Reality, in an unknown province or city, at a certain theater.
The theater had undoubtedly fallen into ruin. Perhaps even "ruin" was too generous a word, since the roof had long since collapsed and three of the outer walls had been torn down. Only the wall behind the stage still stood there in lonely defiance, as if clinging to the last meaning this stage possessed.
But in truth, it had lost its meaning long ago, because the two protagonists on the stage had already died. They had been dead for more than a decade.
Long Jing did not know why he had chosen to return here. He simply felt that perhaps this was the only place that could occasionally give him a sense of having his feet on solid ground in this precarious, tightrope-like world. So he had followed his intuition and come back.
He awoke on the only seat in the ruins beneath the stage. The instant he opened his eyes, his brows drew tightly together.
Zero points.
His score for the Path to Godhood was zero.
It was not as though Long Jing had never experienced a trial that ended with a score of zero, but he had thought he had uncovered the final secret in this trial. Judging from the result, though, he seemed to have been too naive.
Could Sandlais have another secret?
It had to be. Otherwise, there was no way to explain why his patron, the God of Merriment, had given him three points on the Ladder of Audience...
The God of Merriment rarely gave him three points. Even when it did, it was because he had performed outstandingly and deceived everyone, but his score for the Path to Godhood had usually been quite high then.
Yet a situation like today's, with zero points