One hour until the trial ended.
Back on the surface, Li Jingming couldn't erase all mories from the Grand Tribunal's pursuers under the Iron Law's influence—but he could blur a window of their recollections. One hour was the limit of what he could manage.
It would cost him yet another precious item, though.
He'd already paid a steep price today just to witness Order's secret. He could only hope the rest went more smoothly.
Once finished, Li Jingming followed the accord's directional indicator and raced toward Cheng Shi's position. In the ti that remained, he had to rejoin these two hothead teammates and enter the dream together to find the clue.
Cheng Shi was fast, but no amount of underground speed could outpace a surface-running Chosen One. Li Jingming closed in quickly—only to discover that Cheng Shi's position was still inside Prologue Holy Mountain, so distance below the surface.
Sensing the man's location, Li Jingming frowned. Cheng Shi had no intention of coming up. He was still digging deeper!
'What is this Fate Weaver planning?'
His trajectory was clearly aid at putting more distance between himself and the surface. Was he actually going to hoard that mory all to himself?
He'd taken that much loot and still wanted to hoard the mory?!
'Insatiable. Absolutely insatiable!'
'This isn't a Void walker—this is a Descent devotee, a Corruption lackey!'
Li Jingming's expression turned cold. As a Mage, he wasn't without the ans to carve through a mountain—but his elental affinity wasn't earth. He could only use off-elent basic spells to break rock, and the efficiency was dismal.
He did have large-scale destructive options, but they were too close to Katouting. Any major disturbance would draw the Grand Tribunal's attention again, and third-party interference would eat up the remaining ti, making the mory pursuit impossible.
The situation looked like a dead end. The Dragon King had only two choices: blast the mountain open and find Cheng Shi to vent his rage, or let the man tunnel beyond reach and watch quietly as he and Hong Lin lit the Dream Peeping Candle and monopolized the mory.
Either way, he couldn't win.
But Li Jingming didn't give up. After acclimating to Cheng Shi's rhythm, he'd more or less anticipated this.
He knew the Fate Weaver was also adjusting his strategy based on Li Jingming's position—and burrowing deeper to keep him out might not be the only play. The man likely had backup plans, impossible to predict.
Facing a situation where there was no obvious line of attack, how should one break through?
Simple: since the opponent was unpredictable, make yourself equally unpredictable.
So Li Jingming acted. Through the accord, he shared a mory with Cheng Shi. The sharing didn't require face-to-face communication—he simply uploaded his mory, and the other party would receive it. The content was a rather interesting little story.
Cheng Shi received the mory. He'd been digging furiously at the mountain's base when a short fragnt of a Dream Peeping Ranger's mory gradually materialized in his mind.
In it, a Dream Peeping Ranger he didn't recognize used mory techniques to detect the dream-wave fluctuations of his quarry, tracked the quarry down, and killed them.
At the end of the mory, the Ranger had mused: "Dreams are but ripples of mory—with form and trace, and therefore a trail to follow."
The mory ended. The Exchange Accord placed the choice before Cheng Shi: he could share a mory of his own in return, or he could decline and go their separate ways.
This should have been an inconsequential choice—no strings attached, entirely up to him. By all appearances he'd already seized the high ground.
But right now, Cheng Shi couldn't bring himself to smile.
Because the mont the Dragon King shared the mory, the mutual location tracking ended.
Which ant that regardless of what he chose, he could no longer know the other man's position.
That wasn't bad in itself—Li Jingming had also lost Cheng Shi's location. But the problem was, in that mory shared right before the link severed, the Dragon King had revealed that a mory follower could locate a dreaming person!
The Ranger in the mory was a Dream Peeping Ranger, sure—but who could guarantee that a forr Chosen of mory lacked the sa trick?
"..."
And just like that, Cheng Shi was pinned—pinned by an open sche of mory.
Li Jingming had used a seemingly unrelated mory to build a deterrent from the unknown, successfully stripping all aning from Cheng Shi's digging—because he couldn't risk Li Jingming finding them when he and Big Cat finally shared Order's mory.
If the Dragon King did find them, he'd be seething. The only outco would be mutual destruction.
Now neither side could guarantee safety once they entered the dream.
Cheng Shi's face blackened. He abandoned the downward excavation without hesitation, used a die to teleport to the surface, then sprinted at full speed toward the spot where Li Jingming had last disappeared.
Now he was the one racing against ti.
'Well played, Li Jingming! Well played, Dragon King! Well played, Chosen of mory!'
'Definitely interesting.'
Cheng Shi wasn't annoyed or frustrated. He even felt a flicker of mutual respect for the Dragon King's counter-move.
He'd been testing the man's caliber all along, wanting to understand why—beyond faith-based retaliation—the Fun God had recruited the Dragon King into Deceit's fold.
Now he knew. Li Jingming was worthy.
Among all the Chosen Ones and peak players he'd encountered, plenty could counter him. But the number who'd forced him to swallow the bitter fruit he'd cultivated with his own hands, using this particular thod? So far, just one.
His interest in the man deepened, and his vigilance sharpened in equal asure.
Li Jingming hadn't moved from his spot. He was waiting for Cheng Shi. He couldn't be certain the man would co, but he suspected this greedy Fate Weaver wouldn't pass up the final chance to explore the Iron Law's secrets.
And sure enough, a few minutes later, the greedy Fate Weaver appeared—sprinting down Prologue Holy Mountain's slope and skidding to a halt before him.
Li Jingming didn't waste a single word. He glanced at the ti and said: "Forty minutes until the trial ends."
Cheng Shi's face went dark. He jabbed a finger toward the distance: "See that river below the mountain? et there in five minutes. If you're late, don't bla
for taking the candle and leaving."
With a snap of his fingers, he vanished—going to redirect Big Cat.
But when he appeared beside her, what he found caught him off guard. The Prosperity heir hadn't dug very far from the demolished dungeon at all. She'd hollowed out a spacious cavern and was lounging inside in leopard form, resting.
Seeing this, Cheng Shi went blank. He blinked at Big Cat, suspicion dripping from his voice: "You knew?"
Big Cat rubbed her face: "Knew what?"
"Don't play dumb. You knew I couldn't shake the Dragon King, so you just waited here for ?
Hong Lin, you've changed.
You didn't used to be this..."
Big Cat eyed Cheng Shi with a half-smile, extending one claw and flicking up a single razor-sharp nail.
"This what?"
Cheng Shi's expression instantly shifted as he course-corrected: "Doesn't matter—there's still ti. Let's get moving."
Big Cat scoffed, scooped up the three shackled prisoners, tossed Cheng Shi onto her back, and charged in the direction he pointed.
She didn't bother digging. She ramd. The maxed-out Dense Forest Spotted Leopard was a nuclear-powered, annihilation-class boring machine, punching straight through Prologue Holy Mountain's midsection in a dead line.
"I really didn't predict anything. But I do know Li Jingming doesn't take losses.
You shouldn't have underestimated him. He's the only person who's never co out on the losing end against Zhen Yi."
"?" Cheng Shi faltered, then snapped irritably: "You couldn't have told
that earlier?"
"What good would that have done? You were obviously testing him. Might as well let you.
Besides, if I'd told you, how would I get to watch you make a fool of yourself? You spend all day scheming—getting outmaneuvered once is good for you."
There was undeniable mockery in Big Cat's grin. Cheng Shi felt his scalp itch under all those invisible barbs.
'Fine, fine, fine. I thought I was the screenwriter—the director—the audience. Turns out, the script was the only part I wrote. The director was soone else, and the audience was laughing at , not with .'
'I'm nothing. I'm just the clown.'
Cheng Shi touched his nose with a rueful laugh.
'Heh. The clown.'
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