Recaps

Ai Si found an old clown nose in the underground passage, while Zhang Jizu noticed signs that she knew more than she admitted. The group discovered that the Ghost Tide had been faked to delay them, and Zhang Jizu killed Plott before they headed toward the Place of Piety to pursue the missing player.

• Ai Si showed Cheng Shi and Zhang Jizu an old, corroded clown nose she had found in the passage, and Cheng Shi questioned her about what she knew.
• Cheng Shi sent Ai Si carrying the war machine back toward the surface, while Zhang Jizu quietly examined her footprints and the tracks at the doorway.
• The three players found the fog calm and saw scavenger corpses emitting smoke that resembled the Ghost Tide, realizing the tide had been faked to delay them.
• Zhang Jizu concluded that someone had used the smoke and Wells's death to create a misleading information gap, and Ai Si agreed their teammate had gotten ahead of them.
• Zhang Jizu killed Plott, then urged Cheng Shi to consolidate their information before they entered the Place of Piety to pursue the missing player.
• Ai Si buried Plott's body in the snow, erased the surrounding tracks, and followed Cheng Shi and Zhang Jizu.

Cheng Shi, Zhang Jizu, and Ai Si confronted Yenoli at the southern stronghold and forced him to reveal what he knew about the Place of Piety. They returned to the fog’s edge and prepared to enter the Faith Theater using Ai Si’s silence potions.

• Yenoli tried to blame the three players for Wells’s death, but Cheng Shi and Zhang Jizu severed his legs and made him kneel.
• Cheng Shi interrogated Yenoli, who said he had seen no activity at the Place of Piety and knew of no way to explore the fog without making noise.
• Yenoli revealed that Wells had planned to use a battle mech from the Tower of Reason to explore the fog before Yenoli passed out from blood loss.
• Cheng Shi, Zhang Jizu, and Ai Si returned to the barbed-wire fence and discussed the faith and piety tested by the area.
• Ai Si revealed that she had three bottles of a silence potion, each lasting only thirty seconds, and asked whether they were ready to sprint to the Faith Theater entrance.

Cheng Shi and Zhang Jizu uncovered impostors and raced toward the theater while two Ai Sis confronted each other. The real Ai Si learned that the teammate impersonating her was Cheng Shi, who revealed the name Fool’s Play.

• Ai Si drank the potion and charged toward the theater, while Zhang Jizu suspected she was an impostor and poured out his potion.
• Cheng Shi and Zhang Jizu challenged each other’s identities, and Cheng Shi attacked Zhang Jizu with a scalpel.
• Two Ai Sis interrupted the fight, and Zhang Jizu gave Cheng Shi a silence-spell page before they headed into the mist.
• The real Ai Si agreed to hold off her double for thirty seconds and guessed the impostor was trying to avoid a confrontation and become the final beneficiary.
• The disguised Cheng Shi revealed himself to Ai Si and called himself Fool’s Play.

Ai Si learned that Lord Foolish Play was Deception's emissary and sought a chance to earn his favor. He sent her to help Long Jing hinder Cheng Shi in exchange for the possibility of achieving Faith Fusion, and she agreed despite feeling guilty about betraying Cheng Shi.

• Lord Foolish Play claimed that he was Deception's emissary and that he had come to retrieve his fallen ear.
• Ai Si questioned him about Cheng Shi, and Lord Foolish Play revealed that he had guided Cheng Shi toward Deception and found his path more fitting than Destiny.
• Ai Si concluded that the players were searching for the ears to approach Lord Foolish Play and asked how she could serve him.
• Lord Foolish Play told Ai Si to join the competition, help Long Jing, and make things harder for Cheng Shi.
• Lord Foolish Play promised to consider Ai Si's request if she retrieved his ears, provided she was willing to embrace Nothingness, and Ai Si accepted.

Ai Si learned that Sandlais had been a century-long Tower of Reason experiment to test whether a world could survive without faith, but the experiment failed when belief in having no faith gave birth to a god. After Lord Foolish Play sent Ai Si into the fog to help Long Jing find his ears, Long Jing revealed he had been impersonating the lord and entered the fog himself.

• Ai Si recalled how the Tower of Reason created Sandlais, erased its refugees’ memories, and secretly controlled and observed the town.
• The experiment’s results were undermined when a Faith Aggregate known as the God of No Faith appeared, and the Tower of Reason later abandoned Sandlais.
• Ai Si decided to help Long Jing find Lord Foolish Play’s ears and entered the fog with an item the supposed lord had given her.
• Long Jing revealed that he had been playing Foolish Play and had sent Ai Si along the path he wanted her to take.
• Long Jing speculated that finding the ears would cost two Masks, drank a potion, and entered the fog.

Zhang Jizu and Ai Si became trapped in the directionless fog outside the Faith Theater, where a strange voice revealed that someone had died and exposed two secrets. Zhang Jizu concluded that revealing a deeply held secret might be the key to entering the theater, but he did not know who had uncovered it first.

• Zhang Jizu lost Cheng Shi in the fog and later encountered Ai Si walking backward through it.
• Zhang Jizu and Ai Si compared their routes and realized the fog had trapped them in an apparent dead end.
• Zhang Jizu proposed an experiment, but after seeing Ai Si hesitate, he chose to wait instead.
• A distorted voice announced, “So it was afraid, too...” and then revealed the secrets, “Someone... had died?” and “I think it's lying to me, but I still want to know what's inside.”
• Zhang Jizu inferred that the theater's entrance might require confessing one's greatest secret and wondered who had discovered this first.

Zhang Jizu revealed his secret by dying, which opened the fog and exposed the Faith Theater in a frozen town. Ai Si remained behind, unwilling to risk her life, and realized that six secrets had sounded, including one about someone losing their memories.

• Ai Si refused Zhang Jizu’s suggestion to die and reveal a secret, so Zhang Jizu left her and waited in the fog.
• After several more hours, another person died and revealed the secret, “Yes, I lied...”
• Zhang Jizu said, “Praise death,” died, and revealed that he could not die yet because he had to bury someone.
• Zhang Jizu revived as the fog cleared, revealing an icebound town and the Faith Theater, which he approached with a scalpel.
• Ai Si stayed behind, gathered the secrets she heard, and realized that a sixth secret concerned someone losing their memories.

Zhang Jizu, Cheng Shi, and Ai Si pushed open the Faith Theater’s door and emerged in a snowy marketplace from Sandlais’s past. Zhang Jizu detected the scent of divine Memory within the strange scene.

• Zhang Jizu met Cheng Shi and Ai Si at the theater entrance, where Cheng Shi said three people were needed to open the door.
• Cheng Shi pushed the door open before Ai Si finished counting, and the three entered the warm light.
• The light transported them to a snowy marketplace in Sandlais, while the theater appeared across the marketplace as if space had been stretched.
• Cheng Shi concluded that the theater had revealed Sandlais’s past and wondered who might be performing in the scene.
• Zhang Jizu sensed divine power associated with Memory within the marketplace.

Cheng Shi, Ai Si, and Zhang Jizu discovered that the repeated theater gates trapped them in a memory until they followed its plot. They questioned Kraun, an actor from Joyful Theater, and his correction left Cheng Shi’s strange familiarity with the theater unresolved.

• Cheng Shi left through the theater gate, and Zhang Jizu followed him while Ai Si headed toward the theater by another route.
• Ai Si discovered that the theater gate repeated, trapping her in a loop, and Cheng Shi concluded that they needed to follow the memory’s plot.
• Zhang Jizu noticed a motionless young man on the stairs and led the group to question him.
• The young man woke, introduced himself as Kraun, and offered the group discounted tickets to Joyful Theater.
• Cheng Shi asked Kraun about Shaman and called the theater Sincere Theater, but Kraun corrected him that it was Joyful Theater.

Cheng Shi, Zhang Jizu, and Ai Si followed Kraun through repeated theater doors, witnessing his bleak efforts to bring comedy to Sandlais. After a scholar from the Tower of Reason emerged from a manhole, the players realized they had found an anomaly, and Kraun noticed it too.

• Zhang Jizu tested Kraun by making him claim he was Zhen Xin, then let him go when he lied.
• Kraun ran into the theater, triggering a change in the entrance, and the three players followed him into a town.
• The players watched Kraun repeatedly offer flyers for his Joyful Theater as Sandlais's residents rejected his comedy and prioritized warmth.
• After enduring many repeated days, Ai Si complained about the endless scenes, but the players continued following Kraun.
• A scholar from the Tower of Reason climbed out of an open manhole in an alley and hurried toward the gathering.
• The players recognized the scholar's emergence as a mistake, while Kraun noticed the improperly closed manhole cover.

Kraun overcame his hesitation, entered the Tower of Reason’s underground observation station disguised as a scholar, and learned that Sandlais was an experiment. As the scholars laughed at his joke about a clown’s nose, Cheng Shi and Zhang Jizu recognized the nose’s significance.

• Cheng Shi and Ai Si knocked the returning scholar unconscious, allowing Kraun to disguise himself as him and descend through the manhole.
• Kraun bluffed his way past two scholars, obtained scholar’s robes, and investigated the underground station openly while pretending to belong there.
• Kraun learned that Sandlais was an experiment but concealed his fear by confidently directing the scholars’ work.
• Cheng Shi recognized Kraun’s clown nose, and Zhang Jizu studied it as Kraun kicked it away during an argument.
• Kraun joked that a clown had not known what made him one, making the scholars laugh and ending their conflict.

Kraun broke down after discovering the scholars’ cruel treatment of him, but an encounter with a grieving young scholar restored his hope. The scholar’s guess about a deity governing Deception and Joy led Kraun to recognize his own faith in the Lord of Grace.

• Cheng Shi laughed as Kraun wandered the underground pipes, while Zhang Jizu observed that Kraun had changed after his ordeal.
• Kraun, overwhelmed by what he had learned, stopped in a secluded passage and sobbed.
• A young scholar found Kraun crying and embraced him, believing Kraun was also a victim of the Void Energetics Department.
• The scholar vowed to continue Teacher Gelo’s research into Void Energy and guessed that a newly discovered deity governed Deception and Joy.
• Kraun seized on the scholar’s guess and declared that his clowning was an instinctive devotion to a Lord who governed Joy.
• The players realized that Kraun had found his faith and that Sandlais’s past was connected to the Lord of Grace.

Kraun tried to reveal that Sandlais was a false world run as an experiment, but the residents mistook his confession for an entertaining story. Cheng Shi, Long Jing, and Zhang Jizu considered whether Kraun’s story connected to the birth of Foolish Play.

• A young scholar realized Kraun might be involved in the experiment but hid his suspicion and left.
• Kraun returned to Sandlais, changed clothes with the unconscious scholar, and went back to his theater.
• After a time, Kraun set up a stage in the market and told the crowd that Sandlais was a prison and its residents were experimental subjects.
• The residents praised Kraun’s supposed story and begged for more, leaving him devastated that they did not believe him.
• Long Jing grew angry, but Cheng Shi told him Kraun had to make his own choices.
• Zhang Jizu wondered whether Kraun’s clown persona had led to the creation of the Mask named Foolish Play.

Kraun collapsed after performing for Sandlais, and a bearded man carried him back to the theater while the players watched. When a catastrophic blizzard struck the next day, the townspeople blamed Kraun, and the players concluded the Tower of Reason had turned Sandlais from an experimental field into a dumping ground.

• Kraun collapsed onstage in the snow, and the spectators eventually dispersed without helping him.
• A bearded man carried Kraun to the theater, then reassured his wife with a wink after telling their daughter they were experimental subjects.
• Cheng Shi, Ai Si, and Zhang Jizu followed the bearded man into the next Sandlais and found that the sky had collapsed into a lethal blizzard.
• The townspeople gathered to discuss the disaster, and one administrator suggested Kraun’s claims about observers had provoked the cold wave.
• The crowd accused Kraun of bringing the disaster, so he shut the theater door and retreated inside.
• Zhang Jizu concluded the blizzard was a man-made dumping of experimental waste, and Cheng Shi called Sandlais’s inhabitants garbage.

As Sandlais's terrified residents confronted Kraun in the Joyful Theater, he urged them to restore their faith and revealed the god he served. The chapter ended with Kraun unveiling an image of Deception and naming Him as Sandlais's only hope.

• A crowd stormed the Joyful Theater and blamed Kraun for Sandlais's crisis while he crouched onstage in fear.
• Ai Si tried to intervene, but Zhang Jizu urged her to consider whether the Great One wanted them to alter this history, and she withdrew.
• As the crowd's anger faded into despair, Kraun stood and encouraged the residents to believe that the end of the gods might be false.
• Kraun told the crowd that the Observers were the Tower of Reason, which had created Sandlais, and asked why they could not have a Lord of Grace of their own.
• Kraun opened the curtain and revealed Deception as his Lord of Grace and the god he claimed could save Sandlais.

Kraun revealed a second version of himself, which the players suspected was the God of No Faith, and urged Sandlais's residents to worship her for protection. After the residents confirmed the sealed passage beneath the town and learned Sandlais had been abandoned as an experiment, Kraun assured them that faith could still save them.

• Kraun opened the curtain and revealed a second, stiffly moving version of himself, whose strange fluctuations matched those of the ghost in the fog.
• Cheng Shi and the other players suspected that the second Kraun was the God of No Faith.
• Kraun told the residents that he had found the other Kraun in the theater and urged them to worship her rather than fear her.
• The administrator and Kraun led residents into the vertical shaft, where they found a sealed stone wall confirming that a passage had once connected to the observer below.
• The residents realized Sandlais had been an abandoned experiment, and Kraun told them that faith was never too late.

Kraun led Sandlais to worship Deception, but the growing faith erased the God of No Faith that had sustained his other self. When the townspeople discovered Kraun impersonating the divine guide, they tore him apart, and Deception truly appeared above the bloodied stage.

• Kraun encouraged Sandlais to worship Deception, and the town gathered in faith as the snowstorms worsened.
• Kraun noticed his other self fading, shut the theater, and pleaded for the god's gaze to return.
• The townspeople broke into the theater and mistook the real Kraun beneath the curtain for a living divine guide after the God of No Faith vanished.
• Kraun collapsed onstage, and the townspeople realized he was not Lord of Grace's gaze and tore him apart.
• Deception descended above Kraun's bloodied remains, and a pair of Starry Eyes from Nothingness opened.

Deception appeared in Sandlais, and the terrified residents slaughtered one another after she left, bringing the town’s story to its end. As the past rewound, Cheng Shi suspected Kraun’s remains held fragments of the Fool’s Play and rushed to the stage, where the three players each seized an object.

• Deception appeared before the silent players and residents, mocked them, and departed without punishing or blessing anyone.
• The residents of Sandlais turned on one another, and the theater filled with bodies as the town shattered into fragments.
• Time accelerated and rewound Sandlais into the past, leaving Cheng Shi to study Kraun’s remains and consider whether the clown could be resurrected to gather the fragments.
• Cheng Shi inferred that Deception had left someone a chance to save Kraun and rushed toward the stage without explaining his plan.
• Ai Si, Zhang Jizu, and Cheng Shi reached the stage together and each grabbed a different object before facing one another.

Cheng Shi, Long Jing, and Li Jingming pieced Kraun’s remains together and attempted to revive him, but the first effort failed. After the others chased Zhen Yi and Zhang Jizu through a side door, Cheng Shi secretly returned and revived Kraun, who grabbed him and called him Zhen Yi.

• Long Jing gave Cheng Shi the right ear, and the three men gathered Kraun’s scattered remains and reassembled his corpse on the stage.
• Cheng Shi used healing holy light to restore Kraun’s body, but Kraun did not awaken.
• Zhen Yi and Zhang Jizu raced toward a theater side door, and Zhang Jizu called for Cheng Shi’s help after revealing that the secret was behind it.
• Cheng Shi, Long Jing, and Li Jingming pursued Zhen Yi and Zhang Jizu, while Cheng Shi secretly returned to the stage.
• Cheng Shi continued the revival ritual alone, and Kraun awakened and seized his hand, addressing him as Zhen Yi.

Cheng Shi exposed Zhen Xin’s impersonation scheme, then realized the apparent Kraun was actually himself, who had entered the trial undercover to retrieve the Ear of Secret Prying. The chapter left Cheng Shi infiltrating Sandlais’s scavengers and discovering that the mist around the Place of Piety pointed straight to the hidden secret.

• Cheng Shi accused Zhen Xin of impersonating him, hiding the real Kraun, and framing him for trying to take Kraun’s corpse.
• Kraun looked in a mirror and realized that the apparent Cheng Shi was actually Cheng Shi, who had unknowingly impersonated himself through Zhen Xin’s talent.
• Cheng Shi’s earlier plan was revealed: he had planted an unresurrectable corpse, used a Molten Coffin, and gone undercover to retrieve the Ear of Secret Prying.
• After leaving the underground passage, Cheng Shi joined a group of scavengers and learned about Sandlais.
• Cheng Shi heard that mist surrounded the Place of Piety and recognized that it marked the location of the hidden secret.

Cheng Shi’s plan to cross the fog with smoke failed, so he improvised a deception that let him enter the underground passage and gain time to explore the Place of Piety. The chapter ended with Squinty Old Zhang recognizing Cheng Shi through clues he had planted and helping the steady faction take the lead.

• Cheng Shi’s smoke assault failed because his Muddling Through talent did not work inside the fog, and he spotted three other Cheng Shis approaching.
• Cheng Shi questioned Plott, learned about Wells’s plan, impersonated Plott, and secretly killed Wells before waiting for the players to arrive.
• Cheng Shi struck a deal with Mouth Brother, who said “I am Zhen Xin” in his place and enabled him to enter the underground pipes with the three others.
• Cheng Shi pretended to be unconscious and overheard the No Faith Experiment, then Squinty Old Zhang stabbed him while secretly slipping him a silent page.
• Squinty Old Zhang used clues from the abandoned corpse to identify Cheng Shi, led the group back to the stronghold, and gave Cheng Shi time to reach the Place of Piety first.

Cheng Shi entered the mist and bargained with Lips of Foolish Play to get through without exposing his secret, but the mist broadcast it anyway. He reached the Faith Theater and, after Mouth Brother urged him to think carefully, pushed open the door.

• Cheng Shi realized the mist required a secret as a ticket and asked Lips of Foolish Play to pay one on his behalf in exchange for the trial’s gains.
• Cheng Shi used a scavenger’s corpse and the Lush Antler Crown to prepare a self-resurrection plan before offering his secret to the mist.
• The mist broadcast Cheng Shi’s secret despite Mouth Brother’s claim that it was its own, while the scavenger’s secret was also revealed and the scavenger died again.
• Cheng Shi reached the Faith Theater and asked Mouth Brother whether he should open the door.
• Mouth Brother told Cheng Shi to think it through while the others remained lost in the Place of Piety, but Cheng Shi soon pushed open the door and entered.

Cheng Shi entered the theater in Sandlais and encountered the Ear of Secret Prying presiding over a hall filled with bloody ears. The ear joined him, and its confirmation that the Mask’s features originated in the theater left Cheng Shi closer to uncovering their truth.

• Cheng Shi opened the theater doors and found a stage performer and audience made up of bloody ears.
• The performer greeted Cheng Shi, while Mouth Brother revealed it had been eager to return and show off its way forward.
• Cheng Shi sat among the ears, but the performance ended and the audience ears withered into rotten remains.
• The Ear of Secret Prying transformed into white light and settled in Cheng Shi’s palm.
• Cheng Shi asked whether the Mask’s features originated in Sandlais, and the ear confirmed that they did.

Cheng Shi used the Time's Notebook to enter Sandlais's past, then escaped the theater's memory trap and brought Zhang Jizu back with him. He left Zhang Jizu to investigate while he planned to make the theater door require three people, hoping to trap his other teammates together.

• Cheng Shi used the Time's Notebook to replay the past, but Memory and Deception intertwined and forced him out of the theater before he could see what happened.
• Cheng Shi slipped back inside through a gap, found Kraun in Sandlais's past, and escaped the theater by using the Dice and his Fate Weaver powers.
• Cheng Shi waited outside in disguise until he identified the real Zhang Jizu, then explained that the theater held Sandlais's past and that Memory and Deception had become intertwined.
• Cheng Shi and Zhang Jizu returned to the past together, and Cheng Shi said he would make the theater door require three people to open so his other teammates would be forced to gather.

Cheng Shi and Zhang Jizu infiltrated Sandlais’s replay of the past and staged a switch that let Cheng Shi replace Kraun and die before the furious crowd. Zhen Xin revived him at the climax, and Cheng Shi learned that she had deceived even herself while playing his role.

• Cheng Shi explained his suspicions about the other Cheng Shi, the Zhens, and the Dragon King while Zhang Jizu questioned his plan.
• Zhang Jizu revealed how he had recognized the fake Cheng Shi and deduced that the Zhen sisters were impersonating him.
• As they watched Sandlais’s past unfold, Cheng Shi realized Kraun might be the original form of Mouth Brother and the other fragments.
• When Sandlais’s residents stormed Kraun’s Joyful Theater, Cheng Shi switched places with Kraun while Zhang Jizu carried the real Kraun away.
• Cheng Shi died in Kraun’s place, and Zhen Xin revived him at the final moment.
• Cheng Shi asked Zhen Xin whether she had deceived herself while playing his role.