Chapter 82

"What...?" Qixia turned her head and stared 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 would stop you, why did you leave me behind?"

Qixia covered her wound, her face gradually turning pale.

"Let me guess, you wanted me to alert the other 'Ultimate Seekers' so everyone would think 'Qixia has given up,' and that's why you spared my life, right?"

"Ultimate Seekers?" Lin Qi and Zhang Chenze exchanged puzzled glances, completely failing to understand her meaning.

"You are indeed very smart," Jiang Ruoxue nodded. "But you made one mistake, and that is, I don't care whether you can gather three thousand six hundred 'Paths,' and I won't stop you."

Qixia's face was unusually dark, realizing that all her thoughts had been seen through by the other party.

"Although we are all 'Ultimate Seekers,' each of us has different pursuits," Jiang Ruoxue said, taking a rubber band from her wrist and tying her loose hair into a bun. "Some people are obsessed with disrupting the competition, some like to destroy 'Paths,' and others pretend to be natives on the streets, but I am different."

"How are you different?" Qixia asked.

"I enjoy experiencing different games and watching people scheme against each other," Jiang Ruoxue answered without hesitation. "Although 'Ultimate Seekers' are all a bunch of lunatics, cheats, and gamblers, each of us is protecting this place in our own way. My way of protecting it is by inciting good people to participate in the games."

"So... you are a 'shill'?" Qixia asked pointedly.

"Shill...?" Jiang Ruoxue thought for a moment and nodded. "If you put it that way... I am a shill, but no one pays me."

Qixia was momentarily speechless, her mind only pondering one question—what exactly is 'Ultimate'?

"So what about you?" Jiang Ruoxue asked. "Are you really going to give up?"

"What do you think?"

Qixia released her hand from her wound and showed Jiang Ruoxue the blood on her fingers. "Can you heal me?"

"That I can't do," Jiang Ruoxue shook her head. "I can't figure out the 'logical connection' to heal you, otherwise I would definitely save you... after all, you just saved my life."

Seeing that Qixia and the others were still looking at her with caution, Jiang Ruoxue didn't want to embarrass herself. She stretched, revealing her sexy curves, and asked, "Are you going to kill me? If not, I'm leaving."

The three were not ruthless killers and had no reason to kill Jiang Ruoxue. After a moment's thought, they realized they had no reason to keep her either.

"Are you really leaving?" Jiang Ruoxue confirmed again.

Seeing no response from the group, she shook her head in frustration, causing a distant bell to ring.

Hearing this soul-stirring sound, Qixia finally couldn't help but ask, "What does the bell represent?"

Jiang Ruoxue turned around, pondered for a moment, and said, "Since you saved my life, I'll make an exception and answer your question, but you have to answer one of mine."

"Okay," Qixia nodded.

Seeing Qixia agree, Jiang Ruoxue continued, "So far, there are only two known situations that make the bell ring: the first is 'hearing an echo,' and the second is 'the echo disappearing.'"

</di>

"What is an 'echo'?" Qixia asked again.

"That's the second question," Jiang Ruoxue shook her head. "Are we that close?"

Qixia, holding her wound, her face gradually darkened.

Jiang Ruoxue seemed a bit reluctant and said, "Qixia, this time I'll make an exception and answer one more question for you. An 'echo' is a very abstract thing; some people never understand it, and even if they do, they can't harness its power... today my luck was good, and I successfully created two 'echoes' in a row, which is why you're still alive."

Zhang Chenze seemed to realize something: "Sure enough... the person I killed with the glass was manipulated by you..."

"If your understanding is still at the level of 'manipulation,' you'll never understand 'echoes,'" Jiang Ruoxue turned to leave, but after three steps, she stopped and said, "Qixia, don't suppress your sadness; people hear 'echoes' in extreme emotions."

With that, Jiang Ruoxue pushed open the door of the inn and walked onto the street.

"Hey, don't you have a question to ask me?" Qixia called out from a distance.

"Owe it for now," Jiang Ruoxue didn't turn back, just waved her hand.

Her words left the group in a fog, but Qixia felt she had grasped a clue.

According to Qixia's understanding, 'echoes' seemed to be some kind of superpower.

This superpower randomly appears in some people.

And at that moment, the giant bell would ring, and the screen would display "I heard an echo."

In other words, every time the bell rang before, it was because someone had gained this superpower called 'echo,' and the second time it rang, it meant the user had hidden their power or... the user had died.

"Officer Li was an 'Echoer'..." Qixia muttered to herself.

"Officer Li?" Lin Qi and Zhang Chenze looked at Qixia simultaneously.

"Officer Li's death triggered the first bell, and the second bell rang after he died," Qixia tried to connect Officer Li's strange actions with this superpower. "This means he gained this power before he died, but his behavior was very strange."

Qixia took out the old metal lighter from her pocket and showed it to Lin Qi and Zhang Chenze. "He was like a magician, pulling a cigarette out of an empty pack and a lighter out of an empty pocket."

"What?" Zhang Chenze looked at Qixia in confusion. "Didn't you bring those to him?"

"No," Qixia shook her head. "I didn't want you to focus too much on these issues at the time, so I didn't mention it, but now thinking about it, he did briefly gain this superpower."

"So you mean..." Lin Qi extended her hand, gesturing, "this superpower called 'echo'... can make things appear out of nowhere?"

"No," Qixia shook her head again. "If we carefully consider Jiang Ruoxue's words and combine them with everything that has happened, we can make a bold assumption... this thing called 'echo' has many categories, and the abilities each person gains are different. So far, we know of 'disaster summoning,' 'blame shifting,' and Officer Li's 'telekinesis.'"

Zhang Chenze nodded and interjected, "Jiang Ruoxue's ability is also different from Officer Li's... she seems to control the 'logical connection' of events..."