Hearing the na "Zhen Xin," Cheng Shi scoffed, shook off Crown's hand, stepped back two paces, and offered a sarcastic round of applause.
"Clap, clap, clap."
"Impressive. Truly impressive.
I've told myself countless tis not to underestimate your trickery, and yet... your wild imagination still blindsided .
A perfect plan. No — I should say flawless.
Since you perford Crown's role in the San Dales drama, the real Crown was probably hidden by you ages ago.
Those extra hours of head start gave you all the ti you needed.
A bulletproof sche!
You risked death — literally dying in front of us — precisely for this mont. You calculated that soone wouldn't be able to give up on your corpse. That soone would co back to revive you. So you staged that chase to draw everyone irrelevant away.
I'm guessing Mi Laozhang and Ai Si cooperated because of , right?
You impersonated
in front of them, didn't you?
You've had my mories. You understand . You knew I'd co back. You knew that even if I suspected the body was a trap, I'd never pass up the opportunity.
But the mont I returned and appeared here, everyone else in this trial would hear — from your mouth — that I'd snuck back to take Crown's corpse. What they wouldn't know is that Crown was already swapped out long ago.
You found every truth, then pinned every cri on .
And when I finally caught on, you mocked
with your sister's na...
Heh, you little pest. Am I right, Zhen. Yi!"
After this tirade, Cheng Shi frowned slightly. He'd instantly connected all dots from today — except one. Why would she "mock" him at this exact mont? He understood the motive — the pest was chaotic by nature, maximum annoyance at all tis.
But the timing?
The timing made no sense.
The trial wasn't over. He still had a chance to turn things around. How did the Zhen girl dare lay her cards on the table right in front of him?
Wasn't she afraid he'd find the hidden Crown?
Doubt crept across Cheng Shi's face. He sank into thought.
While Cheng Shi brooded, the Crown on the ground stood up with a peculiar expression. He dusted himself off, looking deeply conflicted.
"Zhen Xin, please don't do this. You're scaring .
Fooling other people is one thing, but don't fool yourself too.
You really think you're ? You—"
Mid-sentence, Crown froze. Sothing clicked. With a stunned look, he pulled out a mirror and stared at his reflection.
The mirror showed Cheng Shi's face. ssy hair, raised brows, round eyes, contracted pupils — all indicating that the person holding the mirror was Cheng Shi. A very startled Cheng Shi.
But if his disguise had already ended... then why was the "Cheng Shi" across from him still performing?
Performing for whom?
There was no audience left. And he certainly couldn't be the audience for a con artist pretending to be himself.
When everything becos unreasonable, the most unreasonable option becos the answer. And so Cheng Shi imdiately understood one thing: Zhen Xin, like Zhen Yi, must have a disguise talent. But Zhen Xin's was even more terrifying, because—
She'd even fooled herself!
That "Zhen Xin" comnt had been an accidental bullseye. This "Cheng Shi" didn't believe she could be Zhen Xin — because she'd deceived herself completely. She truly believed she was the real "Cheng Shi": with Cheng Shi's mories, his personality, his perspective, and the Zhen sisters' talents.
Crown's expression grew even more spectacular.
That's right — the Crown on stage was actually Cheng Shi. The real, genuine Cheng Shi. And to explain how this had happened, we'd need to go back to before the trial.
Cheng Shi hadn't co to San Dales for sightseeing or a side gig. He'd co for the Secret Peeping Ear.
And to harvest anything from a trial this close to Deceit's artifacts, he needed serious preparation. So before the trial, Cheng Shi called in many helpers and devised his plan well in advance.
That plan was actually borrowed from Zhen Yi: fake a Player's death at the start, use the opportunity to slip away from the team, blend into the trial's background, and approach the truth from the shadows while the "enemy" stayed in the light.
Yes — the corpse at the beginning wasn't left by the Zhen sisters. It was Cheng Shi's doing. As for where the body ca from...
Rember Cheng Shi's deal with Big Cat?
He'd asked Big Cat to find him sothing — a body he could use to stage his setup in the next trial!
Combined with the Molten Coffin from Xie Yang, he'd effortlessly smuggled in an unrevivable corpse.
This was his insurance policy. First, he was carrying the Fool's Lips and the Tongue of Eating Lies — who knew what "guidance" or "sabotage" those two might pull when he drew close to the ears? Any strange behavior in a group might blow his cover.
He'd called in plenty of help, but nobody could guarantee that teammates who prayed simultaneously would enter the sa trial. And the clown had enough self-knowledge to know not every trial would go his way.
Second, this golden-cicada-shedding-its-shell trick had fooled him once before — which proved the technique worked. "Learning from the barbarians to beat the barbarians" was a principle Cheng Shi understood well. The art of deception grew through constant refinent.
What he hadn't expected was that this trial would actually feature the "barbarian" herself. The Zhen girl had co too — and she'd impersonated him.
But all of that ca later. Cheng Shi only discovered his teammates' antics after running into them.
Back to the real Cheng Shi's perspective: after planting the corpse and leaving the underground tunnel, his first move was to surface and find a group of scavengers huddling for warmth.
Infiltrating an NPC community was child's play for a con artist — easier than eating and drinking. Before long, a "new scavenger" had blended in and gathered the full picture of San Dales.
And when Cheng Shi heard that the Devout Land was shrouded in fog, he nearly burst out laughing.
'What's going on?'
'Is this trial... a freebie?'
'Why is there fog blocking outsiders, with the secret hidden right at its heart? You're basically leaking the answers. Don't you realize that for soone with the Muddied Waters talent, this is practically cheating?'
'Oh — nobody else knows?'
'Never mind then.'
'Keep cheating. Keep having fun!'
...
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