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Ch15 - We normally call him—
Zong Jiu felt that this universe was like magical realism at its finest.
He had just casually chatted with the other about the history behind Zhuge Liang, spouted a few lines of nonsense tops, but the other was able to wheedle out god knows how much information from them.
Zong Jiu considered himself to be quite conservative and cautious with every step, but the other just had to ask one question after another, each craftier than the next. In order to show his sincerity in their cooperating together, especially since he was the one asking a favour of the other, he couldn’t simply keep a tight lid and refuse to talk about it. At once, he was caught between a rock and a hard place.
Expressionless, Zhuge An surveyed Zong Jiu. He didn’t go on a whole spiel to expose him, but concisely dropped a deep-water torpedo straight out.
“I’m curious. How did you hide from the system that you hadn’t entered the infinite loop through the normal means?”
The white-haired young man’s eyelids twitched, an inexplicable foreboding surfacing in his heart.
The man’s eyes were astute, and he scanned Zong Jiu like an X-ray. “How did you do it? Through an instance? Are you an intelligent NPC from a certain S-rank instance, possessing someone like in the Ancient Well of Evil Spirits and then smuggling in?”
??? Your Excellency can even figure this out?
Zong Jiu felt that if he said that although it isn’t that, you aren’t too far off, perhaps those two yin yang fishes spiralling above their heads would greet his body.
“No. It’s impossible.”
Before Zong Jiu could respond, Zhuge An already overturned his own hypothesis. “If you belonged to the yin aspect, it is impossible that Heaven, Lake, Fire, and Thunder, the four yang trigrams, would have no reaction to you.”
“It doesn’t make sense that the system would allow for a soul to be replaced; this goes against conventional reasoning and morals. And since you exist… you must have come directly from the real world to the infinite loop, but had not been through screening. More like an instantaneous transfer.”
“More importantly—you seem to understand me well.”
Zong Jiu, “…”
He had just talked to the other about the five millennia of China’s glorious history, and the result was that apart from the biggest secret of transmigrating into a book, the other had almost stripped him down to his socks.
Danger, Zong Jiu, danger.
He even tried to put up a struggle. “Why do you say so?”
“Because you still remember and are able to say things related to the real world.”
Zhuge An looked at him deeply. “Contenders who have come to the infinite loop will have a protective screen blocking their memories of the real world.”
“The screen isn’t absolute. Knowledge learned in the real world wouldn’t be forgotten; what is blurred is only the knowledge that ‘I have once lived in the real world’, and other memories can be recalled when permitted. Just like what you just talked about, of Zhuge Liang and China, if the clues in this instance pointed towards these two terms, my recollection should be unhindered. The system will only open up a portion of the memories under certain prerequisites and exposure to certain conditions.”
This had got to be the longest length that Zhuge An had ever spoken.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
His voice was light and indifferent, but the message behind it would make anyone’s blood turn cold.
Po atf mbcafcvfg’r wfwbglfr bo atf gfji kbgiv kfgf yibmxfv, atfc bnfg alwf, atfrf mbcafcvfgr ktb tjv fcafgfv atf lcolclaf ibbq ogbw gfjilas kbeivc’a jmalnfis gfwfwyfg ktfgf atfs tjv jmaejiis mbwf ogbw.
Pa kjr jr lo atfs kfgf ybgc jr mbcafcvfgr.
Ibcu Ale cjggbkfv tlr fsfr.
Lf olcjiis ecvfgrabbv atf gfjrbc yftlcv atf lii offilcu atja mjwf ktfc tf gfmjiifv atf qiba lc atf cbnfi.
It was mentioned in the novel that there was no way to return to the real world in the infinite loop. For example, the reward for a c-position debut in Thriller Trainee was a universal wish ticket, but in the description of the written perspectives in the novel, there wasn’t a single trainee who wanted to exchange this ticket for a chance to return to reality.
It turned out that… it wasn’t that the real world had changed after he had transmigrated; rather, these contenders, under some higher will, had been forced to change their perceptions.
The system had put a lock in everyone’s minds. So everyone was trapped inside, unable to escape.
Zong Jiu smiled. “Then why do you remember?”
Zhuge An didn’t speak, changing instead to scrutinise him.
Perhaps it was just an illusion, but Zong Jiu felt that after this conversation, the gaze of Zhuge An, who had oozed indifference, now softened marginally.
“You need to prove your worth.”
He didn’t continue the earlier thread of conversation. He simply and evenly said, “If your words sound like an attack to my intellect, then the alliance may be terminated at any time.”
Zong Jiu dispelled that illusion from before. “Although you shook my hand earlier, you didn’t state your position. Sure enough you don’t intend to cooperate with me, but only want to use the guise of cooperation to extract information from me.”
“Courtesy demands reciprocity, in war nothing is too deceitful.”
Good lord, this guy still holds a grudge.
“Moreover, aren’t you doing the same?”
At this, Zong Jiu gave a superficial smile.
“Had you learnt to control your emotions?” Looking at the expression on the white-haired young man, Zhuge An arched his eyebrows. “There’s no need to be so defensive. If I really wanted to do something, you wouldn’t be standing here. Take it easy.”
For better or for worse, now was the time for them to lay their cards on the table. Zong Jiu could only pinch his nose bridge and own up, “Fine, fine. It’s my bad luck to have gotten into a dubious deal. I resign myself to my fate.”
Zong Jiu could have sworn that after he finished saying this sentence, a faint smile flitted across Zhuge An’s face.
“Let me guess… At present, you’re still unable to solve the S-rank clue that you received from Dr. Chu.”
It was clearly the beginning of a speculation, yet that dark-haired man’s tone was beyond certain, as if he had never considered the possibility of being wrong. “Because you lack key information.”
In any case, since he had already committed to the deal, Zong Jiu longer cared. After weighing the pros and cons, Zhuge An would indeed be his only breakthrough.
He could tell that even without the clue the doctor gave him, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that Zhuge An could still deduce the answer on his own through other clues. Even if he told the other, he would only be hastening this process. No. 3 was capable of much more, and didn’t need an insignificant E-rank to worry for him.
“An integer exists between three and four?”
Zhuge An repeated this sentence, his eyebrows tightly furrowed.
“pnpso is a cipher, no doubt a representative of the Vigenère cipher. Don’t ask why, I can’t be bothered to explain the entire process to you, you only need to know the conclusion… it needs a key, yet the necessary key is still missing.”
There were quite a number of classical ciphers that required a key to be broken. Such ciphers were divided into three parts, the ‘ciphertext’, the ‘key’, and the ‘plaintext’. Now, they knew pnpso was the ciphertext; as long as they knew the key, they could find out the plaintext.
Once unfurling the reasoning, No. 3, who kept people a thousand miles away, began talking to himself. He lost any semblance of his former elitist aura and became more like a chatterbox pacing around the ward.
“There are over three thousand books in the library. If you search carefully, you’d be able to deduce the age of the books from the page index. Only one of these books shows signs of being torn, exactly on page thirty-four. Even more coincidentally, this book shouldn’t have appeared in this era, because it’s a book about superstring theory. Ice pick frontal lobotomy was only massively abolished in 1970, whereas string theory was proposed in 1968, and superstring theory would only have come much later. Yes, that’s right. That’s the case.”
One had to say, this bigshot really deserved applause.
To think that he had only relied on a clue that he barely had any leads on, and snared information that a lone S-rank had spent the day sieving out, Zong Jiu felt that he had made a solid profit.
Midway through his pacing, the verbose Zhuge An suddenly turned his head back. “I’ve already got the answer for this instance. If I want to, I can choose to directly clear the instance now.”
Zong Jiu, “…”
“You have already laid down your trump card, but I have more clues in my hand than you do.”
Zhuge An said, “You’ve shown your value. So—last question.”
“If you can give me a satisfactory answer, as thanks, I will tell you the rest of the clues.”
The white-haired young man crossed his arms. “Ask.”
“Who do you think is the mole who received a different identity card?”
Zong Jiu arched his brows. “He’ll be coming over to knock on the door soon.”
The appreciative look in the dark-haired man’s eyes deepened, and he readily honoured his promise.
“Since you have broken away from Messiah’s team and entered the alternate dimensional space, you should be well aware that there are two non-interfering dimensions in this S-rank instance.”
“The S-rank clue about the integer between three and four, isn’t simply three and four, rather referring to a three-dimensional space and a four-dimensional space.”
A hurricane curled up from the even surface of the ward.
“You’re indeed exactly as the prophecy has foretold, Zong Jiu.”
He moved his hand away, and the Taiji Eight Trigrams suspended in the air began to dissipate.
Zhuge An narrowed his eyes slightly. “One last piece of advice. Be careful of a person.”
“I’m not certain if he’s in this instance, but your paths are destined to cross; he is your mortal enemy.”
Zong Jiu, “Who?”
“No. 1,” said Zhuge An.
“No one knows his name. We normally call him—the Devil.”
“Is this the same prophecy that you spoke of?”
The white-haired young man smiled. “Magicians never believe in prophecies.”
In the last second before the Taiji Eight Trigrams dissipated, Zhuge An seemed to smile as well.
“You will come back to find me. In the future, when the thread of fate spun from the spindle is fulfilled.”
At the same time, all the trainees in the mental asylum received a cold system prompt.
[S-rank Thriller Trainee Zhuge An has cleared the instance.]
The next second, there came a knock on the door of the room.
A high school student’s face appeared behind the thick glass window. He knocked on the door, looking anxious as he shouted for Zong-ge.
Getting so much out of exchanging a single clue, he didn’t lose out at all.
Zong Jiu stood where he was. He calmed his emotions before turning around, walking over.