Followers of Chaos

"Doctor of Forgetfulness?"

Fang Shiqing looked at Cheng Shi with interest, smiling as she picked up the Pocket Watch from the table.

The others also picked up their Pocket Watches one after another, but each wore a wonderfully different expression.

Their gazes kept shifting between Cheng Shi and Xu Lu, and they thought that Clip Girl must have had a reason to be afraid.

Her defensive stance was already this extreme, yet this man called Cheng Shi had actually jumped right into her face, as if afraid that others would not know he and Clip Girl were opposed.

Xu Lu obviously did not dare accept anything from Cheng Shi. She used the Pocket Watch to calibrate the time, then pushed it back.

"Doctor of Forgetfulness isn't a good answer in the Trial of Memory, Cheng Shi. I hope you'll attack the NPCs less. Accelerating them too much will cause the memory to collapse. We might become trapped inside the memory and be unable to escape."

Cheng Shi shrugged indifferently, picked up the Pocket Watch, and turned to leave.

He was going somewhere deserted to carry out Edict of Passage.

The tavern was huge, with two floors.

Its style was similar to medieval Northern Europe, with wooden furnishings and wild-animal pelts as decoration. It was extremely rugged.

There were several dozen tables scattered across the floors, and almost all of them were occupied.

The sounds of clinking glasses and shouting filled his ears. After walking only a few steps, Cheng Shi could no longer hear the voices of his teammates.

The bar at the very center had an open design, with the entire second floor surrounded by a railing. Leaning over it offered an easy view of the whole first floor.

Cheng Shi quickened his pace, turned down a corridor, and, in a corner where no one could see him, took out his own Dice of Destiny.

Edict of Passage ended smoothly. He felt "Time" favoring his fingertips and walked out with a smile.

It was time to begin the investigation.

Compared with war, the Trial of Memory was countless times more "civilized." There were rarely any moments of combat, and even when there were, they were usually confined to a small area and resolved quickly.

In the Trial of Memory, every scene was someone else's memory. If the images of the memory were distorted too much, the memory might collapse, causing the person to become trapped forever.

The objective of the trial was to constantly search for the "memory core" in each scene of memory—in other words, the true owner of that memory.

In the current scene, the owner of the memory had certainly been here and stayed for a long time. That was why they had such a deep memory of the tavern's layout and patrons.

However, a person's memories had their own priorities. In places that person paid attention to, the NPCs would be more lively, and their behavior and logic would tend toward those of normal people.

In places the person had overlooked, there would often be vague fragments.

The NPCs reconstructed from these fragments would have all sorts of "errors." Although those "errors" were not obvious, players had to find them if they wanted to clear the trial.

As for the simplest and most mindless way to find the errors, it was... screening.

In other words, striking up a conversation with everyone one by one.

However, even striking up conversations required skill. If a failed conversation caused other trouble, the memory might become distorted, directly resulting in the trial's failure.

Cheng Shi was not very good at making conversation, but he was very good at lying.

He saw several tavern servers emerge one after another from a small room. Taking advantage of the absence of onlookers, he slipped inside, quickly stole a server's uniform, changed into it, and snuck back out.

As soon as he stepped through the door, he saw Fang Shiqing leading Clip Girl stealthily toward the room.

He smiled knowingly. What a coincidence—they had thought of the same thing.

When Fang Shiqing saw that Cheng Shi had already changed into a server's uniform, her eyes lit up. She praised him in a low voice:

"Smart!"

Cheng Shi was very pleased. He smiled and said, "The praise of an expert is the driving force behind my improvement."

Xu Lu hid behind Fang Shiqing, her eyes full of wariness. She muttered softly, "So fake."

Fang Shiqing smiled.

"I imagine you know that my Lord's Edict of Passage is the pursuit of knowledge as well. Let me share some knowledge with you. The radiance of Truth will illuminate your path forward."

Truth's Edict of Passage was the pursuit of knowledge. Any unknown rule or piece of knowledge could bring a believer of Truth closer to "Truth."

For believers of Truth who possessed support or defensive skills, if they wanted to receive Her protection, they had to share some knowledge with Her believers.

Cheng Shi's eyes shifted, and he quickly shared a small piece of knowledge.

"Inserting a finger into the anus and rotating it for thirty seconds can effectively suppress hiccups."

"?"

"?"

As soon as Cheng Shi finished sharing, the two women in front of him froze in place.

Clip Girl's expression became wonderfully complicated. It was impossible to tell whether she was frightened or disgusted. In any case, a player of an opposing faith being too perverted was indeed a threat to her safety.

She slowly shuffled two steps to the side and pressed herself closer to Fang Shiqing.

As for Fang Shiqing, she felt the radiance of Truth surging toward Cheng Shi. That meant he had not been making things up. It was genuinely true.

"How... did you discover that?"

"Ah, I'm a doctor. Practice leads to true knowledge."

"A doctor in real life?"

Cheng Shi did not so much as blink. "Doesn't it look like it?"

Although Cheng Shi had meant that he had practiced on other people, Fang Shiqing still could not control her gaze from repeatedly drifting toward his buttocks.

"...Thank you. I've been enlightened."

She forced a smile, then led Clip Girl into the changing room without looking back.

Cheng Shi left with a smile and began his investigation.

The players roughly divided up the tavern. Cheng Shi was assigned the entire eastern section of the first floor, consisting of around a dozen tables.

Striking up conversations with people was actually an extremely boring task, especially for someone socially anxious like Cheng Shi.

He casually took a serving tray, collected several bottles of wine from the tables of a few patrons who were dead drunk, and began his work delivering wine.

Whenever he reached a table, he would solemnly claim that it was today's promotion, that the owner was treating them to the wine, and then ask the patrons how their drinks were, whether they were having fun, and, if they were, whether they could share some gossip as payment for the bottle.

To be honest, Bilius's wine was not cheap. Seeing the establishment giving away wine, the patrons were delighted and quickly shared all sorts of rumors they had heard.

After all, they had already been bragging. Bragging once more in exchange for a bottle of wine was simply too good to pass up.

Thus, Cheng Shi became a gossip vacuum, sucking up gossip wherever he went.

Before long, he had heard every manner of rumor about this place called Brooks Town.

"The town was originally Duke Brooks's fief. It later developed into an administrative town when more and more refugees arrived. But apparently, the mayor wasn't sent by the king. He was a refugee posing as one. Don't ask me how I know. It's a secret."

"Even the town's chief justice is a refugee posing as one."

"They even pretended to be exotic dancers. It wasn't until they stripped completely and people discovered they had the equipment that the noble lords realized those dancers were all men."

"But they were still very popular. At least they were more popular than the original dancers."

"Why has your boss become so generous lately? Did he get replaced too? What? You're going to expose him? Come on, mate, isn't it better for him to be generous? At least you get to make some money too."

"The refugees came flooding over from Gasmella. Apparently, the faith of the underground was spreading through the Tower of Reason. They started a civil war and drove out the heretics, so those people came running to Bilius. Isn't that old news from ages ago? Why are you asking about it?"

"There are more refugees than citizens. The duke is worried too, but at least the noble lords like them. Good quality at a low price."

"Gossip? What gossip? Does Yorke buying an Orc girl count? Apparently, ever since that day, Yorke has been calling her name even in his dreams. You're asking who Yorke is? He's the duke's stableman. He's sitting at that table. See him? The most timid-looking one..."

"That's strange. Yorke actually has money to buy women and get drunk? Didn't he owe your boss a ton of money?"

"..."

An hour passed. Cheng Shi listened with complete absorption. If it had not been for the Pocket Watch announcing the time, he would have wanted to keep listening.

This was so interesting. It was far more interesting than the trial.

What? You're asking why someone with social anxiety like me enjoys socializing so much?

I figured that a social terrorist should count as socially anxious too, right?

But a trial was still a trial. Since he had discovered nothing unusual, Cheng Shi had no choice but to return and regroup with his teammates.

When the six players gathered around the table again, every face was filled with gravity.

Except Cheng Shi's.

He was practically glowing with joy.

"Why do you all look so glum? Did everyone find something wrong?"

A'ming pursed his lips and shook his head. Fang Shiqing frowned in thought. Even Huang Bo, who was always scratching his scalp, was silent this time, his head lowered as he wondered about something.

"Based on our past experience, there should be some errors in a memory scene that aren't very obvious but make it easy to notice something is wrong. But this time, Xu Lu and I practically listened in on every table, including those on the second floor, and we didn't find any NPC whose logic was 'overly stiff.' They all seemed perfectly normal—normal to the point that they didn't seem like people from a memory."

"Same here. I even used my talent to sense their minds. They were calm and orderly, unlike the people in a memory."

"You can read minds?" Cheng Shi froze, suddenly interested.

A'ming hurriedly shook his head. "No, no. It's just a vague feeling. I can't tell you the specifics."

Cheng Shi nodded, then looked at Fang Shiqing again. He felt that this big-waved teacher had a similar skill, and that hers was probably stronger.

When Fang Shiqing saw Cheng Shi looking at her, she asked in return, "What about you?"

"Me? I didn't find anything. But I did hear a whole bunch of gossip. Do you want to hear it?"

"..." Remembering the bit of obscure knowledge Cheng Shi had shared, she twitched the corner of her mouth and turned to the others.

"Brother Huang?"

"Mm... headache... Nothing! There shouldn't be anything either!"

Fang Shiqing and Cheng Shi both frowned slightly at those words. The same thought rose in their hearts:

Oh no. This uncle is a believer of Chaos.