Before long, Cheng Shi arrived at the seventh fork.
No silhouette stood before this path. It was pitch-black and fathomlessly deep — one look and his gaze plunged into boundless darkness, as if it led to a devouring abyss.
Anyone with eyes would avoid this fork that bore no trace of [mory]. But Cheng Shi was convinced this was the real answer.
The reason the Fun God had sent him in!
The Fun God would never have thrown him into the mirror just to swap for Li Jingming. There had to be deeper purpose. Though he didn't yet know what it was, the answer felt close.
Consider: inside a [mory] creation, why would there be a path that seemingly led toward [Void]?
Blackness, stillness, the unknown — weren't these the very characteristics of the Void?
[Existence]'s marvels didn't manifest this way. Like the Cracks of [Existence], they were kaleidoscopic, dazzling, srizing. Only [Void] was this hollow, lifeless, devoid of aning.
Cheng Shi stood at the fork for a long while, brow deeply furrowed as though pondering whether to enter.
But in truth, he'd already entered!
Not his real body — but Shadow Cheng Shi.
When darkness stretched unbroken, a shadow with built-in camouflage beca the uncrowned king of the dark. The mont Cheng Shi first circled past these forks, he'd guessed what the Fun God's intended choice was. His shadow had long since slipped into the seventh path to scout ahead.
His furrowed brow now was only puzzlent over whether this path had any end at all — because the shadow had been walking for a very long ti.
The seventh path held nothing besides the mirror-walls on either side. Ahead: void darkness. Behind: the sa. Not even a single branching turn. Arrow-straight — hardly fitting for a labyrinth.
After walking long enough, the unchanging environnt nearly convinced Cheng Shi he was treading in place.
Yet every ti he reversed direction and tried going back, the exit eluded him too. So he steeled himself and pressed forward once more.
Ti crawled on. His frown deepened. He even began to doubt his choice — maybe he'd overthought it, and the Fun God had no deeper motive at all, just wanting him to pilfer so mories from this [mory] creation.
But what if the answer lay just two steps further, and he gave up right at the threshold? That would be the ultimate clown move.
So, tangled in frustration, Cheng Shi gritted his teeth and marched on.
When the unchanging darkness grew tireso, his real body wandered to the other fork entrances to rinse his eyes on those mory phantoms. When the monotony of exploration beca suffocating, he made the shadow run, jump, cartwheel, and even handstand-walk. When he lost all sense of how long he'd been going, he traced the wall engravings and counted how many tis the patterns cycled...
In short — anything that killed ti and diverted attention, he did.
Yet the path ahead remained black. Seemingly endless.
At this point, Cheng Shi felt he'd been set up.
His own devotion had trapped him!
This didn't look like a road to secrets. It looked more like the ellipsis option among seven choices — fundantally aningless.
The shadow stopped, back against the mirror-wall, panting heavily. Cheng Shi's real body likewise leaned against a wall at the starting point, pondering how to break the deadlock.
Both Cheng Shis ran their fingers over the engravings, brows knotted. But breakthroughs often arise from details noticed by accident. When the magnified texture of the engravings' uneven grooves registered under his fingertips, a flash of inspiration blazed through Cheng Shi's mind. His eyes flew open.
Grooves!
He imdiately turned to study the towering mirror-wall, running his hands along its patterns. Though the labyrinth walls were indestructible, the presence of grooves ant sothing: the surface offered handholds!
And if you could climb — was it possible that the labyrinth's exit wasn't at the end of the ground path, but above the walls?!
How else could a straight line qualify as a labyrinth?
Yes — this had to be it!
Excitent surging, Cheng Shi adjusted Shadow Cheng Shi — which had been in assassin form for scouting efficiency — switching to a warrior mask to beco the Hero of Today. Gripping the grooves with both hands, the shadow began scaling the wall.
He climbed fast. Before long, the path below vanished from sight. But the wall above was equally endless. He climbed until even a Hero of Today's stamina showed signs of flagging before stopping mid-ascent, clinging to the heights, lost in thought once more.
The labyrinth's deadlock had returned — only now it had graduated from one dinsion to two.
He looked up at the infinitely high wall disappearing into darkness, then left and right along the original path. Darkness pressing in from all sides ford a cage, trapping Cheng Shi where he hung.
The earlier excitent evaporated, replaced by that familiar deep furrow.
He weighed his options again and again but couldn't commit. From what he could see, the walls weren't the answer either. So how was he supposed to escape this labyrinth?
His steady instincts began rising. The idea of choosing one of the mory paths took root. He even stepped past a few of the mory phantoms to peek at what lay beyond those forks:
Ordinary labyrinths — nothing like the seventh path.
He guessed that following those labyrinth routes would reveal different mories of the chosen person, and those mories' clues would lead to the exit. But the seventh path offered no clues — only endless darkness and two unchanging walls.
What to do?
Hmm? Wait.
The other wall?
Cheng Shi frowned. He drove Shadow Cheng Shi to leap from the high wall to the opposite one — and continued climbing laterally for another half hour. Still nothing.
He was lost again. But this ti, the bewildernt ca and went quickly, because the feel of the grooves under his fingertips sparked yet another idea.
If the seventh path was also a labyrinth, it had to have clues. The darkness didn't look like a clue — so the clue could only be the walls themselves.
He'd first assud the walls were climbable and theorized the exit was sowhere above. But what if the walls themselves were the labyrinth?!
What if the engravings on the walls ford a traceable pattern?
He'd run his fingers over them hundreds of tis during ground exploration and wall-climbing, finding only repetitive cycles — nothing special. But who could guarantee that when the wall beca a labyrinth, those engravings wouldn't form sothing?!
After all, labyrinth elents were nothing more than straight and perpendicular paths combined with forks in different directions — also a kind of repetitive cycle!
With this realization, Cheng Shi tried again. Shadow Cheng Shi stopped climbing upward and instead began circling the area, piecing together the engravings' pathways to see if they ford a giant labyrinth.
And after untold hours of effort, the shadow hanging on the high wall and the real Cheng Shi standing at the starting point simultaneously broke into wide grins and laughed aloud.
Found it!
The seemingly infinite walls were in fact one massive labyrinth diagram. The true labyrinth wasn't actually endless — it was countless identical labyrinths tiled together, creating the illusion of forever-repeating patterns.
Following the labyrinth's guidance, Shadow Cheng Shi quickly located the center of this wall-labyrinth — an ordinary-looking groove. Even when Cheng Shi pressed his hand against it, nothing happened.
But Cheng Shi knew [mory]'s puzzles always worked this way. Even the exit would never be hidden in plain sight — just like [mory]'s trials, where the drear had to realize they were inside a mory.
But the mirror-wall was an inanimate object. It had no mories. So Cheng Shi — who possessed no [mory] power — devised a crafty workaround:
He began reciting the pasts of every Joker he knew to the "exit," while simultaneously recalling his own past in his heart.
Making others' mories "public" while keeping one's own mories hidden — this was the closest thing to [mory] he could manage!
Whether because the "passcode" was right, or because individual mories genuinely resonated with the labyrinth's [mory] power — as Cheng Shi kept reciting, the corresponding section of wall suddenly caved inward. The shattered surface erupted with violent [mory] energy that engulfed Shadow Cheng Shi and plunged him into the unknown space beyond.
"!!!!!"
Sensing this, Cheng Shi... went blank.
"Wait — are you kidding ?
What about ?
How am I still standing here?"
...
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