If the other man wasn't a fraud, then following the earlier hypothesis, he had to be an Investigator carrying a Master of Deception Card. Only that could explain how his contradictory attitudes toward Destiny were both genuine statents.
But beyond that, there was another possibility — one Cheng Shi hadn't dared to imagine before. What if Li Wufang had also experienced one of Ti's "discrepancies," just like Ger Si or Ad Ric? A discrepancy that had turned him into a completely different person across different segnts of the day, and these segnts were not two...
Wait — not two. Three!
Cheng Shi's eyes widened again. He reviewed every reaction Li Wufang had displayed throughout the day.
The first Li Wufang believed in fate but wasn't close to Cheng Shi. The middle Li Wufang claid not to believe in fate — that Destiny could only protect his teammates. And the current Li Wufang... not only believed in fate but was also "Cheng Shi's" subordinate — a subordinate from an unknown, possibly alternate-tiline organization!!!
The other man's "Ti" had shifted!
An icy current shot from Cheng Shi's tailbone straight to the crown of his skull. Terror blood from the deepest reaches of his heart, like a massive hand squeezing his heart in its grip.
'I should have known a Ti trial wouldn't be this simple. But... can it really be this hard?'
'He deliberately scrambled the temporal dinsion. Surely He's not doing this just to screw
over!'
'Or is He trying to prove that the Ti of Eternal Imprisonnt He bestowed was flawless — by turning
into a prisoner trapped in ti, just like Aph Ros?'
Cheng Shi was rattled. His hands and feet went cold.
Though all of this was still personal conjecture with no hard evidence, verification didn't seem difficult. The one advantage Cheng Shi had was that the other man had misidentified him. And where misidentification existed, there was enormous room to maneuver.
And the clown was the absolute master of maneuvering in tight spaces!
So, with his mind racing, Cheng Shi spun around once more, blade flashing — and in a single stroke, slit Ger Si's throat as Li Wufang held him.
SHHK—
Blood sprayed. Life extinguished.
Under Ger Si's terrified, dying gaze — a scream that never ca — Cheng Shi's lips curved into a cold smile. He caught the body and eased it to the ground. Hidden behind the curtain of spurting blood, one hand slipped behind Ger Si's back and, in a blind spot invisible to everyone, silently brushed against the shadow beneath.
DING~
In that instant, the Fate Weaver beca the clown once more. And the clown's first act upon returning was to tuck a Smog Bomb into his sleeve cuff. He needed to guarantee that his "fishing in troubled waters" talent could fire the instant the other man caught on. Fraud no longer had the Never Lost Gambling Gear to save him.
But Cheng Shi didn't imdiately deploy the smoke. With the situation still intact, he could continue playing the "Cheng Shi" that Li Wufang believed in, using the role to verify his hypothesis. So after killing Ger Si under that pretext, he said with a knowing smirk:
"Dead n are easier to hide than live ones."
Honestly, even if the hypothesis held, Cheng Shi had no idea what the alternate-tiline version of himself was like. But he knew that as long as he played the current version of himself convincingly, it would be enough to fool Li Wufang.
Not because the Chaos Acting technique had taken effect — but because Li Wufang's misidentification itself proved that the "other" Cheng Shi was very similar to the present one.
Li Wufang saw the scene and found nothing remotely suspicious. He tugged at the corner of his mouth and sighed: "Did you really need to make this much of a ss, though? Cleaning up after you is exhausting."
Despite the grumbling, the Investigator carefully eliminated every trace in the room. And when he wiped the last drop of blood from Ad Ric's body — looking at the miner, who'd been so terrified he'd long since lost the ability to speak — Li Wufang snorted:
"What about him?"
"Leave him here as bait. Don't worry about him."
Cheng Shi said it casually, though in truth he had no idea what he was saying.
The Lush Horn Crown's recovery effect only worked once per person. Cheng Shi knew he'd already lost the ability to revive Ad Ric a second ti. So until he determined exactly who would be the "discrepancy" of Ti, he couldn't risk gambling that soone else would resurrect this key NPC.
So he improvised a mysterious-sounding arrangent and let the other man fill in the blanks himself.
Whatever Li Wufang concluded, he paused briefly, then nodded: "Makes sense. Let's leave him here, then."
He knocked Ad Ric unconscious, then returned to Cheng Shi's side, expression deadly serious:
"Where do we go to find him next?"
Cheng Shi understood — the "him" clearly ant Jiang Chi. But he had no idea what role Jiang Chi played in this chaotic drama, nor where to find the Jiang Chi that Li Wufang sought.
Judging by Li Wufang's deanor, was he thinking of doing what Grand Marshal Hu Wei had done — tearing open the void and crashing into soone else's trial to find the target?
Needle in a haystack. How could anyone find soone that way?
Though Cheng Shi was technically Hu Wei's "boss" in na, he certainly didn't possess Hu Wei's repertoire of abilities. Hu Wei could pinpoint soone in another trial; that didn't an Cheng Shi could.
If forced to tear open the void, the most he could do was take Li Wufang for a spin through Mockery and Jeering — but could such a pointless trip silence the man's questions?
Absolutely not!
So how should he respond?
Cheng Shi was losing his mind. He had very little ti to formulate an answer. To buy a few more seconds for brainstorming, he first pretended to check on Ad Ric with a worried glance, then furrowed his brow while looking toward the experint site outside, adopting a weighing-his-options posture.
Finally! In those hard-won seconds of rummaging through mories, he suddenly recalled sothing Poison had once said during that earlier trial:
"Jiang Chi is probably a newcor. A peak-level newcor."
Poison had said she'd only t him once. Their next encounter was the collaboration during that trial. And before that, she'd never even heard his na.
But even if a player's position on the Ladder of Ascent had only recently entered the teens or twenties — at most they'd be unknown to the masses. How could they remain unheard of even in peak-level gas?
Especially given that Jiang Chi was an extrely cautious Ti walker. With his conservative approach to climbing the ranks, other players should have rembered him all the more vividly.
'Look at this Pointer Knight — he always makes the correct choice. Though he follows Ti, it's as if Destiny itself protects him!'
That should have been the consensus among peak players with extensive intelligence networks.
And for Poison — a desire-peddling saleswoman who ought to have profiles on every potential client — if even she had never heard of this mysterious Ti walker, didn't that an Jiang Chi's appearance had been extraordinarily sudden? And could "sudden" be considered a type of... anomaly?
Ti...
And conveniently, he was a Ti follower.
So was it possible that Jiang Chi, even during that earlier trial, had already been one of Ti's "discrepancies"?!
At this thought, Cheng Shi's pupils contracted sharply for just an instant.
Reviews
All reviews (0)