Chapter 958: New Speculation (Last Day of August, Requesting Monthly Votes)

Jianna didn’t actually go to Honghong Community to find Lumian and Ludewig; instead, she picked a nearby hotel, rented a room, and checked whether she too would be kicked out.

Nothing happened overnight; when she woke, she immediately returned to Dechuang Garden and sat in a corner of the lobby, facing sideways toward the door leading into the community.

After about ten minutes, she saw Franca.

Franca still wore the old-fashioned black-rimmed glasses and dressed like a conservative office lady.

Seeing this, Jianna exhaled in relief, adjusted her posture, turned her back to Franca, and avoided any encounter.

Her reason for returning early to the community was to confirm whether the current “Luo Fu” behaved the same way as the previous Franca—if the other woman shed her disguise, donned makeup and clothing that maximized her “witch” allure, she’d have to find an excuse to prevent “Luo Fu” from going to work, delaying her for a day.

Now it seemed the “Luo Fu” NPC’s behavior pattern would continue from the previous period.

…………

Tech Tower, 10th Floor.

Franca sat at her desk and slowly brewed herself a cup of coffee.

At that moment, she saw Zhou Mingrui enter and smiled to say:

“Looking for Luo Shan? She hasn’t arrived yet.”

“I thought you two would come together,” Zhou Mingrui said, not hiding his surprise.

In his view, Luo Shan and Luo Fu had always been close, both on the surface and behind the scenes, with a special connection—they were the type who waited for each other and came to work together.

Franca laughed:

“I asked her; she said something came up and told me not to wait.”

“I see…” Zhou Mingrui nodded, turned, and walked toward the exit of the Administration Department.

Lately, his frequency of visiting Luo Shan to gather company rumors had risen sharply, causing idle staff in Administration to spread gossip about him and Luo Shan.

Zhou Mingrui walked at a steady pace to the door of the Administration Department, but no voice called out, “Wait, Luo Fu.”

He hadn’t come today for Luo Shan—he’d come for Luo Fu. He’d expected her to use this chance to hint at something again, but Luo Fu didn’t even want to chat casually with him; her politeness carried a touch of distance.

Zhou Mingrui slightly frowned, didn’t turn back to look once, and left the Administration Department directly.

“Something feels off…” he muttered to himself, when suddenly he saw Luo Shan walking over with a jianbing and a cup of five-grain soy milk.

“Morning!” Luo Shan greeted cheerfully.

“Morning,” Zhou Mingrui smiled. “I just went looking for you, but you weren’t here—Luo Fu said you were held up.”

Luo Shan glanced around:

“Looking to ask me something again?”

They chatted briefly, then each headed toward their respective department offices.

Suddenly, Zhou Mingrui’s phone vibrated.

He pulled it out and saw a message from Luo Shan, who had just been talking to him:

“Don’t talk to Luo Fu about anything today. Wait until tomorrow.”

The instant he read it, Zhou Mingrui thought the two girls’ relationship had suddenly broken down and they were now forming factions to isolate each other—but after reading it again carefully, he reached a preliminary conclusion:

“Luo Shan means today’s Luo Fu is problematic—don’t interact, and it’ll be fine tomorrow?”

“Why would she be problematic? She was normal yesterday…”

“Was it because I talked to her last night about the vending machine, the ‘Assassin’ drink, and the following troubles? That’s similar—very similar—to how the ‘Star’ in the group suddenly went offline when mentioning something critical…”

“What kind of problem? Who caused it? Why does it exist today but vanish tomorrow?”

One question after another flashed through Zhou Mingrui’s mind, but many had no plausible explanation.

…………

13th Floor, Security Department.

Lumian and his partner Lao Xia had patrolled all floors and found no security hazards.

After sitting down in the room that served more as a break area than an office, Lumian pulled out his phone.

Since Franca had exited the dream, he could now meet the Major Arcana cards—so he no longer needed to transmit yesterday’s experimental results, including the suspicion that the vice president of Mushi Hospital was Roland, the Mother of the Earth Mother Church, via Star Dream Grocery.

Most of the experiment’s results matched his expectations; the only surprise was:

Luo Shan’s memories remained intact—all memories of her interactions with Franca and Jianna were still there!

“This means we can ‘cultivate’ dream characters… but we still don’t know how much truth a dream character must learn before anomalies arise…”

“In the future, perhaps a scenario will emerge: all five of us—and later, the Coin Holders—will be completely kicked out of the dream, left only as observers, while many dream characters inherit our intentions and legacies, still striving to awaken Mr. Fool—and they’re part of the dream, immune to being expelled!”

“This is a shift in thinking: not necessarily outsiders, not necessarily us—NPCs can also play a role…”

“At that point, these dream characters won’t be expelled, but they can be killed or corrupted, like the divine envoys.”

“If enough dream characters die, wouldn’t that also count as a kind of stimulus for Mr. Fool? This too is a disaster within the dream city—massive deaths or corruption of key characters…”

“The ‘Witch’ and the ‘Hunter’—are they truly destined to bring calamity?”

Lumian muttered a self-deprecating remark, then selected “Indus Group Green,” entering the chat interface.

He tilted his chin slightly, his expression cold, and sent a voice message:

“How are things going with your recent tasks?”

Sitting on another chair three meters away, Lao Xia heard the voice and words, suddenly shuddered, and felt for a moment that this kid Li Ming was even more like a team leader than Officer Xu.

After a few minutes, Green replied:

“We haven’t found a way to get Huang Tao back into his mother’s embrace.”

“Without Huang Tao’s cooperation and tacit approval, we can’t do many things. For now, we can only use Security Department authority to monitor Zhou Mingrui’s movements—we’ve installed pinhole cameras and listening devices on his desk, and planted a Trojan on his computer, so we can detect issues immediately from his browsing history, search records, and call logs, and intervene in time.”

“A few days ago, Zhou Mingrui considered resigning—he searched for the specific procedures and precautions—but later he didn’t act, and stopped reading articles or watching videos on the topic.”

“Without Huang Tao’s cooperation, we can’t retain him through promotion or raises—we must resolve this before he actually resigns.”

Lumian read it carefully and realized that Green—or rather, the Children of the Great Mother—hadn’t yet considered how to cooperate with the Celestial Sovereign to turn Zhou Mingrui into a “Witch.” They were merely monitoring, observing, and trying to keep Zhou Mingrui within the Indus Group, where they held strong influence, preventing him from quitting.

“It seems the Children of the Great Mother are currently maintaining balance and gathering real-time intelligence…”

This aligns closely with the Major Arcana cards’ and my own assessment of the demonic gods’ intentions…

Lumian murmured to himself, then stood up and began pacing around the office.

He was thinking how to leverage Green and the Mother’s children, and also pondering Mr. Fool drinking the “Assassin” Elixir.

Frankly, when he learned the Celestial Sovereign had lured Mr. Fool into drinking the “Assassin” Elixir, aiming to gradually turn him into a “Witch,” change his gender, and trigger cognitive dissonance, Lumian found it absurd.

In his view, deities were all “It”—except for a few paths requiring gender emphasis, they shouldn’t care whether their form was male or female; ancient beings who’d lived for thousands or ten thousand years would care even less.

Could Mr. Fool truly suffer cognitive issues just from becoming female?

Recalling Mr. Fool’s request to be addressed as “he” rather than “It,” Lumian reluctantly accepted this reasoning.

At the same time, he suspected the Celestial Sovereign intended to exploit the conflict between non-adjacent Path characteristics to drive Mr. Fool insane and gain the upper hand—“Witch,” “Fortune Teller,” “Apprentice,” and “Thief” were not adjacent Paths.

After killing the resurrected corpse Pan Natiya and learning her mission, Lumian’s internal scale tipped further toward the theory that the Celestial Sovereign sought to exploit conflict between non-adjacent Paths:

Pan Natiya’s task was to make Zhou Mingrui fall in love, and remain devoted after he drank the “Witch” Elixir and changed gender—wasn’t that helping Zhou Mingrui, helping Mr. Fool stabilize his mental state?

This contradicted the theory that gender change would cause cognitive disruption.

But if stabilizing his mental state was meant to let Zhou Mingrui drink higher-sequence “Witch” Elixirs and accumulate more madness, that seemed more plausible.

Now, following this line of thought, Lumian had a new question:

Why specifically the “Assassin” Elixir? Why the “Witch” Path?

Any Elixir from a non-adjacent Path to “Fortune Teller,” “Apprentice,” or “Thief” could achieve the same goal…

Would becoming female early truly have benefits—perhaps triggering psychological vulnerabilities?

Combined with the fact that most of our team are “Witch”-affiliated, and the Celestial Sovereign deliberately brought a “Witch” puppet into the dream city—does this suggest there’s a hidden reason behind choosing the “Assassin” Elixir over other non-adjacent Elixirs?

Lumian immediately ran through all the unique traits of the “Witch” Path in his mind.

Within seconds, a term came to him:

“Mirror Person!”

Becoming a “Witch” doesn’t just change one’s gender—it also creates a corresponding, fixed “Mirror Person.”

From this sequence onward, “Witches” can use mirrors to create doubles and cast corresponding spells.

From Lumian’s current experience, “Mirror Persons” are always more extreme, more vicious, more treacherous.

“The Celestial Sovereign wants Mr. Fool to develop a ‘Mirror Person’—then, by doing something to the ‘Mirror Person,’ or making the ‘Mirror Person’ do something, he achieves victory in this confrontation? Faking reality, turning falsehood into truth?” Lumian fell into deep thought.

At that moment, his phone vibrated—a new message from Anderson Hu De.

PS: Last day of August—requesting monthly votes. Tonight, no—on September 1st at 00:02, there’ll be an extra update~

(End of Chapter)