“You seem to have lost something very important?” a voice, tinged with amusement, echoed from the depths of his mind.
Qi Si's vision blurred, and in an instant, the world spun a full one-hundred-and-eighty degrees.
Somehow, he was no longer in the high-backed chair. He now sat before the bronze table, perched on a small stool that had materialized out of thin air.
The murals on the temple's dome melted into a cascading waterfall of blood, which coalesced upon the high-backed chair into a figure with red clothes and red eyes. Beams of crimson light, some vibrant and others faint, danced through the void, twisting the space around them, making it feel thin one moment and viscous the next.
A torrent of ceaseless whispers murmured at the edge of his hearing, stirring a fear that resonated from the depths of his soul. Every fiber of his being, both spirit and flesh, trembled, threatening to shatter and scatter in every direction.
Qi Si's breathing grew ragged, his expression shifting. “I recall discarding the [Humanoid Evil] card... So there are backroom deals under the rules after all. Not even pretending to be fair, are we?”
“This will likely be the last time I come to you of my own accord,” Qi sighed languidly. “I can see you still hold many misunderstandings about me. In truth, you can trust that our interests are perfectly aligned.”
“You can also rest assured that no other entity can enter this place without your permission. I am here as a figment of your imagination—or, you might say, as a personality born from your own fractured psyche.”
“Everything I am about to tell you cannot be perceived by any other being.”
Qi Si noticed that this time, Qi wasn't directly implanting the information into his mind. Instead, he was speaking, allowing the words to be perceived through the normal laws of physics.
This was highly unusual.
What he was about to say was likely not some vague, cryptic oracle, but something much closer to the truth of the game.
Since there was no way to refuse or escape, Qi Si simply straightened his posture and gave the being in the high-backed chair a look, inviting him to elaborate.
Qi began to speak slowly. “The one who acted against you in the last instance is called ‘Li.’ He commands the dual authorities of time and fate. Simply chanting his revered name, or even thinking of it, will draw his perception and his gaze.”
“The reason I'm telling you his name is because he will soon be powerless to do anything to you. It will bring me great pleasure to know he is constantly reminded of you, yet unable to touch you.”
At this, Qi tapped his chin with a forefinger. “You should know, he visited Su Clan Village twenty years ago to do a small favor for me. As for his only grudge against you... that would likely be because you nearly killed his chosen proxy.”
“‘Nearly?’” Qi Si faltered, his mind rapidly sifting through a list of everyone he had killed—or failed to kill—over the years. He couldn't think of a single one.
Since childhood, he had understood the importance of cutting the weeds and digging up the roots. He was meticulous and left no loose ends. Aside from his early days in the Weird Game, when his inexperience led him to leave behind the loose threads of Chang Xu and Lin Chen in the *Rose Manor*, he had never let a target slip away.
A loose thread? Qi Si suddenly recalled the contents of that analysis post on the forums:
‘Is Chang Xu really dead? Didn't that master analyst Yuhan say that the *Hopeless Sea* instance was a dream? Dying in a dream doesn't mean you're really dead. Maybe it was just a ploy to gain sympathy.’
That was right. Dying in a dream wasn't true death, and the game's rules were ultimately a matter of perception.
It was like when the Puppet Master had wrapped the puppet thread around his little finger. He had clearly succeeded in controlling him, yet Qi Si had still managed to turn the tables with an operation that bordered on conceptual substitution...
So, Chang Xu was still alive?
Qi Si narrowed his eyes. “I recall stabbing him several more times just to be sure. Even a cockroach should have been dead after that.”
Qi explained, “Li, the one who bet on him, is what you players would call a ‘Main God’ of the Weird Game. After I meddled with the wager, he was not about to sit idly by. Under the guise of ensuring the game's fairness, he reverted the life state of all the pieces on the board to what they were before the cheating began.”
“‘Main God?’” A strange smile touched Qi Si's lips. “A being of that caliber has so little clout?”
Qi laughed as well. “Beneath the supreme rules, gods have never been the masters. We are merely tools responsible for eliminating unstable factors, maintaining the order of the Weird Game, and collecting sin.”
“To the rules, both we and you players are nothing more than sacrificial dogs and offerings. The only difference is whether we're the daily offerings on a shrine or the grand sacrifices made to heaven and earth during a ritual.”
Rules, always the rules... a supreme, inviolable force capable of exiling even gods...
Seizing the opportunity, Qi Si asked, “I've been meaning to ask for a while now. What is the fundamental nature of these rules you speak of? And what do they have to do with sin?”
Qi did not answer immediately. Instead, he snapped his fingers.
Countless golden specks of light converged on the bronze table from all directions, surging into a roiling ocean of light.
Qi raised a hand, the flow of all things at his command. “You can think of the entire world as a vast ocean. All people and things, past, present, and future, are the droplets of water that form this ocean. The existence of these droplets, and the tension between them, is what is called ‘sin.’”
“The rules are like the moon, which can stir the ocean's tides and maintain the world's operation. The rules themselves are also composed of countless droplets and are intimately connected to the ocean, so droplets often escape into the sea. And you must understand, the total volume of droplets is finite.”
Qi Si mused, “When the ‘moon's’ mass drops below a certain point, it will no longer be able to command the ‘ocean's’ tides. So, to keep the world running, the rules need to reclaim sin from the world?”
“That's one way to look at it,” Qi said. “If left unchecked, the rules will one day lose all their sin and spiral toward destruction. Humans once developed a ‘law of entropy’ to explain this tendency, describing it as ‘all things, as a whole, move toward a state of disorder.’”
“I must admit, some human research has indeed touched upon the essence of the world. If those scholars of ‘quantum mechanics’ were to enter the Weird Game, they might find new evidence for their theory that ‘time does not exist.’”
“Heh, heh,” Qi Si let out three dry laughs. “I've heard of these theories. So, to sum it up, the rules created the Weird Game... for world peace?”
“More accurately, for survival,” Qi corrected. With a wave of his hand, the shimmering sea on the bronze table collapsed, scattering back into golden specks that vanished into the temple.
“Sin cannot be reclaimed on its own, so the rules created the gods to act as a bridge between the world and the rules. Gods form connections with lower-dimensional beings, either by collecting their faith or by making them feel fear and despair. Sin is born from these connections and gathers upon the gods.”
“—And you can probably guess how the rules collect that sin from the gods.”
His memory touched upon the description of the [Poseidon's Scepter]: [After the Sea God was devoured, its authority was reclaimed by the rules and scattered throughout the world. From then on, false gods ran rampant, and ghosts plagued the mortal realm.] Qi Si's expression turned strange. “I've heard that creatures at the top of the food chain accumulate the most toxins. It seems the rules aren't picky eaters.”
Qi nodded, his forefinger tapping rhythmically on the armrest of his chair. “In any case, to avoid being eaten, I conspired with the other gods to design the Weird Game, allowing the rules to establish a direct connection with lower-dimensional beings.”
Qi Si's eyebrows arched slightly. “You designed the Weird Game?”
Qi deftly changed the subject. “Therefore, as the original designer, I can answer three final questions for you. Your time is running out.”
Qi Si knew that Qi had no intention of discussing the past.
Though he was plenty curious, he also knew when to quit while he was ahead.
He asked bluntly, “What is the true purpose of the Identity Cards?”
Qi lowered his gaze and answered, “It once gathered the faint glimmers of authority scattered by the old gods, reflecting the images of deities traversing time and space, guiding the lost lambs in the Sunset Ruins. As for its function within the Weird Game, you will know the true answer when the Final Instance begins.”
Qi Si pressed, “Is it the key to clearing the Final Instance? Or—an invitation to enter it?”
Qi looked at him with a ghost of a smile. “Is that your second question?”
Realizing that Qi did not want to delve deeper into the matter of the Identity Cards, Qi Si shook his head decisively.
He instead took out the [Poseidon's Scepter] from his inventory. “Second question: how do I use this item? Judging from your experience, collecting sin doesn't seem to be an easy task.”
Qi replied, “The sin within the Weird Game belongs to the rules. At your level, you cannot steal even a sliver of it. You can only consider the real world. The Poseidon's Scepter is an anomaly. You must use this anomaly to commit evil.”
He reached out, plucked a golden leaf from a nearby vine, and toyed with it for a few moments before casually tossing it down from the divine seat.
Qi Si caught it, and a scene immediately flashed before his eyes.
In a misty, riverside town, Xu Yao, dressed in a red wedding gown, was prostrated on the ground, praying devoutly.
The vision lasted only a second before fading to black. Qi Si saw a red flame ignite on his fingertip. The golden leaf curled and reshaped itself in the fire, eerily forged into a statue of the Joy God, about half the size of his palm.
The statue was adorned in festive reds and bright colors, but its pale face was both beautifully delicate and utterly soul-stealing.
[Name: Joy God Statue]
[Type: ##]
[Effect: Transform a village or a town into a Ghost Domain]
After clearing the *Flesh Eating* instance, Qi Si knew that anomalies could invade reality, but that process had been passive and uncontrollable.
The *Dialectical Game* instance had reminded him of a supernatural incident he had once caused, but the memory was so hazy that he still couldn't be sure if it was real.
But now, he knew for certain that he would soon be able to personally bring an anomaly into reality, to detonate a supernatural event in the world he lived in, to manufacture a catastrophe...
Tamed lambs are only ever ignored and sacrificed. It is the dangerous who are courted and respected. Only by possessing the power to destroy order can one earn a seat at the negotiating table.
As for where he would test the [Joy God Statue], Qi Si already had a clear choice in mind.
He looked up at the ceiling. “Third question: why do you interfere so much? To be honest, a game with constant cheating is boring, and you don't seem like the kind of god who can't afford to lose.”
Qi offered what could almost be called a gentle smile and traced a series of characters on the table. “I once pondered an interesting question. A madman challenges you to a killing contest: whoever kills more people within a set time wins. If you win, there is a 50% chance you will be executed by human society. If you lose, he will destroy the entire world, including you. I want to know, what would you choose?”
Qi Si mentally recorded the words, his eyes narrowing. “Are you asking me? Or—is this the first day we've met?”
Qi's expression remained unchanged. “So, what is your answer?”
Qi Si pictured the world's destruction: masses of ant-like people falling in droves, the god who loves not the world casting down his scarlet gaze, the putrid fluids of corpses pooling into an oil-painting green, and the earth breaking out in a rash of uneven scars...
A cheerful laugh escaped him. He leaned across the table. “Just give me a heads-up before you destroy the world. I'll find a good seat, grab some popcorn, and enjoy the show.”
Qi chuckled, and Qi Si laughed along with him, his laughter growing louder.
The laughter of the man and the god fed off each other, echoing and spiraling through the dim temple.
Amid the laughter, Qi's form grew increasingly transparent until his outline and features blurred into nothingness.
The moment he vanished completely, a notification popped up from the game space:
[Your single stay in the game space is limited to 1 hour. Additional time can be purchased with points.]