"?"
Cheng Shi froze montarily before realizing that "who" was actually the continuation of the earlier "you... are..."
"..."
'Bro, those pauses between your words are getting longer and longer.'
But no helping it—the boss had asked, and the employee had to answer. So he bowed again and began:
"Praise be to my Lord. I am..."
"I do not... recall..."
"..." Interrupted again.
Cheng Shi went numb. He tugged awkwardly at the corners of his mouth and resigned himself to waiting patiently for the other party to finish speaking.
"...you. You... divine na... what is... it?"
'Divine na?'
'Which divine na?'
'It doesn't recognize ?'
'It still isn't lucid?'
Cheng Shi's expression tightened. Eyes lowered to the ground, a glint of cunning flickered through them. A bold idea was forming—could he exploit the god's confused state and trick it into officially acknowledging his Envoy status?
But that carried risk. If he said one wrong word to a deity that wasn't fully conscious, the resulting fury might award him not a seat on the board of directors but a headstone in Mi Laozhang's cetery.
So—gamble or not?
Cheng Shi hesitated. He threw every cognitive resource into weighing the pros and cons, ticulously tallying everything he stood to lose should he fail, and in the end chose...
To fold.
Not because his greed had evaporated, but because he understood that retreat was never surrender.
Being granted a divine audience already proved his earlier actions hadn't been wrong—at the very least, he hadn't caused any harm to whatever the god was currently doing. Rather than bet everything on a title, it was smarter to leave room for the boss to take the lead. That way he could earn goodwill and protect his own life. Why wouldn't he take the safer road?
Moreover, beyond the imdiate stakes, Cheng Shi had to think about the Void angle.
He needed to consider carefully: if he actually accepted an identity from Chaos, would the two Void gods tag-team beat him to death when he got back?
The Fun God probably wouldn't—even if he'd agreed to rge with Fate, he'd always been interested in Chaos. But the other one... was harder to predict.
Mulling this over, Cheng Shi's lip twitched. He wiped the cold sweat from his brow and gave his na honestly.
Of course, he couldn't reveal his real identity. The Lies of Yesterday effect was still active—at this mont, he was a "genuine" follower of Chaos.
"I am your most devout follower. My na is..."
"Devout..."
Interruption x3.
The chaotic yellow mist began to churn violently. The god seed to recall sothing—or forget sothing. It kept muttering that word over and over, until Cheng Shi's heart was hamring with panic, before finally speaking again with a trace of clarity:
"I do not... recall..."
Cheng Shi had learned by now. He didn't rush to respond. He waited patiently.
"...you.
When... did you... beco... one of my Servant Gods?"
"?" Cheng Shi started—but it wasn't this sentence that sent shock bolting through him. It was what Chaos said next that made his jaw hit the floor.
"I rember... Blazing Sun... rember... Howling Gale... rember... Thundering...
I rember many more...
But I do not... rember you.
Tell ... when did you beco... my Executioner?
Are you... impersonating... my Executioner?!"
The instant the voice faded, the entire expanse of chaotic yellow fog solidified like walls and began crushing inward toward Cheng Shi.
"!!!!!"
'What is happening?!'
'What is it saying?!'
'Executioner?!'
'Whose Executioner? Only Order has Executioners!'
'Blazing Sun—Thundering—those are all Executioners established by Order! How are those nas coming from Chaos's mouth?!'
'Wait—is it... Order?'
'But the chaotic yellow fog beneath my feet is Chaos's creation! How would Order be here?'
'Could this be a prison where Chaos has trapped Order, and the entity that summoned
isn't Chaos at all—but Order?'
'Did I actually guess right that such a place exists?'
'But surely Order wouldn't coincidentally also have those... dramatic... pauses?!'
'No, no, no—that's wrong!'
'It is Chaos. It has to be Chaos!'
Otherwise the Chaos aura on his body wouldn't resonate with its power. It wouldn't be able to manipulate Chaos's force. And furthermore, a mortal radiating Chaos energy could never survive under Order's gaze.
Then why—in its own domain, facing a follower it had once summoned and even shown goodwill to—was it displaying amnesia and confusion? Why was it trying to kill its own Envoy candidate?
'Has it... "chaosed" itself?'
'Bro, have you lost your mind?!'
"..."
Cheng Shi was stunned. His brain emitted a thunderclap of white noise, every thought blanking out. Watching the yellow fog boil ever more intensely around him, fear slowly crept upward.
A possibility had just struck him—a conjecture so terrifying it made his skin crawl.
He'd guessed correctly.
It had truly driven itself into chaos. It had completely and utterly co to believe it was Order!!
Then the tug-of-war between Chaos and Order inside the Grand Tribunal wasn't Chaos suppressing residual Order—it was Chaos, having convinced itself it was Order... casting off its own Chaos!
It was severing its own past!!
It had gone too deep into the role—so deep it had crossed far beyond the bounds of acting, warping its own will into sothing approaching unified transformation.
The strongest evidence for this theory was the mont he'd cast the Calming Spell: all of the Chaos power had rushed backward but hadn't returned to the codex. Instead, it had poured into him.
What could make a fake follower of Chaos more attractive to Chaos energy than the real Chaos itself?
Impossible. That could never happen—unless...
Chaos itself had abandoned Chaos!
It sounded absurd, but the facts seed to confirm it.
First: the entity that had replaced Order—the Iron Law—was definitively not a corrupted artifact of Order. It was Chaos.
Chaos had sohow seized Order's power and settled into Order's nest. And during that process, it had gradually begun abandoning its original Chaos power, attempting to beco true Order.
The side evidence supporting this conclusion? The endless stream of maddened, deranged Order followers appearing throughout the Grand Tribunal!
Think about it: if Chaos truly was discarding its own power, jettisoning Chaos energy without reservation, wouldn't that ownerless Chaos energy destabilize the surrounding space, contaminate people's minds, and drive them insane without their ever knowing?
Yes. Absolutely yes.
But the question remained: was the entity deliberately slicing itself apart to play Order, or had it long since convinced itself it was Order, making this nothing more than an uncontrollable autoimmune rejection?
Consider: with its power, at a ti when Order was absent, it could have easily dragged this unprotected nation into a Chaos hell. But it hadn't. Not only had it refrained—it had disguised itself as Order, striving to keep this land bathed in Order's radiance.
So was this the grandest chaos in the universe? Or the grandest order?
'This world has gone mad!'
Cheng Shi couldn't fathom Chaos's motives. He only knew that Chaos had now beco thoroughly chaotic.
To beco Order, it was splitting itself from its own essence!
And precisely because this discarded Chaos essence had nowhere to go, it accumulated around the Supre Court, spawning the fear and confusion that every person in power knew about yet refused to speak of.
This was also why Grand Justice La Quis had witnessed a Supre Inquisitor trying to tear the Iron Law apart!
Lo Yat's devotion to Order had allowed him to detect the Iron Law's anomaly. He'd tried to "correct" order. But whether that violent act stemd from genuine devotion to Order or from the corruption of Chaos...
No one could say for certain.
Cheng Shi suspected the latter—because he refused to believe the Grand Tribunal's Supre Inquisitors were as reckless as the Grand Justice. If every leader of this nation was that impulsive, then the Grand Tribunal's longevity was honestly quite an achievent...
But regrettably, Lo Yat had still fallen before the absolute force of Chaos.
And this explained why Chaos continued to call itself Order even here, inside this yellow fog where there was no need for pretense.
Because it was lost. Utterly, completely lost.
However...
If all these deductions were correct, then what identity should he present before this entity?
Cheng Shi's brow knotted. His eyes turned grave.
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