2502?
Hearing that score, the heat in Cheng Shi's heart was instantly doused.
Another 2400-plus, and one had even reached 2500.
The good news was that there were plenty of experts.
The bad news was that there were too many experts.
The players' scores in this game seemed a little too high.
And he had only...
What was his score again?
The Memory Traveler was a Mage of Memory.
And Memory faithfully recorded everything that happened, making it the nemesis of Deception.
With an opponent like that standing before him, it would be a lie to say Cheng Shi felt no unease at all.
But if one asked whether he was truly afraid, not necessarily.
After all, it wasn't as though he had never encountered players with scores like these. There were simply fewer of them.
Du Xiguang was very tall, at least 1.9 meters. His glasses gave him a refined, scholarly look, but the flesh beneath his trench coat was clearly powerful.
Du Xiguang, Memory, Mage, 2502
Cheng Shi's gaze swept lightly over him before shifting inconspicuously toward the young woman with the dagger.
"Yun Ni, Disciple of Silence, 2491."
Huh?
She was actually a follower of Silence?
Silence was the third god of the Sinking Path, the finale of Sinking, the collapse of all living things.
He firmly believed that life would eventually disappear, that the universe could not escape destruction, and that everything would pass away before ultimately returning to silence.
Thus, influenced by Him, His followers tended to regard life with extreme indifference.
In their eyes, survival was merely the process leading toward disappearance, while death was only the beginning of all things falling silent.
The meaning of the world's existence was simply to await the final judgment, then crumble into dust beneath His gaze.
Who would have thought that such a fresh-faced, lively young woman would actually believe in Silence?
Oh, right. She was an Assassin!
The Disciple of Silence was an Assassin who worshipped Silence.
That made a lot more sense.
Assassins were all masters of contrasts.
Yun Ni, Silence, Assassin, 2491
Cheng Shi smiled inwardly and looked toward the next person.
The one who had knocked on his door.
This long-haired, handsome man had changed into the inn's clothes. His eyes were cold, and the disdain for everyone else was completely undisguised in his narrow eyes.
Sorry, I look down on every one of you equally.
That was exactly the feeling he gave off.
As for his identity, Cheng Shi had already made a guess.
"Wei Guan, Hunter of Fools, 2450."
Just as expected—the Hunter of Fools, a Hunter of Folly.
Folly was not foolish at all. On the contrary, He believed Himself to be closer to the truth than Truth was.
Because He was excessively close to the truth, creating a gap between Himself and all things in the world, He believed that every other existence in the world was foolish.
That was His Will.
He believed: all life was foolish, and all civilizations were ignorant.
His followers had inherited their Lord of Grace's view perfectly, to the point that every Folly player liked to look down on others through their nostrils.
From the moment they began worshipping their Lord of Grace, their thoughts became more active than those of other players, their minds worked faster, and their stores of knowledge grew larger.
Compared with the followers of Truth, aside from their off-putting attitudes, they were top-tier existences in both knowledge and mental agility. Their strength could not be underestimated.
Wei Guan, Folly, Hunter, 2450
Cheng Shi silently watched as the group of experts finished introducing themselves. But when it was finally his turn, his brows furrowed.
Three men and one woman—five people including himself.
Where had the other person gone?
Wei Guan seemed to see what Cheng Shi was thinking. He let out a cold snort and turned his gaze toward the end of the corridor.
Cheng Shi and Yun Ni, who had come out last, followed his gaze. There, they saw a bare-chested, burly man standing silently with his eyes closed, calmly resting.
Cheng Shi's heart jolted, and he immediately understood the situation.
Silence!
He was a follower of Silence.
This god's Edict of Passage could be discerned from His divine name alone.
From the moment the Faith Game officially began, the players who worshipped Him had probably already given up on speech.
They followed, observed, listened, and thought—but never communicated with anyone.
They lived like solitary monks.
And the muscular man at the end of the corridor clearly looked like an ascetic monk.
An ascetic monk, a warrior of Silence.
X, Silence, Warrior, X
Wei Guan spoke again, confirming Cheng Shi's guess.
"An ascetic monk isn't worth wasting time on."
"..."
Even Cheng Shi, who was used to the followers of Folly, wasn't accustomed to such contempt.
Probably no one liked having an unfamiliar person occasionally sneer contemptuously at them right to their face.
Especially since this trial lasted a full seven days. There was plenty of time.
Cheng Shi spread his hands and smiled, speaking casually:
"Cheng Shi, Reason Corroder, 2401."
The moment he finished speaking, Fang Jue raised his brows in surprise, while the others frowned.
Reason Corroder, a Priest who worshipped Chaos.
Time returned to the previous trial.
The instant Cheng Shi killed Huang Bo and cut off his head.
A'ming, who was far away in the First Act, died immediately as well.
The story of the executioner and the Maestro of Lost Rhythms should have ended there.
But in the final second before A'ming's soul vanished, Cheng Shi snapped his fingers.
That snap represented a Doctor of Forgetfulness's true contempt for death.
He made death forget A'ming.
State Reversion!
At the very first hour mark of the First Act, Cheng Shi had secretly recorded everyone's state.
In that moment before death, Cheng Shi had deceived the self-confident, mistake-free Huang Bo, making him believe that he and A'ming had died together.
But after Huang Bo's death, Cheng Shi used Reversion to revive A'ming.
Death took away the confused follower, carrying his doubts and unwillingness as it vanished from the world.
The follower of Order was allowed to cling to life.
Therefore, the Cheng Shi of today was a follower of Chaos, a Reason Corroder.
In fact, the talent Lies Like Yesterday was not absolute in its restriction to "the most recently deceived follower."
In other words, as long as Cheng Shi wished, he could freely choose the faith of any teammate he had deceived in the previous trial.
But he had still firmly chosen Chaos.
One had to know that Chaos was the nemesis of Order.
Moreover, the reputation of Chaos followers was not very good. Few people liked them.
But that was precisely why Cheng Shi had chosen it.
Because a more controversial topic would divert everyone's attention.
That way, everyone would focus on his faith, and the score he had fabricated would naturally be overlooked subconsciously.
In a high-level game filled with 2400s and 2500s, Cheng Shi couldn't honestly tell them that he had a score of 2100.
There could be only one outcome: the moment he revealed his score, the Hunter of Fools before him would hunt him down without hesitation.
After all, in the eyes of the followers of Folly, having too low a score was also a form of foolishness.
And the Hunter of Fools hunted fools exclusively.
Falsely reporting a low score could conceal one's strength, while falsely reporting a high score could preserve one's life.
That was the charm of Deception.
Cheng Shi had understood it since childhood.
But even after taking all of that into consideration, an accident still occurred.
Before Fang Jue, the Law Giver, could say anything about Cheng Shi's identity, the Assassin who had interacted with him suddenly flashed in front of him. Her gleaming dagger once again pressed close to his Adam's apple.
Cheng Shi froze slightly, then smiled without concern.
"You like my Adam's apple that much? I'll give it to you?"
Before you continue