Regardless of whether this woman is the real Man in Black Robe, the fact that Malevolent Automatons are swarming from all directions indicates that the person hiding in the shadows has made their move. They are about to face the greatest danger in this instance, marking the final step.
Now that they have reached the most critical moment, whether they can break the deadlock and claim first place in the Arena Instance depends on the situation after reaching the Stargazing Platform.
Yan Wei was being dragged by Yan Mingguang as they hurried toward the Stargazing Platform. In his mind, he sifted through all the clues he had gathered since entering the instance, organizing the chaotic thoughts.
If this woman was indeed the Man in Black Robe they had chased into the maze earlier, then the person now enraged and controlling the puppets was likely another Man in Black Robe—just like the players, there were two: the True Self and the Puppet. The woman accompanying them was one, and the enraged one was the other.
From this perspective, the woman’s constant insistence that she must not die suggested a higher likelihood that she was the True Self.
Although Lou’s instances were bizarre and unpredictable, it was impossible for an NPC or a challenge unrelated to the main storyline to appear out of thin air. In other words, based on the information provided, the NPCs in this instance could only be one of two things: the True Self of the Man in Black Robe and the Benevolent Automaton, or the Man in Black Robe and his mother.
In either case, these two sides were opposed, with one wishing for the other’s death.
If the woman was the Man in Black Robe who had shed her black robe, then the enraged one in the shadows was the Benevolent Automaton of the Man in Black Robe.
If the woman was the mother of Ace, the Man in Black Robe, then the enraged one in the shadows was the Man in Black Robe, and he and his mother were enemies.
Since the two were opposed, their current predicament, from the surface, was a result of aiding one side and angering the other. As the woman had said, they had intruded into the secret maze, entered the enigmatic small castle, and left unscathed, which had enraged Ace, the Man in Black Robe in the shadows, who now wanted them all to die here.
Having reached this point, Yan Wei had fully opened another path to breaking the deadlock, but he had also walked straight into a hopeless situation.
Who was truly whose? Who was telling the truth, and who was lying?
He had no clues.
After going in circles, they had returned to the core essence of this instance from the very beginning—truth and falsehood.
Suddenly, several expressionless Benevolent Automatons appeared ahead.
Yan Mingguang didn’t stop, pulling Yan Wei with one hand while his Long Whip lashed out with the other, effortlessly sweeping the Benevolent Automatons aside. Behind them, Lin Zhen dragged the woman for a while before letting go, firing several arrows backward, then grabbing her hand and running forward again.
They were already on the third floor, and despite the swarming puppets around them, with Yan Mingguang clearing the path ahead and Lin Zhen covering their rear, they soon reached the Stargazing Platform.
Chaos had already erupted at the Stargazing Platform.
With the Benevolent Automaton Yan Wei present, there was no need for Yan Wei to intervene; the situation had already completely changed.
Yu Feizhou and the players captured by Morning Star were now engaged in a melee with Morning Star’s members. Xue Wan’s whereabouts were unknown, likely still battling another version of himself somewhere. The Morning Star members had already been pushed outside the Stargazing Platform, and Xu Miaomiao stood in the center, seemingly using Puppetry to control the situation alongside the Benevolent Automaton Yan Wei.
As soon as Yan Mingguang and Yan Wei arrived, the Benevolent Automaton Yan Wei found a way to clear a path for the players.
Yan Wei hurriedly followed Yan Mingguang up.
Behind them, Lin Zhen also dragged the woman up. It was more like dragging than pulling. The woman seemed increasingly terrified, trembling all over, so panicked that Lin Zhen had to drag her up the Stargazing Platform. Her skirt left a messy trail of blood on the ground, stretching all the way to her feet, as if she had an endless supply of blood.
The Malevolent Automatons, held back by the players, surged upward like madmen.
Yan Wei’s Perception spread out, allowing him to sense the Malevolent Automatons surrounding them. Although some players had already destroyed a few Malevolent Automatons, many players were still scattered throughout the castle, hiding. Now that the Malevolent Automatons had gone mad, except for the players at the Stargazing Platform who could still support each other, the scattered players couldn’t hold on.
The number of Malevolent Automatons had skyrocketed in an instant.
At this moment, the castle had gone completely mad.
Although Yan Wei was well aware that others’ lives and deaths were none of his concern, he suddenly paused on the Stairway leading to the Stargazing Platform and glanced back.
Without thinking, he said, “I still don’t know how to break the deadlock. Is there any way we can gather the players here first?”
Lin Zhen was already dragging the woman closer, and as soon as Yan Wei spoke, he laughed self-deprecatingly.
Of course, it was impossible. He must have been out of his mind to ask such a question. He was lucky to be able to take care of himself—while others only needed to complete the Arena Instance, for him, only by claiming first place and obtaining the Moon Wheel Fragment could he survive.
Such a saintly question, the kind only Yu Feizhou would consider, was truly boring and meaningless.
“Although I’ve regained my memories and data,” Yan Mingguang seemed to take Yan Wei’s question very seriously, answering with utmost gravity, “Lou’s instances impose restrictions on players to ensure they don’t possess overwhelming data at the corresponding floors. My Body Index is suppressed by debuffs, and protecting you is already my limit.”
Yan Wei glanced at him. “Let’s go up first.”
While they were talking, Lin Zhen had already half-dragged, half-carried the woman up to the Stargazing Platform.
When Yan Wei and Yan Mingguang arrived, Yu Feizhou was checking Lin Zhen’s injuries, while the woman lay prostrate on the ground, trembling all over, her deathly pale face stiff with panic.
She repeated in a shaky voice, “Ace is coming, Ace is coming, you must kill him!! Otherwise… otherwise he’ll kill us all…”
Below the Stargazing Platform, on the path outside the Stairway, the frenzied puppets slowly parted to make way.
The Man in Black Robe, still cloaked in his full-length black robe, walked out from the midst of the puppets. His hoarse, eerie voice grew closer: “Guests, if you don’t follow my rules, you will forever become my collection.”
Before he finished speaking, the puppets grew even more frenzied.
Two Xu Miaomiaos, each wielding a black staff to control Puppetry, blocked the Malevolent Automatons charging from the front. At the same time, they both looked at Yan Wei, one saying, “Have you found a way to break the deadlock?”
The other added, “Since you’re the one who drove these puppets mad, if you can’t break the deadlock, I’ll kill you first to appease their anger. The Man in Black Robe would surely be pleased.”
Yan Wei sighed. “Such a violent little sister.”
The Benevolent Automaton Yan Wei, clearly accustomed to Xu Miaomiao’s fickle nature, walked past her and crouched down in front of the woman, examining her closely before standing up and addressing Yan Wei and Yan Mingguang: “So this is the Man in Black Robe’s mother you mentioned earlier?”
Yan Wei nodded. “She said only by killing Ace can this all end.”
The Benevolent Automaton Yan Wei blinked. “But what she says isn’t necessarily true. What he says isn’t necessarily true, but we must make a choice now.”
Yan Wei’s gaze sharpened.
He seemed to stare directly at the woman, yet his focus seemed to converge on the Meat Grinder ahead. In that instant, he thought of many things—some were the intertwining and collision of clues, while others were things beyond this instance.
Since this instance was so tailored to him, with such limited time, it would be difficult to obtain more clues.
In fact, the problem had become simpler.
He had to gamble. Should he bet on killing Ace, the Man in Black Robe, who was getting closer to the Stargazing Platform? Or should he go against the grain and kill this woman who claimed to be the Man in Black Robe’s mother? Or perhaps… kill both?
Even if he made a choice, whether he could kill them was another matter.
Amid the chaos on the Stargazing Platform, the castle’s only fully glass-covered ceiling revealed the sky outside. Under the night sky, the full moon hung high, with swarms of crows circling above, partially obscuring the moonlight and casting fragmented shadows through the glass dome.
In front of the Meat Grinder, the woman was crawling backward, futilely trying to avoid the approaching Man in Black Robe, trembling and shouting hoarsely, “Kill him… let’s end this…”
Both the True Self Yan Wei and the Benevolent Automaton Yan Wei glanced at each other simultaneously.
Yan Mingguang said, “With our current numbers and strength, it’s only a matter of time before the Man in Black Robe reaches us.”
In this instance, the Man in Black Robe’s strength grew as time passed. Since Yan Mingguang said so, the current situation wouldn’t get worse, but it wouldn’t get better either.
Yan Wei said, “If I gamble, using double reverse logic, killing this Man in Black Robe is the right move. Can you do it?”
Yan Mingguang: “I can rush up now, grab the Man in Black Robe, and throw him into the Meat Grinder.”
“Alone?”
“Mm.”
Yan Wei raised an eyebrow. “Right, I was just thinking, if I did this, you could probably do it alone.”
The Benevolent Automaton Yan Wei smiled. “Alone.”
Lin Zhen, drawing his bow and firing an arrow, snapped, “You’re speaking in riddles again!!”
Xu Miaomiao’s eyes lit up. “Yes, alone.”
Alone.
But they had all been to the Stargazing Platform before. Some had personally exchanged Benevolent Automatons for Points, while others had observed players making exchanges.
The Meat Grinder was large, and its inlet was quite high. The Puppets—or players mistaken for Puppets—were indeed heavy. Throwing a normal-sized human into it wasn’t as simple as a casual toss.
But how had the Man in Black Robe handled it when players came to exchange for Points and Gold Coins?
He didn’t let the players throw the Prey into the Meat Grinder themselves. Instead, he stepped forward and helped them lift and throw the Prey in.
Players already had to exert some effort to lift the Prey, so with the Man in Black Robe helping to throw it in, they naturally didn’t think twice.
But from the Man in Black Robe’s perspective?
Players were merely tools in his game. Why go out of his way to help? Standing back and watching the game of human nature unfold smoothly would have been better. Throwing the Prey into the Meat Grinder was something a single player could have done alone, so why did the Man in Black Robe always step forward to help?
Yan Wei slowly bent down, looking at the woman, and said, “Just now, when I realized that you, Yan Mingguang, could do this alone, I suddenly had a guess—a guess about why the Man in Black Robe was so kind as to help players throw in the Prey.”
“I was also thinking, in that hidden maze, only we and the Man in Black Robe had entered. This ‘mother of Ace’ appeared out of nowhere and left with us. Could it be that she was the Man in Black Robe who had shed her black robe, and the one approaching now was the Benevolent Automaton of the Man in Black Robe, who had diverged from him?”
“Then, piecing it all together, it seems to make sense. The Man in Black Robe created the Virtuous and Malevolent Puppets, creating Benevolent Automatons indistinguishable from the True Self. So, he made corresponding Benevolent Automatons for everyone who came to this castle, including himself. But precisely because his Puppetry was so masterful, the Benevolent Automatons he created were identical to himself, sharing his love for manipulating human nature and his desire to destroy everything in the world, including himself.”
“Thus, his True Self and Benevolent Automaton diverged, neither able to overcome the other. But an accident occurred—under my design, the True Self Ace prematurely used a massive amount of power to control the Puppets, exhausting himself and hiding in the small maze, which is now…” He raised his hand, pointing at the trembling woman on the ground. “This woman in front of us.”
“She can only be the Man in Black Robe. She deliberately soaked her lower body in blood, leaving a trail of blood wherever she walked, to make us think she wasn’t the Man in Black Robe, since the Man in Black Robe left no traces. But her cleverness backfired—when we entered the small castle, it was spotless, with no traces of blood. This could only mean one thing: she had entered the small castle with us. She wasn’t the so-called ‘mother of Ace’ who had been in the small castle all along, but the Man in Black Robe we had chased in.”
“She could have hidden, waiting for her strength to recover. But her Benevolent Automaton seemed to have noticed her depletion and wanted to seize the opportunity to destroy her, because her Benevolent Automaton, like her, wanted to destroy everything. Even if the Benevolent Automaton would die as a result, it was happy to destroy the True Self—they were born opposed. But the True Self didn’t want to die, so she came up with a plan: appearing before us, spinning this story, hoping we would help her kill her Benevolent Automaton.”
The Benevolent Automaton Yan Wei smiled faintly. “The person below the Stargazing Platform is just Ace’s Benevolent Automaton. The woman before us is the true Man in Black Robe. And the reason she always helped players throw the Prey into the Meat Grinder was because the game rules demanded it.”
Only the contestants who personally threw the Prey into the Meat Grinder could earn the Point for destroying the Prey, or all the Points the Prey was worth.
This instance had never stated that the Man in Black Robe wasn’t a contestant.
Their ranking table only showed the players’ rankings, but it didn’t mean that the ranking table included all contestants.
This was the Man in Black Robe’s game of manipulating human nature. He had all the guests who came to the castle trapped in the struggle between human nature and truth versus falsehood, while he himself reveled in the game.
From the very first day they arrived at the castle, the Man in Black Robe had stated the most truthful rule.
—”Guests and my children are equals.”
—”After all, in a game, it’s only fun if everyone is equal.”
This game was fair, fair to everyone.
The Man in Black Robe was both the enforcer of the game’s rules and a participant in the game, competing alongside the players, and… enjoying the Points. Like the players, if he threw the Prey into the Meat Grinder, he could also earn Points.
And there was a loophole in the game rules that no one had noticed: the player who threw the Prey into the Meat Grinder could earn the corresponding Points, but the rules didn’t specify how many contestants could throw at once. If one person threw, that person earned the Prey’s Points. But what if two people threw together? Would both earn Points?
At first, no one had thought of this, because the Man in Black Robe always helped the players destroy the Prey, creating the illusion that the Man in Black Robe had to be involved in destroying the Prey. Naturally, players didn’t consider what would happen if multiple people threw together.
But if the Man in Black Robe was also a contestant…
Every time he and a player destroyed the Prey together, the player earned Points, but did the Man in Black Robe also… effortlessly earn the same Points?
The Benevolent Automaton Yan Wei chuckled softly. “This woman is the Man in Black Robe who has been staying at the Stargazing Platform to destroy the Prey. The Man in Black Robe is also a contestant—this woman is also a participant in the entire Puppet Castle game. She has participated in every destruction of a Puppet.”
The person with the highest score in this castle might not be Xue Wan.
Bending down, the True Self Yan Wei and the Benevolent Automaton Yan Wei, one on each side, forcefully grabbed the woman and dragged her toward the Meat Grinder.
Both Yan Weis spoke simultaneously: “You don’t want to die, because your death would truly end this. So let me try—what if I throw you in? Will this all end? Will I earn the total Points accumulated in this game so far?”
