Zong Jiu suddenly felt as though the entire universe had become absurdly surreal.
He had only casually brought up Zhuge Liang and rambled a little about Chinese history, yet somehow Zhuge An had extracted an alarming amount of information from those few offhand remarks.
Zong Jiu had always considered himself cautious.
Careful.
Measured.
But every question Zhuge An asked was sharper than the last, each one driving deeper than the previous. And because Zong Jiu was the one seeking cooperation in the first place, he couldn’t simply refuse to answer outright.
Without realizing it, he had already cornered himself.
Expressionless, Zhuge An studied him for a long moment before dropping a single sentence like a depth charge into still water.
“I’m curious.”
His voice was calm.
“How did you bypass the system and enter the Infinite Loop without going through normal selection?”
Zong Jiu’s eyelids twitched.
An ominous feeling rose quietly in his chest.
Zhuge An’s gaze was terrifyingly sharp, like an X-ray peeling away layers one by one.
“How did you do it?” he continued. “Did you come from an instance? Are you some intelligent NPC from an S-rank scenario—similar to the entity from Ancient Well of Evil Spirits—that possessed a human body and smuggled itself inside?”
Zong Jiu: “...”
What the hell?
How could this person deduce that much from so little?
If he admitted that Zhuge An’s guess wasn’t entirely wrong, Zong Jiu seriously suspected those rotating Yin-Yang fish overhead would immediately descend and obliterate him on the spot.
“No. Impossible.”
Yet before Zong Jiu could respond, Zhuge An rejected his own theory.
“If you belonged to the Yin aspect, the four Yang trigrams—Heaven, Lake, Fire, and Thunder—would have reacted to you.”
His brows furrowed slightly.
“It also makes no sense for the system to permit unrestricted soul replacement. That violates both logic and the foundational rules governing the Infinite Loop.”
“Which means…”
His cold eyes narrowed.
“You came directly from the real world.”
“But you were never screened.”
“It was more like… an instantaneous transfer.”
Then Zhuge An added quietly:
“And most importantly—you seem to understand me unusually well.”
Zong Jiu: “……”
Earlier, he had only been trying to discuss Chinese history.
Now, aside from the fact that he had transmigrated into a novel, Zhuge An had practically stripped every secret off him layer by layer.
Danger.
This man was dangerous.
Still unwilling to surrender completely, Zong Jiu forced himself to remain calm.
“Why do you think that?”
“Because you still remember the real world.”
Zhuge An looked at him deeply.
“Every contender who enters the Infinite Loop has a cognitive barrier placed upon their memories.”
“You still retain those memories somewhere in your mind, but they’re locked away in the deepest recesses of consciousness. Under normal circumstances, you cannot actively recall them, nor can you verbally express them.”
“And as time passes, those memories gradually fade.”
Zong Jiu’s expression slowly changed.
“The barrier isn’t absolute,” Zhuge An continued evenly. “Knowledge itself isn’t erased. What disappears is the awareness that you once lived in another world.”
“Under certain conditions, fragments may be temporarily unlocked.”
“For example—if clues within an instance relate directly to concepts from reality, then the system may partially release relevant memories.”
“Like what you just mentioned.”
“Zhuge Liang.”
“China.”
“If those terms existed naturally within the instance’s clues, then my memories concerning them would not have been restricted.”
“The system only loosens the seal under very specific conditions.”
Zong Jiu fell silent.
Suddenly, countless details from the original novel flashed through his mind.
It wasn’t that reality had changed after he transmigrated.
Rather—
everyone inside the Infinite Loop had been altered.
The system had locked something inside their minds.
And because of that, nobody could leave.
Nobody could even remember where they originally came from.
A chill quietly crawled up Zong Jiu’s spine.
He smiled faintly.
“Then why do you remember?”
Zhuge An didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, he merely observed him in silence.
His fingers interlocked neatly before him as he stared without blinking.
For some reason, Zong Jiu had the strange feeling that after this conversation, the icy indifference surrounding Zhuge An had softened ever so slightly.
Then the strategist finally spoke.
“You need to prove your value.”
He skipped past the previous topic entirely.
“If your words insult my intelligence, this alliance may end at any moment.”
The fleeting illusion of warmth vanished instantly.
Zong Jiu laughed dryly.
“So that handshake earlier really was fake cooperation.”
“You never intended to treat me as an equal partner. You only wanted information.”
“Courtesy demands reciprocity,” Zhuge An replied calmly. “And in war, deception is perfectly acceptable.”
Good lord.
This guy really held grudges.
“And aren’t you doing the exact same thing?”
Zong Jiu smiled without warmth.
“Have you finally learned how to control your emotions?” Zhuge An raised a brow slightly. “No need to look so defensive. If I truly intended to act against you, you wouldn’t still be standing here.”
“Relax.”
For better or worse, the situation had already reached the point where both sides had to expose their cards.
Zong Jiu pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Fine. My bad luck for making a deal with someone this shady.”
The moment he said that, he could’ve sworn a faint smile flashed across Zhuge An’s face.
“Let me guess.”
The strategist resumed speaking immediately.
“You still haven’t solved the S-rank clue Dr. Chu gave you.”
His tone wasn’t questioning.
It was certainty.
“Because you’re missing critical information.”
At this point, Zong Jiu couldn’t even be bothered hiding things anymore.
After weighing everything carefully, Zhuge An truly was his only breakthrough.
Even without Dr. Chu’s clue, someone like Zhuge An would eventually deduce the truth on his own anyway.
Telling him now merely accelerated the process.
After all, No. 3 wasn’t someone an insignificant E-rank needed to worry about.
“An integer exists between three and four.”
Zhuge An repeated the sentence softly, brows tightening immediately.
“pnpso is definitely encrypted text. Most likely a Vigenère cipher.”
“Don’t ask how I determined that. Explaining the entire process would waste time.”
“You only need the conclusion.”
“It requires a key.”
“And that key is still missing.”
Classical ciphers like the Vigenère system required three components:
ciphertext,
key,
and plaintext.
At present, they possessed only the ciphertext.
pnpso.
Without the key, the message remained impossible to decipher.
The moment Zhuge An entered deduction mode, his entire demeanor changed.
The aloof, untouchable strategist disappeared completely.
Instead, he became oddly talkative, pacing around the ward while muttering rapidly to himself.
“There are over three thousand books inside the library. By examining the publication indexes, you can roughly infer the era each belongs to.”
“Only one book showed signs of torn pages.”
“Page thirty-four.”
“And coincidentally, that book shouldn’t even exist in this era.”
“It concerns superstring theory.”
“Ice-pick lobotomies weren’t abolished on a large scale until 1970. String theory was first proposed in 1968. Superstring theory emerged even later.”
“Yes… that’s correct.”
“The timeline itself is wrong.”
Zong Jiu honestly wanted to applaud.
With barely any clues at all, Zhuge An had somehow deduced information an entire group of veterans had failed to uncover after searching all day.
This deal was absolutely worth it.
Halfway through pacing, Zhuge An suddenly turned back toward him.
“I already know the answer to this instance.”
“If I wanted to, I could clear it immediately.”
Zong Jiu: “……”
“You’ve revealed your trump card,” Zhuge An said evenly. “But I still possess more information than you.”
“You’ve proven your worth.”
“So one final question.”
“If your answer satisfies me, I’ll give you the remaining clues.”
Zong Jiu crossed his arms.
“Go ahead.”
“Who do you believe is the mole—the trainee who received the different identity card?”
Zong Jiu raised a brow.
“He’ll be knocking on the door very soon.”
For the first time, clear appreciation appeared in Zhuge An’s eyes.
True to his word, he began revealing the rest.
“Since you separated from Messiah’s team and entered the alternate-dimensional space, you should already realize something.”
“There are two distinct dimensions coexisting inside this S-rank instance.”
“The clue about the integer between three and four doesn’t literally refer to numbers.”
“It refers to dimensionality.”
“Three-dimensional space.”
“And four-dimensional space.”
The atmosphere inside the ward seemed to shift violently.
Like a silent storm sweeping through still air.
“You truly are exactly as the prophecy described, Zong Jiu.”
As Zhuge An lowered his hand, the massive Taiji Eight Trigrams formation gradually began dissolving into light.
“One final piece of advice.”
His eyes narrowed slightly.
“Be careful of one person.”
“I’m not certain whether he’s inside this instance, but eventually your paths will cross.”
“He is your mortal enemy.”
Zong Jiu frowned.
“Who?”
Zhuge An answered calmly.
“No. 1.”
“No one knows his real name.”
“We usually call him—”
“The Devil.”
“The same prophecy you mentioned earlier?” Zong Jiu smiled lazily. “Magicians don’t believe in prophecy.”
Just before the Taiji formation vanished completely, Zhuge An seemed to smile faintly as well.
“You’ll come back to me eventually.”
“When the threads of fate spun by destiny finally converge.”
At that exact moment—
every trainee inside the mental asylum received a system notification.
[S-rank trainee Zhuge An has cleared the instance.]
Then came a knock at the ward door.
Behind the reinforced glass window stood Sheng Yu, anxiously pounding on the door while calling for Zong-ge.
Zong Jiu remained motionless for a moment.
Trading a single clue for this much information…
he had profited enormously.
After calming his emotions, he finally turned and walked toward the door.