“What…?” Qi Xia turned his head, staring at Jiang Ruoxue with a calm expression.
“Though I don’t know the reason, I’m not stupid,” Jiang Ruoxue said with a smile. “If you were afraid I’d stop you, why did you spare me?”
Qi Xia clutched his wound, his face gradually paling.
“Let me guess—you wanted me to send word to the other ‘Extremists,’ to make everyone believe ‘Qi Xia has given up.’ That’s why you let me live, right?”
“Extremists?” Lin Qin and Zhang Chenze exchanged puzzled glances, completely lost.
“You really are clever,” Jiang Ruoxue nodded. “But you miscalculated one thing: I don’t care whether you collect 3,600 ‘Dao’ or not, and I won’t stop you.”
Qi Xia’s expression darkened. He hadn’t expected his entire plan to be seen through.
“Even though we’re all ‘Extremists,’ each of us has different goals,” Jiang Ruoxue said, pulling a hair tie from her wrist and gathering her loose hair into a bun. “Some love sabotaging games, some enjoy destroying ‘Dao,’ and others swagger around pretending to be natives. But I’m different.”
“How are you different?” Qi Xia asked.
“I love experiencing different games, watching people scheme against each other,” Jiang Ruoxue replied without hesitation. “Though ‘Extremists’ are all madmen, liars, and gamblers, each of us protects this place in our own way. My way is to incite good people to join the games.”
“So… you’re a ‘plant’?” Qi Xia cut straight to the point.
“A plant…?” Jiang Ruoxue pondered for a moment before nodding. “If you put it that way… I suppose I am. Except no one’s paying me.”
Qi Xia fell silent, his mind racing with a single question—what exactly *was* the “Extremist Path”?
“So, what about you?” Jiang Ruoxue asked. “Are you really giving up?”
“What do you think?”
Qi Xia released his grip on his wound and showed Jiang Ruoxue the blood on his fingers. “Can you heal me?”
“That, I truly can’t do,” Jiang Ruoxue shook her head. “I can’t figure out the ‘logical relationship’ to heal you. Otherwise, I’d save you—after all, you just spared my life.”
Seeing the trio still eyeing her warily, Jiang Ruoxue decided not to overstay her welcome. She stretched, accentuating her curves, then asked, “Are you going to kill me? If not, I’ll leave.”
None of the three were ruthless enough to kill her, and upon reflection, they had no reason to keep her either.
“Really leaving now?” Jiang Ruoxue confirmed again.
When no one responded, she sighed and triggered a distant chime of a bell.
Hearing the resonant sound, Qi Xia finally spoke up. “What does the bell mean?”
Jiang Ruoxue turned back, pausing in thought. “Since you saved my life, I’ll make an exception and answer. But you have to answer one of my questions too.”
“Deal,” Qi Xia nodded.
With his agreement, Jiang Ruoxue explained, “So far, there are only two known triggers for the bell: first, ‘hearing an Echo,’ and second, ‘an Echo fading.'”
“What’s an ‘Echo’?” Qi Xia pressed.
“That’s a second question,” Jiang Ruoxue shook her head. “Are we *that* close?”
Qi Xia’s grip on his wound tightened, his expression dimming.
Jiang Ruoxue seemed to relent. “Qi Xia, I’ll make one more exception. ‘Echo’ is something abstract. Some people never understand it, and even those who do can’t always wield its power. Today, I was lucky—I succeeded twice. That’s why you’re all still alive.”
Zhang Chenze’s eyes widened in realization. “So… the person I killed with glass—that was your doing?”
“If you still think of it as ‘trickery,’ you’ll never understand ‘Echo,'” Jiang Ruoxue said, turning to leave. After three steps, she paused and added, “Qi Xia, don’t suppress your grief. Only in extreme emotions can one hear an ‘Echo.'”
With that, she pushed open the inn door and stepped into the street.
“Hey, didn’t you have a question for me?” Qi Xia called after her.
“Consider it an IOU,” Jiang Ruoxue replied without looking back, merely waving a hand.
Her words left the group bewildered, but Qi Xia felt like he’d grasped a clue.
From what he understood, an “Echo” seemed to be some kind of supernatural ability—one that randomly manifested in certain people.
When it did, the giant bell would toll, and the screen would display *”I heard an Echo.”*
In other words, every previous bell toll signaled someone gaining this power, while the second toll marked either the concealment of the ability or… the user’s death.
“Officer Li was an ‘Echoer’…” Qi Xia murmured.
“Officer Li?” Lin Qin and Zhang Chenze looked at him in unison.
“The first bell tolled right before his death, and the second right after,” Qi Xia said, trying to connect the dots between the officer’s bizarre actions and this ability. “That means he gained it just before dying—but his behavior was strange.”
He pulled an old metal lighter from his pocket and showed it to them. “He acted like a magician—pulling a cigarette from an empty pack and this lighter from an empty pocket.”
“What?” Zhang Chenze frowned. “You didn’t give those to him?”
“No,” Qi Xia shook his head. “At the time, I didn’t want you focusing on it, so I kept quiet. But now it’s clear—he briefly had this power.”
“So you’re saying…” Lin Qin gestured vaguely, “this ‘Echo’ ability… lets people conjure things from thin air?”
“No,” Qi Xia shook his head again. “If we piece together Jiang Ruoxue’s words and everything that’s happened, we can make a bold guess—’Echo’ has different categories, and each person gains a unique ability. So far, we’ve seen ‘Calamity,’ ‘Framing,’ and Officer Li’s ‘Teleportation.'”
Zhang Chenze nodded in realization. “Jiang Ruoxue’s ability was different too… She seemed to control the ‘logical relationship’ of events…”
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