Facing an Ancient God for a Year

Chapter 2585: Chapter 2580: The Fool and the Lake

Fooling is a dangerous game.

Take that saying about reading increasing wisdom—at that moment Fu Qian seemed to brush against the traces of a very particular name: Fool.

On a certain snowy night, he had played the role of a young ”Mr. Wolf,” wandering as a completely ordinary person through one messy carnival scene after another, like he’d stumbled into some cliché horror flick plot.

The transitions in between were a seamless disregard for space and time, and there had been a total of five acts.

Just that single number alone makes it hard not to compare it with the situation right in front of him.

Not to mention that the containment condition for that mission back then was ”correctly complete all scripts.”

Combined with the heavy notebook in his hand that only had five lines written, with two of those lines being nothing but act numbers with no content, it was really hard to chalk any of this up to pure coincidence.

Sure enough, aside from the first act and the fourth act, among the remaining three lines only the second act had content—

[Light and shadow cannot judge each other]

Let’s just say this sentence was even more saturated with artsy flair, nailing down the nature of it as a narrative work.

After all, if anyone wrote their experimental report like that, they’d probably get hit with their advisor’s ultimate rage finisher.

All in all, even though a careful comparison still shows a lot of differences, once this script appeared, the correlation between Engraving Wisdom and All Fools’ Day could no longer be ignored.

And right after that came a Superior Being he could no longer avoid: the Fool, whose image he had even impersonated once in front of the Greedy Worms.

Whether that was the formal Name or just a moniker like the Tyrant’s bandit title was unclear, but this mysterious Superior Being had already shown up more than once just within his Scavenger career alone.

And the authority and power involved seemed to be connected to fooling and to the very essence of Transcendent power.

He said this for two reasons; one stemmed from that ”All Fools’ Day” the young boys and girls loved and celebrated.

Leaving the festival name aside, Transcendent gifts appeared and then vanished, sending a bunch of restless minds completely off balance, finally brewing up an unthinkable spectacle with a strong streak of absurdity.

The other reason lay in two mission rewards that were even more explicit, namely the ”Blood and Wine and Blood” obtained in that mission, and the earlier ”Fool Idol.”

The former’s effect was to directly blur concepts, making blood and wine utterly indistinguishable from each other.

Later he had even used it on Jade Soul, slowing down Jade Soul’s efficiency in ”understanding” everything during their clash.

The latter’s effect was, up to now, almost the most special of all—so long as contact exceeded a sufficient duration, it would directly clear away the Transcendent and turn them into ordinary people.

If that doesn’t touch on the essence of the Transcendent, what does?

And with just a bit of recall it was easy to realize that these two pieces of authority mentioned earlier were also quite prominently embodied in the spectacle before his eyes.

For instance, the beginning of the world and the end of the Transcendent—topics that at a glance clearly involved the essence of the Transcendent as well.

And the Creator of Wisdom’s ”weaving correctness” ability, correcting errors, letting Extraordinary Power be expressed in a more original and pure form... its relation to essence seemed even more direct.

As for fooling—was Engraving Wisdom not fooling?

The young boys and girls at least were still living in reality; he himself was now directly in a time-space-anomaly theme park, even holding its script in his hand.

...

Of course, there were also parts that didn’t quite match.

For example, at first glance the correlation was much stronger with the fourth act; the Fool-like elements further back weren’t as obvious.

Could it be that, just like the Judgment Chief and the others, the Fool had merely left traces here, making a slight appearance in the fifth act in this way, but was not the absolute mastermind behind Engraving Wisdom?

To be honest, that was indeed the more cautious idea, and it really couldn’t be completely ruled out.

But there was a detail here that greatly weakened that possibility—the act before him was the fifth, not the fourth.

He had already analyzed that the ”title” of the first act corresponded exactly to what he’d experienced on his last visit.

In other words, the script’s contents weren’t limited to this current seamless four-part Engraving Wisdom sequence; they even encompassed the previous one.

Do not underestimate that tiny difference—that was practically a move akin to breaking the fourth wall.

It meant the power behind the script was either based on Engraving Wisdom itself, or based on the Inverted Lake, or based on his own cognition as the Mechanical Abandoned Prison King...

Whichever it was, it already seemed to exceed the scope of a simple leftover trace of a Superior Being.

This was actually why he had paid so much attention to the numbering earlier; the Demon always hides in the details.

Which led to the most important question: this script, as an embodiment of the Fool’s power, was ultimately based on which of these three?

”Tyrant—”

Unfortunately, just as the brainstorming was going strong, the next moment it was interrupted by a call.

...

No need to ask; it was Rom from below.

The same form of address, but as if slowly waking from Dream, less dazed than before, and his hatred clearer.

What a pity—this kind of emotion was all too common for Fu Qian; he merely gave a symbolic lift of his eyelids, offering a bit of attention.

He had to admit that compared to earlier, besides the improvement in mental state, Rom’s body had also perked up somewhat—

Not only had the blood-colored hues of his Crystal-covered parts grown richer, there was actually blood flowing out.

The portions without Crystal filling were splitting open into hideous wounds, exposing warped flesh that induced visceral discomfort at a single glance.

More importantly, those wounds were like birth canals, straining to push out one ”spider” after another with the exact same form as the mother body.

Dozens, hundreds, and at a glance absolutely one-to-one replicas, the Crystal-filled parts on their bodies perfectly identical.

The hatred seemed inherited too—the successfully birthed little Roms clung tightly to the mother body while also baring fangs and claws at this side, their ”eyes” filled with the same blood-colored hatred.

But that was human nature. Fu Qian didn’t mind the exponentially increasing hatred; instead, his gaze fell on them and he continued to search for more wounds.

As it turned out, smaller Roms were still crawling out of the little Roms’ bodies...

With the same blood-colored eyes, the same bared fangs and claws.

And then came tiny little Roms...

True animal fractals, huh?

”Descendants, countless to the end of time”—that line now seemed to be getting its most intuitive demonstration.

For Fu Qian, though, given that Lord Rom commanded a certain degree of the Order of Blood and his operations were always of the most gutter variety—

So even though the scene was grotesque, it still wasn’t exactly incomprehensible—smack!

With a crisp sound, Fu Qian reached a hand behind his head and casually flicked something away, then lowered his head again, no longer paying attention.

”Still not enough, need to think more.”