Audience Assembly: Opening

No one knows what the so-called Audience Assembly actually entails, or what kind of grand spectacle it is.

Players only know that the top ten players in the Ladder of Audience Faith Ranking have the chance to be summoned by the gods and witness their true faces on the first full year of the [Faith Game].

Therefore, the closer the time gets, the more frequently players Prayer Trial. Players with low to mid-level scores know they have no hope and won't waste their energy at this time, but how could those Peak Player who are just one step away from the finish line give up this opportunity to face the gods directly?

So they tried harder, and then became more and more disappointed.

Because even the most outstanding individuals are competing!

Even though some of the top ten players have already had an audience with the gods, the Ladder of Audience is one of the two most important leaderboards in the [Faith Game], and no one would consider the Audience Assembly be as "ordinary" as a regular audience.

So during the three days Cheng Shi was away, the [Faith Game] was quite lively.

However, all this excitement has nothing to do with the Clown; you find it exciting, but I just find it noisy.

Cheng Shi wanted to give himself some time to quietly sort out everything he had experienced, to do a review, and to lay a solid foundation for taking that unknown step into the future.

But some gods don't give him a chance at all; he can only be forced to move forward and drift with the tide, pushing open that door and arriving at the Audience Assembly...

Um?

This doesn't seem to be the venue for the Audience Assembly; it looks more like the Stage area.

Cheng Shi, who had been drawn here by the power of the Void, narrowed his eyes and paused.

What lay before him was not a space resembling a meeting hall, but an endless Void. Only before this Void floated a layer of seemingly nonexistent, transparent Curtain appeared to be nonexistent but could actually be touched.

Behind that invisible and eerie Curtain lay the true venue for the audience.

The venue was enormous; though it was called a venue, it was actually neither a field nor a piece of land.

Countless visible Refracting Threads pierced through the Void, suspending countless enormous Mask in the endless darkness.

Each thread is tied to a Mask at a different angle, but the threads are so dense that they almost fill the entire Void!

This scene is exactly the same as the Mask Wind Chimes Cheng Shi saw before stepping through the door, except that the wind chime here is ridiculously large!

Each Mask is an independent foothold. At this moment, six figures stand on different Mask, sizing each other up and observing their surroundings, feeling both uneasy and wary.

Their height decreased sequentially from six, just like their ranking on the Ladder of Audience, while the ten Mask seats resembled a spiral staircase winding around the center of the arena, except that the top three seats and the bottom seat were unoccupied.

Cheng Shi silently watched everything unfold before him, his eyelids twitching violently.

I guessed wrong.

This is the God of Merriment! Even though he blindly rushed into the Gate of Destiny, he still ended up in the Audience Grounds Deception. Not only that, the Shadow Cheng Shi that stepped into the Gate of Deception... also arrived here.

Cheng Shi never imagined that he would deeply understand what "different paths lead to the same destination" meant at this moment, as his Deception Lord of Grace had not given him a second choice.

The two doors He left wide open on the rooftop were clearly a joke!

"Ha, Clown."

But I've gotten used to it.

Cheng Shi chuckled self-deprecatingly.

Fortunately, after the teasing comes the sweet reward; at least I didn't expect to appear at the Audience Assembly like everyone else. But what does this Curtain represent? Is it meant for me to hide behind the scenes and watch the show?

Thinking this, Cheng Shi gradually moved closer to the Curtain, An Jing waiting for the "performance" to begin.

For the players inside the venue, their performance had already begun long ago.

Long Jing was the first [Deception] Believer to arrive at the venue. He knew that it would be difficult for him to surpass the Dragon King and Zhen Xin in the ranking on the Ladder of Audience, so he could only try to overtake them in terms of audience speed. Therefore, the moment the Audience Gate opened, he rushed in without hesitation.

Sure enough, he did it; he was the first person to arrive at the venue.

But that's not enough; it's not enough to show his piety. His personal piety is rather weak. If he could add some fun to his piety, he might gain more attention from the God of Merriment.

The more the God of Merriment watches, the closer one gets to Him, and the greater one's contribution to the Clown's various plans will be. He doesn't believe that his piety alone will not yield a single useful word from the God of Merriment.

Having thought of this, Long Jing suppressed his secret joy and secretly hid it away.

He hid beneath the highest Mask platform, waiting to surprise Zhen Xin when she arrived and avenge his humiliation at the first Jester's Gathering.

But he never expected that this wait would last until now.

Zhen Xin and Dragon King haven't arrived yet, nor has Cheng Shi. Instead, six swindlers have appeared on the field one after another.

The top con artists all knew each other, or at least had seen each other in various Trials, so there was no greeting or familiarity among them, only wariness towards one another.

They understand their peers all too well, and they understand the God of Merriment even more; nobody wants to be the source of that fun in such an important setting.

In the past, if I was cheated by a colleague, I would just curse a few times and move on. But if I were cheated at a Deception Audience Assembly...

Believe me, these fellow scammers will never let you get away with this.

Once the Audience Assembly over, you will become the greatest source of amusement in the world, at least for the moment!

Therefore, in order not to become the target of ridicule, every scammer is on high alert, trying to minimize their presence and avoid being attacked by the masses.

This led to what should have been the most lively [Deception] Audience Assembly almost "cold," with six pairs of eyes darting around like they had ADHD, but six mouths seemingly in Faith [Silence], with no one daring to speak.

Long Jing was getting impatient, but Zhen Xin still hadn't appeared. He even wondered if the Top Rank person was receiving different treatment from everyone else and had already gone to pay a one-on-one audience?

Where is the Dragon King? Why hasn't he arrived yet?

Oh, right, the Dragon King's name is [Deception], but his real name is [Memory]. Perhaps he attended [Memory's] Audience Assembly?

It's not impossible.

Where is Cheng Shi? Why isn't he here?

Out of ten top-tier con artists, there are only four Clown. Now you're telling me that besides myself, the other three have disappeared? Is that correct?

And I was the first one to arrive at this venue, right!?

No! Not at all!

You can't keep treating me like Clown; I'm an Acrobat! What exactly happened and what have you been hiding from me?!

In fact, the Clowns didn't hide anything from Long Jing about this Audience Assembly.

But outside of this grand audience, Zhen Xin did not reveal the truth to the Clown.

Cheng Shi's departure from the world to the True Universe was something that couldn't be known to many people, Zhen Xin naturally wouldn't say much. To avoid arousing suspicion, she didn't even meet with the other Clown. So Long Jing naturally didn't know that the current Magician had inherited the [Chaos] Divine Throne and gone to another Audience Assembly as a "judge".

As for Li Jingming, he guessed correctly; the other party had gone to the audience Audience Assembly [Memory].

Cheng Shi was the only one of the three to arrive at the [Deception] Audience Assembly, but he was backstage, not on stage. This meant that the Acrobat on Stage waited for a long time behind their Mask, but no Clown appeared.

When there's only one Clown left on the field, he must be the real Clown.

Long Jing was tired, and at this moment he wanted to give up his plan to create fun.

He feared that if he waited any longer, he would become the laughingstock.

It was at this moment that the others finally began to suspect the four top-notch con artists who had been waiting for so long.

"I don't believe that the woman surnamed Zhen would skip the Audience Assembly. Be careful, everyone. She might be hiding under someone's Mask, waiting to make fun of you."

"Heh, Zhen Xin might not do that, but Zhen Yi... well, who knows."

As soon as the words were spoken, a series of sounds suddenly emanated from the various Mask platforms at different heights...

"Hehe~"

"..."

"..."

"..."

The brief exchange fell silent again.