It was once again the Fire Passing Hall.
After Fang Shiqing left, Qin Xin gradually let the smile fade from his face. The fla-colored hue in his hair receded little by little, and even his complexion turned pale.
He suddenly doubled over with a violent cough, then lightly raised a hand and wiped the streak of blood from the corner of his mouth.
He was wounded—and the wound was far from light.
As for where this injury ca from, that required rewinding to the mont right after the Trial had ended.
Don't forget—before entering the Trial, Qin Xin and the Blind One had been hunting the Ti Chosen, Lao Deng. They had assud that even though Lao Deng had stalled for ti with everything he had, his situation was already beyond salvaging.
Once the Trial ended, this Rank 1 player should have died on the spot. But no one anticipated that an accident would occur.
To explain this accident properly, the clock needed to rewind a bit further—all the way back to the diocre Person Society gathering, after certain "orioles" had left the scene.
The Void. Inside the Existence apparition that the Dreamless Mirror had projected over the diocre Person Society's venue.
The true venue belonging to a certain soone was a stage rusted and corroded beyond recognition. Everything the assembled players had witnessed inside the diocre Person Society had taken place within the Existence apparition that Qin Xin had constructed using the Dreamless Mirror.
So when Lao Deng left that apparition, he hadn't truly escaped into the Void—he had stumbled straight into the trap the Torchbearers had laid for him.
Lao Deng wasn't actually old at all. On the contrary, he was exceedingly young—so young that when the two Torchbearers faced him, neither could be certain whether the boy had even co of age.
As everyone knows, there is a period before adulthood when people tend to be at their most rebellious. So no matter how the two Torchbearers tried—gentle persuasion or threats laced with bribery—none of it could make Lao Deng "bow his head." The young man had made up his mind to leave, and he declared outright that such an entertaining affair ought to be shared with all.
Left with no choice, Qin Xin and the Blind One made the hardest decision they could. They clashed with this Ti Chosen in a cataclysmic battle within the Void.
By the ti both sides had exhausted every trick in their arsenals, Qin Xin was drenched in blood, the Blind One's spirit was spent, and Lao Deng had taken several sword wounds and lay pinned underfoot by a false mory follower.
But right at that mont, the Trial that Lao Deng had desperately stalled for finally arrived. In the very instant Qin Xin was about to take his head, all three of them were pulled into the Trial.
His blade and Lao Deng's cervical vertebrae had been separated by nothing more than the width of a bowstring.
Yet that hair-thin distance was enough to contain an entire Trial.
And then ca the mont the Trial ended.
When Cheng Shi submitted his answer, Qin Xin had in fact already been prepared. He had even adjusted his posture to match the exact stance he'd held before entering the Trial, so that the instant he exited, his body's instinct would finish the kill on the spot.
The Blind One had done the sa. Before the Trial released them, she had poured every support skill she possessed into Qin Xin—all for the sake of a single, decisive strike.
Yet no one could have predicted that, even with preparations this thorough, the unexpected still happened.
In that stretch of Void sealed and locked in every dinsion of space and ti by the intertwined divine power of mory and Fate, a strange surge of divine energy suddenly erupted. A violent force entangled with the power of War and Fate leaked out from sowhere unknown, disturbing that sealed space-ti and giving the Ti Chosen—pinned underfoot—an opening he seized in an instant. In the final heartbeat before his death, he triggered the deduction power of the Another Day Assassin.
Consider this: to climb to Rank 1 on the Ti ladder with an assassin's build ant that Lao Deng's entire talent frawork had likely been built around deduction.
He might not have been the "strongest"—but there was always a version of "him" that could dodge every counterasure and fight to the bitter end.
Just like now. Lao Deng once again drew revelation from Ti's deduction, overwriting the present with the future most favorable to himself.
And so that sudden eruption of entangled force veered a fraction off its original trajectory as it spread—and by sheer coincidence, it interfered with the direction of Qin Xin's strike. The Mirror Person's blade scraped down along Lao Deng's shoulder and neck, missing the cervical spine by a hair's breadth, shearing away the entire right half of his body instead.
A chance to escape had appeared.
But this crazed assassin spared not a thought for breaking free. Instead, he grinned savagely, twisted his mangled fra, and let a spray of blood and shredded flesh scatter into the Void. He flipped his dagger upward and materialized directly in front of the Blind One, driving the blade straight at her eyes.
He knew the Fate Chosen was already blind. But he wanted her blinder still—the kind of blind from which there was no coming back.
A Prophet may be known for prophecy, but at its core the class remained a Singer—a support profession capable of bolstering other players. Fate's support talents were nurous, and among them the most useful in combat was undoubtedly the Triumph Song.
This lody allowed its beneficiary to sense an enemy's attack during battle, granting the foresight to anticipate and seize the initiative.
And that buff was active on Qin Xin right now. He was already a Hawk Eye Scout, the class most adept at reading a battlefield. Layered with the Blind One's enhancent, he had felt Lao Deng's killing intent in the very instant the strike had missed.
Only this death-throes counterattack wasn't aid at him—it was aid at the Blind One. And that ant Lao Deng's unguarded back was laid bare before his eyes.
In that lightning-flash of a mont, Qin Xin faced two choices:
Abandon the Blind One and kill Lao Deng. War's techniques gave him full confidence that he could strip the boy of every resurrection in the sa instant he ended his life. But that would an the Blind One would die too—and there was no telling whether Lao Deng also possessed ans to destroy every chance of revival.
Or protect the Blind One and let Lao Deng go. Because this move was clearly the boy's gambit—"threaten the Blind One to save himself." Then again, it might just as well be a genuine trade: his life for hers.
Every fiber of this impossibly young Ti follower radiated a savage, reckless ferocity. Watching the way he threw himself into the fight, it seed entirely possible he truly intended to take the Blind One down with him before he died.
By all rights, a Torchbearer should not have hesitated at a mont like this. Such things had happened far too many tis before. Torchbearers who sacrificed themselves for the cause were beyond counting, to the point that the Void Grave Forest they themselves had established was filled with more life stories than could ever be fully read or told.
But this ti, Qin Xin hesitated. He did not seize the chance to kill Lao Deng. He chose to save the Blind One instead.
With a precisely aid upward parry—so accurate it was almost inhuman—he deflected Lao Deng's dagger. Lao Deng seized the montum to spring backward, opening distance between them, then let out a wild laugh and dove headlong into the zone where that berserk, entangled force was still spreading, vanishing without a trace.
The Blind One was stunned. She turned toward Qin Xin, her expression a tangled knot of emotions.
"Qin Xin, you..."
Qin Xin gave a bitter smile and swallowed the blood pooling in his mouth. "You're not a true Torchbearer. If the Torchbearers want to go further, they can't abandon their friends. I didn't dare gamble."
"Thank you..." The Blind One pressed her lips together so tightly they went white, then reached behind her back and produced a poker card from inside her coat. "Don't panic just yet—the Fla of Hope can still shelter us, and we still have a chance to deal with this. I'll go find Xin Xin. She can definitely help."
Though the words leaving her mouth were "don't panic," the urgency etched across her face made it plain that the situation was spiraling toward collapse.
She saw it. Or rather, both she and Qin Xin saw it.
What they were facing was no re accident. That sudden eruption of entangled War and Fate power hadn't appeared without reason. Both Qin Xin and the Blind One had sensed sothing hauntingly familiar within it.
As for where that familiarity ca from...
Hero of Today versus Hawk Eye Scout.
Yes—that inexplicable surge of berserk divine energy was unmistakably born from the violent entanglent that had torn through reality when Cheng Shi fought Qin Xin inside the Trial.
And so the question arose: why would power from inside a Trial manifest in the real Void?
Perhaps the answer didn't need thinking about at all.
Ti had intervened.
It had used this "accident"—or rather, this deduction—to save Its follower's life.
And when the Blind One spoke of finding Zhen Xin, it wasn't to seek reinforcents. It was to reach Zhen Xin and, through her, find a way to petition the Void—to claw back an outco from the defeat that Existence had handed them.
Qin Xin understood all of this perfectly. But there were no other options left. The safest strategy now was to return to the Fire Passing Hall and weather this storm under the Fla of Hope's watchful gaze.
And that was how the scene of Qin Xin sitting calmly at his table had co to be. He had to gauge the Fla of Hope's deanor to determine just how dire the situation facing the Torchbearers truly was.
But from what he could see, the Fla of Hope showed no sign of alarm—which ant everything was still within manageable bounds.
Qin Xin let out a sigh and rubbed his forehead. Too many surprises lately, too many threads to untangle. He was genuinely exhausted.
Next, there was still the God Creation Plan to push forward—the plan they had settled on long ago—and two new Fire Seekers who needed to find their rhythm together. As for the previous Fire Seeker...
He wondered how Ming Yu's conversation with Zhen Xin was going.
...
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