Capital City, District 4.
Inside the white tower, a circle of guards knelt on the ground, not daring to breathe.
The polished ground reflected a wine-red image, and with each step the Queen took forward, the atmosphere inside the tower grew more oppressive.
"Say what you know again."
"...Your Majesty, the Tower of Faith in the palace has been demolished."
“Of course I know the tower was destroyed,” otherwise she wouldn’t have been teleported directly to Sector 4 after returning from Frozen Harbor. “What I’m asking is, how was it destroyed?”
"Currently... we haven't found the reason yet." The guard had no way to explain. "You said we should lure the snake out of its hole, to make the palace lower its guard, so..."
"So you can't even do surveillance?"
She turned halfway around, the folds of her dress twisting into a smooth arc, every inch of the floor-length skirt woven from gold thread and silk shimmering with dazzling luster.
The guards dared not look at her; their heads were almost buried in the ground.
They simply couldn't keep an eye on them. Those three had a million ways to escape, and all sorts of strange weapons to subdue them. He really couldn't do it.
The guards, with their heads bowed, did not see the Queen looking directly into their eyes without any emotion.
Until he heard the Queen instruct the others, "Take them all away, I'm going to the Thorn Lands to use them as nourishment."
!
Before he could even scream, his arms were pulled back and his mouth was gagged. He was dragged away without any chance to fight back.
Everyone present acted with extreme caution, even breathing softly, silently praying that the Faith Tower would activate quickly so they could escape this suffocating and oppressive atmosphere.
A white halo lit up, and the Queen stepped into it. Just a second before it closed, a white talisman flew over like a sharp blade, interfering with the teleportation array and causing a momentary deviation. The Queen turned her head and saw only a robe.
She didn't see Pusheng clearly, but Pusheng saw her clearly.
When he saw Ji Hui and Yan Ruoying running over, his expression was serious. "The oil painting that Shi Jinzhe and the others found in the secret room of the Gao Lun family, that girl, Sheh said she was the queen, right?"
Yan Ruoying braced herself on her knees, panting heavily. "Yes, Shekh is certain that it is the Queen. What's wrong?"
“The girl in the painting has blonde hair and blue eyes, but why does the queen I see have purple eyes?” he said. “It’s a very obvious purple, definitely not a visual illusion caused by light.”
Ji Hui said, "It's impossible that Shekh mistook them for someone else, otherwise they wouldn't have disappeared in that dilapidated maze. It's precisely because Shekh's memory is correct that there is really a problem there."
A person's eyes don't change color for no reason. Pu Sheng intuitively felt that this was related to the mysterious woman's advice not to let Shekh use petrification.
"By the way, did you successfully affect the teleportation array?" Yan Ruoying asked.
Pusheng: "It should be done. I saw her look surprised. What about you guys?"
Ji Hui: "It works too. I took half of the guards who were being escorted away at the right time. The moment the teleportation array was activated, half of the life force was lost. Even if we absorb the lives of the civilians now, it will be too late. The Queen will most likely not be able to reach her destination."
Pusheng: "That's good. Let's go, we still need to go back to the palace to study that teleportation array."
"This dungeon was so difficult..." Yan Ruoying said, hands on her hips, panting from running. "Seriously, your acting skills are terrible at pretending to be weak. Stop pretending and let's be honest. Heaven knows how panicked I was after they disappeared, and then you told me you had the 'two-word card'..."
“I’m just a conman, don’t believe me.” Pu Sheng gulped down a bucket of water and wiped his chin clean. “But it’s really lucky to be in the same group as you. I didn’t expect you guys to be willing to come back and help me dismantle that broken tower. Bad guys really don’t get grouped with lucky cards.”
“We’re on the same side anyway,” Ji Hui sighed. “Let’s be realistic. Shekh is a very obvious clue. She’s very important. I won’t help you dismantle the towers. I can’t get through this dungeon on my own. It’s better to find a way to bring them back.”
Pusheng: "Judging by actions but not by intentions is the same."
"Instead of chatting, you two should run faster."
Yan Ruoying adjusted her breathing and passed by the fruit stand where she had asked for directions that day. When she glanced at a bunch of purple grapes on the stand, a flash of inspiration struck her.
"Someone on the forum said that Shekh's snake tail is purple, right?"
Ji Hui: "Yes, dark purple."
Yan Ruoying: "What about her eyes?"
Ji Hui: "No one has ever seen her. Everyone says that looking into her eyes will petrify you, so no one takes the initiative to look at her face."
Yan Ruoying: "Neither of you have seen it?"
Pu Sheng blurted out, "Why are we staring at her? Are we waiting for her to turn to stone, or for Shi Jinzhe to make his move? What a question you're asking."
"Okay... I didn't think it through."
Yan Ruoying explained her thoughts, "I was just thinking that if Sheh's eyes were also purple, could the reason she couldn't use petrification be because the Queen could sense it? Look at grapes, each grape is connected by a stem, and nutrients are distributed to each grape. The grapes are not independent individuals; they are connected."
Ji Hui paused. "If the Queen can really sense it, it means her purple eyes are closely related to Shekh. She originally had blue eyes, which later turned purple. It's possible that her purple eyes came from Shekh?"
Pusheng: "What kind of identity would be needed to do this? Shehe can't be a god here, can he?"
"...You know what, I really think it's possible," Yan Ruoying asked. "Otherwise, how do you explain what happened in the maze? It was so targeted at the two of them."
Pusheng: "But isn't Keshehe a player? She's on our side now."
Ji Hui: "Do you never read forums?"
Pu Sheng said, "Yes, it's either arguing or arguing about who's stronger or weaker. I've only seen it twice and haven't clicked on it since."
"Sheh's identity is very versatile: humanoid prop, dungeon boss, game player. Her identity is different in different dungeons."
Now that you mention it, it does seem possible.
“I have a way to find out if it is her.” Ji Hui turned into a deserted alley, looked her over from left to right, and said, “It’s simple, just ask her.”
Yan Ruoying was stunned. "...Who are you asking?"
Ji Hui: "In the game, the second task is to find the world's god of faith. This task can be broken down into two parts: finding and returning. The prerequisite for returning is finding, and finding requires locking onto the target. Only by locking onto the target can we proceed and our faction's progress move forward."
Otherwise, if we make a mistake in this step, we'll go astray from the rest of the game. A dungeon that awards so many points must have a correction mechanism; we just need to gamble on whether or not it exists.
"Will it work...?" Yan Ruoying hesitated.
Ji Hui has a lot of experience in regional point-based competitions. "You can give it a try. The system will intervene in the dungeons. The more important the dungeon, the higher the probability of it opening a back door."
Yan Ruoying: "But what if we're wrong?"
"I don't know."
“It’s okay, let me try.” Pu Sheng became much more serious after dropping his pretense. “If she is the one, many of our current guesses can be confirmed, which is very important for all of us.”
Before anyone could dissuade him, he immediately asked the system, "Faction cA1782 has requested to lock onto the mission target. Shekh is the original god of this world."
Every second of waiting for the result was agonizing, but thankfully, half a minute later, the system notification sounded.
[Faction cA1782 has locked onto the mission objective; this faction is currently ranked first in progress.]
This notification was received by all surviving players, including Shi Jinzhe, who was trapped in a special situation.
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