Lying on his back on the rooftop, feeling the sunlight of reality on his body, Cheng Shi had a strong sense of surviving a disaster.
He didn't expect this method to actually work!
Having won a high-stakes gamble with his life and fortune again, Cheng Shi couldn't help but feel that he really had a bit of good gambling luck.
He took out the dice from his pocket, looked at it against the dazzling sunlight, and the 1 point on the dice became very glaring under the reflection.
"Predestined Fate? Heh, bullshit."
Cheng Shi smiled, and casually threw the dice away.
The dice rolled quickly on the rooftop ground, and after a few turns, it stopped steadily, the brightly lit 1 point still facing upwards, unchanged.
As if protesting against Cheng Shi who denied it, or mocking Cheng Shi who was powerless to change it.
Cheng Shi didn't look at it, but just closed his eyes, everything he had experienced in the past five days surging in his mind, carefully sorting through all the details, doing a review of his successful clearance.
There is no such thing as eternal good luck, it's just quiet effort.
After each Trial, he would review all the operations within it, striving to make his intuition sharper, his nerves tighter, and his Fraud more natural.
This was Cheng Shi's way to win.
But these efforts were too tiring, far less practical than being a slacker.
So Cheng Shi's ultimate dream was to latch onto a Da Lao and be a slacker.
Unfortunately, he always encountered all sorts of idiots in the Trial, and rarely had the chance to slack through an entire game.
This Trial was actually well-matched, there were many Da Laos, and he should have been able to slack all the way through.
But the answer to the Trial didn't allow him to slack, or rather, the Da Laos didn't seem to have the intention of carrying him.
The five mask rewards after the end of the Trial explained this:
None of these 2400+ Da Laos died!
Why didn't they die?
Perhaps it was because they had already seen through the answer.
"They're all geniuses!!"
Cheng Shi sighed, turning his memory back to the moment the Trial arrived.
The hint given by Death was: There is only one path leading to Death, find it, and offer your sacrifice!
Referring to previous Death Trials, this was clearly about finding a sacrifice, killing him, offering him to He, and thus ending the Trial.
But what was strange about this Trial was that Eternal Bloom Town, where the Trial was located, did not accept Death, or rather, Death was difficult to descend upon it.
But things were not absolute; at least in a Town affected by a demigod item, another demigod item could create Death.
So everyone's initial goal was to find the killer and decipher the Trial clues from him.
During this period, everyone's direction of effort was the same.
Only Wei Guan, who was like a bystander investigating in the Town for half a day, used the means of foolishness to deduce an answer.
Then he used the killer with extreme certainty and killed himself!
He "committed suicide"!
This was also why everyone couldn't find any traces at the scene.
Because it was him himself, who cleared all traces.
A Hunter of foolishness perfectly faked the scene of his own Death, leaving his teammates deeply trapped in inexplicable fear.
During that time period, no one expected that they were the sacrifice!
Offering oneself was the only path.
The sacrifice valued by Death in this Trial was not a specific person, but the wisdom and courage to face Death!
The second person to "stumble upon" the answer was Yun Ni.
This Assassin Miss of annihilation had no clue; she just wanted to speed up the process of getting clues, so she resolutely returned to the hotel and began to rush towards the killer!
You should know that annihilation is the opposite of Death; what He advocates is even more extreme than Death's advocacy of Death without dispersion.
So His followers disregard life, not only others' but also their own.
In their view, Death is just a state before heading towards annihilation, and it is not scary.
But when she sensed that people from the Grand Tribunal were at the hotel, and even sensed that there was a demigod item in the room, she suddenly felt that she had found the answer:
That is, in a Town protected by a demigod item, die under a demigod item!
So she calmly went to her Death, embraced "annihilation", and took the opportunity to "save" her teammates.
But at that time, she overlooked one point, which was also a point Cheng Shi only realized after four people had died!
That is, the rule contained in the sentence "There is only one path leading to Death" is not just one!
There is also a very crucial point: Each method of Death can only happen once!
Yun Ni was very lucky; without fully understanding this hint, she ran into Mercsius of the Grand Tribunal and died under Mercsius's staff.
But the Ascetic Monk who followed wasn't so lucky.
This Warrior of silence took a hit from a demigod item's lightning punishment but didn't die.
At that moment, he immediately understood the meaning of this hint, and then decisively chose to pounce on Cheng Shi, pouncing on that When Fear Arrives!
There was never a second killer at the scene, nor was anyone muddying the waters.
It was the Ascetic Monk who chose himself, and then used that replica to kill himself!
Although Wei Guan's Death was by subjective will, the perpetrator was Ados, dying by his hand from When Fear Arrives!
Yun Ni's Death, the executioner was Mercsius, dying by his hand from Moment of Execution!
And the Ascetic Monk, he was the first true suicide; he used fear to kill himself, dying by suicide from When Fear Arrives!
These three methods of Death were disabled after these three people cleared the Trial.
There were few methods of Death left for Cheng Shi, Du Xiguang, and Fang Jue.
And Du Xiguang was because he read Ados's memory and found that he hadn't followed Wei Guan to clear the murder traces, thus guessing Wei Guan's intention.
But at this time, he was deeply trapped in a dire situation with almost no chance to kill himself, so he could only find another way, using special means to return to the past, letting his Death replace the Ascetic Monk's Death, and tampering with memory!
Thus, cause and effect were misplaced.
Because the Ascetic Monk had already left the Trial and was distorted in memory, he disappeared from everyone's minds.
And Du Xiguang found a loophole, using When Fear Arrives in memory to kill himself, dying by suicide from When Fear Arrives.
However, due to his excessive performance, Fang Jue missed all the clues, and even the slightest traces left in the original memory were erased, the new timeline directly throwing him into the Executive Law Bureau's prison.
Cheng Shi realized the final answer even later.
It was after Mercsius's attack failed to kill him that he suddenly realized the answer was to sacrifice himself using different methods of Death.
It was also then that a plan began to form in his mind.
After Mercsius's Death, he had a very safe way to win the Trial, which was to use Moment of Execution to commit suicide.
But there was also a risk; if there was even a 0.1% chance that the answer was not Death, then Cheng Shi would face the end of his gaming career in endless regret.
Therefore, the Death-fearing Cheng Shi first conducted an extremely bold experiment:
He used the alchemy notes taken from Chernosley and Mercsius's corpse to fake the scene of the alchemist's Death, and then submitted the Executive Law Bureau's definition of "nominal Death" as the answer.
This was a risky move.
Because this was a Trial of Death!
Cheng Shi's opportunism could very likely backfire, turning all of this into a performance blaspheming He.
Thus causing him, who originally had a chance to land safely, to veer off the runway and crash to his Death.
Fortunately, Death acknowledged it.
Although He gave 0 points.
But at least the Lord greatly appreciated his performance, believing that he had deceived Death.
Cheng Shi won the gamble.
The chips won were not only clearing the Trial, but also a When Fear Arrives, and a Moment of Execution!
Two demigod items, just like that, were brought back to reality by him!
"Ah, a 2400 game, didn't gain a single point, what a waste."
Although he said this, this Trial was still the most difficult one Cheng Shi had endured since joining Faith Game.
When weak, seek cooperation; when strong, compete.
The Trial at this tier had gradually stripped away the mechanism of lower-tier Players cooperating together, and they began to guard against each other.
Everyone in here was terrifyingly astute; if it weren't for the habit of trust required for cooperation in the early Trial, perhaps Cheng Shi would have fallen into an absolute disadvantage from the hostility brought by the Faith of Chaos from the start.
And it was precisely this game that finally allowed him to see how the top tier of Players at this stage were embracing divinity.
In this astonishing Trial:
The followers of foolishness were the least foolish;
The followers of annihilation annihilated themselves;
The followers of silence were deafening;
The followers of memory secretly tampered with memory;
The followers of Order cheated and broke "Order";
The followers of Fraud were pitifully deceived to the end.
Except for Fang Jue, everyone was the best actor.
They not only perfectly ended their parts but also left no trace of clues for their teammates.
Although their actions pushed others away from Death, they also forced the remaining Players to go against the answer.
The surviving people fearfully buried themselves in the search for "What is the Death sacrifice?", yet heard none of the silent mockery from the victors who had already cleared the Trial.
To be honest, guessing the answer was Death might not be difficult.
The hardest part is, dare you die.
They had already discovered the clues within and dared to use Death to verify their conjectures.
This courage and confidence made Cheng Shi ashamed.
As for the follower of Order who was still kept in the dark until the end...
Forget it, every Trial has to have a slacker.
Even the most awesome Player has off days.
You agree, right, Fang someone?
This Trial was worthy of being high-end, and Cheng Shi didn't act like a slacker either.
Although he didn't carry anyone, he won for himself in an extremely safe manner.
Even if he was completely fooled by others, at least in the end, he still "fooled" Death.
"Does this count as me fooling God?"
As soon as he finished speaking, a wave from the dark abyss enveloped the rooftop where Cheng Shi was.
"???"
Again?