“I can see you getting more anxious by the day.” Jiang Ruoxue reached out and placed her hand on my shoulder. “When we first met, your eyes weren’t this despondent.”
“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “I just feel like I’ve stopped… Even though time stands still in this place, I know I haven’t… But now… I feel like I’ve stopped too.”
“Do you really want to achieve this goal?” she asked again, her expression serious. “Even if it’s hard… even if it requires great sacrifice?”
I knew that look. Whenever Jiang Ruoxue turned serious, she always said things I didn’t expect.
“I can help you,” she suddenly blurted out.
“Haven’t you been helping me all along?” I forced a bitter smile.
“No… This kind of ‘help’ is different.” She shook her head. “If I choose to assist you from a higher level, it means my mission is complete.”
“What do you mean…?” I didn’t quite understand. “Your ‘mission’?”
“Remember…?” Jiang Ruoxue chuckled and pinched my cheek. “The reason I’ve been able to appear here for five straight years is because I sensed you needed me. Once I help you accomplish this, my task is done, and you won’t need me anymore. ‘Causality’ won’t let us meet again.”
“What…?” I was stunned.
“After that, if we want to see each other, it’ll have to rely on real ‘fate’,” she said with a smile. “Our birthpoints are far apart, almost on opposite ends of this city. Meeting won’t be so easy anymore.”
“I don’t really get it…” I frowned at her. “Ruoxue… You could’ve helped me directly in other ways, yet you chose to waste five years?”
“Waste…? No, no.” She shook her head. “Zhichun, everything in this world follows ‘causality.’ If something doesn’t align with it, you can reverse-engineer the cause from the effect and still find the answer.”
After five years together, I could mostly grasp what she was saying.
“So you mean… these five years are also part of ‘causality’?”
“Of course.” Jiang Ruoxue nodded. “These five years weren’t wasted. My presence made you a little brighter, a little happier. Telling you this method now is far better than five years ago. The success rate of ‘causality’ will be higher. Even without me by your side, you can complete this task. This is the ‘causality’ I follow—the inevitable ‘causality’ of all things.”
I understood, but I didn’t want to.
“So once you help me solve this… you won’t be able to act with me anymore?” I asked again.
“It’s not that absolute.” She gave a wry smile and shook her head. “Zhichun, this city isn’t small. Finding one specific person in it isn’t easy. Once I remove the ‘causality’ that made us meet and instead use it to help you build the organization, our encounters will become much harder. That’s all.”
After saying this, she seemed to notice my unhappiness and smirked mischievously. “After all, neither of us knows the other’s phone number. We can’t even contact each other normally, right?”
I wasn’t in the mood for jokes and just asked dejectedly, “Then what will you do… after that?”
“I’ll help you from the other side of the city.” She replied, “You’ve said it yourself—this organization doesn’t need ‘collaboration.’ Everyone operates independently. So… we’ll act separately, recruiting members from opposite ends of the city without needing to communicate. Who knows? One day, this organization might become incredibly strong.”
“But… how will you help me?” I asked.
Jiang Ruoxue took a step forward, standing right in front of me. She took my hand, inhaled deeply, and said slowly:
“Yan Zhichun, building an organization isn’t hard. You just need to understand the underlying logic.”
As soon as she finished speaking, beads of sweat formed on her forehead. After a pause of a few seconds, she continued:
“From now on, as long as you speak the truth with sincerity—without any deception—the other person will believe everything you say.”
Something about her seemed off. In just those few sentences, sweat dripped from her face as if she’d exhausted herself.
Once done, she quickly let go of my hand, bent over to catch her breath, then wiped the sweat from her face and said, “Just how massive is this organization supposed to be…? Why is it so draining?”
“Are you okay?” I looked at her worriedly.
“Don’t worry.” She gave me a weak smile. “Zhichun, now you have the potential of a ‘King.’ The rest will follow naturally.”
“So what exactly did you do…?”
“Nothing much. I just told you the ‘causality’ that will inevitably happen.” After taking a few deep breaths, she asked, “So, what should we name this organization?”
“A name…?”
“Yes.” Jiang Ruoxue steadied her breathing. “We’re partners now. I’ll need to recruit others too—how can I do that without a name?”
I lowered my head, considering the organization we were about to build.
From now on, we’d walk a completely different path. In fact, it wasn’t just us—every ‘participant’ here seemed to have their own way.
Some could peacefully engage in the games, some boldly formed factions, others gambled their lives against the ‘Zodiacs’ in the games, and some even donned masks to become ‘Zodiacs’ themselves.
There’s a Roman saying: ‘All roads lead to Rome.’ But I don’t like that phrase. It’s straightforward but lacks depth.
I prefer the Daoist saying: ‘Three thousand great paths, each leading to divinity.’
We would abandon all other possibilities, deviate from the main path, and focus solely on one. Not just that—we’d take this single path to its absolute extreme. It was destined to be an irreversible, radical route.
In Daoism, there’s a special name for those who follow this approach—
“**The Path of Extremes**,” I said.
“**The Path of Extremes**…?”
“Right. Our organization will be called **The Path of Extremes**,” I told Jiang Ruoxue. “Every member who joins will be an ‘Extremist.’ The goal of the organization is to ‘protect the Land of Finality.’ We need these people to make ‘The Path of Extremes’ their lifelong belief. Since none of them will know each other, the recognition code will be: **Long live the Path of Extremes!**”
After that cycle, just as she’d said, Jiang Ruoxue never appeared at my birthpoint to wait for me again.
Her role shifted from a close, talkative friend by my side to a distant, seldom-seen partner.
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