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

”Even if Xie Chong is Zhu Qiansi’s blood descendant, why did his body have to be torn apart?”

”Shouldn’t you respect the guy’s corpse more?”

Facing Lin Yu’s question, Chen Yuanye, who had already opened up, paused for a moment before continuing.

”More than respecting the corpse, what I care about is... how to revive Zhu Qiansi and Willow Town, to let them see the light of day again.”

”I can’t accept them dying such an unjust death, especially dying with a stain on their name—so I have to bring Willow Town and Qiansi back into the world,” Chen Yuanye gritted his teeth and said. ”So after that old dog, the Taiqing Sect Founder, died, I started making my moves... I first renamed ’Liu Town’ to ’Willow Town,’ then gradually altered the county records of Liu Town, causing its past to blur with Willow Town in people’s perception.”

”After that, I kept setting up in Liu Town, planting Causality Silk on its residents.”

”At the same time... I made sure Xie Chong, as Qiansi’s blood descendant, gained widespread fame both before and after death—which meant he formed connections with most people in the Prison Mountain Realm.”

”Once the number of people connected to Qiansi grew large enough—to the level of fame and quantity we see today—I could then use Xie Chong’s remains to lure them all to the new ’Willow Town’... then both Qiansi and Willow Town could re-emerge into the world through the ’Karmic Ability’!”

”Just part of the remains would be enough to be safe, but two pieces... the effect is even better!”

Mystic Cloud Master exclaimed, ”Are you insane? The people of Willow Town died three hundred and fifty years ago!”

”But Qiansi didn’t die,” Chen Yuanye growled again. ”Just like me—the consciousness of all of them was preserved by Qiansi within the Causality Silk. As long as Qiansi is revived, Willow Town will be revived!”

”So... we’re just one step away. We just need Xie Chong’s remains to reach Willow Town!”

Hearing this, both Lin Yu’s group and Snowy Owl’s group suddenly understood what the ”reach Willow Town” and ”prevent Willow Town from appearing” in their tasks meant.

Lin Yu pressed his forehead. ”Ah... ah! What a roundabout way to go!”

Li Nian also caught on. ”So, this dungeon was actually supposed to be a simple offense-defense centered around Xie Chong’s remains... We follow the escort team to deliver his remains to Willow Town, then Willow Town automatically appears, and we clear it.”

”By the same logic, that group of three over there just needed to grab these remains and destroy them to succeed... right?”

As Li Nian spoke, Lin Yu nodded painfully.

”Sorry, this one’s on me... I made things complicated.”

Although Lin Yu was used to most of his dungeons being abnormal, as Li Nian had said, this dungeon actually had a ”normal,” ”simple” solution.

He looked at the employer Flying Knife and apologized again. ”Sorry, I made things complicated.”

Flying Knife was stunned for a moment, then waved his hand. ”It’s fine, it’s fine. Without you, I wouldn’t have made it through either... This way, I might even snag an extra achievement like Threading the Needle, since I know the whole truth now.”

”Besides, isn’t clearing it easy now? We have no conflict of interest with this... this surviving senior from Willow Town. We just need to give him the remains and head to Willow Town together—doesn’t that make everyone happy?”

Chen Yuanye nodded and spoke. ”Not bad. It seems there are still sensible smart people among you out-of-realm folks!”

His gaze at Flying Knife was full of relief, then he turned to Lin Yu.

”It seems there are no more questions between us. So, let’s cooperate happ—”

”Bang!”

A bullet hit Chen Yuanye’s forehead, and he slowly fell.

Lin Yu put away his revolver and said calmly, ”Blathering on and on. Who wants to cooperate with you?”

Flying Knife was startled. ”What are you doing?”

”Doing the right thing, of course—I put in so much effort to find a way to clear it together, and now taking a shortcut would undo all that progress?”

Lin Yu turned around and looked at the dejected Mystic Cloud Master and the dumbfounded Snowy Owl trio.

”Are you all brainwashed by his spiel? Do you actually believe that Zhu Qiansi is innocent? The Taiqing Sect Founder killed her three hundred and fifty years ago, so after three hundred and fifty years, she gets to kill people freely with Causality Silk? Forget the rest... the people from Chen Family Fort and Golden Fortune Escort Agency were acting with me—do they deserve to die just to clear that spider’s name?”

”And Xie Chong was her blood descendant—didn’t he just have rotten luck to be stuck with a spider great-great-great-grandmother like that? Oh, ’everyone wronged me, so I don’t care anymore, I’ll let down the whole world’—if this self-righteous revenant had just stormed Taiqing Sect directly and slaughtered your Sect Founder, I still wouldn’t support it since the Taiqing Sect members didn’t seem to know either... but at least I could say it was a grudge between the right parties, right?”

”Bastard!”

Another puppet’s angry shout came from outside the door.

”Oh, reconnected pretty fast, huh? Heard that, did you?”

Lin Yu sneered as he looked at the door. ”Brother, it’s fine to fool people, but don’t actually believe that you and your master are innocent, good people and monsters persecuted by the whole world. They might not catch it, but I hear the slant in your words—Zhu Qiansi was ’kind-hearted’ in Willow Town, but what about before Willow Town?”

Although Lin Yu didn’t know the details of what happened back then, he could hear the flaws in the other party’s words.

Just like how Mystic Cloud Master’s story was off, even though this ”Chen Yuanye” was saying the opposite of Mystic Cloud Master, that didn’t mean he was telling the truth.

”Maybe the Taiqing Sect Founder was guilty, but... the Thousand-Eyed Thousand-Silk Demon Lord isn’t necessarily clean either. You just said she always lived in Willow Town and didn’t have time to harm people—that argument doesn’t hold up. A thousand-year-old great demon sneaking out every day to harm people, and a whole town of idiots could keep an eye on her? Besides, with that Causality Silk ability, killing someone from a thousand miles away wouldn’t be hard at all—Willow Town had a million people, seventy to eighty percent were infected with Causality Silk, that’s seven or eight hundred thousand. How could a few thousand living souls be enough? The skill’s consumption would be way too low... If the consumption were really that low, why are you struggling so hard to gather souls for her now?”

”Of course... you might also be just as deceived by your master as Mystic Cloud Master was by his Sect Founder. After all, Zhu Qiansi is a great demon who took human form and cultivated for who knows how many years. Playing with a pure, naive human kid from your town—it’s like playing with a dog!”

Li Nian also nodded. ”If you ask me, the Taiqing Sect Founder was right to do what he did. Just from those spiders swarming all over the mountain chasing people and chomping on them—how could Zhu Qiansi be any good? At the very least, she probably cheated on her husband... Her descendant Xie Chong looks completely human, but with so many carriage-wheel-sized spiders, who did she have them with?”

Lin Yu and Li Nian traded barbs, and the dark mass outside the door could no longer hold back. ”You two bastards—die!”

The dark mass surged toward the Taoist Temple. Lin Yu raised Xie Chong’s remains high and then lit the torch. ”Take one more step, and I’ll burn these two corpses!”

Although Xie Chong’s remains were extremely tough, the pale flame in Lin Yu’s hand exuded a natural aura of fear, making all the puppets stop in their tracks.

But Lin Yu knew this was only temporary because of the threat.

He turned back and looked at Mystic Cloud Master.

”What are you standing there for, Daoist? What about the means you’ve prepared over the years against the Thousand-Eyed Thousand-Silk Demon Lord?”

”And you three... do you still want to clear this dungeon or not? If this keeps up, I’ll defect to the spider side!”

Hearing Lin Yu’s words, Mystic Cloud Master finally reacted.

”Right away, right away!”

The old Daoist hurriedly pulled out a pile of talismans and began arranging them.

Snowy Owl’s trio also got moving, pulling out their weapons to prepare for battle.

Seagull, pulling out his notebook, sighed as he spoke.

”Sometimes I feel like a skewer of kebabs, getting flipped back and forth every day... Which side is actually the good guys?”

”The world isn’t just black and white—there’s always opposition between black and white...”

Lin Yu looked at Seagull and spoke seriously.

Seagull chimed in again at his words. ”You mean there’s also gray in this world?”

”No, I mean there’s also the possibility of a black-eating-black, dog-eat-dog situation where both sides are problematic.”