Even A Rad was stunned. He opened his eyes and craned his neck to look at Cheng Shi, puzzled by the question.
"I don't know when His na first started spreading, but I know that in the surrounding towns, there's always so eloquent scholar preaching His na.
Shi Lolin sent people to investigate him. She even had
make contact with that scholar — back before I'd joined the Proxy Hand.
But he was slippery. Never revealed his whereabouts.
At the ti, I didn't understand what use these people had. She told
that underground scholars who didn't worship Truth were most likely Truth's enemies. Anyone who could topple an evil god would be a potential ally for the Extre Desire Brotherhood. So she'd always been interested in Folly's followers.
But I later learned these Folly believers were most likely Tower of Logic people themselves. I couldn't read their intentions, so I always considered them untrustworthy."
Cheng Shi froze too. The eloquent scholar sounded like Allendor, but that wasn't the key issue. The critical point was: Shi Lolin didn't know about Folly. She'd even assud Folly was a Wild God. And if she didn't know, how could she have sent A Rad to contact Folly's followers?
Frowning, he hauled A Rad up and dragged him into Shi Lolin's room. Under Shi Lolin's venomous glare, Cheng Shi asked again:
"You truly don't know about Folly?"
"I swear — I'd never heard His na until those two scholars showed up. I didn't even know the words 'foolish' and 'idiotic' could represent a deity! Even Wild Gods wouldn't take a na like that — no wonder He's called Folly!"
"..." 'Ma'am, that's the second ti — the second ti you've blasphed Him. Good luck.'
Cheng Shi twitched. To be safe, he frowned: "Tell
a lie. Careful, Shi Lolin — you only get one chance."
Shi Lolin was sharp. She guessed his purpose and replied with dead seriousness: "I've heard of Folly's na."
A lie! Definitely a lie.
Now Cheng Shi was truly confused. He recalled the thought he'd had when he first saw the compressed Silence Divinity inside the Abyss Colorful Crystal — that speculation about the nature of Eras.
In Aph Ros's description of Eras, each successive Era contained one additional Epoch. The Descent Era had one more Descent Epoch than the Life Era. The Chaos Era had one more Chaos Epoch than the Civilization Era. Eras grew progressively longer from inception to finale.
That pattern only shifted with the dawning of the Existence Era.
Setting aside Epoch-length variations, if you looked at the earlier Eras and Epochs alongside the gods' chronological order of descent, a question erged — one Cheng Shi had been pondering continuously:
After They'd already descended but before Their respective Epoch arrived, what were They doing?
The simplest example: by the ti the Descent Era ended, its three gods had already been legitimized by Origin into true deities, freed from any Era's influence, independent of the river of Eras.
So when the next Era — the Civilization Era — opened its first Epoch (the Life Epoch), why were those three gods nowhere to be found?
Cheng Shi couldn't be certain about this. The Faith Ga's trials were chaotic. Players had no concept of Eras, and nobody could tell which Era a trial's background Epoch belonged to. Still, based on his experiences, the Life Epoch had few Descent adherents — at most, so Corruption seedling believers.
So if the legitimized Descent trinity held the authority to oversee Eras, why didn't they appear at the Epochs' beginning?
Or take this very trial, set in the mid-Civilization Epoch. But from the Civilization Era onward, four different Eras all contained a Civilization Epoch. So which Era did this one belong to? And how did identical Epochs across different Eras differ?
Cheng Shi had never been able to puzzle this out — until he'd confird the Fear Faction and Approach Faction from the Fun God himself, and learned that Void had given humanity the entire Faith Ga. Only then, viewing things from the Approach Faction's perspective, did he finally catch a glimpse.
He believed the gods stuck to their "tilines" — never appearing early nor missing their historical cue — because they didn't want to influence an Era's trajectory. Rember: an Era's conclusion involved Origin. And the act of Origin legitimizing them — nobody knew the true reason. Who was to say Origin didn't determine each deity's status based on how the Era developed?
After all, the very naming of the Paths of Fate already revealed a great deal. And the Fun God himself had said: the evolution of Paths was inherently the progression of life and civilization.
So if you were a god born from a particular stretch of history — standing before an all-powerful supre deity — would you dare sar the history you'd walked through?
No! You wouldn't dare!
No god would!
Except Deceit!
He wasn't just saring — He was defecating on Existence's head!
But He was Fear Faction. Were the others?
No. Most were Approach Faction. The most daring were neutral, and neutrality ant "don't cause trouble." So how could they possibly "defy" That One?
From that point on, Cheng Shi had understood: when gods had already been legitimized but their ruling Epoch hadn't arrived, they hadn't failed to descend — they were hiding behind the world's curtain, quietly waiting for their turn to take the stage.
But now, the Silence Divinity compressed inside the Abyss Colorful Crystal made Cheng Shi realize: during their off-stage wait, They were significantly more active than he'd imagined. Even if They didn't alter the Era's main narrative, they were probably far from idle in the peripheral details.
If faith truly mattered, who wouldn't want to spread their faith early? Who wouldn't want more followers sooner?
Gods, after all, had desires too!
Following this logic, Cheng Shi confird that the current Civilization Epoch likely belonged to either the Existence Era or the Void Era — because only in those two Eras would Silence have already been legitimized and be waiting backstage.
That alone explained why — in the mid-Civilization Epoch, before His official descent — His Divinity had already been compressed into mineral form.
As for telling these two Eras' identical Epochs apart, Cheng Shi currently had no leads.
Returning to Shi Lolin: Cheng Shi had mulled over her ignorance of Folly extensively but made no headway — until just now, when hearing Folly's na again, everything clicked. A breathtakingly bold idea erged.
He thought his reasoning had been wrong again.
Shi Lolin might not be from the future. She might be from... the past?
Could she be from a Civilization Epoch's mid-point in so Era before the Existence Era — an Era where Folly hadn't yet descended?
In other words: could Shi Lolin's displacent span not just forward and backward within an Epoch, but also across Eras?
She was from the future in terms of Epoch — but clearly from the past in terms of Era!
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