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"Xiao Qingniao scored 100 points?"

Lu Changsheng looked at him.

"You were there at the banquet."

The old man's lips were trembling. His fingers were stuck in the soil, his knuckles white, as if he wanted to grasp the entire earth.

"I don't remember," he said. "I don't remember what happened that day at the banquet. I only remember going to the banquet, and then—and then I remember nothing. When I woke up, I was lying on the ground in the East Garden, with wine stains on my clothes, and my score on my forehead had dropped from 20 to 19."

He raised his head and looked at Lu Changsheng.

"I thought I had drunk too much. I thought I had done something at the banquet that made the audience dislike me. I thought—"

He didn't continue.

Because he saw the expression on Lu Changsheng's face. That expression wasn't one of sympathy or pity, but rather a colder, more rational one, like the expression one would give when watching a patient describe their symptoms.

"You don't remember because someone erased your memory," Lu Changsheng said. "It wasn't alcohol, it wasn't fatigue, it wasn't any physiological reason. Someone used blue light to cut off that part of your memory."

The old man's pupils contracted again.

"Blue light can only be blocked, not eliminated."

"What if we could block it out for a long enough time?" Lu Changsheng said. "If the audience can't see you for that entire period of time, your memory won't have the 'audience' as an anchor. A memory without an anchor is like grass without roots; it will scatter with a gust of wind."

The old man fell silent.

A very long silence followed.

So long that the sounds of the slaves working in the East Garden changed—from carrying stones to pulling weeds, and from pulling weeds to leveling the road. They were changing jobs, as if driven by something, working non-stop, constantly exhausting themselves.

"Xiao Qingniao got 100 points." The old man finally spoke, his voice very low, almost as if he were talking to himself. "And then?"

"Then chains appeared," Lu Changsheng said. "Black chains, engraved with runes, surged from the ground. The chains wrapped around her and dragged her back to the bottom of the lake. The silvery-white liquid in the coffin disappeared, and her body was gone too."

"He failed," Lu Changsheng said. "Xiao Qingniao's score reached 100, but she didn't become a god. She was dragged back by the chains. His plan failed."

The old man stared at him for a long time.

Then he shook his head.

No. He did not fail.

Lu Changsheng frowned.

"His plan isn't to make Xiao Qingniao a god." The old man frowned. "Although I don't know exactly what his plan is, based on my understanding of him, it's definitely not that simple."

Lu Changsheng did not refute this, because he did have this premonition. Xiao Yuheng was too calm after Xiao Qingniao disappeared, as if he had everything under control.

"Rule number four. Never go into the master's study." The old man's lips curled into a meaningful smile. "Aren't you curious? A rule that's clearly written down and visible to everyone is the easiest to follow. Because everyone knows you can't go, no one will go. And because no one will go, no one will know what's in the study."

He paused for a moment.

"And Xiao Yuheng's greatest skill is hiding secrets in the most conspicuous places."

Lu Changsheng stood between the two, his gaze fixed on the old man.

"So what exactly is in the study?" he asked.

The old man's smile faded, and his expression turned serious.

"I have no idea."

Lu Changsheng frowned.

"I have never been inside the study." The old man's voice lowered, as if he were lost in a deep memory. "Only once, when I was young, the study door opened a crack for no reason, and out of curiosity, I looked through that crack once."

His fingers unconsciously drew circles in the soil.

"What did you see?" An Zhiyu asked.

The old man stopped moving.

His fingers were frozen in the mud, his knuckles white, as if he were pressing down on something.

"An eye, just one eye."

He raised his head and looked at Lu Changsheng.

The moonlight shone on his face, illuminating the score of 19 on his forehead and the real fear deep in his eyes.

"I only caught a fleeting glimpse of one eye, just one glance, and it still terrifies me. So many years have passed, and I've forgotten what those eyes looked like, but that fear remains vivid in my memory. I've lived so long, and I've never been so afraid before."

Lu Changsheng remained silent for a moment.

"Besides eyes, what else is there?"

The old man took a deep breath, as if to calm himself down, and after a while he shook his head.

"I saw nothing at that one glance."

"The next day, the study door was closed."

Lu Changsheng looked at him and remained silent for a long time.

Why are you telling us this now?

The old man raised his head, and the corners of his mouth curved slightly.

"Because I don't want to die without even knowing why I died."

He stood up and patted the dirt off his knees.

"The biggest secret of this castle is hidden in Xiao Yuheng's study. If you want to go, you'd better hurry. I have a feeling that the castle will be in chaos tomorrow—or at the latest the day after. Tonight may be your only chance to enter the study."

He turned around and walked towards the East Garden.

He took a few steps, then stopped without looking back.

His figure disappeared into the shadows of the East Garden.

Under the moonlight, only Lu Changsheng and An Zhiyu remained.

A night breeze blew across the lake, carrying the smell of fish and a chill.

"What do you think?" Lu Changsheng asked.

An Zhiyu remained silent for a moment.

"He was telling the truth. But he didn't finish."

Lu Changsheng nodded. He also sensed it—every word the old man said was true, but he only told half of each sentence.

"The worst thing is this: not half-truths, but every word is the truth, but it's all incomplete truths."

Lu Changsheng said calmly.

"Moreover, I thought the study was Xiao Yuheng's territory, but I didn't expect that this study was already there when the old man was still alive."

An Zhiyu looked at him.

"So we still have to go ourselves."

Lu Changsheng nodded.

"Now?"

"Now."

The two of them looked at the fifth floor of the castle at the same time.

That window was still dark; there was no light, no one in sight.

But Lu Changsheng knew that Xiao Yuheng might not be in the room.

He might be at the bottom of the lake. He might be in some corner of the East Garden. He might be anywhere he should be.

Lu Changsheng turned around and walked towards the side gate of the castle. An Zhiyu followed behind him, the two of them walking one after the other, their footsteps making very soft sounds on the stone path.

The side door was not closed.

A dim light shone through the crack in the door, illuminating the door frame, the stone steps, and the shadows cast on the ground by the two people.

Lu Changsheng pushed open the door and went inside.

The corridor was quiet. The wall lamps were still on, one every few meters, casting small patches of dim light on the stone walls.

They didn't take the stairs.

The staircase is too conspicuous and too easy to spot.

An Zhiyu walked to the end of the corridor and pushed open a window. Outside the window were the inner walls of the castle, covered with dense, thick, and ancient vines, like a net woven over decades. She reached out and tugged at them, but the vines didn't budge.

"Okay," she said.

Then she flipped and leaped out of the window. Her movements were as fluid as a cat's; she touched the windowsill with her toes, launched herself into the air, grabbed the vines above, swung herself, and landed steadily on the second-floor windowsill. The whole process took less than three seconds.

Lu Changsheng followed behind her. He channeled his spiritual energy into his hands, his fingers gripping the vines like iron clamps. He pulled himself up, tapped his toes against the wall twice, and climbed onto the second-floor windowsill.

Third floor, fourth floor, fifth floor.

The windowsill on the fifth floor was half the width of the one below, only about a hand's width. Lu Changsheng pressed his back against the stone wall and glanced down—the height of the fourth floor, the stone floor gleaming a cold white light under the moonlight.

Anzhiyu had already opened the window. The window wasn't locked.

She climbed over the wall and went up to the fifth floor, with Lu Changsheng following closely behind.

The fifth-floor corridor was different from the ones below. The walls were smooth, dark wood panels, and the carpet was deep red, so thick that footsteps were almost inaudible. The wall lamps were made of brass with frosted glass shades, casting a warm and soft light.

The two people were enveloped in a blue halo, like two transparent ghosts, silently passing through the corridor.

The study is at the end of the corridor.

The door was made of dark brown wood, without any decoration, except for a single brass doorknob, which was polished to a shine. A faint blue light shone through the crack in the door—exactly the same light emitted by the short stick in Lu Changsheng's hand, but colder, fainter, and more like moonlight.

An Zhiyu walked to the door, reached out her hand, and grasped the doorknob.

She glanced at Lu Changsheng.

Lu Changsheng nodded.

She turned the doorknob.

Click.

The door opened.

A gust of air wafted out from under the door, and Lu Changsheng pushed the door open and went inside.

Then he stopped.

eye.

The walls are covered with eyes.

It's not a painting, not a photograph, not the "one eye" the old man mentioned. It's hundreds, thousands, densely packed, real, living eyes stretching from the floor to the ceiling.

Each eye is embedded in a small hexagonal grid on the wall, like a honeycomb. The eye slowly moves within the grid, its pupil contracting and dilating, and its iris displays different colors under the light—brown, blue, gray, green, and black.

But all eyes are looking in the same direction.

Look at the center of the study.

Lu Changsheng stood at the doorway, feeling those gazes surge towards him like a tide, from all directions, from every angle, from head to toe. He was surrounded, overwhelmed, and watched by countless eyes simultaneously.

That feeling was exactly the same as what the old man described.

No, it's even stronger than the old man described.

Because the old man had only seen one eye. But now he sees thousands.

An Zhiyu stood beside him, her sword already drawn. Not out of fear, but out of instinct—when stared at by so many things at once, her body automatically entered a fighting stance. The tip of the sword pointed to the ground, her wrist slightly twisting, the blade tracing a cold white arc in the blue light.

"These are not human eyes," An Zhiyu said softly, but in the study filled with eyes, every word was magnified infinitely, as if someone was speaking through a megaphone.

Lu Changsheng nodded.

He noticed it too.

The human eye is not arranged like this—a hexagonal honeycomb structure, with each cell being exactly the same size, and the gaps between the cells so small that even a needle cannot be inserted.

The human eye doesn't move like that—thousands of eyes turning in the same direction at the same time, pupils contracting simultaneously, and irises adjusting their focus simultaneously, as if controlled by the same nerve.

Human eyes don't glow like that—it's a bioluminescence, like that of deep-sea creatures. Light seeps out from deep within the pupil, forming a thin film on the surface of the eyeball. It is then reflected, refracted, and amplified by the hexagonal grid, eventually converging into beams of light that strike the air in the center of the study.

There's something in the air.

Lu Changsheng looked in the direction of those beams of light.

There was nothing in the center of the study. There was only an empty, dark red carpet, and about 1.5 meters above the carpet—a ball of light.

It's not ordinary light.

It is a slowly rotating sphere of light suspended in mid-air, formed by the convergence of beams of light emitted from those eyes.

The surface of the sphere of light was not smooth, but covered with patterns that were exactly the same as the runes on the coffin at the bottom of the lake.

Outward-spreading, diffused patterns, like an upside-down tree.

Lu Changsheng stared at the ball of light, his pupils suddenly contracting.

The sphere of light is breathing.

It rose and fell, expanded and contracted, its frequency exactly the same as human breathing. With each expansion, the runes on the surface of the sphere of light would light up, and the glow of the eyes on the wall would intensify. With each contraction, the runes would dim, and the light of the eyes would weaken.

The sphere of light and the eye are connected.

No, it's not "connected".

The sphere of light is the heart, and the eyes are the cells. With each pulsation of the sphere of light, something is pumped into those eyes.

"The audience," Lu Changsheng said, his voice slightly strained, "these eyes are the audience."

An Zhiyu turned her head to look at him.

"The audience isn't a person," Lu Changsheng said softly, as if talking to himself. "The audience is these eyes. No—the audience is people who are looking through these eyes. These eyes are the medium. They are the interface between the audience and the castle."

He walked to the nearest wall, squatted down, and brought his face close to a hexagonal grid.

Inside the grid was a brown eye with a round pupil and fine lines on its iris. Lu Changsheng stared at that eye, and the eye stared back at him. The pupil contracted slightly, and the lines on the iris twisted slightly, as if focusing, as if recognizing, as if confirming something.

Then Lu Changsheng saw it.

Deep within the pupil of that eye, there was something—a complete, clear, and moving image. The image showed a room, a table, a computer, and a person sitting in front of it. That person was wearing pajamas, holding a cup of coffee, and staring intently at the screen.

The screen shows a picture of an ancient castle.

It is Xiao Yuheng.

Lu Changsheng squatted by the wall, staring at the scene in his eyes. The person in the scene seemed to sense something and raised his head.

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