Very quickly, the scene shifted again.
Perhaps the wait had grown too long — long enough for Zhen Xin to have already completed a divine audience and returned. Yes — Zhen Xin was back.
The mont she appeared, she looked down from the highest mask platform at the gathered fraudsters. Her gaze swept across each person in turn, lingering on the last mask platform for a mont before she raised an eyebrow and said:
"Having fun, I see. Though your eagerness to please the Fun God through this is a bit too obvious, wouldn't you say? If last-minute flattery worked, the Acrobat would already be standing where I am. Everyone — put your skills away. It has no ti to watch your circus. Right now, it's busy summoning the thing it likes most."
With that, she pointedly dipped her chin toward the very bottom mask platform.
At Zhen Xin's appearance, the scene went quiet again. Rank one on the Ladder of Ascent, with an authority long established — she silenced the floor the mont she appeared. It was also possible that these fraudsters were giving Zhen Yi a little face, since no one wanted to cross that unpleasant thing in a place like this.
Hearing her words, soone frowned and peered downward, skeptical: "You're saying the Fun God is summoning the lowest-ranked one among us?"
"That's right. He has a na — you know him, don't you? He's called Cheng Shi. He's a... Fate Weaver." Zhen Xin smiled.
"Ha. A Fate Weaver should be at [Fate]'s Convention. What business does he have here? Look at Long Wang — now THAT'S knowing your place."
Before the words had finished, soone scoffed:
"And you believe anything a Zhen says? The Fate Weaver is probably just at [Fate]'s Convention, which is why he's not here. She's feeding us nonsense. Watch yourselves — don't fall for her tricks and end up missing the entire audience with your patron."
"The Fun God is nothing but a pair of eyes. Do you need to wait for the Convention to see it? — My friend, it hasn't summoned you even once before, has it?"
"?"
"Wait — is there actually soone here who's never been summoned? Oh my, then let
give you my slot. I'd feel bad otherwise."
"Your mom's dead."
"Is she taking up a spot in your family's ancestral plot?"
"..."
Less than two exchanges in — they were fighting again.
The fraudsters' thoughts were entirely disparate, each harboring their own sches. Two people's sparring quickly escalated into a multi-person lee. Strangely though, while the fighting was loud — the actual destruction was negligible. Smoke and haze billowed everywhere instead, until before long the whole space was blanketed in a fog — and then—
Ambushes erupted from all directions.
Everyone was attacking — but nobody could have predicted that their targets would be so uniformly consistent. Not whoever they'd been trading insults with, not whoever they found irritating — but the person on the first platform above, looking down at them all with that playful curl of the lips: Zhen Xin.
Yes. Under the borrowed cover of the fog, every technique was flung at Zhen Xin.
They all felt sothing was wrong with this Zhen Xin. As con artists who had crossed paths with Zhen Xin before, they all knew her personality. Zhen Xin, even at her most cutting, would never openly antagonize an entire room the way Zhen Yi would. She excelled at cooperation and at calculation — when facing a crowd of fraudsters, she would only divide the group's power and strengthen her own camp. She would never open with a mass roast that left herself isolated.
So the person standing up there — definitely not Zhen Xin. But it couldn't be Zhen Yi either. Because Zhen Yi was not this well-behaved. If that rotten thing could act — it would, and without announcing itself beforehand or waiting for soone to suffer first.
Which made the identity of this "Zhen Xin" obvious: soone was impersonating her. And whoever dared pull this off in this setting — either they were using it as an offering of entertainnt for the Fun God, or they had so hidden ulterior motive. Every fraudster in the room was sharp. They all figured this out at the sa mont, reached a silent understanding, and all charged toward Zhen Xin in unison — they wanted to know what this Zhen Xin impersonator had discovered on the first platform.
Zhen Xin seed to have anticipated this. She didn't fight back — just let out a scoffing laugh and slipped through every ambush with fluid footwork.
Seeing this, the unclothed mask-wearer paused his step. He looked at the ghost-like figure and frowned.
"Long Jing?"
The gathered fraudsters blinked — then looked at the vacant third platform below, and the penny dropped. That made sense. No wonder Long Jing hadn't appeared — he'd been hiding here impersonating Zhen Xin.
So where did the real Zhen Xin actually go?
With his cover blown, Long Jing dropped the pretense entirely. He laughed out loud, slipped free of the fog, and hopped onto a separate hanging mask away from the spiral platforms — watching the crowd scrambling above and below with boundless satisfaction:
"No wonder a monkey act is indispensable in any circus. The effect really was sothing — bravo, bravo, bravo—"
"..."
"..."
"..."
Every fraudster in the room directed a look of absolute loathing at "Long Jing" — and among those looks was the real Long Jing's.
Yes. That was not Long Jing.
The very instant "Zhen Xin" had appeared, the Long Jing hiding below the first mask platform knew she was a fake — because the pressure he felt from her was far too weak. Nothing like the suppressive authority that one of the Jokers would carry.
In other words, this "Zhen Xin" had the appearance but not the soul.
Long Jing hadn't considered resuming his own sche at all. He'd spent the whole ti wondering who had manufactured this fake — and he had a rough idea of the purpose. The Convention had gathered everyone here, but showed no sign of any god appearing. Everyone was probing for whether the chance to see their patron was hidden sowhere in this venue. This was most likely a test of sorts — though how the test-initiator intended to run it, he couldn't fully work out.
Then the fog rose, and Long Jing smiled.
He could see that this crowd of fraudsters wanted to use the chaos to rush the first platform and see what was hidden there. And as the second-ranked [Deceit] player, there was no way this group would catch him. So he used the fog to swap positions as well, slipping secretly into the shadow of the lowest mask platform.
He'd intended to keep hiding and observe — but then soone had thrown an entire pot of bla directly onto his head. Could he endure that? Absolutely not.
Long Jing's expression darkened, and he moved decisively — hiding himself even more thoroughly. Before he'd found the real test-initiator, he wasn't going to beco so random mid-plot entertainnt act.
The fraudsters were sharp too. Even after the fake Long Jing had outed itself, no one here trusted anyone else. They just accepted it as "Long Jing" on the surface and used the fading chaos to search the first platform thoroughly — and only when they genuinely found no chanisms or hidden teleport doors did they reluctantly accept that Zhen Xin had very likely already been summoned.
"Looks like we're taking turns for a divine audience. Hopefully it won't take too long."
"Don't worry — when I see the Fun God, I'll let it know you voluntarily gave up your turn."
"Whoosh whoosh whoosh—"
"If you can't close your mouth, I don't mind helping you sew it shut."
"Is that what you did to your mom, since she can't speak?"
"..."
The Beast Tar said nothing — and just kept firing arrows.
Cheng Shi, having watched the whole farce unfold below, shook his head and chuckled. But as he watched the eighth-ranked Master of Trickery — the one dodging Xiao Qi's attacks with a mouth full of people's mothers — a faint flicker of sothing crossed his eyes.
It was this eighth-ranked Master of Trickery who had impersonated Zhen Xin and pinned the bla on "Long Jing." Standing above and looking down through the smoke, Cheng Shi saw it clearly: while the Master had appeared to join the others charging toward the first platform, that too was an illusion. The real Master of Trickery had never left his own platform from beginning to end.
He seed to have used one deception to draw everyone else away from their own platforms. He had probably been guessing that the divine audience was sohow tied to holding one's platform — and when he saw the others leave their platforms and his own audience still hadn't begun, the Master of Trickery hidden in the shadows let out a helpless exhale, realizing he'd overthought it.
Now that was a Master of Trickery. His illusion acting wasn't a step behind Zhen Yi's — which showed that ranking in this sense, at least among [Deceit] believers, didn't fully represent power.
What Cheng Shi confird was that this Master of Trickery wasn't anyone he knew — and couldn't possibly be the "Su" with whom he'd once crossed paths. Which ant the truth was drawing closer to his original guess: that "Su" Master of Trickery he had once encountered might, from the very beginning, have never been a real Master of Trickery at all.
Cheng Shi shifted his gaze toward Long Jing hiding below the tenth platform. His expression grew more and more complex.
Is that really you, President Gong?
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