Busy days are fulfilling and fleeting. Before long, it was ti for the next special trial.
Only a day had passed since the Grand Tribunal, but Cheng Shi had accomplished quite a bit.
First, he'd called Hu Xuan—but she hadn't answered. Considering she was probably off giving birth to sothing in another trial, Cheng Shi obediently abandoned any plans to ring the silent baby bell.
'No need. There's no urgency. We'll connect when she's free. Compared to other players, this sister's survival abilities don't require much worrying. Sa for her reproductive abilities.'
Then he'd combed through the chat channels he'd missed over the past few days. Faith fusions were clearly accelerating—especially recently, almost erupting. He needed to understand how each faith faction's front-runners were doing.
This wasn't rely to gather intelligence on other players. More importantly, he needed to find clues within these fusions—to analyze which factions the gods had aligned themselves with.
As far as Cheng Shi could tell, there were still only three factions: the Fear Faction, the Neutral Faction, and the Approach Faction. All divisions related to the gods' attitudes toward Origin.
The Approach Faction needed little elaboration. Until soone was confird neutral, any god could provisionally be categorized as Approach—especially Prosperity and Decay, who were surely the faction's backbone.
'Sha the backbone has literally beco "bones" now. One's body is gone entirely; the other's fixated on rotting.'
Cheng Shi's Benefactor Fate was undeniably Approach as well. Though the reason for wanting to draw near Origin remained unclear, Fate's behavior—particularly disagreeing with the Fun God—confird its inclination.
By that logic, Folly and Truth were also likely Approach. At minimum, Folly was—Fate wanted a relationship with it, and Folly lay on Fate's fusion path as Chaos's second god.
Truth's obsession with becoming a "god" was common knowledge among the divine. Whether that ambition stemd from genuine devotion or sothing else was uncertain. But Truth's actions were undeniably trending toward that distant entity.
As for the Neutral Faction... honestly, Cheng Shi didn't know much. He'd only heard the term from a certain being upon the Bone Throne.
In purely semantic terms, the only god he could think of was that very entity.
Death sat atop its Divine Throne, entangled with the Fun God yet deliberately keeping distance—a push-pull dynamic that qualified as neutral.
'Other neutrals must exist. That entity had said "the neutral ones," plural—so there were probably quite a few.'
As for the Fear Faction—what more was there to say? Team Fun God—just the one, no question.
Cheng Shi had considered Chaos too. But Order had to be Approach. Aph Ros had said Order was different from other gods—at the dawn of the Civilization era, it had arrived bearing supre authority. Other gods received their titles at an era's close, but Order was appointed as a true god at the very start.
And Blazing Sun's betrayal stemd from Order's failure to protect it at the era's end. So Cheng Shi leaned toward this theory:
Order's descent carried Origin's will. Blazing Sun had drawn close to Order to get closer to Origin. But the era's concluding chapter proved Order couldn't change anything—it rely carried that will. So Blazing Sun chose a different way to approach Origin: Chaos.
Viewed this way, Chaos also resembled Approach—because devoting so much effort to impersonating an Approach mber didn't seem like sothing a Fear Faction god would do.
But this was all speculation. As for Chaos's true purpose... perhaps only Chaos itself knew. Well—the Fun God probably knew too.
So far, Cheng Shi's understanding of the gods ca entirely from their own mouths. But divine audiences were too rare, too infrequent, and the gods always spoke in half-asures—leaving him still fumbling through the fog.
That was why he wanted to find traces in the real world. Whatever the gods wanted to accomplish would inevitably be reflected in the Faith Ga.
But reality proved Cheng Shi had overthought it. Those who didn't know would probably never know. The gods' wills weren't fully understood or propagated at every level.
Though faith fusion was raging among peak players, the sprawling chat channels showed almost nothing about it. Even information like Lin Xi's fusion or Mo Li's oathbreaking was hard to find. The channels were dominated by speculation about the Land of Hope's history and the most publicly known headlines.
So the phrase "common knowledge" was circle-dependent. No matter how hard ordinary players tried, they'd never catch wind of what peak players discussed.
'How similar to the Grand Tribunal in the last trial. Faith and devotion are also flourishing among the players!'
Though he'd found little of personal interest, one piece of information from the Singer chat channel caught his attention.
It was sothing he'd stumbled upon yesterday afternoon while casually scrolling. A player had randomly asked: their neighbor had been missing for a long ti but wasn't dead. Their spatial prayer trials kept failing, and they were worried—did anyone know what was going on?
'Neighbor concern aside—' The word imdiately made Cheng Shi think of his own lovestruck War neighbor.
Xie Yang had been missing for ages too. And the symptoms matched exactly—no activity, and their spaces couldn't rge.
'Don't ask how I know they can't rge. I just know.'
Curiosity piqued, Cheng Shi followed the thread closely. Sure enough, the channel always had experts. Before long, another player replied saying the sa thing had happened to their neighbor—it had lasted several days, but yesterday the space had suddenly beco ownerless and rgeable. So they suggested waiting it out: maybe the neighbor would die in a couple of days.
"..."
'Great advice. But essentially useless.'
What mattered was that the comnt drew more people out. Many reported the sa phenonon. Though these few chat ssages were still inconspicuous amid the channel's frenzied scroll, the fact that they sparked any discussion at all proved the situation was unusual.
'Xie Yang and many others have all vanished. Could they be trapped in so inescapable trial?'
'No—trials automatically return players upon conclusion. Their situation can't be trial-related. It's more like they're trapped in... reality.'
'Reality... multiple people... trapped... gradually dying...'
'This déjà vu feels an awful lot like attending so gathering and getting snatched for experintation.'
'Sound familiar, Yu Mu?'
'But if there really were such a large-scale gathering, the heavyweights I've recently t would surely know. Unless... this isn't targeting the high-end bracket—just a low-level gathering?'
'But at this scale, peak players should have caught so wind of it.' After further thought, Cheng Shi decided to ask around.
This ti, he didn't make a call. Instead, he pulled out a key—the Death work badge personally delivered by Zhang Jizu!
That's right—he was going to visit Mi Laozhang's cetery in person. And maybe harvest a few corpses while he was at it, for inventory.
'Sure enough, living next to a War follower long enough is contagious. Always wanting to keep a few corpses at ho.'
But this visit wasn't solely for scavenging and intelligence. He also had an important favor to ask of Zhang the Steady. And requesting favors shouldn't be done with a re phone call—so he'd go in person, to show Mi Laozhang his sincerity.
That evening, he raised the bone-shard key to the empty air and twisted. The key's tip instantly sprouted countless white bones, spreading rapidly until they ford a Bone Gate standing squarely before him.
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