Chapter 876

Who gave you the guts to assimilate my believers?

On the other side.

Time needs to rewind a bit, back to when the previous trial had just ended.

Cheng Shi opened his eyes and found that he hadn't returned to the rest area but had appeared in a space with dim light.

Looking at this environment, it seems...

Is it the void?

But why would there be light in the pitch-black void?

And this dim light seems to be shining from behind him.

The stranger the scene, the faster the audience with a god.

Who will it be this time?

Although he was already well-versed in the process of audience with a god, Cheng Shi's heart tightened at this moment. He instinctively wanted to turn around to find out, but as soon as his muscles tensed, he cautiously stopped and began to carefully perceive the abnormalities around him.

However, there were no abnormalities around; perhaps the only abnormality was that it was too quiet here, quiet enough to feel like falling into the true void.

【Void】?

Gulp...

Cheng Shi swallowed nervously, thinking to himself, could the one behind him be that benefactor who left in anger after punishing him, 【Fate】?

If She is standing silently behind him, does that mean She is angry again?

Angry at whom?

He had been very well-behaved lately; surely She couldn't still be angry at him...

Right?

Oh no, why are his legs starting to go weak?

Cheng Shi's brain raced frantically, reviewing his actions over and over, scrutinizing his words, screening his behavior, terrified that he had committed some blasphemy again and angered this easily-angered benefactor.

But after thinking it over, he couldn't recall any act of blasphemy, so he pondered for a moment and decided to take the initiative, using a "submissive attitude" to first secure a chance for "lenient treatment."

Cheng Shi took two deep breaths, instantly put on a perfect smile, and then turned around abruptly, praising loudly before he could even see who was in front of him:

"May 【Fate】's... radiance... forever shine... shine... upon... the world..."

But he had only said a few words when he felt as if a giant rock were pressing on his throat, making pronunciation incredibly difficult. It wasn't just his throat; his mouth, nose, and ears all felt bound by a strange power, becoming unclear. Even his vision began to blur, the difference between light and dark grew closer, and the entire field of vision seemed to be slowly fading, bleaching into black and white, until even the boundary between black and white was no longer distinct.

And it was in this process of gradually losing his five senses that a terrified Cheng Shi suddenly realized his body was also rapidly stiffening; his muscles became rigid and mechanical, his shell became frozen and straight.

He finally realized that the one in front of him was not the benefactor of 【Void】 at all, but a giant, lifeless wooden puppet he had never seen before, hanging in the void.

He couldn't even perceive what the puppet was made of, only seeing a dull figure floating lifelessly in the void, staring blankly at him, as if examining some secret.

Cheng Shi's heart tightened abruptly; he seemed to realize who was in front of him, but gradually, even the fear in his heart began to blur, and all perception and emotion were rapidly being stripped from his consciousness.

Every thought felt like the swan song of life, every delay felt like the final echo of consciousness.

A vibrant life seemed to have been completely bleached into a dead object by this terrifying silence, no longer possessing a shred of vitality.

The laughing clown merged silently into this space, becoming one of the countless small puppets hanging before this massive wooden puppet.

Thus, 【Silence】 descended.

Indeed, this giant puppet was one of the incarnations of the omnipresent 【Silence】 in the real world.

【Silence】 is a god who is very difficult to fathom.

His believers only know to practice His will, but no one actually knows what His will is, because He never issues decrees, let alone any guidance. He interprets His god-name with actual actions, so His believers imitate this behavior, keeping as silent as possible.

Of course, except for those believers who are so noisy they make others silent.

This was undoubtedly Cheng Shi's first audience with 【Silence】, but it was hard to call this scene an audience; after all, his senses were leaving him, and aside from a trace of an impression of the puppet in the deepest part of his consciousness, everything else... nothing remained, and nothing could remain.

This world seems to no longer need expression, yet this world is full of omnipresent expression.

Just like now, just like this moment, as the clown was about to completely turn into a puppet, a pair of extremely cold eyes opened in this void!

As soon as She appeared, the cold wind from the void shattered all the puppets like bone-piercing steel needles, followed by a sharp explosion.

Successive syllables resounded through the universe, making this area, which once only had silence, no longer peaceful.

Those eyes looked coldly at the largest puppet in this space, each word like a cold wind from the abyss:

"【Silence】, who gave you the guts to dare to assimilate my believers?"

At this moment, She, who once wholeheartedly protected Her believers... seemed to have returned.

During the questioning, the entire void began to fill with changing colors, as if a giant hand that would not be defied had poured a bucket of colorful paint from the sky, splashing the black and white of this world into psychedelic brightness.

Seeing this, the giant puppet raised its head mechanically and sluggishly, staring blankly at those angry starry eyes, and began to retreat at a turtle's pace that was hard to detect.

It was clear that He didn't want to go against 【Fate】, but His reaction was so slow that it was hard to tell whether He was retreating or preparing to gather strength for a counterattack.

However, no matter what, 【Fate】 had no intention of letting Him go. The 【Void】 Sovereign, acting in anger, sealed the entire void in the blink of an eye, and then brought out the momentum of that 【Void】 civil war, detonating the unpredictable power of 【Fate】, dragging the entire space into the battlefield of 【Void】.

But no matter how violent 【Fate】's power was, when attacks mixed with terrifying divinity approached the puppet, they all turned into docile auras without threat, dissipating into the surroundings. The tidal storm from the void seemed to form a blank zone at the center of this battlefield, creating a relatively safe buffer zone.

All attacks fell silent before Him.

"......"

Seeing this scene, 【Fate】 also fell silent.

She knew this was the true 【Silence】; the other party never expressed and was never forced to express, silently observing everything in this universe since the beginning of birth, remaining unchanged as eras changed and epochs aged.

Just like the stubborn stone on the mountain peak or in the valley bottom, witnessing countless vicissitudes, yet never eroded by them.

The world does not need expression, the past is the same, and the future is the same, this...

Is His will.

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