Chapter 144 Night Candle Rules 22 What is a Judge?
The turn of events was too abrupt. It seemed as if nothing had happened, and they were still as close as teammates, naturally asking her questions. Deng Erhuai laughed angrily, "Nanmen Jue, you don't answer any of my questions, so why do you think I'll tell you?"
“It seems you know,” Nanmen Jue said.
Deng Erhuai did not answer. She stared at Nanmen Jue with a stubbornness bordering on childishness.
She didn't even know what she was doing. Was she trying to force this person to compromise? The thought was immediately dismissed; Nanmen Jue never compromised for anyone. So why was she deliberately making things difficult for him? Perhaps she just couldn't swallow her anger, even knowing that confronting him would inevitably lead to her compromise, her fiery temper wouldn't allow it!
Nanmen Jue stared at her quietly for a while. Deng Erhuai felt that she had been seen through, but Nanmen Jue said nothing, only nodded slightly, and turned to look up.
Deng Erhuai panicked a little. "What are you going to do?"
“Since our negotiations have broken down, I won’t stay here any longer.” Her continued presence here would only attract powerful enemies to them, which would serve no purpose. Thinking of Zhou Yiming, who had disappeared with Ying Yao and whose whereabouts were unknown, Nanmen Jue’s face darkened.
Even though she guessed what she was going to say, Deng Erhuai still felt a surge of absurd grievance. She swallowed the bitterness in her throat and turned her head away.
Seeing that Nanmen Jue was really about to leave the barrier, and Deng Erhuai was still sulking and refusing to speak, Lu Yunxiao wiped the sweat from his forehead and smiled as he blocked Nanmen Jue's way, "Everyone, don't be in such a hurry. Things need to be resolved one by one, and words need to be spoken clearly. Don't cut ties over a single disagreement, okay? We've been through so much together."
"Yes, the last thing he did to me was to beat me so badly that I almost didn't make it out of that world alive." Deng Erhuai sneered, his sharp, piercing eyes fixed on Nanmen Jue's back.
Nanmen Jue knew she was waiting for an explanation, but she had nothing to explain; she was in the wrong about the matter.
She wanted to give a flippant smile, like she did with everyone else, and say something sarcastic and irreverent. She knew what kind of words would hurt this girl and make her lose all goodwill towards her. She was prepared to do it; she had already rehearsed what she was going to say. But... she couldn't say it.
What right does she have to hurt someone's body and then continue to hurt their heart? This is someone who once trusted her so much, someone she personally hurt, and someone who still hoped to trust her again. In all her life, she has only had a handful of people who have ever trusted her.
She couldn't bring herself to say it.
The atmosphere froze. Nanmen Jue didn't turn around or leave immediately. The principle of this barrier should be the cutting of space, without affecting the underground structure itself. She stared at an earthworm slowly burrowing upwards, but it didn't know that the ground above wasn't moist soil, but sealed tightly with cement. It was destined that it would never be able to burrow out of this path.
Trying to find a way out of a dead end is simply impossible.
"Come here, I'll tell you what the judge is all about." Suddenly, Deng Erhuai's voice rang out from behind, reluctant and angry.
Lu Yunxiao felt as if he had been granted a pardon and looked expectantly at Nanmen Jue. Nanmen Jue had his head down, and before he could react, Deng Erhuai's angry voice came again.
"I can't possibly ask you to come over, can I?"
Lu Yunxiao tugged slightly at Nanmen Jue's sleeve.
Nanmen Jue sighed silently, turned around and went back to Deng Erhuai's side, casually sitting down by the campfire.
A hemostatic talisman was tossed onto her lap, but Deng Erhuai still didn't look at her. "I don't want to see blood."
Nanmen Jue paused, then placed the talisman back beside her and said softly, "I've already used the prop."
Deng Erhuai glanced at her body, avoiding eye contact, and seeing that the bleeding had indeed stopped, he put the talisman away with a hint of annoyance.
Lu Yunxiao sat down on the other side, looking left and right.
“You really know how to ask questions. The Judge is the most dangerous thing in this world, but most new reincarnators don’t know about him,” Deng Erhuai said. “According to our intelligence, he has very special abilities. He can not only kill people, but also transform them into monsters.”
"What? Turn people into monsters?" This was the first time Lu Yunxiao had heard of this, and he was so shocked he almost jumped up. "Isn't that worse than death?"
“Yes, it’s worse than death,” Deng Erhuai said coldly. “After becoming a monster, you won’t lose your memory, but you will clearly feel the difference between yourself and humans. It’s like your brain has been invaded by a special virus. You will gradually move closer to the real monster and think in their way. If you were originally a cold person, you might be able to continue living in this form after becoming a monster. But if you are a kind person with strong emotions, your cognition will be affected and you will kill yourself.”
There was a chilling undertone in her voice. Nanmen Jue looked up and finally met Deng Erhuai's eyes. "Are you one of your people?"
Deng Erhuai nodded. "Her name was Qi Xiu. She was turned into a monster in the Judge's Ghost Realm, but she didn't hurt anyone. Instead, she told her teammates what happened and then committed suicide."
Lu Yunxiao said, "Can the supernatural also lead to suicide?"
“Qi Xiu is indeed dead, but we don’t know how she did it,” Deng Erhuai said.
“As long as we kill all the ghost servants and destroy the ghost realm, the ghosts will die,” Nanmen Jue said.
Both of them looked at her, their faces pale in the dim light.
“The intelligence is reliable.” Nanmen Jue did not elaborate further.
"...This is very important intelligence. If this news gets out, the attitude of the reincarnators towards this world will undergo a huge change." Deng Erhuai became serious. Faced with important matters, she put aside her personal feelings. "I need to find a way to tell Sister Terra this news as soon as possible!"
Nanmen Jue asked, "Do you know where the Judge's realm of trickery is?"
If you can't afford to offend them, you can at least avoid them. Nanmen Jue doesn't plan to kill them one by one. In such a dangerous place, it's always better to avoid it.
Deng Erhuai was silent for a moment, and the other two felt a bad premonition.
“He is everywhere,” Deng Erhuai said in a low voice.
Lu Yunxiao said, "What do you mean by 'omnipresent'? He's here too?"
“The Judge is extremely powerful. Even if he kills the Ghost Servant and destroys the Ghost Realm, he can kill the Ghost. I don’t think anyone can kill the Judge,” Deng Erhuai said. “No one knows where his Ghost Realm is, because whether or not one enters his Ghost Realm is not a choice one can make.”
Nanmen Jue frowned. "What is his trigger mechanism?"
“He will take people into the Ghost Realm, but we don’t know the criteria for taking them yet,” Deng Erhuai said. “Everyone who goes in will have to go through his three trials. Depending on the results of the trials, you will become one of three things: a human, a dead person, or a ghost.”
"Trial?"
Judge, trial—logically, that makes sense, but…
"The supernatural is here to judge humanity? Judge what? Can it even understand what it's judging?" Lu Yunxiao was completely baffled. "Is it just looking for a reason to kill people?"
“We initially thought so too, but according to the survivors, it shouldn’t be,” Deng Erhuai said. “The questions the judge asked must be things you’ve experienced. According to the survivors of Iron Drill, the three questions they were asked were: Have you ever sacrificed innocent lives for your own benefit? Have you ever remained indifferent to injustice? If not, what have you done? And if everything you’ve done to others, good or evil, were to happen to you in double measure, could you bear it?”
After these three questions were raised, the other two fell into a thoughtful silence.
"What a sharp question." After a moment, Lu Yunxiao murmured, "It sounds like this judge is judging people's good and evil? Like the King of Hell?"
Nanmen Jue asked, "Is it permissible to lie?"
“Of course not, these are the rules, who can cheat the rules?” Deng Erhuai answered Nanmen Jue first, giving her a reproachful look as if to say that she had asked such a stupid question. Then she looked at Lu Yunxiao and said, “You could say that.”
“But… this still doesn’t seem right,” Lu Yunxiao said. “There can’t really be that many bad people in this world, right? Does everyone who goes on trial either die or become a monster? If so many people are trapped, there shouldn’t be so few who come out alive.”
“That’s the biggest problem.” Deng Erhuai couldn’t help but sigh. “The dead are dead, the people who become monsters become monsters, and those who can still live after the trial are not allowed to leave their monster realm.”
Silence.
The matter is clear: the living cannot come out, the dead will not utter a sound, and those who become strange cannot be guaranteed to still be the same people. That is why there is so little information about the judge.
The survivor of the iron drill must have survived the trial and was able to return to the main hall of the god until the mission ended. As for the other reincarnators... not to mention anything else, there probably aren't many who can survive the trial, because it's hard to say whether the original inhabitants of the reincarnation world are considered "human" in the eyes of the strange beings.
Even if the reincarnators haven't killed any other reincarnators, who doesn't have a few native lives on their hands?
If Nanmen Jue had been judged by the judge himself, he would probably have been sentenced to death without a complete corpse.
Even if a new reincarnator who hasn't had a chance to do anything survives the trial but is trapped in the Judge's Ghost Realm without a way to earn points, they will be eliminated before returning to the main hall because they don't have enough points.
No matter how you look at it, once you enter the Judge's realm of trickery, it seems like you're in a dead end.
That was all Deng Erhuai knew. She had no way to avoid entering the Judge's realm of evil. Nanmen Jue remained silent for a moment before getting up to take his leave.
Deng Erhuai looked up at her. "Are you still leaving?"
“Ying Yao, Mo Gui, and Wei Chongru have also come in, along with my crow. We were scattered, and now our fates are unknown,” Nanmen Jue said. Deng Erhuai’s expression immediately changed.
"Why didn't you say so earlier!" Deng Erhuai stood up abruptly. "I thought it was just you... Then let's hurry up and go find someone instead of wasting so much time!"
The three reached an agreement, and Nanmen Jue was the first to step forward. A drop of thick blood dripped from above and landed on her forehead.
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