Chapter 623: The First Lie of This Trial

The first lie of this trial

(Super long three chapters, thanks for everyone's support~)

"Don't be nervous, we mean no harm."

The strange atmosphere lingered for a while, and in the end it was Qin Xin, lying on the ground, who sat up, rolled his shoulders a bit, and said with a smile:

"I believe you've already figured it out — we've run into a bit of trouble, a nasty one, so I had Mingyu do a prophecy.

The vision of the prophecy was me 'dying' at someone's feet..."

Hearing this, Cheng Shi's eyelid twitched slightly, and he understood.

At the very start of the trial, Qin Xin had passed out from severe injuries; he himself had tiptoed over for a look, and he never expected that scene to become the blind man's prophecy.

They must have thought someone killed Qin Xin, but in fact this was entirely a misunderstanding.

But this misunderstanding of yours is just too awkward. Cheng Shi grudgingly put away the Bai Bu he had been using for his act, and the look he gave Qin Xin and the blind man turned somewhat teasing.

"Looks like the prophecy arts of the 【Fate】 Chosen aren't all that great either.

Is it that He doesn't really want to favor you?"

"......"

"......"

Qin Xin's smile froze, the blind man was rooted to the spot, and even the others looked at Cheng Shi with a touch more admiration in their eyes.

To be able to mock the 【Fate】 Chosen to their face — this guy probably really doesn't know how to write the word 【Fate】.

"Alright, I'm not the petty type either. Luckily the misunderstanding was just a misunderstanding — aside from costing me two extra drops of sweat, it didn't cause any real damage, otherwise I'd have made you two pay up one way or another."

As Cheng Shi spoke, he sized up the five people in the room. After roughly memorizing everyone's appearance, he pulled out another smile and, very considerately, introduced himself:

"Although a lot of you may already know me, I'll still introduce myself.

Cheng Shi, Weaver of Fate — probably the very Weaver of Fate you've heard of."

Cheng Shi's frankness earned sidelong glances from the others. The man in the leather jacket frowned thoughtfully, then looked at Cheng Shi with curiosity and asked:

"Did He really summon you?"

"Brother, I don't think we're close enough to jump straight into that the moment we meet — I don't even know your name yet."

The man in the leather jacket was taken aback, gave an awkward dry laugh, nodded to everyone present, and said:

"There happen to be a few familiar faces here — as many acquaintances as strangers. This round truly fits with the Way of Balance.

Li Li Wufang, Investigator."

?

The moment Li Li Wufang finished speaking, Cheng Shi's pupils contracted.

Surname Li, talks a lot, and an Investigator to boot.

This plot... why does it feel so familiar?

His eyelid twitched, and his scrutinizing gaze shot toward the man. He had to take a good look at this so-called Investigator to see whether he was one of the clowns he had just pulled into the organization.

It shouldn't be that much of a coincidence, right?

Even if he wasn't, Cheng Shi still had to size up this follower of 【Order】 properly, to see what his attitude toward an opposing faith was — after all, the Clown had already merged with 【Chaos】, and by that logic, 【Order】 was now on the opposing side too.

Still, this Investigator had done one thing right: he had indeed, following Cheng Shi's lead in introducing himself, quietly skipped the part about reporting his score.

And that was also one of the reasons Cheng Shi had jumped in to introduce himself first — he was "saving" his lie.

Although fabricating a score for the Path of Ascension wasn't hard for him, the higher one went on the Path of Ascension, the fewer people there were, and with scores so close together it was too easy to expose his true identity, so Cheng Shi had chosen not to report a score this round.

He wasn't gambling here — from his earlier sizing-up he could tell there were no slackers in this round. Among peak players, scores probably didn't matter much either, so even an Investigator famed for his sharpness subconsciously overlooked these unimportant details.

Cheng Shi smiled faintly, thinking to himself that his 1501 was safe.

After Li Li Wufang finished introducing himself, the woman behind him spoke up next. This cold-faced beauty with short hair in a Princess cut had a rather low voice, and her words were concise.

"Wu Cun, Ember-Extinguisher."

【Annihilation】!

No wonder she carried such intense killing intent — it turned out that wasn't killing intent at all, but a destructive urge she couldn't suppress!

Cheng Shi's brow rose, and he studied her carefully for a moment.

Ember-Extinguishers are mages of 【Annihilation】 — a class that can disregard the world's rules and casually erase things from reality.

They differ from other 【Annihilation】 classes. Cleaners, End-Walkers and the like at most differ in the way they annihilate objects, but they all basically still follow the pattern of banishing the entire object into a world on the verge of annihilation. Ember-Extinguishers, however, have their own way of 【Annihilation】.

They mobilize the power of 【Annihilation】 to wipe out an entire selected area within their field of vision, and this erasure of area doesn't take the integrity of objects into account — meaning that under their attacks, the battlefield remnants left behind in the real world tend to be even more of a mess.

They are renowned team-fight specialists; once their numbers grow, they can even erase an entire city from reality.

When Cheng Shi had faced Helobroth head-on before the end of the trial before last, most of the World-Ender squad at the time had been Ember-Extinguishers.

Upon hearing that this female player named Wu Cun was a follower of 【Annihilation】, the brows of everyone present lifted almost imperceptibly.

Followers of 【Annihilation】 love to annihilate all kinds of traces, yet 【Time】's trial relies precisely on tracking and tracing. The trial He bestows is similar to 【Memory】's trial — both require restoring the accuracy of 【Existence】.

The 【Memory】 trial is about finding the true dream amid the tangle of different dreams, while 【Time】's trial is about finding the errors that don't belong to a given spacetime within a fixed spacetime. These errors could be objects, could be people — so encountering a player who follows 【Annihilation】 in a trial that demands extensive investigation and searching is not exactly good news.

Their urge to destroy everything doesn't lessen as their score rises; on the contrary, it only gets more suppressed, until all that destruction erupts in a single outburst of desire that can no longer be held back.

Thinking of this, Cheng Shi could only shrug helplessly and hope this teammate wouldn't make the trial any harder than it already was.

After Wu Cun spoke, the room fell into a brief silence. It was the tall, thin man beside her — the one who had followed the blind man in — who gave a light cough to ease everyone's awkwardness.

"My name isn't all that important, so you may all call me Wang Mou. I am a mage, a polymath scholar who follows 【Truth】."

The moment these words were spoken, Cheng Shi froze, and the corner of his mouth suddenly curved into a playful arc.

Interesting — at last, the first lie of this trial.

This seemingly honest, tall, thin man actually wasn't planning to meet them with sincerity from the very start?

Where exactly is the problem in this sentence — or is the whole sentence a lie?

Cheng Shi forcibly restrained the urge to size the man up and didn't look at him, but his peripheral vision kept drifting in that direction. His eyes darted around twice; he didn't spot anything off about Wang Mou, but he did keenly catch that the corner of Qin Xin's mouth had, for an instant, curved up just like his own.

Hmm?

What is Qin Xin laughing at?

Could he also have seen through this Wang Mou's lie?

This makes it even more interesting — how does a player who looks so much like 【War】 possess this sort of 【Deception】-like ability to pierce an unverifiable lie?

Cheng Shi quietly shifted his gaze away, silently committing this matter to memory.