To see through a deception that had lasted fifty years in just a few days was not an easy task, even for Lin Yu.

Even now, sitting calmly in front of Alt Mercury, Lin Yu looked back on his time in Sleepless City as nothing short of perilous.

During that process, if there had been even a single moment when he was not firmly convinced that the assassination contract on Alt Mercury contained some kind of trick, he would have missed the truth.

Then…he would have genuinely prepared to assassinate a Chosen One and, in astonishment, met his own failure.

But…

“Good thing I’m naturally suspicious.”

Lin Yu sighed slightly, feeling awed.

Alt Mercury, who sat opposite Lin Yu, had already caught on.

“You mean I’m not the Chosen One of the God of Life… the real Chosen One is Arlan Mercury, right?”

“Yes,” Lin Yu nodded slightly, “and the reason he did this was so you could live.”

“I don’t know exactly what happened fifty years ago, but you probably died in an accident—or at least fell to the brink of death.”

“To let you, the elder brother, survive, Arlan Mercury made some sort of deal with the gods—its cost or form was to make you appear to be the Chosen One.”

“And it looks like he had to make the people around you believe you were the true Chosen One.”

As Lin Yu spoke, he couldn’t help but marvel again.

This was also why he could see through the deception: all of the actions were far too similar to how a Fraudster’s methods take effect.

Lin Yu keenly noticed that Arlan Mercury was deliberately leading everyone to deduce that Alt Mercury was the Chosen One—after all, Lin Yu himself often did the very same thing.

Of course, Arlan Mercury could not be a Fraudster; his motivation likely came from the requirements of faith and ritual.

When it came to gods and Chosen Ones, Lin Yu did not know all the details, but he understood enough to be close.

So killing Alt Mercury—the one who was already, in a sense, “dead”—was essentially about breaking the setup Arlan Mercury had put in place.

Alt Mercury sighed again.

“How willful of you, Arlan, to keep me alive like this for fifty years…”

“Then it seems, even though you intend to kill me, I don't need to resist too fiercely,” Alt Mercury mused, “after all…by natural order and moral law, I should have been dead long ago.”

Alt Mercury looked at Lin Yu. “So, how do you plan to do it?”

“To be honest, I don’t know which exact method will work, so I prepared many plans.”

Lin Yu paused after saying that. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

“In any case—start with the simplest one first. It will also serve to test my hypothesis.”

Before Alt Mercury could speak, Lin Yu suddenly plunged a knife into Alt Mercury’s throat.

Alt Mercury had no time to react and died unexpectedly.

But then…

Lin Yu withdrew the knife and quickly noticed a powerful life force surge within Alt Mercury’s body; a teal-green glow flickered like a breath and instantly mended the cut at his neck.

The blood on the floor turned into specks of blue light and vanished.

Lin Yu exhaled.

“As expected, this old man’s life form is no longer fundamentally human!”

Alt then regained himself, as if he had just been dozing, and spoke in a somewhat dazed tone.

“What just happened?”

“I killed you, and then you revived,” Lin Yu said calmly. “Don’t you have any memory?”

Alt rubbed his temple. “None at all, but I do recall similar occurrences…over these fifty years, whenever I got injured, I would briefly lose memory and then my wounds would heal rapidly—the servants told me about my injuries afterwards.”

“I always assumed it was a passive effect of being the Chosen One of the God of Life. So it was Arlan who engineered this?”

Alt Mercury said with regret, “Then it seems the simplest approach won’t work; I seem to be immortal in a certain sense.”

“Do you have any other plans?”

Lin Yu nodded.

“Of course. Maybe I could repeatedly and rapidly kill you—this recovery ability must have a cost, so constant killings might eventually hit a limit.”

As Lin Yu spoke, Alt Mercury was slightly astonished.

“Isn’t that a bit cruel for me?”

“Yes. I don’t kill for torture’s sake, so I won’t use that plan unless absolutely necessary—since you object, I’ll respect your objection.”

Lin Yu said earnestly, then stroked his chin and added, “Still, it’s odd that as an Assassin, I’m discussing methods with my assassination target.”

“You old man, is it because you feel you’ve lived enough that you don’t plan to resist?” Lin Yu teased.

Alt Mercury shook his head. “If I must answer, I still want to live, but you have shown me the truth—I am someone who should be dead, someone who is already dead.”

“Although I’m not truly the Chosen One of the God of Life, I have believed for fifty years that I was, so I accepted the scriptures passed down about the God of Life… All living things have an end.”

“To serve the god who controls life means you must not shy away from death—we must all calmly face the end of our lives.”

Alt Mercury said, then asked again, “So…explain it. How do you plan to take the life of someone who is already, in effect, dead?”

Lin Yu, freed of further restraint, nodded.

“Since Arlan Mercury made you actually live by convincing everyone you were the Chosen One and that you were alive, I suspect…perhaps I can make everyone believe you’re dead, so they’ll assume you truly have died.”

“Though I don’t understand the exact mechanics, I should be able to achieve this by disrupting Arlan Mercury’s arrangements.”

Alt Mercury heard this. “I see, that is a very alchemical way of thinking.”

“How do you plan to do it—make the nobles present first accept it as true?”

Lin Yu nodded. “Naturally. But before that, I need a professional with a profound understanding of alchemy to evaluate things for me.”

Saying that, Lin Yu looked at the piled corpses nearby—not the pile of nobles he had killed, but the dolls of Sleepless Sky Huoxing.

Those corpses lay silent, as if they were merely scenery.

Lin Yu smiled as he addressed them.

“What do you think, Miss Huo Xing?”