Just as Zhang Jizu finished carving the last stroke on the headstone and was about to stand it upright, his vision went black without warning.
But he didn't panic. He simply closed his already-squinting eyes, and when consciousness returned, he quietly cracked them open again to a slit.
Of course, that was just his sensation — his entire being had already beco a pale white skull.
As anticipated, when his sight returned to normal, he saw beneath his feet the familiar fishbone staircase, the towering Bone Throne atop it, and the colossal skull sitting upon the throne.
Death!
His Benefactor had summoned him once more.
"Praise the great God of Death." Zhang Jizu offered his devout greeting.
At this mont, his mind was overflowing with questions — so many that he desperately wanted to ask whether this trial had truly been, as Cheng Shi claid, a trial bestowed upon him by Deceit. But before he could speak, the great one cut him off.
His tone seed even more placid than usual, impossible to read.
"You. Did. Well.
My. Transaction. With. Deceit. Is. Complete.
As. For. What. You. Are. Thinking...
Though. I. Am. Not. On. Good. Terms. With. Deceit. I. Must. Admit:
Void. Far. Better. Suits. This. Era. Than. Life.
Faith. Will. Ultimately. Converge. Into. One.
So. If. You. Wish. To. Walk. The. Path. Of. Deceit...
I. Do. Not. Object.
But. You. Must. Rember:
On. His. Road. The. World. Past. Future. None. Of. It. Contains. Truth."
With that, the giant skull's eye sockets flashed with green fla. A small skull burst free from the river of skulls flanking the fishbone stairs and rolled to a stop before Zhang Jizu.
Zhang Jizu was still parsing the aning behind his Benefactor's words when the great one continued:
"Life. Is. Not. Void.
But. Void. Can. Contain. Life.
If. You. Truly. Wish. To. Draw. Closer. To. Void.
Use. It. To. Pray. To. Him.
I. Expect. Deceit. Will. Not. Refuse."
The mont the words fell, the ground beneath Zhang Jizu shuddered. A colossal surge of white bone erupted before his eyes, sweeping the entire Fishbone Hall apart into fragnts.
He floated, dazed, in the void. Before long, he plumted downward — and returned to reality.
He set the headstone down and examined the small skull his Benefactor had bestowed. It was clearly tinged with Deceit's essence. Its face bore no eye sockets, no nasal cavity, not even teeth — just a bone-white surface adorned with two elongated slits for eyes, like a mask of Deceit.
But upon closer inspection, Zhang Jizu noticed the bone face looked uncannily like... himself?
On an ordinary mask, the eye-slits tilted upward at the corners — because Deceit loved entertainnt above all, so every mask wore a smile.
But the one in his hand had perfectly level eye-corners. It looked exactly like an elongated pair of squinted eyes...
'So this is the token Deceit left with the great one?'
'Cheng Shi was right? That trial was aid at ?'
'But wait — am I being mocked?'
Zhang Jizu's emotions turned strange. He sat in silence, connecting every detail from the trial, organizing his thoughts again and again.
Only when he'd finished sorting through every thread of faith did he realize he truly didn't have many good alternatives.
Life was universally wild. Descent was self-destructive and terminal.
Civilization was rigid and hidebound. Chaos was wall-to-wall lunatics.
Existence would have suited him, but They seed to have no interest in him.
anwhile, Void had inexplicably offered him a chance to choose...
Fate was beyond mortal comprehension. So by elimination, only Deceit remained.
Zhang Jizu rubbed the skull thoughtfully, deliberated a mont, then made his decision.
He would apply another layer of protective camouflage to himself. If nothing else, at least he wouldn't fall too far behind everyone else on the path of Faith Fusion.
So he murmured to the skull: "Cannot distinguish..."
Before he could finish — he vanished again.
When he next opened his eyes, he was floating in the void. Gazing at the infinite darkness below, Zhang Jizu squinted as hard as he could.
And the mont he squinted, a pair of dazzling, magnificent stellar eyes opened before him.
Star-points flashed with rhythmic radiance. Spirals spun in srizing cadence. The instant those eyes opened, the entire void seed to catch His mood and turned rry.
This was Zhang Jizu's first audience with Deceit. Although he'd already heard descriptions of Deceit's appearance from certain people's mouths, actually standing before a pair of stellar eyes still left him slightly nervous.
For safety's sake, he led with praise.
"Praise the great God of Deceit."
Sa formula — just Death's divine na swapped for Deceit's.
Hearing this, those upturned stellar eyes tilted even further with amusent. They studied the Squinty Eyes before them and giggled:
"As expected of Old Bones' little bone — that wooden expression is a perfect copy of His."
"..."
That single sentence broke Zhang Jizu's brain.
He'd heard certain... rumors about the Fun God. But he'd never imagined those rumors were true!
He was actually a deity who mocked, taunted, and even hurled insults at other gods!
Zhang Jizu had only ever had audiences with three deities. War had never shown its face. But whether it was his Benefactor, Death, or Truth — who seed quite interested in him — every one of Them spoke and acted like lofty, exalted divine beings.
And yet this one...
'Why does He feel like a fusion of Zhen Yi and Cheng Shi?'
'No, no — that's backwards.'
'What I should say is: Zhen Yi and Cheng Shi really are His followers. They've imitated their Benefactor to an eerily faithful degree.'
But Zhang Jizu had no idea how to respond to this. All he could do was plaster on a standard smile and et silence with silence.
Seeing him go quiet, the eyes rotated once and teased again:
"What — could it be that Old Bones is actually your second faith, and at the very start of that Path of Fate, the one you chose first was...
Silence?"
"..."
'It had nothing to do with Silence until just now. That one sentence of Yours dropped
straight into Silence's territory.'
Zhang Jizu was so mortified he could barely breathe. To avoid leaving a bad impression at his first audience, he forced himself to respond:
"Great deity, forgive my boldness. I feel... not entirely aligned with Your will. So I've been deeply puzzled: why did You... choose ?"
"Oh? If you don't accept my will, then why pray to my token?
Don't you know this constitutes the highest cri of blasphemy!"
As He spoke, those stellar eyes narrowed just like Squinty Eyes' own. Instantly, the rry atmosphere of the void shattered. From nowhere, an endless torrent of biting, howling wind erupted.
The gale scread and tore — as if in the next second it would rip this blaspher floating in the void to shreds.
Zhang Jizu felt sensation draining from his limbs. His fingers were freezing. Even his vitality was evaporating at terrifying speed. But instead of panicking — he actually stopped being nervous. Sothing like enlightennt flickered in his eyes as he looked up at those stellar orbs and stated, dead serious:
"In the great domain of Deceit, there is no truth. Therefore, You are not truly angry. Everything I'm seeing should be an illusion."
"..."
Now it was the eyes' turn to fall silent.
The narrowed gaze slowly opened wide. The star-points ceased their twinkling. The spirals stopped spinning. As if having lost interest, He sighed:
"So aptitude, but not much. So entertainnt value, but also not much.
This is why I dislike the Pen Pusher. He's too boring — boring as a genuine piece of wood.
You're Old Bones' follower. Don't be as stiff and serious as the Pen Pusher.
Though you got one thing wrong. Hee~
I wasn't angry, true. But that doesn't an the Void storm was an illusion."
Those words sent a jolt through Zhang Jizu's heart. Before he could wonder who "the Pen Pusher" was, cold sweat was already beading on his forehead and back.
Because he discovered his vitality was genuinely running dangerously low, and no matter how he tried to move his frozen extremities, they refused to budge.
'This is bad. Reality hidden within illusion, illusion woven into reality. His thoughts and temperant truly are harder to read than any other being's!'
The eyes watched Zhang Jizu's panic and found their amusent once more, bursting into laughter:
"Not bad. I'm already looking forward to seeing you lie."
The eyes blinked softly. Star-points connected into lines, conjuring a grinning mask out of thin air. It drifted down and settled before Zhang Jizu.
"Alright, that's enough for this audience.
I need to hurry over to Old Bones' place and mock Him a couple of tis, or today'll be too boring.
Gone."
"..."
Zhang Jizu watched Deceit vanish before him, utterly at a loss for words. If not for the overwhelming divine power of Void that he couldn't resist, he'd almost believe he'd just had an audience with Zhen Yi.
Thinking of Zhen Yi, his eyes narrowed once more.
'So that's how she was "born"?!'
'Zhen Xin's frightening, obnoxious alternate personality was actually... imitating Him?'
'Then what about Cheng Shi — was he doing the sa thing?'
Thoughts swirled endlessly as his consciousness sank. When Zhang Jizu opened his eyes again, he was back in the real-world cetery. And the skull in his hand...
His hand had been ravaged by the Void's gale. The skull had been replaced by a grinning mask, now lying on the ground.
He healed himself wearily. Only when dusk had nearly faded to black did he have the strength to pick up the mask at his feet. Gazing at this artifact of his second faith, Zhang Jizu murmured through narrow, conflicted eyes:
"Deceit...
Cheng Shi was right after all. His existence seems to revolve entirely around entertainnt. He's looking forward to seeing new entertainnt from .
Cannot distinguish true from false, disregard the line between reality and illusion.
He speaks as if nothing matters. But is this road truly so easy to walk?
Whatever — now that I've taken this step, I won't look back.
Co to think of it, if Deceit and Death can fuse...
then in the future, would the line between real death and fake death...
stop being quite so clear?"
...
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