There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch, but Mine Is a Little Expensive
(But isn't promising an extra chapter but actually adding two chapters a form of Deception?)
Four chapters today, 10,000 words in total, double the fun!
I am Believer in Deception! (Hands on hips)
Let's praise the [Deception], there will definitely be no next time, it's too tiring...)
Cheng Shi, who was focused on finding a job, felt relieved Cheng Shi receiving Old Jia's instructions. He quickly signed the contract and then set aside some time to go home and surprise Old Jia.
But instead of a pleasant surprise, I was filled with overwhelming fear.
Old Jia passed away, and his body was buried by the surrounding neighbors, using money from Aunt Sun next door. Under the promise of a huge sum of money, no one told Cheng Shi about this.
On the day Cheng Shi returned home, he didn't find Old Jia, but he saw a handwritten letter from Old Jia on the table with a missing corner.
On the letter's cover, two words were written crookedly: Cheng Shi.
Cheng Jia's Cheng, and honesty's Shi.
Cheng Shi froze upon seeing this.
He knew that Old Jia couldn't even write his own name in his entire life. In the more than ten years he had been studying, he had only learned to write these two characters. Although they were written like a dog's scratch, in his eyes they were better than any other font.
This is the name he gave himself.
When he saw his name written on a letter by Old Jia, he guessed the meaning of the letter.
His hands suddenly started to tremble.
It was clearly a thin piece of paper, but to him it felt as heavy as a thousand pounds, and he tried several times but couldn't pick it up.
He couldn't hold back his tears any longer, so he forced his trembling hands to press down on the envelope and pulled out the letter from inside, keeping them close to the table.
This is an A4 sheet of paper folded several times. When you unfold it, you can see that there are only four words written on it: Live well.
It was printed.
Cheng Shi burst into tears after just one glance.
He burst out of the door, shouting "Old man" everywhere, then "Dad," then "Cheng Jia," until his heart-wrenching cries brought tears to the eyes of the neighbors. Finally, an aunt couldn't bear it any longer and gave him directions.
Cheng Shi ran wildly along the road and entered a Cemetery, where he soon found the old man's grave.
The tombstone was completely blank, which suited Old Jia's personality, but Cheng Shi knew that this was not his own arrangement for his funeral; it must have been erected with the help of Aunt Sun.
As for Aunt Sun... her grave is right next to the old man's. No one knows how she passed away, or whether she is really gone. In any case, she still chose to be the old man's neighbor.
Cheng Shi knelt before the grave and wailed, while Jiang Wu Mei stood far behind him, his heart filled with mixed emotions.
What a tragic person! He was deceived by lies from childhood until the death of his beloved father, and he was still kept in the dark by lies.
Old Jia undoubtedly wanted Cheng Shi to learn to be good. In the latter half of his life, he lied and acted for more than ten years, cultivating Cheng Shi into an honest and good person. But in the end, he broke through Cheng Shi's defenses with the most painful lie.
No wonder this Fate Weaver was able to trick Zhen Yi...
Destiny witnessed his misfortune, and lies permeated his "life".
It's truly remarkable that someone could survive until the arrival of the "Faith Game" and become a high-scoring player in it under such circumstances.
Oh right, Old Jia told him to live well, and that's probably his motivation.
Jiang Wu Mei looked at Cheng Shi, and was at a loss. He seemed to have never witnessed such a vivid dream, nor had he ever felt such a moving Memory. Overnight, it was as if all of this had happened right beside him, as if he were Cheng Shi, who had been deceived from beginning to end.
The witnessing is over; it's time to leave.
He rubbed his face and walked out of the Cemetery in a daze, but as he walked, he found that the Cemetery seemed a bit strange. Why were the names on the tombstones so... eerie?
Jiang Wu Mei frowned, turned to look at his side, and saw a short inscription on the tombstone beside his legs:
"Chen Han, Dream-Peeking Ranger, 1394."
?
Jiang Wu Mei was stunned, thinking he was seeing things. He rubbed his eyes and looked again, only to see that the words were clearly engraved there, not an illusion.
He panicked for a moment, then took a few more steps forward and saw the inscription on the tombstone in front of him:
"Wei Fengming, the Dream-Peeking Ranger, 1517."
His heart skipped a beat, and he stared wide-eyed in disbelief. He quickly looked around, his nerves on edge, but found no one else around except for Cheng Shi, who had fainted in front of Old Jia's grave.
Jiang Wu Mei keenly sensed the crisis. Although he didn't know where the crisis came from, his reason told him that he had to leave this place first, so he frantically ran out of the Cemetery.
The wanderer ran very fast, like the wind. The tombstones beside him flashed past in his peripheral vision, stretching infinitely behind him. But even though the light turned into a trajectory, he could still clearly see the inscriptions written on the tombstones that were left behind, almost forming a low walled city.
"Zhu Youyou, Dream-Peeking Ranger, 1656."
"Cheng Meng, the Dream-Peeking Ranger, 1877."
"..."
"Song Siqi, Dream-Peeking Ranger, 2204".
"Jiang Wu Mei, Dream-Peeking Ranger, 2319."
!!
This is insane!
The last tombstone with a name actually had his own name written on it!
He actually saw his own grave in this absurd dreamlike Cemetery!
Jiang Wu Mei was suddenly overwhelmed by immense fear. He stopped in his tracks, drew his longbow, and stiffly surveyed his surroundings. At this moment, how could he not know that his existence had already been discovered by the master of the dream?
And the place he is standing right here is right at the entrance of the Cemetery.
A figure emerged from behind the massive stone pillar at the entrance, her eyes red-rimmed, and said to him:
"Ugh, this is so annoying. I've already tried to forget all of this, so why do they keep trying to make me cry?"
Jiang Wu Mei looked in the direction of the sound and saw that the figure was none other than Cheng Shi!
But he wasn't the Cheng Shi from Old Jia's grave; he was his teammate, the Fate Weaver, Cheng Shi!
His eyes snapped open, his pupils contracted sharply, alarm sirens blared in his mind, and his brain went completely blank. A surge of fear shot from the top of his head to the soles of his feet, leaving him with almost no strength to draw the bowstring.
But his survival instinct made him move; he didn't actually do it because he still held onto a sliver of hope.
He swallowed hard, his voice trembling with tension, and said, word by word:
"I did nothing to hurt him."
Cheng Shi's tears were still flowing, but she smiled:
"Yes, Ranger, you are cleaner than any of the Dream-Peeking Ranger lying here."
But I'll only ask you one question, just one question:
Will you dedicate everything you see tonight to Him?
If you say no, I'll let you go.
A fleeting hesitation crossed Jiang Wu Mei's face, but he gritted his teeth and said firmly, "No."
Yes, that's a lie.
Very good, very good.
Cheng Shi wiped away her tears and smiled indifferently.
"I never liked being disturbed, nor did I want him to appear in this disgusting game, and I certainly didn't want to reunite with him in some unexpected way. So, I'm sorry to trouble you, Ranger."
You know I'm a liar; you can't believe what I say.
"Boom--"
Before he could finish speaking, thunder roared. He remained the cautious Cheng Shi, never giving the enemy any chance in such a moment.
"However, wanderer, I still want to tell you one thing: there is no such thing as a free lunch."
When you listen to someone else's story, you naturally have to pay the corresponding price.
However, my story is a bit pricey.
It's probably worth just one life.
Seeing the ranger in front of him blasted into a charred corpse, Cheng Shi raised his hand again and fired another shot.
"Boom--"
"Goodbye, Rogue, sweet dreams."
Thus, the Dream-Peeking Ranger died in his dream.
Two claps of thunder swept by, followed by a torrential downpour.
It's raining. In this Cemetery filled with sorrow, a rain is falling, a rain that weeps for the misfortune of Destiny.
Cheng Shi stared blankly at the ashes at his feet, then shook his head and chuckled as if he had just remembered something.
"Speaking of which, I have to thank you all. It was you Dream-Peeking Ranger who filled in the gaps in my image of the old man's father. With each of you coming, I felt his love for me deepen."
As he spoke, he looked up at himself, who had collapsed in tears in front of the tombstone. Cheng Shi woke up from his dream, drenched by the pouring rain. His tears mingled with the rain, and his sobs were drowned out by the sound of the rain, as if the sorrow had vanished.
But only Cheng Shi knew that he was at his most Despair at this moment, because he was thinking, "Why is even God mocking me?"
It was from that time that he began to despise Destiny.
"Sigh, it's all in the past."
Cheng Shi sighed, resisting the urge to take another look, and turned to leave.
"Old man, I know you like playing chess, so I found you a new chess partner."
But be careful, he might be very good at memorizing game records.
He paused as he spoke, his voice choked with emotion.
"Old man, I'm leaving. I'm probably going to forget some things about you again..."
But now I know, so you also envy other people's children who became Top Scholar exam.
Well, Top Scholar, I'm too slow-witted and don't Top Scholar.
But nowadays, there aren't any Top Scholar anymore...
Cheng Shi spoke, he suddenly laughed again. He turned back and looked at the soon-to-disappear Cemetery one last time, bidding farewell to Old Jia with his last tear.
Tears fell, and the dream vanished.
Meanwhile, in the main house of the Fungus-Footed People tribe in the Sighing Forest, Cheng Shi, who had slept Cheng Shi all night, opened his eyes.
Daylight broke.