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

”Even though there was no resistance, the mastermind behind this probably isn’t using something like hypnosis,” Lin Yu summarized the patterns of the three disappearances, reaching what could now be considered a fairly certain conclusion. ”This guy is far worse at his job than you are, Old Zheng... If it were you, you definitely wouldn’t leave so many loopholes.”

Lin Yu was sure that if Old Zheng were in charge, setting everything up on his home turf, he definitely wouldn’t have given Liu Chengyang the chance to lose control and fire a signal arrow.

Moreover, the players’ memories definitely wouldn’t have been preserved either.

Even if he were restricted to only tampering with NPCs’ memories due to some limitation... Old Zheng would at least handle the NPCs’ memories cleanly and neatly.

There’s absolutely no way he’d make such a serious mistake as letting Yue Zhenqiao and the other dart masters still remember the ”total number of people,” nor would he let Yue Zhenqiao realize the ”irrationality” of having sent only one person.

Old Zheng would definitely fabricate a complete set of fake memories, even briefly modifying their cognition, making Yue Zhenqiao firmly believe that everything was perfectly fine—if that were the case, even with Lin Yu’s exceptional strength, he would inevitably be suspected, hostilely treated, and guarded against by Yue Zhenqiao and the other dart masters.

Old Zheng also acknowledged Lin Yu’s praise. ”Indeed, boss... So I think this further proves that whatever entity is behind these disappearances truly doesn’t have the ability to modify people’s cognition and memory through spiritual or soul-level means—it’s not some being with spiritual power surpassing mine using techniques I can’t even detect, but rather they’ve taken another route to cause these dart masters’ memory loss.”

”That’s what I’m curious about,” Lin Yu said in a low voice. ”Besides directly affecting the soul and spirit, are there other ways to modify memories?”

”Of course there are. The soul and body are like hardware and software. Spiritual power experts like me, other players or NPCs skilled in soul-level matters—we’re like hackers. Modifying memories is what us hackers do best,” Old Zheng paused here before continuing. ”But the Ten Realms are too vast and too complex. There are always exceptions... just like Truth Corporation’s ’Emotion Technology’ and related alchemy—those are the best examples.”

”In the Prison Mountain Realm, there are also sects capable of modifying people’s memories through methods like silver needle acupuncture and talisman soul-transfer techniques.”

As Old Zheng spoke, Lin Yu understood.

”I see... So it’s possible that some super martial arts master or high-speed demon, after eating someone, could instantly acupuncture all the dart masters to make them lose their memories?”

Lin Yu said, and Old Zheng spoke with a heavy tone.

”Although it sounds somewhat unbelievable, if the entity truly possesses such speed to accomplish it instantly, then this theory would hold.”

”Tsk, this Prison Mountain Realm isn’t simple either.”

Lin Yu stood up and looked at Yue Zhenqiao and the other two, who had been silently waiting while he thought and observed.

”Let’s go, Dart Head Yue. Let’s go meet the one I sensed.”

He now had more clear and specific questions, and it was time to find someone to answer them.

Yue Zhenqiao generously applied a talisman to Liu Chengyang as well. Then the three dart masters followed Lin Yu as they walked out of the cave area.

With Old Zheng’s guidance acting like a navigation system, Lin Yu headed straight toward his destination without any hesitation.

Although the roads within Chen Family Fort were narrow paths, they were all built quite straight and orderly. Even when slightly angled, there were rarely winding, twisting roads. It was mostly a series of square grids dividing the stone houses and low fortresses from each other.

Lin Yu led the three dart masters straight toward one of the stone fortresses.

When he reached the entrance, just as Lin Yu was about to push the door open and enter, he heard a voice behind him.

”Four guests, why aren’t you staying inside your rooms at this noon hour, wandering about instead?”

”This won’t do!”

Lin Yu turned around and saw Chen Yongde, the village chief of Chen Family Fort who had received them earlier.

This old man had somehow appeared behind them like a ghost, just standing in the middle of the road.

More importantly...

This old man had no means of shading himself from the sun or escaping the heat. He was just standing there alone under the blazing, scorching sun, seemingly completely indifferent to the intense high temperature.

It wasn’t that he could ignore the high heat—because Lin Yu could see clearly that bean-sized sweat drops were rolling off the old man like rain. He was clearly already suffering terribly from the heat.

He was standing here purely through sheer willpower!

But that was precisely the problem... Lin Yu couldn’t see any trace of Chen Yongde forcing himself to endure. It was as if he was completely unaware that he was about to be cooked alive or die from heatstroke!

Yue Zhenqiao, Wu San, and Liu Chengyang were also startled by this old man’s sudden appearance.

Then, Chen Yongde’s clearly abnormal behavior also made the three, who hadn’t known that everyone in Chen Family Fort was dead, realize that there was something strange about this old man. All three of them immediately became extremely vigilant.

”Careful!”

Yue Zhenqiao said in a low voice, already prepared to face an enemy.

Wu San and Liu Chengyang also placed their hands on their sword hilts.

But none of them made a move directly.

Yue Zhenqiao looked at Chen Yongde and spoke in a low voice. ”Elder, we came to this house looking for someone about some matters.”

If possible, Yue Zhenqiao didn’t want to start a conflict with this Elder Chen Yongde on his turf at this blazing noon hour.

Hearing Yue Zhenqiao’s explanation, Chen Yongde’s tone remained calm. ”Is that so? How urgent... but how strange...”

”This house belongs to the second son of the eldest branch of the Chen family—that is, my elder brother’s son, my own nephew.”

”And my nephew has been studying martial arts elsewhere and hasn’t returned to Chen Family Fort for a long time,” Chen Yongde’s voice turned cold. ”You wouldn’t be trying to steal something, would you?”

Looking at Chen Yongde, whose expression had turned somewhat stern, Yue Zhenqiao felt immense pressure even though the other was just a dried-up old man.

”Elder, I...”

However, before Yue Zhenqiao could offer a new explanation, a swift shadow flashed past him.

”Bam!”

With a dull thud, Chen Yongde fell to the ground with a thump.

Lin Yu put away his [Fear Torch] and let out a breath.

”Done!”

Yue Zhenqiao looked at Lin Yu, startled. ”Female warrior, you... what have you...”

”No time to argue with this old man,” Lin Yu waved his hand. ”Although this guy seems a bit strange, since he was already sweating profusely from the heat, it means his physical condition is at least at the level of a normal old man.”

”But whether knocking him out will trigger some chain reaction...”

Yue Zhenqiao said worriedly.

”It shouldn’t. I didn’t sense any connection between his spirit and anything else,” Lin Yu said with narrowed eyes. ”The mastermind behind the strangeness of Chen Family Fort has been hiding and evading. If it frantically appears and triggers some anomaly to stop us just because I knocked out an old man, that would actually be something I’d like to see.”

”At the very least, it would mean it doesn’t want us attacking the people of Chen Family Fort—if that’s really the case, then we’ll have something to do!”

”Whatever it doesn’t want to see is exactly what we should do. So at that point, we’ll just attack these villagers directly!”

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