You know what's the scariest thing about office culture?
Getting caught by the boss while eating up juicy gossip about the executives.
Who could have imagined that within a mory, Deceit would actually descend!
So was this descent a replay of the past? Or a twist that existed only inside the trial?
Nobody knew. Nobody had ti to think about it, either — because all three Players had a far more pressing problem than figuring out why Deceit had appeared:
The Benefactor Himself was here. Did you dare not say hello?
To a deity, past and future were aningless. Wherever He appeared was the present. So the Players weren't facing so phantom echo of the past — this was Deceit in person.
Which created another dilemma: when you finally had an audience with your Benefactor, would you identify yourself by your true na... or the skin you were currently wearing?
Not greeting Him was suicide. Greeting Him was self-exposure. Die physically or die socially — just like the Devout Land before, the true test of devotion had arrived.
Ai Si and Zhang Jizu were sizing each other up from the corners of their eyes. Only Cheng Shi stood unmoved, staring at those starlit pupils in thought.
Silence fell.
But most of the silence ca not from the three Players, but from the San Dales residents — frozen stiff on and around the stage. Even the most thick-skinned, the most furious, could feel the terrible pressure radiating from the Void. They knew exactly whose eyes those were.
But why... did He actually exist?!
San Dales' sky collapsed again.
This ti it had been patched by the clown and torn back open by the crowd.
Everyone was stupefied. Fear bound them in place like rope. They didn't even dare bow to the deity before them.
What were they supposed to say?
'Praise Deceit — Your timing is impeccable, we just tore Your emissary apart?'
Ha. As if they'd dare.
They didn't dare — because they feared death. Otherwise Crown wouldn't have died.
But those stellar eyes held no malice. Stars flickered and spirals unwound as the gaze swept the room, pausing briefly on the three silent followers, before releasing a single sarcastic snort:
"Tch—
Interesting... but useless."
And then He left.
No punishnt for the "blasphers." No blessing for the dismbered follower on stage. The piercing red still stained the dark curtain — the arc of blood spatter curving like that parting sneer.
But doing nothing was probably His greatest punishnt. Stripped of divine protection, their last hope shattered, the mont Deceit vanished, San Dales' residents lost their minds completely.
Truly lost them.
First their faces went paper-white, then blood-red. They glared at the first person who'd questioned the divine emissary Crown — as if killing that one person could win back the deity's gaze and earn forgiveness.
A second arc of crimson mockery splattered the curtain. Then a third. A fourth. Fifth. Sixth... On and on, without end...
Until the warm liquid saturated the fabric, and the ropes holding the curtain finally gave way beneath the weight that no longer belonged solely to cloth — dropping the brand-new drape in its entirety.
And so the absurd play of San Dales reached its finale before three pairs of stunned eyes.
Everyone was dead. The Joy Theater was carpeted in body fragnts. Not a single corpse was whole — mirroring the quartered clown at center stage. All of "San Dales" had shattered to pieces.
Then ti accelerated. mory rewound. The vivid red darkened and dried. The broken limbs rotted and decomposed. Outside, the blizzard grew even wilder, carrying bizarre experintal waste of every shape and size.
The Tower of Logic was accelerating the site's decommission.
In just a few breaths, San Dales' past beca past once more.
The story seed over. But don't forget — it was San Dales' story that had ended. The Players who'd witnessed everything now stood before a rusted stage, rotted chairs, desiccated remains, and freeze-dried bloodstains, lost in thought.
Cheng Shi especially. From the mont the Fun God descended, his eyes hadn't left Crown's remains on the stage. He suspected those fragnts might be similar to the Tongue of Eating Lies — shards of sothing — but he'd watched and waited and nothing had stirred.
That didn't stop him. A bold idea had already ford.
Suppose Yu Xi's fragnts truly existed. Suppose they'd evolved from the clown's dismbernt. Then if the clown were resurrected on this very stage — could that thod be used to collect all the fragnts...
All at once?
Was there really such a windfall to be had?
'Maybe. Maybe not!'
Cheng Shi's eyebrow twitched. His mind crackled to life.
He still rembered the Fun God's loaded parting glance. Think about it — even if the deity dismissed the San Dales mortals, why would He ignore a follower that devoted?
Honestly, however saintly Crown may have been, his every move aligned perfectly with Deceit's will. Every performance struck the very essence of falsehood. He spread the divine na through absurdity and expanded belief through deception. A follower far more "devout" than Cheng Shi himself — no reason the god would simply discard him.
Unless...
He never intended to discard Crown. He'd long since left the chance to save the clown for... soone who was prepared.
'So that's where it all led. A clown saves another clown — just like the scene onstage where Crown tried to save San Dales with his double.'
Future and past had woven themselves into a circle tinted with Deceit's colors.
And what about the ears — the artifact that never appeared through the entire story? Could they be the reward for saving Crown?
With that thought, Cheng Shi moved.
He couldn't explain his reasoning aloud — that might trigger the Silence trial's settlent chanism. So he launched himself at the stage with everything he had.
The other two weren't fools. All top-tier liars, they'd each arrived at their own conclusions. Three figures hit the stage simultaneously, each seizing sothing different.
When the three Players stood in a triangle standoff once more — each studying what the others held — they all fell into deep thought.
...
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