HP - Chapter 45

Kingdom of Gods 23

“The Tarot Path actually has the ability to revive players.”

Qiu Heming confirmed that he had indeed killed Luo Shen back then, taking advantage of her weakened state.

But now, she had appeared safe and sound.

If it were merely a projected image, he might have suspected technological synthesis.

But the crucial point was that she had pointed out that Zhong Xu’s identity was different from everyone else’s!

Ji Zhou stood nearby with a stern expression. “I remember that the one who knew Ah Xu had drawn a blank card was You Shaofei. Could he have been revived as well?”

Ning Zhi, however, focused on this ability to revive.

She speculated, “Such a powerful ability shouldn’t exist. Even if revival is possible, there must be some kind of restriction.”

At that moment, they heard movement behind them.

Turning around, they saw Zhong Xu packing her things—mainly preparing weapons and equipment, while also tying up her hair, which had grown longer.

“I really shouldn’t have just left last time.”

Zhong Xu was now filled with regret, a dense killing intent flickering in her eyes. “I’m going to kill my way back.”

“Wait, wait, wait…” Several team members hurriedly stopped their newly appointed captain. “Ah Xu, your injuries haven’t fully healed yet. Wait a little longer.”

“Almost healed,” Zhong Xu said calmly.

Her vision had also begun to clear. Although it was as if a grimy filter still covered her sight, she could basically see things clearly.

“Even if you have an immortal body, if the entire Tarot Path mobilizes… and they use Reversed Tarot cards at the cost of their lives, you will eventually suffer a mental breakdown.”

Qiu Heming spoke solemnly. “There are countless patients who develop psychological disorders because they cannot withstand intense pain.”

Seeing Zhong Xu’s expression loosen slightly, Qiu Heming’s features softened as well, and he said gently, “We’re teammates now. We can solve this together. You don’t have to fight alone anymore.”

Zhong Xu lowered her eyes and gave a slight nod.

With the situation urgent, the four-person team quickly held a brief meeting.

This move by the Tarot Path undoubtedly pushed Zhong Xu into the position of a public enemy of all players.

The chaotic state of the city prompted most players to want to escape the game, and to clear it, they must now all be searching for Zhong Xu’s whereabouts.

“We need to find the key clues of this world and uncover its truth. That will surely lead us to the path of clearing the game.”

Ning Zhi was the first to propose, “The four of us can split into two teams. One team will stay in the city to observe the movements of the various factions, while talking to NPCs as much as possible to gather clues. The other team will explore outside the city with the same objective. Then we’ll synchronize information at all times and make sure we never lose contact…”

“But time is too tight. I’m afraid that with too many clues, we won’t be able to grasp the key points,” Ji Zhou said, stroking his chin.

At that moment, Zhong Xu seemed to sense something and turned her head. Her gaze passed beyond the window. Not too near, not too far away, a corner of the large withering tree came into view.

“The moment the Tree of Faith withers is when the calamity occurs. At that time, the entire Kingdom of God should truly be destroyed.”

“Only killing those who have sinned is useful. I bury them deep underground, and their flesh and blood will nourish the Tree of Faith…”

In the garbage dump of Grave City, that NPC’s words echoed in her ears once again.

Now the tree had withered, and the calamity had indeed occurred, but…

She couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something deceptive hidden in that NPC’s lines.

What did “truly be destroyed” mean? What did “those who have sinned” mean?

At the same time, Ning Zhi noticed Zhong Xu’s gaze. She followed her line of sight, and her pupils tightened as well.

“What does this tree signify?”

“The origin of the nightmare.”

She still remembered the tavern owner’s meaningful reply in the alley behind the tavern.

This tree was the core clue of the world.

The same sentence surfaced in the minds of Zhong Xu and Ning Zhi at the same time.

“I think we should split our team like this…” Ning Zhi said after a moment of thought. “Qiu Heming and I will form one group, and the captain will form another with Ji Zhou. How about it?”

Ji Zhou chuckled. “You’re already calling her captain—haven’t you thought about letting the captain decide the grouping?”

…

Zhong Xu’s ears suddenly rang.

A voice from far away sounded beside her ears.

“Senior Zhong Xu… save me.”

At that moment, time seemed to return to that rainy night long ago, when she heard a girl from the Realm of Despair crying for help while she slept underground. A powerful will to survive had driven her to leave the underground.

This was Ran Ran’s voice.

Zhong Xu frowned. Why was Ran Ran’s voice reaching her?

Her Tarot card ability was “Hope,” so did that mean she now held a powerful wish, hoping to be saved by Zhong Xu?

“Senior Zhong Xu… I’m waiting for you in the Pantheon. Please, you must come…”

Ran Ran’s final words faded away, leaving behind the lingering echo of wails from the Realm of Despair.

The sounds of Ning Zhi and Ji Zhou arguing returned to her ears.

Ning Zhi gritted her teeth. “You’re completely unreasonable!”

Ji Zhou snorted coldly and turned his head. “Ah Xu, you decide!”

She spent a few seconds pulling her drifting thoughts back to reality, then said, “Let’s arrange it like this. Ji Zhou and I will stay in the urban area.”

“What?!”

Hearing this, the other three all looked shocked.

“The urban area is full of players! Players who are hunting you!”

“The most dangerous place is the safest place.”

Zhong Xu’s tone was calm and firm, sounding completely resolute. “Most players will think the same as you—the urban area is unsafe, so I must have hidden outside the city.”

“But the urban area is only so big. Outside the city, the world is vast. It would be much easier to hide or escape.”

“There are two more reasons. Ning Zhi has no combat ability, so she should avoid the monster-infested urban area as much as possible. Ning Zhi has strategic reasoning skills; exploring the world might be faster for her.”

After stating her two reasons, Zhong Xu concluded, “It’s decided. If you disagree, do as you please.”

“Fine!” Ning Zhi said immediately. “Qiu Heming, let’s go. We’ll set out now.”

Rain poured down in torrents, the water gathering into streams.

Wading through the water and hiding along the way until they reached outside the urban area, Qiu Heming asked thoughtfully, “Why did you want to team up with me?”

“Because we both have secrets.”

Although she was wearing a raincoat, the rain was so heavy that Ning Zhi had to wipe her face every few steps.

“I think neither of us truly trusts Zhong Xu, given that her identity is different from ours.”

“Oh?”

Ning Zhi said, “That’s not shameful. After all, not everyone is as sincere and pure as Ji Zhou. My lack of complete trust in Zhong Xu isn’t because of her identity, but because I’m still trying to understand her as a person.”

“So you trust me?”

“No.”

Ning Zhi was quite frank, which made Qiu Heming chuckle involuntarily.

“But we’re teammates now, so for the time being, we can only choose to trust you… We can exchange our respective secrets and piece together more complete clues.”

She paused slightly. “To show sincerity, I’ll go first.”

“After the torrential rain began in this world, those terrifying monsters started to appear. They began to grow and will eventually devour this world, because they once committed mistakes.”

Ning Zhi repeated the tavern owner’s words.

“In order not to reveal all the clues to players at once, the game designers release clues in stages, or use deceptive narration to fragment the information further.”

“To deduce the truth of the story, you have to connect the fragmented pieces of information and make bold hypotheses.”

Qiu Heming carefully considered the tavern owner’s words as repeated by Ning Zhi and murmured thoughtfully, “The key lies in ‘committed mistakes’?”

Ning Zhi nodded appreciatively. “Exactly.”

“At first, I thought the two ‘they’s referred to the same group. But later I made a bold assumption—what if one refers to the monsters, and the other refers to the players?”

“So I asked the owner, ‘Have I committed a mistake?’”

Qiu Heming’s brow twitched.

Ning Zhi said, “The owner didn’t give me a definite answer. He replied, ‘I don’t know. I wouldn’t dare say.’”

“But that answer is already very clear.”

The raincoat was shaken open. Zhong Xu spread her arms to put it on and said calmly,

“Perhaps the sinner isn’t me, but you.”

Ji Zhou raised a hand and pulled the rain hood over her head. Hearing this, he arched an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“‘They once committed mistakes,’ ‘Only killing those who have sinned is useful’… The two NPCs I encountered both directed the clues toward ‘mistakes,’ and they were not referring to just one person.”

Ji Zhou paused slightly. “What is a sinner? Aren’t people who commit mistakes called sinners?”

She curled her lips, but her eyes burned with anger.

“What everyone heard at the very beginning was a lie.”

That game developer entered the game personally and planted a lie from the very start through deceptive narration.

His words could not be treated as rules, because in this level, he was the player ‘Xu Mu.’

And in the detailed rules released by the game system, it never once mentioned that there was only one sinner among the gods. No wonder Little Butterfly had reminded her at the very beginning to listen carefully to the rules—only those issued by the system were the true rules.

“So that’s it. No wonder…”

Qiu Heming and Ning Zhi got into an abandoned car by the roadside.

Ning Zhi sat in the driver’s seat and tilted her head. “What do you mean ‘no wonder’? Can you talk about what you’ve been hiding now?”

“Not long ago, I ran into a player I had met in the previous level. I don’t know his real name, but the role he played before was called Liang Qing.”

Qiu Heming subconsciously tried to push up his glasses, then suddenly remembered that he had lost them at the Tarot Path base.

“At the time, he told me that the monsters had returned his memories.”

Ning Zhi found the statement familiar. “The tavern owner told me the same thing.”

Qiu Heming nodded lightly. “He said we had all been deceived… then invited me to team up, saying he wanted me to regain those so-called memories as well.”

“Then why didn’t you agree?”

“I didn’t trust him.”

The car had already started and sped through the curtain of rain.

“His goal wasn’t to clear the game, but to use the information gap to rule this world.”

“Huh?” Ning Zhi found it absurd. “Then he should go to the Pantheon… Wait—so the method of ‘reversing the cards,’ he was the one who told you?”

It wasn’t something an NPC had said at all. He had been lying.

Ning Zhi was indeed perceptive.

At this point, Qiu Heming no longer concealed it. “Yes.”

“Then why did you hide this?”

Qiu Heming looked through the car window into the distant darkness.

“I knew full well what would happen after reversing the cards, yet I still did it. Now that you know, aren’t you afraid?”

Bang—

A colossal being rose abruptly from the ground, crushing a high-rise building beneath one foot.

Dust billowed upward, only to be instantly swallowed by the torrential rain.

“This is madness!” In the dark alley, Ji Zhou looked up at the distant scene, his expression cold. “They’re trying to destroy this world entirely.”

“No one’s here. Let’s go.” Zhong Xu adjusted her rain hood and continued forward.

Ji Zhou hurried after her. “Ah Xu, are you really going to the Pantheon?”

Sevyn here ~~~

Reminder Ran Ran Star Card = Hope (as the ability)

Enjoy!