"If will is the projection of faith, then everything the gods champion will find its corresponding foolish act in the mortal world.
The Torchbearers are here scheming their God Creation Plan — yet unbeknownst to them, their protector [Deceit] may also be running a God Creation Plan of its own!"
"???"
At those words, everyone present was shaken.
Qin Xin's expression hardened imdiately. He said in a low voice: "You know we're the Torchbearers? Who revealed the secret? Sun Miao?"
The puppet nodded.
"It was indeed her — but please don't bla her. A [Folly] believer has great difficulty keeping secrets in my presence. And she didn't reveal anything this ti. I... used certain resourceful thods to find a few traces in her rest area."
"?" Cheng Shi blinked. "Don't tell
that you spent all that effort assembling teleportation arrays from divinity fragnts not for any experint — but to sneak into other people's rest areas to steal things?"
The puppet was silent. After a short pause, he corrected:
"Collect intelligence. I don't deny that breaking into others' rest areas is indeed a fine thod for collecting intelligence — though this particular foolish act was my first attempt. Recent anomalies have been too many, and I failed to foresee them in advance. That troubled
sowhat, and I found myself stopping at nothing."
Showing up uninvited might sit poorly with the Torchbearers — but for Cheng Shi...
Con n and thieves. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
So he just smiled. "Leave that thod with
when we're done here — it'll make visiting friends much more convenient."
"..."
Every eyelid in the room twitched in unison. The looks they gave Cheng Shi were profoundly strange.
Is that what you call "visiting friends"?
Cheng Shi held his head high with complete dignity. What else?
Everyone shook their heads. Fine. If you say so.
No one spent further energy on that question. Attention turned back to what Wei Mu had just said.
A God Creation Plan!
[Deceit] and [Ti] had hatched a God Creation Plan!
Mortals built gods so they could beco gods. If the gods were building a god — then the only thing another god could still call a god was [Origin] itself.
When he first heard the words, Cheng Shi had gone numb all over. The reason he had interruped with that joking comnt was to forcibly loosen his own nerves.
This was not a trivial matter. Once anything beca entangled with [It], the outco seed to be only destruction and oblivion.
Still — knowing the Fun God as well as he did, Cheng Shi couldn't call the God Creation Plan impossible. "Creating" an "[Origin]" was the greatest possible desecration of [Origin]. The perpetually contrary Fun God would absolutely not pass up this kind of fun.
But the question was — how? Could it actually be "created"?
Cheng Shi furrowed his brow in thought for a long while, then shook his head. "Why do you say that?"
Wei Mu was also thinking. Everything he was saying now hadn't been prepared in advance — it was being deduced in real ti from the clues available, pushing toward the most plausible direction.
"In your account just now, you repeatedly ntioned [Ti]'s will to save the world. This ans you're firmly convinced that [Ti]'s intention is to save the world. So [Deceit], who could work alongside [Ti], would absolutely not be walking a path of destroying the world — otherwise their wills could not have converged.
Just like the two completely opposing gazes from [Void] upon you — their convergence also has a reason.
And that reason is what you described: [Fate] wanted to forge a sacrifice that could draw close to [Origin], and [Deceit]... 'recognized' [Fate]'s 'devotion' and helped forge that sacrifice.
But what [Deceit] wanted to forge was not a sacrifice that 'draws close to' [Origin] — but a sacrifice that 'becos' [Origin].
Only this way could [Void] walk the sa road."
"..."
Truthfully, Wei Mu's conjecture was deeply staggering. For those directly involved, it was like detonating ten thousand nuclear warheads inside the mind.
But unfortunately, the directly involved party was Cheng Shi — a thinker so lateral that the clowns who tried to trick him ended up being tricked themselves. He had long since imagined in sweeping strokes every possibility of the Fun God's scheming, and naturally had also wondered whether he was gradually becoming so unspeakable entity.
That was also the reason why, since his audience with [Ti], he had done everything necessary to keep his own fixed-destiny identity intact.
He hadn't forgotten — the "guidance" [Ti] had offered was... draw closer to [It].
If a divine God Creation Plan truly existed, then he, as its prototype, was doing exactly that — drawing closer to [It]!
He simply couldn't reconcile "drawing closer" to [Origin] with "moving away" from [Origin] as a unified thing.
And today — in Qin Xin's room in the Torch-Passing Hall — Wei Mu gave him an answer.
"Continuing from before, the internal rift within [Void] is resolved. Now what remains is the rift between [Existence] and [Void].
[Ti] intends to save the world — so [Deceit] would not be destroying it. But I believe that what [Deceit] is currently doing, including the sche to drag the gods off their thrones one by one, is in a sense also world-destruction.
Only — the 'world' being destroyed may not be what we an by that word. The old world is what it wants to destroy. The new world is what it wants to save.
In other words: everything we see driving this universe toward its end is a fa??ade — a performance [Deceit] has staged to mask its will to save the world. It wants to bring down this old world that [Origin] gazes upon — and then, beyond that Creator's gaze, rebuild a brand-new world."
"!!!"
Even the battle-hardened Qin Xin couldn't hold his composure at this.
He clapped a hand on Cheng Shi's shoulder — first in consolation, then turned to face Wei Mu with a grave voice.
"This is only your conjecture. If the Creator cannot be defeated — how would they deceive [It]?"
Wei Mu didn't deny it. He nodded.
"This is indeed only conjecture. Given my mortal perspective, I cannot fathom how [Deceit] and [Ti] would deceive the Creator in the Real Universe. But based on what I currently know, this may be the world's only chance.
[Folly] was right — this is undeniably a foolish act.
The rebels rebel endlessly, yet can never truly rebel. The saviors pour themselves into saving, yet can never truly save.
A sche stretching across an entire era, all for the sake of making one world truly a world — rather than a specin in the Creator's experint...
I confess — I had never truly seen [Void]. Had never truly seen [Deceit]. It is far more deceptive than I imagined. And far greater."
"..."
Cheng Shi fell silent. Not because he didn't understand — but because he had finally understood what it ant for drawing closer and moving away to exist in harmony.
Beco "Origin." Replace [It]. Look out upon this world. Sever the experint.
This was at once the grandest deception — a theft of sky and swapping of sun — and also the sacrifice offered to [Void].
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