Chapter 1351: Number One on the Road to Ascension

"Lord Yu Xi jests.

Compared to a marionette that can't be brought to any respectable stage, your achievements are the true 'cheat.' Otherwise, [Void] wouldn't have chosen you to become..."

The little puppet still didn't dare say the whole thing. He was waiting for Cheng Shi's response.

Cheng Shi guessed where Wei Mu was going. He made no move to stop him — he simply smiled and extended a hand, gesturing for the other to continue, letting the wise man perform freely.

Before asking questions of the Road to Ascension's top-ranked player, he needed to first confirm how far the other had already gotten on his own.

If Wei Mu truly had the ability, then sharing the latest intelligence to fill in any remaining gaps could come later.

Given the gesture, Wei Mu bowed once more and continued.

"...the sacrifice of this era.

I believe I've guessed the reason for your visit here, my lord. You're searching for a way to escape the identity of sacrifice — am I correct?

Forgive me — merely a metaphor, no disrespect intended toward either of you.

When all the 'rebels' gather in one place, no one will believe they're here to discuss how to make the current ruling divine authority more stable.

And so I begin to understand.

I had long found it puzzling that the gazes of [Deceit] and [Fate] — the two [Void] rulers — upon you carried a slight distortion. Two entirely different wills somehow converging in an inexplicable intersection.

But when I learned that you resist the identity of sacrifice — it clicked. [Fate] was probably the one who truly found you first. And the identity of Yu Xi is connected to [Void]'s answer — am I right?

And that answer is very likely not a pleasant one for you, which explains the resistance. And that resistance gave [Deceit] the opening it needed — it used that will to bind you.

I believe I'm correct. And [Deceit]'s motivation isn't entirely without trace — in fact, the evidence stands right before us now:

It raised a [Fate] Envoy to shelter these 'rebels' — which tells us clearly that it favors this kind of defiance. And the result of this defiance is that [Void]'s two wills converge within you, drawing the attention of all the gods toward [Void]'s answer.

Come to think of it — I should be thanking you.

The day I became number one on the Road to Ascension, I realized the Road to Ascension might not be about drawing close to the gods themselves — but close to the gods' 'choice.'

I'd hesitated over whether to give up — but I also couldn't bring myself to abandon such a rare chance to draw close to divine beings.

But the longer I stayed at that position without receiving any 'feedback' from any divine being, the more I realized perhaps someone had already 'stolen' the Road to Ascension's divine gaze — making the gods no longer care who was closest to them, because they had already found that 'choice'... the choice [Void] had made.

You 'saved' me, my lord. Wei Mu offers you his sincere gratitude."

"..."

The words weren't unflattering — and yet that "gratitude" sounded like contempt from any angle you looked at it.

So this is a wise man? So this is Wei Mu?

He'd never appeared in a single [Void] trial, and yet he could read both [Void] rulers' intentions with near-perfect accuracy from the universe's scattered traces alone.

Cheng Shi himself had no idea exactly why [Void] had chosen him — but based on everything he'd experienced, Wei Mu's interpretation aligned perfectly with his own.

Cheng Shi gave him a genuine round of applause for such an impressive deduction — but he knew this absolutely wasn't the full extent of this so-called top mind's understanding of the world. So he extended a hand again, inviting Wei Mu to keep going.

Wei Mu blinked. He understood what Yu Xi meant. He nodded, choosing his words carefully.

"A stepping stone again, is it...

Since you've given Wei Mu this opportunity — then Wei Mu will offer a humble brick to invite your jade, and humbly present his shallow observations in hope of receiving your true knowledge.

Since last we briefly crossed paths, I suspected you were collecting certain special items — things like, say, the eyes found inside that Fool-Hunting statue?

Those would be pieces of a mask, would they not?

I'm not entirely certain whether that mask is connected to [Memory] or to my god's missing authority — but looking now, I believe it must be connected to [Void]'s answer. Am I right, my lord?

You haven't collected everything. You remain uncertain where the answer lies. The confusion on the faces of the other two also tells me — at least here, you won't find what you're looking for.

So you didn't come here for the possible mask pieces. You came for something else."

By this point, Qin Xin had entirely lost his expression. He stood in place in silence, listening — had it not been for the false Curtain Call laying a foundation inside him beforehand, his face would have been fully written over with shock by now.

The Flame of Hope was different. It was looking at the little puppet with boundless curiosity, hanging upside-down in front of it multiple times, clear as anything that it wanted to pry open the puppet's skull and see what was kept inside.

Only Cheng Shi remained composed — though it was performed composure.

He was more stunned than anyone, because he knew everything Wei Mu had said was correct. He himself had lived through countless fears, confusions, and despairs to reach this point — to know these things. What gave the wise man the right to know?

Just a brain that had started believing in [Folly]?

If that didn't qualify as a "cheat," the word deserved to be struck from the dictionary.

Of course, these musings were only self-deprecating. If the universe truly had such a cheat available, the Fear Faction and the Fun God wouldn't have been pushed this far.

He looked at the puppet's blank, wooden eyes and considered — seemed to recall something — and linking it to what [Time] had once said, Cheng Shi started suddenly and blurted out:

"Faith? You used the Container in your hands to borrow the power of faith!?"

"!"

The puppet froze. It was the first time Wei Mu had lost composure in front of another person — because someone had seen through his trick.

Yes. He had borrowed the power of faith.

Remember the meeting on the terrace in Dolgod? Wei Mu had mentioned then that he had obtained [Folly]'s Container — but that Container was meant for collecting faith condensed into divinity. Wei Mu was not [Folly]'s "divine being," and [Folly] had no servant god to lend him an identity. So initially, he had no way to use that Container.

But he had thought of a method: become the top-ranked player on the Road to Ascension, and make the world believe in — and chase after — his intelligence.

This way, once the belief that Wei Mu's intellect surpassed all players in the game had spread — he collected his first drop of divinity.

This divinity could be assembled into authority. But [Folly]'s authority was missing, leaving Wei Mu with no reference instructions. He could only try to piece it together himself.

The experiment of seizing [Folly]'s authority this way failed — though not entirely, because during the experimental process, he discovered that collecting faith to condense it into divinity produced results beyond divinity alone. A special connection that emerged between the faith-bearer and the faith-convergence process during the gathering of belief was itself a subject worth researching.

He shifted his focus to that domain entirely. While mastering the assembly of divinity, he also mastered the small trick of temporarily borrowing the intellectual processing power of faith-bearers by channeling the congregated belief.

In simpler terms: when Wei Mu thought, he was no longer relying solely on his own brain — he was borrowing a tiny sliver of computational power from every "devoted believer" of his intelligence.

That borrowed processing power was negligible from each individual — often merely the dormant, unused portions of individual consciousness — and yet they were passively lent to him by virtue of their "devoted belief" in Wei Mu.

While the contribution of each individual was tiny, stacked across an enormous base of believers, Wei Mu still gained considerable assistance when thinking. This was why he had been drawing ever closer to the "truth" in recent times.

He had mapped out for himself a prototype of how faith becomes authority — and was on the verge of discovering the assembly instructions for [Folly]'s authority.

And this was precisely why the gods placed such weight on faith — because authority and faith had never been two separate, independent things.

In a certain sense, what Wei Mu had done already matched the literal meaning of the Road to Ascension. He was drawing close to divine beings, step by step, in his own way.