left himself without a fallback. In fact, perhaps that lively shadow was not meant to hint at him — rather, it was the shadow becoming lifeless that seemed like the real hint.

Following this line of thought, he continued to broaden and branch out his thinking, beginning to ponder what hint Cheng Dashi had left behind.

First, one point needed to be made clear: if "he himself" had set up the game, he would not have left useless information. So from the moment he ran into Su Su Yi Da, the clues had already been planted.

But Cheng Shi was genuinely curious — was that Su Su Yi Da, who died in both the past and the future, lured back by his future self, or... was it an act?

It probably wasn't an act... what actor acts himself to death?

And the desire to kill him in those eyes was far too intense — he was only held back by his own plan, which was why he dared not truly act.

Thinking it over, it seemed he had been the one to deceive him first?

"......"

He couldn't think of it that way—the future was the future, and he was himself; one could only say the two were alike, but couldn't simply equate them.

Since he'd thought of Su Su Yi Da, then naturally he had to think of the 【Prosperity】 divinity left on him!

That was the divinity Cui Lao had wanted, yet by a twist of fate Cui Lao had stuffed it back into his own body—so, was this also within Cheng Da-shi's expectations?

【Prosperity】 had spawned the fruitless Conjugate Whisper, and the contingency Cheng Da-shi had left within it quietly slipped into the fruit he himself had fabricated, parasitized his own shadow, and even deceived 【Them】.

But had it truly deceived 【Them】?

If Cheng Da-shi had such power, why not be more direct? Even if his contact with himself wasn't so direct, at least the clues could be more direct; since it was this covert, it meant he still couldn't deceive 【Them】—he had merely exploited 【Them】......

And 【Them】, especially those four—【Existence】 and 【Void】—they didn't simply operate in the spacetime dimension where mortals resided, so perhaps, in the future, Cheng Da-shi was also playing a game against Them, only this time he stole a round and got the message back.

If so, he must have found a way to change the tragedy, and the hint to that method lay in the game he had laid out.

So what was it......

Actually, Cheng Shi had already thought of the answer.

It was 【Prosperity】!

From beginning to end, in this "killing game" concerning the future, or the turning of 【Fate】, the shadow of 【Prosperity】 appeared at every key juncture.

And this game just happened to be 【Prosperity】's game as well.

When too many coincidences are spread across the entire story, they can no longer be coincidences.

Since Cheng Da-shi had chosen to reveal this hint within this game to let him know he had once been here, what clue he was pointing to was self-evident.

It was 【Prosperity】!

The "turning point" of that tragedy when the future's reality shattered might well lie within this trial!