Chapter 104: “Life is a Series of Clever Miracles.”

Chapter 104: "Life is a series of miraculous intricacies."

After relentless trials with the die rolls, the party members finally arrived at the base of the spur.

At this moment, blizzards raging across the tundra suddenly tore through the cloud bank. A beam of sunlight pierced the gap, illuminating the snow-capped summit and reflecting a near-blinding glare. The players had to squint and look up to barely take in the monolithic peak before them.

From a distance, it hadn’t seemed so imposing, but now that they were closer, they truly grasped the scale of the lateral peak. This made it even harder to imagine what kind of power—one that transcended natural law—could have created this mountain overnight.

Chen Hui let out a weary exhale. "We’re finally here. This is the place."

Eurus turned to look at him, intending to needle him per usual—rarely did his brawn-over-brains mentality manage to express such poetic reflection—but she noticed an unusual calmness in Chen Hui’s gaze.

Even as the sunlight reflected off the snow and stabbed directly into his retinas, he didn’t avert his eyes, as if staring at a long-anticipated conclusion.

Something was wrong. This was definitely wrong!

Instantly, Eurus sensed a looming threat, a gnawing foreboding of an approaching storm...

On high alert, she took a few steps back when Chen Hui murmured again, "This is the place—"

"The purpose of my creation," he enunciated slowly, "the remnant of fate."

"You—"

Before she could finish, Eurus felt the ground beneath her tremble.

The soil beneath the snow began to shift. At first, it was sluggish, but as the frost binding it shattered, the dark soil instantly transformed into a surging black tide.

The soil burst through the snow, forming countless sharp spikes like a massive claw reaching up from the earth, thrusting toward Eurus with overwhelming force.

Meanwhile, some of the soil silently pooled and softened beneath her feet, turning into something akin to a sinking mire, attempting to trap her.

Had Eurus not been on high alert and kept an eye on the ground beneath her, swiftly harnessing the gale to lift herself into the air, she might have fallen for his combination strike.

"Let’s talk this out. I don’t know your exact identity or motives, but we might not even have conflicting interests."

"We’re just ordinary players trying to beat the level. No need for this, really..."

Eurus nimbly retreated, about to seek support from Scholar and the others, when a sharp pain exploded in her head.

Every formula, law, and geometric shape she had ever seen now surged uncontrollably in her mind!

Triangles extended sharp corners, lancing through every synapse, splitting her head with agony.

Mathematical and physical formulas knotted into chaos, racing and grinding deep in the folds of her brain, disrupting her fundamental understanding of the world.

Even the symbols of scientific laws twisted and spun, devouring her concentration, making it impossible to think straight...

Gripping her skull in pain, Eurus lost control of the wind keeping her aloft and stumbled to the ground.

She almost barked a bitter laugh—such a sadistic assault could only be an Ability from the Truth Domain.

For at least the next month, she’d probably feel sickened by the very sight of text or symbols.

"Scholar!"

"Fine, fine," Eurus gnashed her teeth. "So you’re working with him?"

With her hidden identity, she’d assumed she was playing 4D chess—only to realize she was stuck in beginner mode while the other players teamed up to outmaneuver her...

For a moment, Eurus questioned reality. Had she wandered onto the wrong set? Wasn’t this supposed to be a cooperative instance, not some "Mission Impossible" scenario?

"Aligned objectives can forge temporary alliances between even the most disparate individuals," Scholar replied, his tone eerily calm. "Besides, haven’t you been hiding things too?"

Eurus’s lungs burned with fury. "But I never planned to kill any of you!"

Gasping for breath, she shook off the dirt creeping up her boots and tried negotiating again. "I can use an item to leave the instance voluntarily. I won’t interfere with whatever you’re doing. There’s no reason you have to kill me—"

Scholar smiled. "What if I said there is?"

Eurus froze. "What?"

"My secret objective is—'Identify the impostor among the players and consign them to these mountains forever.'"

"Your unusual fixation for Zhang Ming was suspicious from the start. I wasn’t entirely sure it was you—but thankfully, you couldn’t resist revealing yourself."

Eurus opened her mouth to argue, but the agony detonating in her cranium left her breathless, only managing faint, broken gasps.

She couldn’t understand. It was just a hidden task. Even if left incomplete, it wouldn’t affect clearing the instance. Was it really worth this?

As if reading her thoughts, Scholar added coolly, "We need a perfect run—only by achieving 100% completion will the system allow us to take the instance’s keystone with us."

The instance’s keystone...

A wave of absurdity nearly overwhelmed the agony in her head. Eurus stared in disbelief. She realized what Scholar and Chen Hui were planning!

They wanted to extract the entire landmass? What kind of insane plan was that?

And this hidden task—clearly designed to stir conflict. No wonder the instance had seemed so peaceful until now.

They’d been waiting to ambush her all along!

Eurus flexed her fingers, trying to summon another blizzard to create an opening to escape.

But the wind no longer obeyed her.

Straining with all her might, she managed only a faint breeze—just enough to dislodge Chen Hui’s ever-present cap, revealing a crimson tattoo on his scalp: crossed swords and axes forming an "X," with flames burning at their intersection.

Eurus stared at the tattoo, momentarily stunned.

She recognized it—the emblem of the notorious militant faction, Burning Pure Land.

"Stop struggling."

Scholar’s voice cut in again, still infuriatingly calm, assured, and faintly condescending. "If I’m not mistaken, you’re an Ability user from the Liar Domain. You have no inherent combat abilities to begin with."

As everyone knew, those of the Liar Domain were notorious for their "master of disguise." They moved through crowds under different names, identities, and appearances, masquerading as Ability users from other domains, relying on others’ "belief" to manifest their fabrications.

But they had one fatal flaw: once their deception was exposed, their power vanished.

Scholar, a staunch pursuer of truth, pronounced judgment with disdain. "Power built on lies will always crumble in the end."

Eurus let her hand drop weakly, scoffing. "Wow, faction prejudice too?"

"Acting all high and mighty—what’s your deal anyway? Partnering with the notorious Burning Pure Land doesn’t exactly scream 'paragon of virtue.'"

Scholar remained unfazed by her open defiance.

He looked down on Eurus, his tone laced with a hint of disdain. "What we pursue is a cause greater than you can imagine—of course, you'll never get to know."

With that, the scholar gave Chen Hui a meaningful glance. "Take care of her. You can handle something this simple, right?"

Chen Hui glanced at Lena, who stood not far away, and pressed, "And her? Do we take her out too?"

From the moment the incident began, Lena had remained motionless, her tiny child's body didn't seem threatening at all—like an inconspicuous, docile witness.

The scholar showed little wariness toward her. "Fate Domain users aren't exactly frontline fighters."

"Just keep her from causing trouble. How you handle it is up to you."

After giving his instructions, the scholar turned toward the mountainside. In his palm appeared a bizarre-looking pen, crafted from some kind of transparent crystal, its surface glittering like scattered stars. Along its shaft, a slowly rotating eye blinked—the emblem of his organization, Longinus: the Anchored Eye.

Once marked by the Anchored Eye, the target became Longinus' marked prey forever.

No matter what world or dimension they ran to, the prey’s precise location would always be shared among all members of the organization—until Longinus claimed them for good.

However, the moment the scholar unsheathed the pen, a voice long silent spoke in his mind.

"So this is your goal?"

Yi Fengchu, who had been quietly observing all this while, spoke again, his voice curious. "I’ve always been the one hunting others. To be treated as prey myself…" He paused, then chuckled. "Hah, now this is something new."

For him, rather than anger at the provocation, he found himself more intrigued than offended.

As for rage…

Why should he be angry?

An Ability user of the scholar’s caliber posed no threat to him whatsoever. Who gets mad at a bug beneath their shoe jumping slightly higher than the others?

Yi Fengchu smiled. "I promised before that I would be more merciful than the system—so I never let you see that dice can also kill."

The scholar’s breath hitched, his hand shaking around the pen.

Within him, a terrifying sense of crisis surged like a tsunami. An icy dread shot up from his feet, screaming at him to run—but where could he possibly escape to?

Yi Fengchu’s presence had even merged with the mechanics of this dungeon. Escaping him was as impossible as fish trying to leave water.

"Life is a series of delicate miracles."

Yi Fengchu listed them with morbid fascination. "People never think about how much work each heartbeat does, the contraction of blood vessels, the expansion of lungs, the transport of blood and impurities, the birth and decay of every cell… Life hangs by a surprisingly thin thread."

"Now, do you realize—just how many lucky breaks it takes simply to keep breathing?"

Under the crushing weight of dread, the scholar gritted his teeth stubbornly, pushing with all his might to bring the pen down, desperate to mark his target.

When he accepted this mission involving higher-tier forces, he'd already sworn to give everything to the organization’s ideals. So now, he had only one thought:

So close… just a little more…

But even with the stone wall right before him, his hand wouldn't move.

The sound of rolling dice came one after another. The dice that had once hovered at the edge of his vision now spun, split, and multiplied endlessly, swelling like a flood until nothing else remained. Soon, the scholar’s vision was filled with countless silver-white afterimages, wiping out everything else.

Innumerable dice spun wildly, their jagged edges blurring into madness, leaving the scholar’s mind blank and his ears ringing.

At the same time, one soft dice prompt after another chimed in his ears like death's countdown:

"Heart rate accelerating. Blood vessel pressure rising. Player, roll the dice."

"Breathing accelerated. Increased probability of airway spasms and lung infection. Player, roll the dice."

"Toxins building in blood. Probability of vascular blockage and brain compression detected. Player, roll the dice."

"Player, please—"

"......"

The scholar couldn't speak. His heart pounded beyond normal thresholds, stealing his breath as his heart became a wild beast, sharpening its claws to tear through his body and burst from his chest.

Abandoned by luck, it was as though every latent illness and risk in his body erupted at once, setting his whole body aflame, pushing him toward the brink of destruction.

From the other players’ perspective, the scholar simply stood frozen before the snowy mountain, only the occasional twitch proving he wasn't already dead.

Chen Hui also noticed something amiss. He strode to the scholar’s side and clapped a hand on his shoulder. "What are you—"

Why aren’t you acting?

But the moment his hand touched the scholar’s shoulder, the man’s pallid, vacant-eyed figure swayed stiffly before collapsing heavily into the snow.

Chen Hui stared, stunned by the sudden turn.

Only when warm blood began seeping from the scholar’s nose and mouth, dripping down his ghastly pale skin and staining the snow in shocking crimson, did Chen Hui slowly come to his senses and realize—

His collaborator had seemingly… dropped dead without warning.

To die so pathetically before even getting close.