Er Hong caught on at once. His fawnlike eyes widened little by little, while the countless eyes in the room stopped moving.
Right after that, the eyes all flickered with a hint of having been deceived.
"River Witch wore Aran's skin and lived until now. Only River Witch knew the complete soul-mending technique. Only she could pull everyone onto the stage at the same time and make them perform in her script." Yu Xing looked at the Main Quest panel, where the task to find River Witch and repair his soul had stalled, and suddenly everything made sense.
The system hadn't bugged out. The Main Quest hadn't become impossible just because a key figure had already died.
The only thing keeping the task from progressing was a blind spot, right under their noses.
Aran was a talented young woman, but she was still too young to shoulder the responsibility of fully inheriting River Witch's role.
And she was nowhere near as ruthless as River Witch, who had lived for so many years.
Once they realized that the Aran they knew was actually River Witch inside, every inconsistency since the start of the instance fell into place.
Who had drawn them onto the stage? River Witch.
Who had used the threat of harming the Deductionists at River Witch's Tower to steer everyone into outright opposition to the Master of Ten Thousand? River Witch.
Why hadn't Aran risked her life to avenge River Witch? Because she was River Witch. She couldn't afford to risk her life, so she had decided to play along and stay alive.
What had the Deductionists come here for? To do what River Witch wanted—to stop the Master of Ten Thousand for good and put an end to the secret soul-stealing plot.
Why had "Aran" joined the Deductionists?