The mont those words fell, the variable Cheng Shi no longer had a future.
An experint was, in the end, just an experint. Nobody cared whether a variable vanished or not — unless that variable determined the experint's outco.
And, unfortunately, the variable Cheng Shi clearly wasn't that kind of variable.
He stared at Cheng Shi in shock, and in the next instant felt an imnse, boundless force ripping his body apart — disintegrating it. And it wasn't just him — it was Cheng Shi himself. No — it was every player in this experint.
Cheng Shi's heart lurched. He scrambled out of the "Qin Xin" perspective and, through the Truth Limit's Creator mode, saw the entire experint collapsing at visible speed. But he hadn't manipulated the Truth Limit. He hadn't planned to reconstruct another experint either. So why was the experint dissolving as though its supports had been yanked away?
Was sothing external interfering with his experint?
Yes — of course there was!
The Ritual of Truth!
The Truth Limit was rely a reflection of the Ritual of Truth. The real Ritual was still in the Grand Scholars' hands. If they activated it to forcibly interfere, they could absolutely snuff out the experint he was running.
But why now? They hadn't acted earlier or later — why wait until his experint was complete?
Even if the Ritual of Truth needed a cooldown before its second activation, there was no way the timing coincided this perfectly — finishing its cooldown the exact mont his experint concluded.
Besides, the experint was already done. What was the point of stopping it?
If it wasn't about stopping anything, then right now...
The thought hit him like a freight train. Cheng Shi's expression changed in an instant as he suddenly realized: the Grand Scholars' timing was anything but random. The fact that they'd tolerated him completing the entire experint ant they wanted it completed!
In other words, the Grand Scholars had been waiting for him to finish!
These cunning old foxes had to have been eyeing sothing on him — which was why they'd cast a sprawling net at the perfect mont to harvest his experint's results for their own gain.
But that didn't add up either...
The experint's result was simply eting another version of himself. Everything Scarred Cheng Shi said was in his head. How would the Grand Scholars extract those mories?
Or maybe it wasn't the mories they wanted?
At this mont, though Cheng Shi's body was disintegrating, his mind was razor-sharp. He clearly rembered that this experint had been born entirely of a spur-of-the-mont impulse. Before obtaining the Truth Limit, he'd never planned to run his own experint within [Truth]'s Trial.
Since the experint's existence was coincidental, how could the Erudition Presidium have predicted it would happen?
They hadn't predicted it — they were improvising?
No. A liar's instinct told Cheng Shi this was no coincidence. These old fossils had been waiting for sothing all along. And when he connected it to their urgent "we're running out of ti" when he hadn't yet realized the Trial was an experint, his pupils contracted and a terrifying thought surfaced:
Could they be stealing "ti"!?
As [Truth] followers, when [Truth] sought to seize [Ti]'s authority, saying its followers were stealing ti wasn't wrong. But that wasn't what Cheng Shi ant. He ant the Grand Scholars were using him to steal ti!
The thod was unknown, but Cheng Shi had evidence to support this theory: the Ti Battlefield's effect had been weakening!
Was that the Grand Scholars' doing?
If so, it ant the Grand Scholars weren't just observing from outside the Ti Battlefield — they were counting on him to keep resetting ti within this reconstructed Tusnat experint ground. They were siphoning [Ti] power from him, and he had beco [Truth]'s window for plundering [Ti]!
This was bad!
Cheng Shi's expression darkened further. It suddenly dawned on him why the Grand Scholars had waited for the experint to end — because they'd already anticipated he would run this experint.
Of course, the Erudition Presidium — long buried in history's depths — couldn't possibly know a specific Drifter this intimately, even if they'd been inford about the Drifters' existence.
So the one who'd predicted his actions wasn't the Grand Scholars at all. It was their Benefactor — [Truth]!
[Truth] hadn't just told Its followers about the players' existence. It had almost certainly laid out Cheng Shi's personality in exhaustive detail!
So this was never a sche where NPCs stole player identities. This was a sche designed to target him — Cheng Shi — personally!
[Truth] had factored him into Its plan to exploit [Ti]. It had even predicted his greed once he obtained the Truth Limit. It had calculated every single step, all for the sake of waiting for him to break through the spatiotemporal barrier and connect with so existence in another slice universe.
That existence didn't have to be himself — it could be anyone. [Truth] wouldn't care. It only needed to confirm that [Ti]'s power had carried him out of the present and into a parallel space-ti that [Truth] could neither observe nor perceive. With that confirmation, [Truth] could verify Its hypothesis and glimpse the universe's truth!
After all, seizing [Ti]'s authority was most likely for exactly this purpose!
And [Truth] already had a hypothesis about the universe's truth — otherwise, this experint wouldn't have been so masterfully deceptive, using layer upon layer of nested traps to lead him into the snare!
Fine — fine! What a [Truth]! What a glorious continuation of [Civilization]!
'Seems a certain clown has been on Your shopping list of experintal materials for a long ti. Otherwise, how could You know my greed and desire for revenge so thoroughly!'
Cheng Shi was furious. He felt like a genuine clown at this mont — not the job class, just the pure pejorative.
But there was no ti for self-recrimination. He knew he had to act imdiately. While everything hadn't completely fallen apart, he needed to extract himself and his teammates from this identity experint that was about to be reconstructed.
The question was: how?
The Ritual of Truth wasn't the Truth Limit. It hung above the experint, an external force that altered the experint and was unaffected by ti resets. So even if Cheng Shi reactivated the Ti Battlefield and dragged the tiline back to the starting point, the only thing affected would be the collapsing experintal environnt.
Trees, buildings — they'd simply change shape and position while continuing to crumble. Utterly useless for saving the players.
In this mont, the survivor seed to have stumbled into a dead end, with a python called "conspiracy" lurking in the shadows, waiting to strike.
Saying he wasn't panicking would be a lie. Cheng Shi was panicking out of his mind.
But he certainly wouldn't sit and wait for death. In a Trial where a true god had entered the fray, the Grand Scholars carried so much of [Truth]'s will that every contingency he'd prepared against mortals was instantly rendered useless. At this point, Cheng Shi knew: relying solely on his own power was no longer enough to turn the tables. His only hope now lay in the divine balance of power.
As the Fear Faction's sole lackey and the Approach Faction's "offering of destiny," Cheng Shi absolutely refused to believe that [Void]'s two patrons had no reaction to [Truth]'s machinations. They must be "fighting back" — it was just happening in dinsions he couldn't see.
And [Truth] must have found allies of its own. Otherwise, it alone could never have held off two [Void] sovereigns.
Which ant his two Benefactors were tied down.
In this mont, to steady his nerves, Cheng Shi once again pulled out the [Corruption] Container. As fear receded like a tide, his thinking beca exceptionally clear.
When waiting for rescue was hopeless, the only option was to take the initiative — to call out through prayer and draw the attention of the Benefactors beyond the Trial, thereby injecting a thread of vitality into this dead end.
But how to get their attention was another problem. After racking his brain, Cheng Shi suddenly thought of one desperate asure.
Ti Has Path!
Rember the finger-snap he'd made when Fang Yuan pulled out the key and called down the teor fire rain?
At the ti, Cheng Shi had activated Fate Has Divergence, but the experint hadn't responded at all. So he'd concluded that [Truth] was externally blocking every force that might destroy the experint. But looking back now — what if "fate's divergence" wasn't ant to bring down the teor fire rain, but to create the very predicant he was in right now?
If so — could activating Ti Has Path now rewind everything back to the mont before they'd found the Truth Limit!?
After all, what was restricted to working only within the experint was the Ti Battlefield. Whether Ti Has Path could affect the entire Trial was sothing even Cheng Shi, as its user, couldn't be certain of. But at this point, who cared about certainty? Just try it. If it didn't work, he'd think of sothing else.
With intense resolve in his eyes, Cheng Shi snapped his fingers one final ti before his body fully disintegrated — activating the [Ti] talent that uncannily mirrored [Fate]'s own:
Ti Has Path.
The fragile snap echoed, and everything...
Remained exactly the sa.
"...#$%@&*!"
Cheng Shi's suspended heart quietly died.
...
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