Chapter 269: Two Kinds of Players / The Truth About Players

Torrential rain poured outside. The living room of the Xia-Ke house was empty, leaving only Ke Mingqing and Kamishiro Ruri standing face to face.

Ke Mingqing remained expressionless.

"Answer me," he said.

A smile touched Kamishiro Ruri's eyes.

"I have ties to the Japanese yakuza," she said. "The magical girl Sakurahime happens to be the eldest daughter of one of those families. From Sakurahime, who recently returned to the country, I learned that Blue Pigeon killed the Witch of Despair. Then I discovered that Blue Pigeon was a teenager named Ke Mingqing. Combined with the identity broadcast by the system, I figured out exactly who you are."

She smiled, crossing her arms and tucking her hands into the wide sleeves of her kimono. "Jin Chengwu is Ke Mingqing, who is also Blue Pigeon—am I right, Li-kun?"

Ke Mingqing fell silent for a moment before letting out a soft sigh. "Then I'm really out of options. You couldn't possibly have come knocking on my door just so I could silence you."

Despite his words, he brushed past Kamishiro Ruri without changing his expression. He walked to the refrigerator, opened it, and pulled out a bottle of Apple juice.

Kamishiro Ruri shook her head. "Not at all," she said calmly. "I don't intend to leak this to anyone. That 'anyone' includes non-players, such as your fami—"

With a sharp crack, Ke Mingqing twisted the cap off the juice bottle, cutting her off. "You don't seem to understand the situation. You're standing in my living room, spouting a secret that could get me killed ten million times over."

Kamishiro Ruri lowered her voice. "It can't be helped. It's raining out, so it's hardly suitable for us to chat outside. That would be too conspicuous. And you went and deleted me from your friends list."

"Not killing you is the most lenient decision I've ever made in my life," Ke Mingqing said.

Kamishiro Ruri smiled faintly. After a long pause, she said, "Li-kun, you should be able to tell that the Red Umbrella I placed in the stairwell is a system item. It isolates the sound of our conversation within a very small radius. People outside won't be able to hear a thing, and naturally, that includes your siblings upstairs—"

At this, she suddenly raised an eyebrow. Pulling a hand from her kimono sleeve, she stroked her chin and muttered, "Oh, no, it might be a bit presumptuous of me to say that. I'm still not sure if you actually treat them as family."

"It doesn't matter," Ke Mingqing said, taking a sip of his juice. "Spit it out. What do you want?"

"Li-kun—or rather, Qing-kun, we're on the same side," Kamishiro Ruri said softly. "I believe you've grasped the truth about players, just like I have."

"What are you referring to?" Ke Mingqing asked. "Could you Japanese beat around the bush any more than this?"

"Do you still remember Kamishiro Kawa?"

"Your younger brother, the top host in Tokyo?" Ke Mingqing said. 'I just saw him posting on the Player Forum,' he thought. 'That ID was obviously his.'

Truthfully, he never expected the system to transport a pair of siblings to this world. Or rather, it was only after their souls crossed into bodies in this world that Kamishiro Ruri and Kamishiro Kawa became siblings.

Originally, they should have been two completely unrelated people.

But it didn't matter. They were players, and this familial identity was just an excellent smokescreen for them.

"Exactly." Kamishiro Ruri nodded, lowering her voice. "He and I have broken ties. Not long ago, we even got into a massive fight. In the end, I chose to sever all relations with him and left Tokyo."

"Why?" Ke Mingqing asked suspiciously.

To be honest, hearing these claims made it hard for him not to suspect that she was an agent sent by other players to deal with a Red Name Player.

But if Kamishiro Ruri truly wanted him dead, she wouldn't need to go to such lengths to earn his trust. All she had to do was find a way to tell his family that Ke Mingqing was a player. The Owl Judge and Rain Crow would step in to handle the rest.

Based on that logic, Ke Mingqing decided to hear her out.

"Qing-kun, you should know that Japan has a superhuman species known as 'jujutsu sorcerers'—" Kamishiro Ruri teased. "Yeah, just like the Shadow Warriors, they're a local specialty of Japan. This kind of superhuman species doesn't exist in other countries."

"And then?"

"Among jujutsu sorcerers, there is a highest-grade taboo ritual. It requires sacrificing ten lives to summon the Omniscient Demon God."

Ke Mingqing was taken aback. "The Omniscient Demon God?"

Kamishiro Ruri nodded. "As the name implies, it's an Omniscient Demon God that claims to be able to answer any question in the world."

Ke Mingqing thought for a moment. "You two performed that ritual?"

"Exactly. As it happens, we siblings were still being hunted by Shadow Warriors. A month and a half ago, they were stronger than us, but now they are no longer our match. So, Kamishiro Kawa and I captured ten Shadow Warriors alive and used that taboo ritual to sacrifice them, summoning the Omniscient Demon God—"

"And then?"

"The Demon God looks like the genie from the Arabian magic lamp, just a bit darker. Well—I hope it can't hear me saying that." Kamishiro Ruri shrugged. "Then the Demon God told us it could answer two of our questions. After answering them, it would disappear."

Ke Mingqing raised an eyebrow. "So what did you ask?"

"The two questions we asked the Omniscient Demon God were: first, what exactly is a player? Second, if we don't complete the Extinction mission, the system will execute an Obliteration on us—is that true? Is there any way for us to break free from the system's restrictions and return to our original world?"

Ke Mingqing froze. He stayed silent for a long moment before saying, "Holy shit, couldn't you have asked something a bit more useful? Like what exactly the system is? Who created it and sent us to this world?"

Kamishiro Ruri crossed her arms, tucking her hands back into her sleeves, looking a little embarrassed.

After a moment, she sighed softly. "To be honest, we didn't expect the ritual to succeed. Even those orthodox jujutsu sorcerers haven't performed it in hundreds of years. Plus, time was very tight. The Omniscient Demon God only gave us one minute, so we couldn't think things through on such short notice."

Ke Mingqing looked at her helplessly. 'If that guy named Fanquan had been the one asking, he definitely would've gotten something useful out of it, right?' he thought.

After a moment, he sighed and said, "Forget it. That's very much in line with my impression of Japanese people. And then? What did the Demon God tell you?"

"First was the first question. The Omniscient Demon God told us that there are two kinds of players in total," Kamishiro Ruri said, her gaze shifting slightly as the cool breeze blowing in from the window made her kimono flutter.

"Two kinds?" Ke Mingqing was stunned. 'What kind of explanation is that?' he wondered.

Kamishiro Ruri fell silent for a moment. "Yes. One kind is the players as we widely understand them: their souls crossed over from a parallel world to this world, entering the bodies of native inhabitants who share their exact first and last names, replacing them."

Wait—

Could the other kind of player be—

As Ke Mingqing thought about it, he suddenly froze. At that moment, the island in the middle of the lake flashed through his mind, along with the appearance of the Witch of Apocalypse, Samsara, and Tyranny.

After a while, he lowered his voice and asked slowly, "Then... what about the other kind?"

Kamishiro Ruri took a deep breath. "As for the other kind, they are native inhabitants who originally belonged to this world."

She paused and abruptly lowered her voice. "Qing-kun, they were implanted with fake memories by the system, leading them to mistakenly believe they are transmigrators. Only then can the system make them willingly complete the 'Exterminate Superhumans' mission—"

Ke Mingqing stood utterly frozen in place. In that instant, accompanied by a sudden deafening roar, thunder tore across the sky, dyeing the world in a momentary flash of daylight.

The lightning illuminated the teenager's face, making it look as pale as a paper doll. His pupils constricted slightly, reflecting a smear of reddish-brown from the kimono.

'It's true—'

'What the future me said is true—'

'Otherwise, it makes no sense that it's such a coincidence, that Kamishiro Ruri just happened to give me this exact explanation. But the future me seemed to only know half the truth. Did he not know that players are divided into two kinds? Otherwise, why didn't he tell me?'

A moment later, Ke Mingqing shook his head, throwing away the tangled mess of thoughts in his mind.

"Then what about me—which kind of player am I?" he asked hoarsely. Even though the thunder had already faded, his voice was still so faint it was hard to hear.

"I don't know. The Demon God didn't tell us how to identify which kind of player we are."

Ke Mingqing lowered his head, his drooping bangs covering his eyes. "Then how do I call the Demon God out? Do I just need to kill ten more people?"

"Unfortunately, the Demon God has already entered a deep slumber. As far as I know, that taboo ritual can only be performed once every few decades," Kamishiro Ruri said softly. "I tried again later, but I couldn't call it out—I believe there simply isn't a second chance."

"Then we'll just kill a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand people for the ritual. Since it's sleeping, we'll wake it up—" Ke Mingqing looked up from under his bangs, enunciating every word.

Kamishiro Ruri was taken aback. She frowned in hesitation for a moment before shaking her head. "Unfortunately, according to a jujutsu master I know, doing that would only enrage the Demon God, and then we would die very, very miserable deaths. I don't recommend it."

Ke Mingqing fell silent.

'If there really are two kinds of players,' he thought, 'could the future me truly tell which kind he was? And was the truth Xia Wenna told him back then definitely correct?'

'Could it be that even Xia Wenna herself didn't truly distinguish between the two kinds of players, and ended up feeding the future me a false truth? That would leave me completely in the dark, believing I'm the real Ke Mingqing.'

'Or maybe... Xia Wenna was trying to punish the future me? Because I killed her family, did she think that simply telling me that would plunge me into guilt?'

'I was already pushed to the brink back then. Did Xia Wenna have any reason to lie to the future me? If she didn't lie, then did the future me lie? Which side is actually right?'

"Qing-kun, what are you running from?" Kamishiro Ruri suddenly asked.

The living room fell dead silent. Ke Mingqing was slightly stunned for a moment before he lifted his head and asked, "What are you talking about?"

Their eyes met.

"I'm very familiar with that expression," Kamishiro Ruri said softly, looking at him. "That's the expression of someone running away from something."

"Can you shut up?" Ke Mingqing said. "Stop talking to me in that Japanese anime tone of yours, or I'll slaughter you. And stop calling me 'Qing-kun' over and over again—it makes me sound like some Imperial Japanese colonel."

"All right, I understand."

Kamishiro Ruri curled her lips into a nonchalant smile.

Ke Mingqing remained silent for a long time before asking unhurriedly, "Putting aside whether I believe what you're saying for now, I'm curious about something else. Why did you and your brother have a falling out?"

"It's very simple. After the Omniscient Demon God told us the definition of the two kinds of players, it pointed out our identities in passing. And unfortunately, I am a native player. In other words, I'm the unlucky bastard whose brain was washed by the system and implanted with fake memories—"

Kamishiro Ruri suddenly lowered her voice, a violent glint flashing in her eyes. "Whereas Kamishiro Kawa—is a player who crossed over from another world. You should understand what I mean."

Ke Mingqing was slightly taken aback, staring blankly at the kimono-clad young woman whose expression had suddenly changed.

A moment later, Kamishiro Ruri slowly raised her eyes. Her soft, feminine face was brimming with fury, as terrifying as a Lion baring its fangs.

She gritted her teeth, speaking hoarsely, "That's right. It means that whether it was intentional or not, Kamishiro Kawa still killed my brother and replaced him!

"And I was kept completely in the dark, treating my own enemy like a brother!"