Ichikishimahime, Tagitsuhime

Zi Xu pushed open the stone door and was hit by a familiar sensation of teleportation. Unlike the illusory teleportation from before, this time it was genuine—so much so that he felt a slight discomfort in his stomach.

Zi Xu had already guessed the truth behind his "cycle" in the previous space. There had never been a real cycle from the start; everything was the effect of a Genjutsu. From beginning to end, what Zi Xu saw with his eyes was never the true scene.

He had merely been repeating the cycle of the illusion over and over. As for whether the emotions displayed by the illusion's residents were real, he couldn't say. After all, those people were nearly fully turned into stone statues. He didn't know if Tagorihime possessed a technique to seal people's consciousness within an illusion.

"Hmm? This place seems pretty normal—no strange buildings, no suspicious people... Speaking of which, where did Orochimaru go? I forgot to ask Tagorihime. It'd be best if he died here..."

Zi Xu raised an eyebrow. The space behind the stone door wasn't very spacious, and thick fog obscured his vision. The slippery rock walls and the not-too-rough stalactites at least indicated that this place was still within the bounds of Ryūchi Cave. He felt he probably hadn't fallen into a Genjutsu.

"System, oh System, I never thought you, with your honest face, would set a trap for me. I'll have to be more careful about which missions I can take in the future." As he sent out Shadow Clones to scout ahead, Zi Xu half-jokingly complained to the system.

He knew full well it wasn't the system's fault, but he just wanted to vent. Over time, he'd developed a habit of joking with the system—it at least helped lift his mood.

As Zi Xu dispatched more and more Shadow Clones, he seemed to sense something off. In an instant, he dispelled all the clones he had sent out.

Normally, when a Shadow Clone is dispelled, the chakra within the clone and the memories from its duration return to the original body. But Zi Xu could clearly feel that the total amount of chakra returning was wrong. If his total chakra was 100, splitting into several clones would divide that 100 equally among them and the original. Even accounting for consumption during the clone's existence, he should recover about 90.

But the current situation was that Zi Xu had only recovered about 50 chakra. A large chunk had vanished into thin air, and the memories from the clones showed nothing unusual—just continuous walking.

After recalling the clones, Zi Xu narrowed his eyes, scanning the surroundings for anything abnormal. His gaze eventually locked onto the fog—the only anomaly.

"Such an obvious trap? But there doesn't seem to be a good way to counter it..." Though Zi Xu knew the fog was absorbing chakra, he had no good solution. Could he use Silent Power to freeze the fog? He couldn't do that yet.

"Thinking alone won't help. Time to act. If there's no retreat, I'll just charge forward." Watching the fog creep toward him, Zi Xu gritted his teeth and plunged into it, intending to sprint all the way through.

He wouldn't have known without trying. Once inside, Zi Xu personally experienced the fog's power. If an ordinary person felt like they were flying through the air when running—light and effortless—then entering this fog felt like a bird whose wings had been filled with lead, crashing into water. Every movement required immense effort.

But that wasn't a problem. For an ordinary person, this place would be impossible to traverse, but Zi Xu's physique was far from "ordinary." His speed barely decreased; it only felt like the air around him had thickened slightly. Other than that, there was no difference.

"It doesn't drain much stamina, but the chakra absorption is heavy..." Feeling the steady trickle of chakra being pulled from his body, anxiety crept into his heart, but he forcibly calmed himself using Silent Power.

A fork appeared ahead—the first branching path. He guessed that only one of the two paths was safe, making the next choice crucial.

His breathing, which had grown slightly erratic, gradually steadied. His perception of the surroundings sharpened. As he ran, he noticed many strange symbols on the wall before the fork. He stopped, examining them.

He touched the paint on the mural. Though he couldn't immediately tell what it depicted, a small flake of black paint came off on his fingers, staining them dark. Cursing the paint's quality, he focused on studying the mural.

"Looks like snake murals? There are snake-like drawings before the fork too..." Zi Xu observed. On the left and right sides of the fork, a purple snake and a black snake were carved respectively, with a large green snake in the middle. Each mural had its own unique style, vividly detailed.

The purple snake's every scale was meticulously rendered, reflecting light so realistically that it seemed to gleam. In the mural, the purple snake coiled its body, revealing only one wide-open eye, its tongue frozen mid-flick, looking curious.

The black snake looked utterly miserable, its eyes half-closed as if it hadn't woken up. Its pitch-black scales reflected no light, and its tail hung limply, giving it the appearance of a sickly creature.

The green snake seemed lively. Its long body wasn't coiled solemnly but loosely twisted in a relaxed manner. Its head was held high, its eyes filled with clear curiosity, and its tail slightly raised, as if anticipating something.

Corresponding to each mural were some crookedly carved words:

Purple Snake: The black snake is lying. The right path is a dead end. Black Snake: I never lie. The right path is a safe path. Green Snake: One of the purple snake and the black snake is lying.

"If the green snake is absolutely impartial, then assuming the purple snake is telling the truth and the black snake is lying, the purple snake says the left is safe. Since the black snake is lying, it should mean 'I always lie; the right path is a dead end.' But if the black snake always lies, then is 'the right path is a dead end' also a lie?" Zi Xu's mind raced as he quickly analyzed the mural's information.

"Assuming the black snake is telling the truth—it doesn't lie—the right is safe, the left is a dead end. The purple snake is lying, so its words should be 'The black snake isn't lying; the right path isn't safe,' meaning the left is safe..." Zi Xu's palms grew damp. The rapid chakra drain made his heartbeat erratic again, and cold sweat beaded on his forehead.

"Either way, it's a dead end... Wait. If the green snake is the one lying, then interpreting it normally: the black snake lies, the right is a dead end; the black snake doesn't lie, the right is safe—still no way out..."

Faced with this unsolvable puzzle, he didn't blindly pick a path. The more critical the moment, the more his thoughts wandered. Finally, he looked at the black paint on his palm, thought it over, and made a bold decision.

He rubbed his hands repeatedly over the black snake mural, coating his entire palm black, then extended his "claws" to the purple and green snakes, smearing the black paint all over them. In an instant, the once-sacred purple snake and the mischievous green snake were turned into two pitch-black, charcoal-like rods under his hands.

The purple and green snakes had never suffered such indignity. Zi Xu thought he saw a hint of human-like grievance in the mural snakes' eyes, but he shook his head, dismissing it as an illusion, and waited to see what would happen.

"Rumble, rumble~" A violent tremor shook the area. Rocks around the cave entrance crumbled, and the rising dust mixed with the strange fog. Through the haze, Zi Xu seemed to see something fly out of the three murals—something so fast that even his sharp eyes couldn't track it.

"It worked. Looks like I guessed right." Zi Xu was inwardly excited. He didn't know if this was the correct answer, but at least the situation had changed. However, the area of collapse was growing larger, and the situation seemed... a bit off?

"Big sister, don't stop me! That brat dared to smear dirt on my beloved scales! Those scales I've been maintaining for hundreds of years! I worked so hard to make them beautiful, and he defiled them with filthy ash! Aaaaah!"

A sharp female voice came from the dust. From her tone, Zi Xu could tell she was furious—like someone whose freshly done nails had been scratched.

He wondered which unlucky fool had made the owner of that voice so angry. Haha, how amusing. Hey... wait. It seemed the only person in this space who could have angered her was himself. Wasn't he in danger?

As Zi Xu nervously looked up at the ceiling, another voice confirmed his suspicion, making him even more anxious.

"Third sister, calm down. This is his trial. If he fails, you'll certainly be allowed to deal with him. Then you can kill or torture him as you please. But during the trial, we can't break the rules, understand?" A rational, calm, mature female voice followed. No need to guess—it was Zi Xu's doing.

"But didn't that one who looked like us also fail? Why can't I eat him? I feel like eating him would boost me a lot..." The lively female voice spoke again, her anger fading.

"He's already half our kind. White Immortal won't allow us to eat him. More importantly, that guy's body is strange. Are you sure you want to eat him? If things go wrong, he might end up eating you instead..." As their conversation ended, the dust before Zi Xu mostly cleared, and he could finally see the women's faces:

Both wore outfits similar to Tagorihime's. One was a loli with cyan-blue hair, a pale gold crown, and cyan-blue magatama earrings. She wore a light cyan robe with a single-magatama green ornament on her chest, and had sharp teeth and a pink tongue.

The other had similar decorations but with brown hair, a white robe, sharp teeth, and a blue tongue. She was tall and slender, which, compared to the little loli beside her, was a bit of a blow to the latter's pride.

The brown-haired beauty nodded slightly at Zi Xu, pulling the sulking loli aside and speaking:

"Greetings, trial taker. We are Ichikishimahime and Tagitsuhime, the shrine maidens responsible for testing trial takers."

------Author's Note------

Good morning. Can't sleep from hunger.