After throwing out every last trump card, Cheng Shi had essentially nothing left in reserve.
All five bolts of thunder had been spent. The [Fate] mask had lost its chance to switch warriors. He didn't even dare reactivate Sinner Redemption under Aph Ros's watchful "anticipation"...
So all he could do was frighten Lin Xi, letting the man's terror recharge his ring once more.
And judging by the results, it had worked splendidly. Lin Xi alone had filled all five charges.
Combined with the physical enhancent from [Decay]'s Faded authority, even in the clown's form, he could hold his own against the Lin Xi before him.
But the mont Lin Xi saw that even the Envoy trump card he'd hidden the entire ti had failed to take down Cheng Shi, he lost every last shred of fighting spirit. He'd been reduced, thoroughly and completely, to a "rotten piece of wood."
Whether Chun's death had played any part in that collapse, no outsider could say. All Cheng Shi saw before him was this:
Rotten wood had rotted through.
It was almost laughable. A player who constantly proclaid his own devoutness had, at this crossroads, finally found his true self, reverting to the confused young man he'd once been.
But neither in appearance nor in spirit did Lin Xi have anything to do with the word "young" anymore.
He no longer clung to his devotion, no longer viewed Cheng Shi as the divine target marked for elimination. He simply lay on the ground, motionless, hollow eyes fixed on the cloudless sky. Whether he was contemplating the aning of life or reminiscing about a past too painful to revisit, no one could tell.
Honestly, Cheng Shi had never read such complex emotions on a single face before. He didn't even need to get close. A single glance from a distance told him that all Lin Xi wanted now, besides decay, was nothing.
And the irony was that, stripped of his [Decay] faith, Lin Xi couldn't even rot himself away. After a long silence, Lin Xi laboriously turned his head. His death-resigned eyes fixed on Cheng Shi, and his voice ca out trembling:
"Why... are we even alive?"
Cheng Shi could feel Lin Xi's emotions pouring out in a torrent at the edge of life, but that didn't an he would empathize.
And so, hearing this aningless question born of despair, Cheng Shi scoffed:
"Tch—
Only now you decide to ponder the aning of life?
Lin Xi, oh Lin Xi. A man shouldn't only have his epiphany and repent when he's the one suffering. Don't make yourself look this pitiful. I much preferred you when you were arrogant and defiant."
"..." The mockery clearly disrupted Lin Xi's daze for a mont, but he no longer had the will to feel anger. He simply repeated the question, blank and hollow as before.
Cheng Shi frowned slightly and tossed him an offhand answer: "To be alive."
"To be alive? Ha. Haha. But what's the point of being alive?" As he spoke, Lin Xi wept. This executioner who had slaughtered countless players and treated life like grass actually shed two murky trails of tears.
Yet Cheng Shi remained utterly unmoved. He could not empathize, and at the man's most lost and desperate mont, he drove a knife straight into his heart.
"Of course your life has no aning. Because your betrayal was how you stripped your own life of aning with your own hands.
Lin Xi, don't forget. You didn't earn the life you have."
"I NEVER BETRAYED ANYONE!!!" Lin Xi shot upright, shrieking at Cheng Shi in full hysteria. "The thing I despise most in this life is betrayal! She betrayed ! Chun betrayed !"
His eyes flickered between flashes of mory and tenderness and surges of rage and loathing. The thinning-haired Plague Cardinal clawed at what remained of his hair like a man gone mad, roaring:
"She abandoned her faith to save her own skin! She betrayed the one who loved her! She defected to [Prosperity]! Did she ever stop to think that one day she'd still end up dying before ?!
She deserved it! She deserved every bit of it!!"
Lin Xi's voice had gone hoarse. Gradually, his volu dropped. "She deserved it..."
He kept repeating those words, as if trying to numb himself into dissolving his hatred.
Cheng Shi's brow furrowed deeply. He could tell Lin Xi's reaction was genuine. So Chun's act of salvation had, in Lin Xi's eyes, beco an act of betrayal.
No wonder the two of them had been at each other's throats from then until now, locked in mutual hatred.
Faced with an [Oblivion] believer who'd co to kill him on divine orders, Cheng Shi had no obligation to set the record straight for Lin Xi. He hadn't even explained Garuda's love story to Le Le'er. Why would he bother with a mortal's self-inflicted anguish?
But rembering the trust Chun had placed in him, Cheng Shi sighed and offered one final remark:
"Have you ever considered that she was trying to save you?"
"Save? Haha, save ?" Lin Xi, who monts ago had been vacant and lost, suddenly contorted with emotion. He stared at Cheng Shi, fingers tearing bloody streaks into his own scalp. "Fate Weaver, tell : is 'saving' soone the sa as stabbing a dagger into their heart?!
Do you know that dagger nearly killed ?!
If not for my Benefactor's rcy, I would have died at her hand! Is that what you call saving?!
Ha. Hahaha. If that's saving, then I'd rather have died in the shadow of the Septic Final Tomb. At least then, in my mories, there would still be soone who loved ..."
As expected, this was a misunderstanding beyond explanation.
Ordinary people couldn't fathom [Decay]'s will, but Cheng Shi, who had faced [Decay] directly, knew the truth. Perhaps it was precisely because Chun had pushed Lin Xi to the brink of death that their Benefactor, a fellow "pitiable soul," had taken pity on Lin Xi. Just as the deity hoped that the decay of the entire universe might inspire pity from the one above.
And that was probably why the Fun God called [Decay] a "stinking beggar": because the deity was begging for [Origin]'s charity, praying for the rcy of that omniscient, omnipotent being.
Which only proved how wondrous fate could be.
Chun's motivation for saving him was good. Her understanding of the deity was wrong. But fortunately, the final outco was "good"... at least the man had survived.
As for what the man did after being saved...
'Forget it. If you don't know how to judge this either, then why don't we just curse fate together?'
'Fate, appearing before the eyes of mortals in the sa beautiful pose as always.'
"Any last words?" Cheng Shi said suddenly.
Lin Xi froze. He seed to see the gates of [Death]'s hall swinging wide before him. But before he could utter a word, Cheng Shi raised his hand and fired three decisive thunderbolts, blasting the forr [Decay] believer into ash.
Shock, confusion, fear, hatred... in that instant, all of it was blown away to nothing.
"Sorry. I had to trick you out of sothing.
You ca here to kill . I have no obligation to let assassins leave their final words."
Cheng Shi shook his head, feeling neither joy nor sorrow, and turned to leave the ravine forest, now stripped of vast swaths of reality.
He'd once said he would bury the [Decay] maggot in a [Prosperity] forest. But since the maggot was no longer [Decay], perhaps it was forgivable that his burial ground was no longer [Prosperity], either.
He dusted off his hands and stepped back into the trial.
But before he could take a single step, a familiar figure suddenly plumted back into reality, landing right in front of him.
Cheng Shi's pupils shrank. A flash of delight crossed his eyes, but caution made him retreat half a step.
"Chun? You're alive?"
Indeed. Standing before Cheng Shi was none other than Chun, the one Herobos had flung into a world on the brink of annihilation.
Her expression was extraordinarily complex. Her gaze drifted past Cheng Shi to that pile of "familiar" ash. Her mouth opened and closed several tis, her face caught between smiling and weeping, eyes glistening with unshed tears. Lost and helpless, she asked the very sa question Lin Xi had asked:
"Why... are we even alive?"
...
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