Chapter 239 The Second Examiner
Seeing Aiwass suddenly shoot and kill the reporter, everyone looked at him in extreme astonishment.
"You are really decisive."
Huoyin, standing by, crossed his arms and muttered in admiration, "It doesn't matter if he's Merlin, a reporter, or a detective who came down early. As long as this isn't Floor Zero, I can fire this shot."
"I just want to save everyone some time."
Aiwass wiped the muzzle of the gun and spoke calmly.
If he were Merlin, Aiwass would not be worried - Merlin would only cause them trouble, but the real Jacob would personally open the box for his grandson Aiwass.
At this point in time, the Noble Red had not yet been established, and the Scaleless Hand was still a prestigious ritualist organization among the people.
Even though they are wanted for cursing the lives of some wealthy and powerful people, their reputation among the people is very high.
In this case, if Jacob realized that he was wronged, he would most likely directly announce his identity as the founder of the Scaleless Hand.
——Evans still doesn’t know who Chunbai and the others are, so this secret cannot be revealed to them.
From this perspective, Aiwass was actually silencing the witness.
"If it weren't for the intelligence Lulu painstakingly brought us, this floor could have become a deadly trap."
Aiwass said in a deep voice, stepped over the reporter's body, walked to the round table, sat down and crossed his legs.
He looked at everyone and said slowly, "The other layers are like storms in the darkness. Suddenly, they arrive at this layer where the sun is shining, the air is fresh, and the birds are singing and the flowers are fragrant... As long as they don't regain their memories and find their true mission, they will definitely think they have arrived at the real layer.
"—Because this place is different from every other dream."
Isabel initially thought so, as she passed out right after giving the information and didn't hear Aiwass's reasoning at all.
"But right after a storm of that magnitude, it wouldn't be this clean. Not the forests, not the grasslands, not the lakes.
"Branches, broken wood, garbage and debris were blown all over the place, and even the fish in the lake fell to the ground. This was obviously just the imagination of a little girl who had no experience in life about the storm."
"Oh."
Suddenly, Junbai laughed, "These are just excuses...it's actually because of Topa.
"Because after verifying the information brought by Miss Lulu with that of others—if you exclude the information brought by Merlin, you will realize that Topal did not exist in the levels she descended.
"So you suspected that we were actually on the second floor. And Topa was on the first floor... that's the only way it makes sense.
"But have you ever thought about a possibility? Maybe Topa killed everyone?
"Just like me—killed everyone and fell to the next level."
Pure White raised his head slightly and pronounced his sentence: "Admit it, Mr. Fox. You made a mistake—because of your arrogance and my lies, you eliminated the body that carried your teammates."
"Oh? Is that so?"
The fox looked at Pure White with a smile, and Lulu clenched her fists nervously and looked at the fox.
Pure White sneered and said without hesitation: "Of course.
“Although I don’t know why you entered this ceremony earlier than me, you obviously don’t understand the basic principles of the Nine Pillar Gods’ construction of the ceremony.
"When the Nine Pillars construct the promotion rituals and prepare the plots and bonus points for the rituals, they only consider the absolutely rational decisions of the promoted. In other words, the optimal solution for each ritual is based on the premise that 'everyone is smart and rational, and everyone knows that everyone else is smart and rational', and 'everyone acts according to their own path.'
"So what's the optimal solution in this situation? Of course, everyone should kill everyone on their own level.
"As long as everyone kills everyone in their dream layer and then commits suicide—then they will immediately and precisely fall into layer zero. Not only that, everyone will fall into layer zero. This is the most tacit and efficient cooperation! No matter how many people there are or how many layers there are, at least six people can be guaranteed victory.
"From the perspective of the questioner, is there anything wrong with me killing everyone on my own floor?"
Pure White spoke incessantly.
The more Lulu listened, the paler her face became.
She looked at Aiwass with some panic, but saw an increasingly obvious smile on Aiwass's face.
"Who are you?"
Aiwass suddenly asked back.
Pure White narrowed his eyes, somewhat disappointed: "You don't still think I'm Merlin trying to deceive people, do you?"
"You are not Merlin, but you are indeed lying and deliberately misleading people."
Aiwass said dimly, "So what I'm asking is... who are you in real life?"
"You've crossed the line, Mr. Fox."
Pure White narrowed his eyes and warned.
"You're the one who crossed the line."
Aiwass shot back without hesitation: "Why are you helping Merlin?"
Hearing this, there was a sudden silence around.
Pure White glanced at Aiwass in surprise: "When did you find out?"
"Ever since I proposed the winning strategy. But now that I think about it, you already showed your weakness when we first met."
Aiwass snorted coldly: "Think about it carefully, since the first time you met me...everything you said seemed to be questioning Merlin, but in fact it was to help him get rid of suspicion.
"After you met, you suspected there might be Merlin between the two of us."
—Can you trust me now? I am the detective, and that strong man is the fox.
Merlin said this when Aiwass and Merlin met for the first time.
This seems to be fine, but in fact, there is nothing wrong with it.
"First of all, if Merlin was a true 'detective' at that time, he wouldn't have to explain to you why he was a detective. Since you two didn't know each other, why couldn't Merlin do what a detective could do simply through language?
"So what he said was actually telling me that 'the content of our previous conversation was that he suspected that I was Merlin'. And you subconsciously made a wrong response -"
——To be precise, now we can only be sure that at least one of you two is not Merlin.
Pure White said so at the time.
Aiwass crossed his fingers and whispered, "You chose to follow up on the topic raised by Merlin. But this is complete nonsense... Of course, we can't both be Merlin, because there is only one Merlin.
"You said this instinctively because you knew the reporter was Merlin, but you didn't dare to reveal that you knew it.
"You're so naive to believe he's not Merlin that it doesn't make sense and would make you suspicious—to avoid that, you pretend to be wary of him. But you're also worried that I might actually suspect him of being Merlin, so you don't dare to go all the way to him. So you just say this, neither too lightly nor too harshly, just to make your stance clear.
"From that moment on, I began to doubt you. But at that time, I didn't expect you to be working with Merlin, so I made two attempts...
"I openly suspected you were Pure White, yet you showed no hostility towards me. There are four of you, and we are three—and if I may be frank, the detective and I are the main force, as you can probably see.
"And we told you through our words that we had gathered on the upper level and verified each other's identities. But you didn't try to stop us, nor did you try to find your teammates.
"If you really follow the position of the Ascendants as you said, and everything is done for the sake of absolute rationality, you should have tried to divide us at that time.
"For example, trying to make the 'detective' suspect that I was Merlin from the very beginning, or even giving false testimony or deliberately misleading me to make me suspect him. Since we're already together, it's very likely that we'll all be together in the future. And if Merlin isn't among us, then it means that one of your three teammates will most likely be replaced.
"In other words, you were already at a disadvantage from that point on. So how did you respond?
"—You ignored the logical flaws in Merlin's 'rapid descent theory' and accepted the three-person team. And you still showed no hostility towards Merlin."
Aiwass said calmly, "That's when I realized something. You're definitely not Merlin, but there's something wrong with you.
"Because you don't want to win that much. But if you don't want to win, why did you come to the promotion ceremony?
"Then, Merlin suddenly proposed a hypothesis to you - you might have killed an entire floor of people. What is the purpose of this hypothesis?"
The answer is simple, just swallow one layer.
But there is a loophole in this decision: the number of floors can be reduced, but the number of people will not be reduced suddenly.
"I was wondering... what if Topa was actually on the first level? So I came up with the 'surefire way'... it's a bait. But it's not for Merlin, it's for you."
"The surefire way to win is based on two things: Toppa had already made it directly from the upper levels to Level Zero, and you had actually killed people on Level One. So, counting the real detectives who hadn't come down yet, we were already on Level One. So, your death at that point would have been victory.
"You didn't choose to die. And now you're raising this point again... You're denying what you said before, saying you did kill a group of people. And you're also claiming that Toppa killed another group of people.
"If that were true, then, counting Toppa's floor, the detective's floor, and yours, we would have indeed reached Floor Zero. But unfortunately, that's not the case... We're still in a dream, not yet in reality."
"If you don't believe me," Chunbai sighed helplessly, "you can call out the dancers to come and see."
"—Yes, Mr. Fox."
Upon hearing this, the dancer came over from the stairs.
She smiled and said, "I fooled you too. Actually, I am Topa... from the very beginning."
"In that case," Aiwass asked, "when did you come here, sister?"
"As I recall," the dancer said, "I came here last night to get out of the rain... but that memory is definitely not right."
You're a hammer.
Aiwass couldn't help laughing.
You don't even know what "here" I'm asking about -
"Then it matches."
The corners of his mouth rose slightly, and he said without hesitation: "You are Merlin."
Then, Aiwas pointed to the body at the front desk: "He is Topa--
"It was because you saw Topa on the first floor commit suicide that you deliberately killed the receptionists on the second and third floors as well.
"Pure White deliberately tried to mislead me, adding the front desk and excluding Dai Ya. You wanted to exclude Topa from the front desk by making Dai Ya a participant.
"That's why I said, you were able to make Merlin admit his identity in front of you and cooperate with you... who are you?
"Merlin said that the Nine Pillars of Deity were watching this ceremony... Is your identity related to this?"
"It's better not to ask this."
Huoyin, who had been silent all the time, suddenly spoke up and warned.
Hearing this, Chunbai stared at Aiwass for a long time.
The old inspector finally sighed helplessly and closed his eyes.
"No, it's okay..."
Chunbai opened his eyes and suddenly changed his tone to a calmer one. "This is a test that a certain Pillar God asked me to give you when I entered. He wanted to see if, under extreme circumstances, you could change your bad habits—"
"You are quite suspicious and find it difficult to trust others. You always keep a cautious distance from others, but you lack discernment towards those close to you and always subconsciously want to believe the words of well-intentioned people. Miss Lulu is kind and brave, but because she is too well protected, her character is a bit weak and her willpower is not strong enough to withstand her talents. Mr. Detective is smart, calm, and rational, but he always likes to be in the spotlight, has a strong desire for performance and curiosity, and also has an overly strong desire to win.
"I'm your temporary examiner. I was originally going to test your ability to withstand deception... but you caught me out. Well, that's an answer, after all."
"...Who gave this test? Who are you?"
After hearing what Chunbai said, Aiwass hesitated: "Are you... the Eternal Saint?"
He originally thought that Chunbai just knew Merlin, so he chose to cooperate with him.
Unexpectedly, I actually received a private message from the Nine Pillars Gods...
Oh my god, who is this person?
"you guess?"
Chunbai smiled slightly and did not comment.
The old supervisor slapped the gun in front of Aiwass, and looked at Aiwass with a calm and long-lasting gaze: "My test is over, but the ceremony is not over yet. But you win.
"Merlin told me that Topar has fallen to the negative first floor. After all, he was born on the first floor, making it difficult for him to distinguish between dreams and reality. In other words... the inevitable elimination has already appeared.
"Now, as long as we all reach Level Zero, all six of us will win..."
"—I'm sorry, Lord Pure White... and Merlin. I wanted to interrupt."
Aiwass suddenly spoke up: "If I'm guessing correctly, entering the negative first floor won't kill you immediately, right?"
"what you up to?"
Merlin asked, "Do you want to dispel the earthbound spirits and rescue Daiya?
"In principle, it's not impossible... As long as you return to reality, your power will return. But you are only a second-level priest."
"Don't underestimate the priest, Merlin."
Aiwas smiled, then hugged Dai Ya again and held her in his arms.
"……what are you up to?"
Dai Ya lay in Aiwas's arms, twisting her body uneasily: "Or, I'd better give up this time... You just follow them down. I'll wait here and maintain the dream..."
"no."
"It's only half a month anyway. I can just go to the New Moon Ceremony by myself in two weeks..."
"no."
Aiwass spoke softly, lifted Daiya's hair and put the gun behind her ear.
"I simply don't believe that the Ascension Ceremony will guarantee the death of one of the participants. You must have a way to survive and achieve victory.
"If you can't find it, I'll help you find it—consider it a reward for enduring the pain and killing yourself so many times and becoming stronger."
One shot. Two shots.
When Aiwass woke up again, he heard the surprised voice of the Flame-Defying Butterfly:
"...Brother...you finally woke up!"
"Yeah, I'm awake."
Aiwass said softly.
When he opened his eyes, a golden-red light suddenly shone from the bottom of his pupils, like the rising sun.
Chapter 2 of 4,500 words! Already 6,000 words!
But there's still Chapter 3 (Aknuckles)
I'm going to have lunch and come back to continue writing, but the third chapter may have to be done at night.
I guess the cat won't update 10,000 words today——
(End of this chapter)
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