Death Game: Starting as a Trickster, Pretending to Be a God

Following Lin Yu’s words, the pile of ”doll corpses” belonging to Sleepless Sky Huoxing began to squirm.

Soon, one of the corpses, which looked like a somewhat obese person, wobbled and stood up.

Then, a split opened along the spine on the back of that plump corpse, slowly tearing open like a zipper.

A black-haired girl wearing form-fitting pajamas crawled out from within, blinking her fiery red eyes.

”Freud, is it? Truly remarkable... So how did you know I was inside here?”

Lin Yu shrugged. ”Simple, I deduced it. Just now, although it seemed you were using a recording, you were too deliberately emphasizing the ’recording’ aspect, which made me feel you were actually live-streaming.”

”The sudden appearance of phlogiston gas later further proved this point—you must have been on-site, controlling the release of that phlogiston gas.”

”Considering your personality, such a chaotic scene, and with you also being quite confident that I would definitely appear to continue stirring up trouble... you probably wouldn’t miss such excitement, right?”

”Therefore, you definitely hadn’t run far.”

”Based on this, the Sleepless Night Family’s Alchemy Array is very powerful... If it were me, rather than running outside, I’d simply hide inside the venue.”

”And with you bringing so many corpses, mixing in would be all too easy.”

As Lin Yu analyzed, Sleepless Sky Huoxing nodded in agreement.

”Truly impressive—no wonder you can impersonate Furbollo. Your sharpness might even surpass the original!”

”I acknowledge you!”

Sleepless Sky Huoxing gave a thumbs up, then also greeted Alt Mercury. ”Hello, Grandpa Alt Mercury, long time no see.”

The two were clearly acquainted, and a smile appeared on Alt Mercury’s face.

”Oh, Huoxing, it really has been a long time... But why did you get so many corpses and even lie inside one of them? That doesn’t seem very hygienic.”

Sleepless Sky Huoxing shook her head. ”Don’t worry, Grandpa Alt. I washed them all carefully, dried them, sterilized them with high heat, and disinfected them with ultraviolet light.”

”Anyway, I’m sorry. I also colluded with this guy called ’Freud’ and participated in the assassination contract against you...”

Alt Mercury shook his head. ”It’s fine. As I said, I am a man who should have died—you should have known this long ago, right?”

Sleepless Sky Huoxing gave a slight nod. ”Yes. After all, one of the Superior-level Alchemy techniques I master is related to corpses and is an extension of the ’Life Alchemy’ lineage. So I am quite sensitive to your condition...”

”Arlan Mercury placed you with the Sleepless Night Family and allied with the Sorenson Family and the Head of the Sleepless Night Family precisely to prevent too many people who study the ’Life Lineage’ and have deep research in this lineage from contacting you and noticing something amiss.”

”He just didn’t expect that I, as a direct descendant of the Sleepless Night Family, could actually succeed in studying the ’Life Lineage’.”

Sleepless Sky Huoxing said this with a grin, and Alt nodded.

”That is indeed quite surprising... Anyway, do you think his plan is feasible?”

Sleepless Sky Huoxing nodded slightly.

”It’s generally feasible... It’s truly hard to imagine that you, a complete outsider who knows nothing about alchemy, could guess about seventy to eighty percent of Arlan Mercury’s arrangements.”

”What he used was a ’belief ritual’ to strip away the original power of himself as the ’Chosen One of the God of Life’ and then forcibly created a concept of ’Life’—this is the power of Supreme Alchemy that only a Chosen One can master. The core of any ’Supreme Alchemy’ is to create a ’concept’ and then extend it infinitely.”

”Therefore, the Emotion Lineage can activate, energize, and materialize emotions.”

”The Life Lineage can achieve the mutual transformation of life and form for all things.”

”The Fusion Lineage is about activating inanimate objects and extending them as part of a certain life.”

”However, merely creating a concept of ’Life’ is not enough—because even though you still had a breath left at the time, ’death’ was almost an established fact. Such a near-resurrection-from-death ’miracle’ cannot be achieved by creating a concept alone.”

”So, Arlan Mercury constructed another ritual. By making everyone in Sleepless City believe that Alt Mercury was still alive and was the Chosen One of the God of Life, he linked this concept of ’Life’ to you.”

Sleepless Sky Huoxing organized her thoughts, explaining patiently like a teacher giving a lecture.

Lin Yu knew she was doing this for his sake, so he also looked at Sleepless Sky Huoxing solemnly.

”Thank you for the explanation, Sleepless Sky Huoxing.”

Although this alchemy knowledge sounded basic, it was absolutely a secret not passed down outside the nobility—especially since it involved the core and essence of the alchemy practiced by each of the Five Great Noble Families.

This knowledge wouldn’t just be useful this time; Lin Yu would continue to use it in the future.

In fact... if she were only evaluating Lin Yu’s plan for this situation, Sleepless Sky Huoxing wouldn’t need to explain it so thoroughly.

By doing this, she was laying a foundation for Lin Yu.

”So, your line of thinking is correct. Dismantling this ritual through reverse operation might really succeed... But after all, this is an effect achieved through Supreme Alchemy. Even if you truly make everyone in Sleepless City realize that Alt Mercury is not the Chosen One of the God of Life, I estimate the success rate might only be about fifty percent.”

”Fifty percent? That’s enough.”

Lin Yu nodded, speaking confidently.

After all...

If Sleepless Sky Huoxing, based on all this, gave a fifty percent success rate, then Lin Yu dared to guarantee the actual success rate should exceed eighty percent.

Because he didn’t just plan to ”expose that Alt Mercury is not the Chosen One of the God of Life” and the fact that ”Alt Mercury has long been dead.”

What Lin Yu hadn’t told Alt Mercury and Sleepless Sky Huoxing was that he naturally possessed the ability to use 『belief』 to construct facts.

So he didn’t need to ”expose” that Alt Mercury had long been dead; he only needed to expose that the other party was not the Chosen One of the God of Life... and then manufacture a fact about ”Alt Mercury” being dead!

Although Lin Yu couldn’t make a living person die or a dead person come back to life through lies... Whenever Lin Yu tried to conceive such an idea, he could feel that the amount of 『belief』 required would be theoretically impossible to achieve.

Unless the entire world’s population or several gods believed devoutly and wholeheartedly could such a condition possibly be met.

But if the fact that Alt Mercury was ”alive” was itself ”fabricated”...

Then constructing a new ”fact” to overlay it and achieve his death wouldn’t require nearly as much belief!

Admittedly, the Supreme Alchemy ritual was of an extremely high-ranking nature, and Arlan Mercury’s arrangements involved gods, but Lin Yu didn’t need to forcefully dismantle this ritual head-on.

He only needed to be able to activate his own 『Class』 ability, and then he could appreciate whether the ”rules of the Death Game” or the ”ritual of the gods” had the higher ranking!