Doomsday Jigsaw Puzzle

Chapter 172: Chapter 172: Honest and Kind Ten of Spades

Bai Wu couldn’t get Jing Liu to confess whether the pot had been subjected to Spirit Possession, so he could only change the subject to the Ten of Spades.

He was deeply impressed by this child.

Though there must be children of even finer quality in the other farms, Bai Wu felt that the Ten of Spades he had met had a lot of potential.

Jing Liu didn’t answer this question, she just shook her head and said:

"He is a very interesting child, but not like you, you. Although you did not live on the farm, you are more suited to the world outside the High Tower. If you were on the farm, you would probably be at the K level."

"You still haven’t answered my question."

"All I can tell you is that you have already met the Ten of Spades."

"..."

Bai Wu felt a bit dejected:

"Do you know what I used to wonder? Why are all the fortune-tellers blind?"

"You can’t beat me."

Jing Liu, the conversation terminator.

Suddenly, Bai Wu found such conversations boring. He had wanted to say that fortune-tellers are often blind because they love to speak in riddles, only telling half-truths, and love to be mysterious, and then they get blinded by someone.

The figure of Jing Liu became elusive again, not recovering as quickly as before.

"I have to go."

"There’s one more question."

"No, the world you come from is one we all envy."

Jing Liu disappeared.

Bai Wu was given a straightforward answer to his last question, but this answer left him with even more doubts.

He had intended to ask whether his world before the cross-over was the same as the one 700 years ago.

But what he didn’t expect was that Jing Liu’s answer was negative.

Even though he himself also felt that there was no connection between the two worlds.

The reason he asked this question was actually... very special.

Long after Jing Liu disappeared, Bai Wu stood alone in his own world of consciousness.

The last question was not important, unrelated to saving the world, yet it left him feeling hollow inside.

Since arriving in this world, Bai Wu had always felt that some of the torment from his father had unexpectedly turned out to be like some kind of specific training.

He also wondered why his father was a good man in front of everyone else but a devilish figure in front of him alone?

Could the experiences of those years have been a preparation for the present?

Now, however, Jing Liu’s answer negated this thought. Bai Wu smiled and said:

"In the end, he was just simply torturing me."

...

...

Bai Wu fell into a coma.

This scene terrified Yin Shuang. Just as Bai Wu lost consciousness, the door to the telephone booth finally opened.

She didn’t know what Bai Wu had experienced, but as a healer, she found that Bai Wu was not injured, and his pulse and heartbeat were normal.

"It seems like he’s fallen into some kind of coma."

Ringing from the distant telephone booth started again, but Yin Shuang thought about it and decided not to answer, realizing she was not Bai Wu, with a vast gap between their abilities.

She activated the Return Roulette.

This exploration was originally meant to avoid the captain’s election meeting in the afternoon, but Yin Shuang suddenly came up with a new approach to the problem.

A minute later, the two of them disappeared.

After their disappearance, the telephone booth continued to ring incessantly.

As Jing Liu said, the series of cause and effect here were not actually under her control.

What she really could choose were only three places.

But for Bai Wu, those three places were premature for now.

...

...

An unknown farm, an unknown time.

The Ten of Spades in the library found a book called "Crime and Punishment." After finishing "The Silence of the Lambs," he began to read this one.

He became increasingly gentle.

This made Mom happy, as the Ten of Spades used to sit alone under a big tree and read, not fitting in with the other children around him.

In this No. 1 farm, without J, Q, and K, the Ten of Spades was the smartest child in the whole farm.

But she always worried about what the Ten of Spades was planning in his heart.

A memory wipe not long ago seemed to have changed his nature, which delighted Mom.

A few days ago, in the dining house on the farm, Dad did something—a Seven of Hearts that shouldn’t exist—was erased by Dad’s power, and then quickly removed from everyone’s memory by Dad’s abilities.

Everything returned to normal, and before long, children in each of the nine farms would reach the age of fifteen, and the season of harvest was near.

"Dad" was very satisfied. Despite some turbulence, he knew this would be the last time.

Little Sister’s plan had failed again, and it would be a very long time before she could change causality. While unable to see the future, "Dad" was convinced that everything was progressing as intended.

The child sent by Little Sister, the Seven of Hearts whom he had erased in an instant, had not discovered any information.

He did think so, that Jing Liu’s action would intensify her demise for bearing no fruit. However, he overlooked one thing—the power of words.

A week later, the Ten of Spades became good friends with the Three of Diamonds and the Four of Clubs. He told the two children stories about the beautiful scenes outside the wall.

The two naive and innocent children took his word for truth.

They had been taught from a young age to listen to Mom, to love one another, and to consider others, with the education of goodness, kindness, and beauty perfectly infiltrating their souls in the absence of lacking resources and unstable neighborhood influences.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that each of them was like a little angel, yet all of them... had a fervent view of "Dad" as a deity.

A very few children did not.

They possessed intelligence different from others, capable of observing and detecting the abnormalities around them.

More than once, the Ten of Spades had pondered, what exactly was outside the wall? Why had those older brothers and sisters who left never returned?

Were they really contributing to the world inside the wall? Was the world outside, as Mom and Dad described... truly a world for adults?

What exactly constitutes an adult?

These questions used to trouble the Ten of Spades.

But recently, the Ten of Spades often had dreams, and he always felt as though he had forgotten something.

Forgotten things can’t be recalled unless prompted in some other way.

The hint for the Ten of Spades came from his dreams.

In deep sleep, he dreamed of a wristwatch, its hands wandering uncertainly. In the past few days, he found it strange that he could never remember where exactly he had seen that wristwatch.

He wanted to ask someone about it, but a subconscious unease held him back.

It seemed that asking about it would have unpleasant consequences.

He continued to read every day, sitting under the tree with "Crime and Punishment," a book he had flipped through not long ago, occasionally playing games with Diamonds Three A and Clubs Four C.

The game was called "Who’s Lying." Everyone would say a sentence and let the others decide whether it was true or false. If the guesser was right, they won; if not, the speaker won.

Spades Ten appeared to have no talent for the game. Diamonds Three A and Clubs Four C always won with ease.

To the other two kids, Spades Ten was often very clever, but he really couldn’t lie. When he tried to deceive, it was too obvious, and his lies were easily exposed.

Most of the time, Spades Ten was genuine and smiling. It seemed as if he would never lie except when playing this game.

Days passed, and still, the wristwatch haunted Spades Ten’s dreams. Someone was about to leave beyond the wall, and he desperately wanted to follow and see for himself, but his mother and father forbade it.

He felt as if something was buried within him, something germinating, breaking through the soil.

Two weeks later, the dream changed.

Perhaps it was because he dwelt on it day and night, or perhaps his innate curiosity about the world beyond the wall had grown—a world he longed to discover. In his dream, the wristwatch began to speak.

"Do you know what’s beyond the wall? I suggest you take a look if you ever get the chance. Your talents are a ten, you’re smarter than most people here, but you must conceal your intelligence. Don’t let anyone know your true level too soon. Before you graduate and go beyond the wall, you must see for yourself what’s out there!"

These words looped ominously in his head.

Spades Ten’s desire to explore beyond the wall grew stronger.

He knew there were nine farms, forming a # character in a tic-tac-toe arrangement. Fortunately, he was at Farm Number One. If he were at Farm Number Five, he would have to take a special passage.

But all Farm Number One required was a climb over the wall.

In the following days, the thoughts that had planted themselves in Spades Ten’s mind began to sprout, push their way through the earth, and grow stronger.

His relationships with Diamonds Three A and Clubs Four C improved. Both of them were fourteen years old. freeωebnovēl.c૦m

And just a few months left until they would leave the farm and venture beyond the wall.

Spades Ten was too curious about the outside world. In "The Silence of the Lambs," he had seen the power of beguiling persuasion.

In the lying game, he realized that he could, indeed, influence others’ thoughts; with a small adjustment in his wording, provided at the right time and place and matching the listener’s mindset, he could make them mistakenly believe something.

At first, this was just a skill for Spades Ten, but later... this skill evolved into a talent. According to what they said later, it was called "Sequence."

Spades Ten’s lies became increasingly indistinguishable. To everyone, it seemed he was someone who never lied.

He discovered that, like in "The Silence of the Lambs," the biggest lies often needed to be paved with truths.

To persuade Diamonds Three A and Clubs Four C to venture beyond the wall ahead of schedule, he had started befriending them long ago.

And he had built up a reputation as someone who never lied.

Diamonds Three A and Clubs Four C had no idea that during each game of "Who’s Lying," Spades Ten actually let them see through him on purpose.

All of this was just to make his subsequent lies even more effective.

After another month of preparation, Spades Ten’s incitement began.

Under Spades Ten’s cunning influence, Diamonds Three A and Clubs Four C believed that just by climbing over the wall, they could see their older brothers and sisters and watch them work with their father.

"By climbing this wall, we’ll become adults. I have discovered a secret. Mother let it slip by accident. Actually, father encourages climbing the wall. Climbing it early will even earn his praise. Just imagine, what took our older siblings until they were fifteen, you will have achieved before your fifteenth birthday with your own efforts! When father sees you, he will surely be amazed!"

The lie had many logical flaws, but since it was spoken by Spades Ten, a person who never lied, the lie was effective.

Diamonds Three A and Clubs Four C indeed undertook their wall-climbing endeavor three months early, using tools provided by Spades Ten.

...

Spades Ten had expected that this action would reveal something amiss in the eyes of mother and father.

Originally, it was thought that Diamond Three and Club Four would eventually be returned, and perhaps the farm would react in some way.

But to Ten of Spades’ disappointment... nothing happened.

Diamond Three and Club Four vanished from Ten of Spades’ memory.

To be precise, they vanished from everyone’s memory.

Only in Ten of Spades’ dreams did two more items appear.

They were two playing cards.

In addition to the talking wristwatch, there were now two talking playing cards.

A new cycle began.

Ten of Spades continued to lead astray, and children kept climbing over the wall prematurely, continuously vanishing from everyone’s memory... forever.

The number of playing cards in Ten of Spades’ dreams kept increasing.

It wasn’t just the playing cards, but also the power within.

Ten of Spades discovered that he possessed some strange abilities within his body, abilities that belonged to no known sequence.

He didn’t know from whom these abilities came, he only knew... that they could help him scale that wall more effectively.

Even one day, Ten of Spades felt his power had surpassed that of Mom.

He began to fear Dad.

The stronger his abilities, the more intensely he could sense the terror emanating from Dad.

This was something he couldn’t detect when he was without any abilities. That’s why every time Dad was coming, he would find ways to hide as far away as possible.

The world beyond the wall... was certainly not the world of adults, of this he became more convinced.

And as children continually escaped from Farm No. 1, it seemed that Mom had neglected her duties, so she was replaced.

To be replaced meant to be erased from memory permanently, just like Diamond Three and Club Four.

Thus, in Ten of Spades’ dreams, a black and white joker card was added.

As children kept leaving, Dad patrolled Farm No. 1 more frequently.

He knew he would be discovered soon.

So, on a certain night... Ten of Spades began his escape plan.

He didn’t know what was beyond the wall.

Nor could he recall what those cards in his dreams represented; he just instinctively felt afraid.

But this fear was not from beyond the wall, but from within, from this paradise-like refuge.

Under the cover of night, empowered by many strange abilities, Ten of Spades—scaled the gigantic wall.

...

...

High Tower, ground floor, hospital.

Bai Wu lay in the hospital bed, where Wu Jiu and the others had planned to elect the deputy leader of the seventh team that afternoon.

But upon hearing that Bai Wu and Yin Shuang had left the Tower and that Bai Wu had returned to the High Tower unconscious, Wu Jiu immediately canceled the meeting and rushed to the hospital.

At this moment, everyone was worried about Bai Wu, but Bai Wu... in the depths of his consciousness, pondered various issues.

He reached a surprising conclusion—Ten of Spades might just be Cain.