Foolish Game of the Gods - Chapter 101

“So, you call this ‘nature’?”

Qin Chaoge’s face was full of mockery as she eyed Hu Xuan’s tight-fitting, revealing dress. She was just shy of pointing at Hu Xuan’s forehead and saying, “You’re just being flirtatious.”

Hu Xuan remained unbothered by her attitude, even extending her hand toward Qin Chaoge with a playful beckon.

“Come, let me show you what it means to feel nature.”

“You think I’m afraid of you?”

Qin Chaoge snorted coldly and extended her own muscular arm—so muscular that even Cheng Shi couldn’t help but feel a sweat break out—and grabbed Hu Xuan’s soft hand.

The raw strength in Qin Chaoge’s grip turned Hu Xuan’s hand red, but the latter maintained her serene smile as if she couldn’t feel any pain. She closed her eyes and murmured:

“May rage melt away, may differences be reconciled, may we be of one heart… relax, for He is watching over you.”

As soon as the words left her lips, Qin Chaoge’s expression turned to shock. She jerked her hand away, taking two steps back, her brows furrowing in confusion as she demanded:

“What did you just do!?”

Hu Xuan gave a gentle smile, placing her hand on her now slightly swollen belly and softly said:

“Look, our child.”

Instantly, everyone present was dumbfounded.

“Wait… what…? Huh?”

Cheng Shi’s jaw practically hit the floor.

His gaze bounced between Hu Xuan and Qin Chaoge, occasionally lingering on Hu Xuan’s belly.

His eyes grew wider, but the corners of his mouth slowly curled upward.

This is wild!

This escalated quickly!

Wait… does this count as completing a [Divine Will] already?

Li Bola was also observing Hu Xuan’s belly with great interest, while Ji Ran, who had been knocked to the ground earlier, crawled back on all fours, staring at the now slightly swollen belly with a look of amazement.

“Wow, sis, how did you manage that?”

Hu Xuan gave him a polite nod and stretched out her hand toward him.

“Come.”

“…”

Cheng Shi had never heard the word “come” sound so ominous. He instinctively took a step back, only to realize Ji Ran had retreated even faster.

“No thanks, no thanks. You’ve already got one. I’d just be an extra burden.”

“…”

Everyone was thoroughly entertained, except for Qin Chaoge, whose face had darkened as if she had swallowed something bitter.

She couldn’t be sure exactly what Hu Xuan had done or what this “child” was. She also couldn’t be sure whether Hu Xuan had some “special” means of using it to influence her. Leaving such a vulnerability exposed so early in the trial was enough to frustrate anyone.

But frustration wasn’t going to help. This Sage of Life was clearly on a different level than the rest of them.

At least, Cheng Shi had never heard of someone getting pregnant just by touching hands.

“Well, now that introductions are out of the way and we’ve witnessed the ‘miracle of life,’ let’s get down to business.”

Li Bola finally spoke up, putting an end to the chaotic situation. Holding back her laughter, she looked at Qin Chaoge with a knowing smile and asked:

“Miss Voice of the Storm, care to tell us where our final teammate is?”

Everyone turned their attention to Qin Chaoge, a bit surprised. They saw her grit her teeth in frustration before lowering her voice and saying:

“He’s dead. In the room next to mine.”

“???”

Cheng Shi blinked in shock, unsure of how to process the situation.

“Dead?”

“Yes, before I even woke up, he was already dead.”

With a grim expression, Qin Chaoge led the group toward the room where the dead teammate lay.

Everyone followed, their minds racing with questions.

Cheng Shi’s head buzzed in disbelief.

A teammate died in the room next to yours, and you could still joke and chat with us like nothing happened?

Wow, lady, you’ve got nerves of steel.

Then again, with nerves like that, it’s no surprise you were ready to make a baby with a stranger you just met…

And that hunter lady… how did she figure this out?

“……”

When the players reached the door of the room next to Qin Chaoge’s, their personal assistants had followed them. Not wanting them to discover the dead body, Qin Chaoge once again waved the assistants away, telling them to stay back and not interfere.

The group pushed open the door and filed into the room, where they were greeted by two corpses lying at opposite ends of the room.

One was clearly one of the inn’s tour assistants.

And the other…

“Him, a follower of [Silence].”

?

No wonder you could openly reveal your faith. You already knew your opposition was dead.

Cheng Shi mentally snickered, half-wanting to ask if Qin Chaoge had been the one to kill him.

“It wasn’t me. When I woke up, I noticed how eerily quiet it was in the room next door, so I suspected there might be an opposing faith player matched with us.

So, I climbed in through the window to ‘get to know him’ a little earlier.”

“……”

That statement left everyone speechless.

Yeah right, you were just trying to test his strength by picking a fight, weren’t you?

“And that’s when I found his body.

He… had already committed suicide.

When I entered, I broke the silent field that had been set up. The assistant outside heard the noise and came in to check, so I killed him to avoid drawing more attention.”

All eyes turned to the other corpse.

She admitted to killing someone, but the victim was from Far Dusk Town.

Cheng Shi raised an eyebrow at this revelation.

The way the assistant’s body was positioned looked a lot like a suicide. If Qin Chaoge hadn’t confessed, the group might have believed something else had killed him.

But what was her reason for confessing?

Trusting words alone wasn’t enough. The players began examining the room.

Li Bola, being a hunter, was adept at analyzing evidence. After carefully scanning the room, she provided her conclusion:

“She’s telling the truth.

All the traces match her description. As for our deceased teammate…”

She crouched down beside the follower of [Silence] and tugged at his collar.

“He’s male, somewhere between 40 and 50 years old. Hands show signs of bow calluses, and his shoulder has markings consistent with a quiver—he was an experienced hunter.

The wound is on his chest. Judging by the marks, it looks like he reversed a dagger in his right hand and stabbed himself in the heart.

The strike was swift, with no hesitation, and the placement was precise—typical of [Silence] followers.

However…

He didn’t kill himself!

Like this poor assistant, it may look like suicide, but it’s not!”

As soon as Li Bola finished speaking, the entire room turned to Qin Chaoge, the atmosphere growing tense.

Indeed, if Qin Chaoge was capable of staging one suicide, she could easily stage a second. Her pre-emptive confession might have been a tactic to play mind games with them all.

Qin Chaoge’s face darkened as she glared at Li Bola, her voice low and cold as she demanded:

“Explain.”

Li Bola didn’t flinch under Qin Chaoge’s gaze. She pointed to the corpse’s left hand.

“The killer staged the scene in a hurry and overlooked one critical detail:

This follower of [Silence] has thicker calluses on his left hand than his right, and his left arm is slightly more developed, indicating he’s left-handed.

I can’t think of any reason why a left-handed hunter would use his right hand to commit suicide.

Also, the floor and his chest are covered in blood splatter, except for the inside of his right hand;

There’s a blood imprint on his right hand, and his fingers show signs of post-mortem injury—clearly, they were broken after death.

So… this is a poorly staged suicide.

In contrast, the assistant’s scene was more convincing.

If Miss Qin hadn’t confessed, we might’ve wasted more time investigating.

It’s a shame…

The fate of a hunter is often to become prey for another hunter.”

Cheng Shi frowned as he listened to Li Bola’s analysis.

Indeed, this was a very sloppy attempt at staging a suicide, with flaws everywhere.

No matter the ranking, such a clumsy cover-up wouldn’t fool any teammate, so why had the killer bothered?

Was this really just some reverse-psychology move by a [War] follower?

That seems a bit too risky, doesn’t it?

The eerie atmosphere in the room left everyone in silence. After thinking for a while, Cheng Shi still felt something was off.

By all accounts, while [Fate] trials were intense, they didn’t involve people dying right at the start.

[Fate] trials tested the heart, manipulating human nature, but they weren’t about taking lives.

In [Fate]’s trials, the goal was to uncover the truth behind the events, understand the threads of fate, and when the final decision point arrived, choose whether to maintain the current course of fate or alter it.

Then the entire fate situation would be offered up as an answer to [Fate].

Whether the decision was right or wrong depended on the specific trial, and couldn’t be generalized.

In the end, no matter if the choice was right or wrong, you might lose points on the Ladder, but not players.

Unless the choice you made had such an impact on fate that it, in turn, affected the players, leading to the tragedies everyone feared.

But now, with a teammate dead at the start, this was no good omen.

Could it be that death itself is the answer this time?

In [Fate] trials, the decision point always appeared simultaneously for all players, and Cheng Shi hadn’t received any prompt for a decision. This meant that the follower of [Silence]’s death was indeed an “accident!”

“So, what do we do now?”

In past trials, it was usually Cheng Shi who asked that question.

But today, someone beat him to it.

Ji Ran had lazily sat down on a chair by the table as soon as he entered the room. Now, seeing everyone looking confused and frustrated, he decided to speak up, if only to remind them that their assistants were still waiting outside.

He furrowed his brow, voicing the question on everyone’s mind.

“Doesn’t this town feel off to you? We’re just a group of ordinary travelers, yet each of us has been assigned a personal tour assistant.

What kind of sightseeing requires this level of personal attention?”

Nobody responded, or rather, nobody had an answer.

The trial had just begun, and the secrets this town held were still unknown.

As the group fell into silence, Hu Xuan gently caressed her belly and suddenly spoke:

“I sense His power in these tour assistants.”

“!?”

Cheng Shi was stunned: “[Birth]?”

“Yes, [Birth].”

“Is [Eternal Sun] His envoy?”

Hu Xuan smiled with interest:

“I don’t know His name, but we can find out.

Perhaps this ‘tour’ isn’t really a tour, and the ‘monitoring’ isn’t really monitoring. We don’t yet understand this town, so why rush to conclusions?

Feel it, understand it, get to know it, and then judge it.

That is the way of nature.

So I suggest we leave now and explore the town.”

Qin Chaoge scoffed.

“And the bodies? Just leave them here?”

“Why not? They both committed suicide, didn’t they?

How the authorities handle these bodies is also useful information for us. So, if they died by their own hands, what does it have to do with us?”

Hu Xuan, now kneeling beside the body of the fallen teammate, gently touched the corpse’s hand.

She murmured softly once again:

“May the pain fade, may the confusion end, may we meet again… relax, for He is watching over you.”

“???”

As the others stood dumbfounded, unsure of what Hu Xuan was doing, she adjusted her barely-there skirt, stood up, and, with her hand resting on her now even more swollen belly, smiled at the group:

“Look, the continuation of life.”

“……”

Everyone’s faces darkened instantly.

Cheng Shi lowered his head, his eyes flashing with seriousness.

One slacker, one brute, and one lunatic.

This trial was going to be a wild ride.