Ten Day Ultimatum Chapter 411

Chapter 411

Chapter 411 King of Common

“Chu Tianqiu, insane…?” Yun Yao shot back. “Of course, a spotless reputation, no matter how long it lasts, can be shattered in an instant by a single descent into madness. He brought this on himself.”

“Isn’t that so?” Zhang Chenze glanced at Lin Qin.

“You only know the present Chu Tianqiu,” Yun Yao said with a hint of regret. “Believe it or not, in the years when Qi Xia was absent, Chu Tianqiu reigned as the king of {common people}. He did more for all the {Participants} than you all can imagine.”

Lin Qin had heard Chu Tianqiu’s reputation before, but eting him revealed a man wholly unlike the image she’d ford.

Indeed, if Chu Tianqiu had been deranged from the start, how could he ever have beco the king of {common people}? Why would so many at the {Passage to Heaven} have rallied behind him?

Zhang Chenze paused, then said, “You’re suggesting Chu Tianqiu had a child in {End Point}… and that child was eaten by their own mother… and that drove him to this madness?”

“That’s only my conjecture,” Yun Yao sighed. “I too would rather not assu so, but if that were true, all of Chu Tianqiu’s motives would fall into place.”

A heavy silence settled over them.

When the one thing a person clings to crumbles within {End Point}, who could help but lose their mind?

But was that child… truly Chu Tianqiu’s last tether?

“I’ve wanted to bring this up ever since I saw Qi Xia suffering from those headaches,” Yun Yao remarked. “Chu Tianqiu suffers from them as well. That affliction alone leaves him without the impulse to escape.”

“What?” Lin Qin’s brows arched. “He has headaches too?”

“Correct. Chen Junnan likely knows of it as well.” Yun Yao nodded, her words slow and deliberate. “Chu Tianqiu has brain cancer.”

“What…?”

At that, they recalled the mont when Chen Junnan had pressed a blade to Chu Tianqiu’s throat, tapping his own temple as he asked, {Does it still hurt here?}

“Chu Tianqiu never had any reason to leave,” Yun Yao continued. “He has only two months to live in the real world. {End Point} was his sole refuge. All that he did for the {common people} was already selfless beyond asure. In truth… no one had the right to condemn him. For a long ti, he gathered food on his own and distributed it among everyone. He freely shared strategies for the ga, all so their chances of survival here might increase.”

“But if that’s the case,” Lin Qin remarked, “you had no reason to leave {Passage to Heaven}. Is there anyone in {End Point} more reliable than him?”

Yun Yao paused, then replied, “My grievance with him is that he toyed with the lives of every mber at {Passage to Heaven}. We trusted him so utterly, and he manipulated us as if we were nothing—that is betrayal. He could have told us the truth; we would have chosen our own end. Instead he let us go to our deaths cradling blind faith.”

Those present understood the ache in Yun Yao’s words. Being betrayed is one thing; far worse is to be betrayed by the one you trusted most.

Yun Yao grew ever more convinced that, after Chu Tianqiu learned that the woman called Qiaoyun had eaten their child, he had slipped into madness.

When he activated that grotesque copying ability, he had also dug into flesh and shoved a chunk into his mouth—was he trying to imitate Qiaoyu’s cannibalism?

“Who exactly is this Chu Tianqiu you speak of…?” The shop assistant’s voice quavered further; it seed she was grasping at a mory, but no matter how she tried she could not wrench her sanity back.

“Do you rember Chu Tianqiu?” Yun Yao asked. “He's the {delivery person} you previously ntioned. He had an attractive smile and a pleasant voice.”

The shop assistant blinked; a faint, elusive recollection stirred at the edges of her mind—how long had those mories lain dormant?

Decades, perhaps.

——“Xiao Wen, we will lead everyone out. We will raze this place.”

——“Xiao Wen, you are all our hope. But if you make it out and cannot find …perhaps it will be because I do not wish to see you.”

——“Xiao Wen, the path you walk now is perilous…”

——“Xiao Wen, where have you been all these years? Do you not even rember ?”

“I… am Xiao Wen…?” The shop assistant’s eyes flickered, brimming with unshed tears, her lips muttering blankly, “My na is Wen Qiaoyun…?”

Everyone let out a quiet breath of relief at the sight. It seed she was regaining her sanity.

Yet only seconds later, Wen Qiaoyun’s face dimd again, her gaze clouding over, as though those fleeting mories were but a stone dropped into a lake—ripples fading until nothing remained.

“Please…feel free to peruse…” she bowed her head slowly, voice dull and hollow. “Please… select your goods yourself… Please…”

It was the sa with every {indigenous inhabitants} they had encountered. At first, fragnts of mory would resurface, but the deeper one pressed, the faster those recollections slipped away into oblivion.

“So…” Zhang Chenze turned to Yun Yao and Lin Qin, asking, “if one becos an {indigenous inhabitant}, there is truly no return?”

Lin Qin nodded. “Yes. I have never seen a single {indigenous inhabitant} regain clarity.”

Yun Yao was about to nod and acknowledge, but the words caught in her throat.

“No wait…” Yun Yao said gravely, “I cannot give a definite answer on this matter…Perhaps {indigenous inhabitants} really can regain clarity…”

“What?” Lin Qin frowned at her, baffled. She had never heard of such a thing.

“Do you rember Xiao Nian?” Yun Yao turned to her. “Her full na is Xu Liunian. Qi Xia ntioned eting her when she was an {indigenous inhabitant}, yet now she has returned to {Passage to Heaven}. Not only has she fully regained her sanity, she can also use her {Reverberation}.”

“Regained her sanity…?”

“But it’s still strange…” Yun Yao continued, “Xu Liunian never ca back to our {Probation Room}… it seems she’s eluded the tenth day {annihilation} and wanders the land endlessly.”

Lin Qin was struck dumb at her words.

“That can’t be… could soone like that truly exist?” she said with a deep frown. “If she has escaped {annihilation}, it ans she can no longer return to the real world. We can go back once every ten days, but she cannot… so what is she now? A {participant}, or an {indigenous inhabitant}?”

“I’m not sure either…” Yun Yao admitted. “I once asked her about this privately. She only said that one day she woke up with her mind clear again, and then returned to {Passage to Heaven}. Chu Tianqiu gave her a last-minute order to impersonate him… the rest, you already know.”

“Since there’s a precedent… then it may just be possible…” Lin Qin’s eyes widened gradually. “If she no longer faces {annihilation}, it ans her mories will never fade. If we can discover the right thod, we might be able to free everyone in {End Point} from this curse. That would usher in a new peak for us all…”

“But there is still sothing I cannot make sense of…” Yun Yao’s tone shifted sharply. “Since she is unable to return to our {Probation Room}, it would an death is final for her… But this ti she was unmistakably reborn… Where did she revive, and how did she do it?”