Xing Ye pointed at the mobile app and said, “They used this to do it.”

After being angry for a while, Lu Mingze suddenly didn’t know who he was even angry at anymore.

Angry at the fake “Lu Mingze”? He knew nothing; he was innocent. Besides, he looked just as good as himself—how could Little Mirror bear to be angry at him?
Angry at the system? The system had been tripping players up for far more than just a day or two. There were simply too many things to be angry about—if he took each one seriously, he’d be furious to death, completely unable to keep up.
Angry at Xing Ye? How could that be? Xing Ye, even after becoming a homeless man and struggling just to survive, still managed to find him—and hadn’t even looked at the fake “Lu Mingze” one extra time. What was there to be angry about?

And so, unable to find anyone to vent his anger on, Lu Mingze stopped being angry all by himself after just a few minutes. During this entire time, his intimacy level with Xing Ye remained firmly at 100, never dropping even once.

Xing Ye carefully held Little Mirror in his hands and said to him, “Actually, I was able to retrieve my abilities thanks to your invitation QR code. Otherwise, I really wouldn’t have known what to do.”

Hearing the praise, Lu Mingze felt happy for a moment, but then said worriedly, “Where did the system put your abilities? When I went through my final stage, I never imagined the system could be this excessive—leaving you without even a single ability.”

Xing Ye had been thinking about this question all day and had gained a bit of clarity. He explained to Lu Mingze, “The system follows rules. If it could so easily take everything from me, it would have taken my points long ago. The reason it hasn’t reclaimed my points is because it can’t. The Black-and-White Cube once said that the game encourages players to fight against fate. It sets obstacles for players while also hoping that someone can truly overcome destiny.

“So this time, the one who took my abilities shouldn’t be the system itself, but rather the difficulty that the system set up.”

“Then who could possibly do something like that?” Lu Mingze had actually already thought of the answer, but didn’t dare to be certain.

Xing Ye said, “Aside from myself, who else could completely take away everything that belongs to me? This world has another ‘younger brother,’ another ‘Lu Mingze,’ and of course, another ‘Xing Ye.’ In fact, the hint is already very obvious—the opponent the system prepared for me in the final stage is ‘myself.’”

Lu Mingze panicked slightly and said, “Then what do we do? You only have 1,150 points and two starting skills—‘Repainting Brush’ and ‘Mirror Reflection.’ But the other one has ‘Repainting Brush,’ ‘Kuafu Chasing the Sun’, and ‘Stealing the Sky and Swapping the Sun’. The last two are extremely powerful. Even if you both compete using ‘Repainting Brush,’ his points far exceed yours—you can’t win. And if the opponent is ‘you,’ his intelligence won’t be any lower than yours.”

Xing Ye, however, remained quite calm. He said, “I also have your starting skill and achievement title. In addition, after completing game tasks, I obtained a QR code called ‘Power of Knowledge.’ With a surprise attack, it’s not that I have no chance of winning. But right now, I’m not planning to treat him as an enemy. Instead, I’m puzzled by two things. First, why didn’t you refresh beside the other ‘Xing Ye’? Second, what exactly is this world?”

“Isn’t the first question already solved? I have ‘Eye of Truth’—I wouldn’t be fooled. Staying by his side would be useless,” Lu Mingze asked.

Xing Ye said, “The system’s ultimate goal in separating us was to prevent you from becoming my support. Besides lowering our intimacy, there’s another way—to directly erase your existence. Before you and I met, you couldn’t use your consciousness-transfer ability. If the system placed you beside ‘Xing Ye’ at that time, then even if you realized he wasn’t me, he could erase your consciousness or smash the mirror. Wouldn’t that be far more decisive than making you jealous to drive a wedge between us?”

Lu Mingze: “……”

That sounded absolutely terrifying.

He rubbed his arms, comforting his frightened little heart, and continued asking, “Then… was it because I was lucky? After all, my luck stat is high.”

Xing Ye shook his head. “If luck were useful in the final stage, you wouldn’t have failed your own final stage. The luck stat of the Fate-Following faction is something the system grants—and it can take it back at any time. Moreover, logically speaking, since everything of mine was taken by the other ‘Xing Ye,’ you, as my item, should have been taken as well. So why were you with the other ‘Lu Mingze’?”

“With so many questions, how did you determine that I was with ‘Lu Mingze’?” Lu Mingze asked in confusion.

Xing Ye had thought through all of this, yet instead of going to duel with “Xing Ye,” he came looking for “Lu Mingze”—and even successfully found him.

“It wasn’t certainty,” Xing Ye said. “I simply started looking in the place with the highest probability. Information about ‘Lu Mingze’ was very clear, but information about ‘Xing Ye’ wasn’t, so I prioritized the former.”

And he was fortunate enough to find Little Mirror. Perhaps all of his luck had been used up just to find him.

After silently rejoicing for a moment, Lu Mingze asked again, “You said you have a mobile app—what’s your current task?”

Xing Ye glanced at his phone and said, “After completing the task ‘Gain the younger brother’s trust,’ I received 1,000 points and the ‘Power of Knowledge’ QR code. Then the next task updated to ‘Kill Xing Shuo and seize his points.’ I’d have to be insane to carry out that kind of task.”

Lu Mingze: “……What exactly is the system trying to do by issuing a task like that?”

“Intensifying contradictions—this is a trick of the system. Look at the game rewards: you can obtain 2,000 points and Xing Shuo’s initial skill, ‘Kua Fu Chases the Sun’.” Xing Ye said.
“If I treat this world as a replica and regard my brother as unreal, killing ‘Xing Shuo’ without hesitation, then I would be falling step by step into the system’s trap.”

“The system’s novice task is ‘find your own identity.’ My identity is Xing Ye, yet there is another ‘Xing Ye’ in this world. Then I’m told to gain my brother’s trust, and afterward to kill my brother. If I obediently follow the mobile game’s tasks one by one, I will inevitably be pushed into total opposition with ‘Xing Ye’—and that will be a dead end.” Xing Ye said.

Lu Mingze suddenly realized something. “So at first you didn’t say that ‘yourself’ was the opponent, but later you said the opponent prepared by the system for you is ‘yourself’. In other words, the opponent the system prepared may not be the real key to the final stage at all—but rather, like a fake ending, it’s actually a trap?”

Xing Ye nodded.

“This is already the final stage, and the system is still pulling this kind of stunt?” Lu Mingze asked in confusion. Has the Guizhou donkey exhausted its tricks?”

(NT: idiom meaning having no more tactics left. It comes from a Tang-dynasty tale where a tiger, initially frightened by a donkey brought to Guizhou, realizes after seeing its few tricks that the donkey has no more abilities and kills it)

“No,” Xing Ye shook his head. “It’s not that the donkey has run out of tricks. It’s that something went wrong in a certain link, which led to the current situation.” He pondered.

“What went wrong?” Lu Mingze asked.

Xing Ye said, “That relates to my second question: what kind of existence is this world? From the moment I arrived, I felt a sense of disharmony. Many things seem to have the ‘right’ outcome, but the logic behind them is wrong—there are obvious loopholes.”

Lu Mingze didn’t quite understand. He blinked, silently expressing his confusion.

Xing Ye explained, “Let me give you a few very obvious examples.

“First: just because I didn’t lure your bodyguards away doesn’t mean you couldn’t have been kidnapped. The kidnappers were never caught—the hidden danger didn’t disappear.

“Second: you weren’t kidnapped, yet you still went abroad to study. That’s inherently unreasonable, because you once said that if there had been no kidnapping, you would rather have studied under your mother.

“Third: after experiencing school bullying, my younger brother Xing Shuo became outwardly well-behaved but inwardly scarred. That shadow magnified his sense of inferiority—he felt he couldn’t help me, so he abandoned science and chose to study history. But in this world, he never experienced school bullying, yet he made the exact same choice.

“Fourth: I had long told my parents that I didn’t want to interfere in the company’s affairs for the time being and hoped they would give me limited freedom. If my parents hadn’t died, I wouldn’t have taken over the company so soon. Yet in this world, my parents are alive, and I still became the company’s leader.

“Fifth: I checked online. The company’s current scale is exactly the same as in the real world. I still cooperate with your father, and even the company’s development model is identical. But logically speaking, if my parents hadn’t died, things should never have unfolded this way.

“Everything should have gone down a completely different path—but the endings are exactly the same. How do you think such a completely illogical result came to be?”

Lu Mingze listened in a daze, his mind going blank from how complicated it all sounded. He decided it was better to wait for the conclusion.

Xing Ye pointed at the app on his phone and said, “This app answers all of my questions.”

Lu Mingze said, “It looks like a pirated version of the ‘Challenging Fate’ game. It assigns tasks and grants abilities, but it only works within a single world and doesn’t have a system space.”

“Everything was done through it,” Xing Ye said. “It was also through it that my abilities were taken away. Think carefully—does the ‘Lu Mingze’ of this world have this app?”

The app was installed on a phone, and Lu Mingze was a phone case; he couldn’t directly see the phone’s contents. But he carefully recalled how often and how strangely that ‘Lu Mingze’ used his phone. The little mirror said, “Maybe he really does. First he used me to admire his face—as handsome as mine—then he looked around, and after confirming no one was nearby, he turned on his phone and tapped a few times. After that, he did something strange… something strange to my mom… Well, his mother said he was having dinner with old classmates tomorrow, but he didn’t say who. I saw it very clearly—he was lying. I don’t know who he’s planning to meet tomorrow!”

“That only proves he lied,” Xing Ye shook his head. “It doesn’t prove he has an app.”

“I feel like he does,” Lu Mingze said firmly.

“Then he does,” Xing Ye replied.

Xing Ye continued, “That makes everything reasonable. In fact, the original trajectory of this world was exactly the same as ours. My parents died in a car accident. You became a vegetative patient. Xing Shuo died. Everything was identical—until that point.

“Someone used a supernatural power to forcibly erase those events. They resurrected my parents and Xing Shuo, allowed you to recover from your vegetative state, and deliberately erased everyone’s memories and impressions. That’s why this sense of dissonance exists.”

“How did they do it?” Lu Mingze asked.

Xing Ye pointed at the mobile app and said, “By using this.”

 

Translator : DarNan