Chapter 2: I Am a Follower of [Order]
A gentle breeze brushed by; the bright moon cast its silver light.
Atop the roof of a supertall building, Cheng Shi sat on the edge, his legs dangling and swaying over the abyss below, enjoying his hard-won spoils from the day.
What he was chewing was the most common Blood Finger Bread from the food trial rewards. This bread was shaped exactly like a human finger, matching its texture down to the finest detail.
Only when it hit your tongue and the taste of cranberry jam bursting from inside the finger flooded your mouth could you confirm that this was genuinely just food and not a severed finger.
Unfortunately, the bread tasted like wax and the jam was cloyingly tart. C-Rank food was not appetizing.
None of that stopped it from providing energy, and providing energy meant it could keep him alive.
Ever since [The Gods] descended half a year ago, reality had long since been reforged into an absurd [Faith Game].
Everyone was forced to choose a deity to worship, clinging to life in this shattered, unreal world with their god's blessing.
The entire world had been fractured into countless shards by the gods, and every person had been randomly assigned to survive within one such shard.
As for Cheng Shi, he had been assigned to the rooftop of an unknown building.
The rooftop covered roughly two hundred square meters. Spacious, but completely exposed. Wind, sun, and rain beat down on him relentlessly, and he didn't even have a scrap of cloth to wrap himself in.
Worse still, the perimeter and both above and below were sealed by invisible walls. Even though the door leading downstairs was right within arm's reach, he could not pass through the barrier to descend.
Only by initiating a "Trial" related to spatial expansion and clearing it successfully could he breach the surrounding invisible walls and gain a larger living space.
This was the game's foremost rule. In the [Faith Game], all "resources" could be obtained by participating in [Wish Trials]. From "food, clothing, shelter, and transportation" to "divinely granted power," as long as you dared to make a wish, the gods would send down a trial and match you with corresponding teammates.
The more outlandish the wish, the higher the trial's difficulty.
If you were socially anxious, you could also opt for a Solo Trial. The catch was that Solo Trials did not increase any score, and the rewards were barely usable.
Cheng Shi sat on the rooftop, swallowing the food in his mouth with effort, and looked up at the game information displayed in his field of vision.
[Current Global Follower Count: 8478114678]
In just half a year, the world's twelve billion people had been reduced to two-thirds.
The [Faith Game] was not an absolutely safe game. Dying in the game meant dying in reality as well.
But if you refused to accept the gods' trials, you would have no means of obtaining the supplies and resources necessary for survival.
"One day left…"
Looking at the glaring red text reminder in the center of his vision, Cheng Shi sighed.
The [Faith Game] did not allow players to merely scrape by. Every seven days, it would automatically match players into a [Special Trial].
This trial was extremely difficult. If players failed to clear it, even those who narrowly survived would be stripped of their ability to participate in [Wish Trials] for the following cycle.
In other words, failure meant an entire week with zero income, surviving solely on dwindling reserves!
"I hope the teammates I'm matched with this time are more reliable. After getting screwed over last time, I've already wasted a lot of food. The supplies in my storage have dropped to the warning line…"
Just as this thought crossed his mind, a call suddenly rang out from afar.
"Hey, bro, how'd today go?"
Cheng Shi looked up toward the opposite building and found the voice coming from the "resident" of the neighboring rooftop: a young man with long hair and trendy attire.
The colorful, bizarrely shaped clothes he wore were all the latest "new" models obtained from trials.
Young man surnamed Xie
The real world was divided by invisible walls, and while players' movements were restricted, their senses of sight and hearing were not, nor did the walls block thrown objects.
So you never knew when your neighbor might whip out a submachine gun and riddle you with holes.
The [Faith Game] did not forbid players from killing one another, which made neighborly relations less than amicable.
Cheng Shi's neighbor on the opposite rooftop was surnamed Xie. He claimed to be from Jiang Province and was a senior civil engineering student.
A bit eccentric, but not a bad guy.
He'd been stressing over job hunting right before graduation, never expecting that the descent of the gods would turn him straight into a professional "player."
That made him one of the rare "Descentists," people who believed the gods had saved the world, or at the very least, saved the world's employment rate.
Cheng Shi shook the canned tentacle slime beverage in his hand and smiled, signaling that this was his haul.
"Holy shit, snot water! Bro, I've never bowed to anyone in my life, but I bow to you. How do you even stomach that stuff?"
The young man surnamed Xie stared in horror, the color draining from his face by several shades as he eyed the drink in Cheng Shi's hand.
"Snot water" was the nickname for this beverage. Tentacle slime was greenish and absurdly viscous, bearing an uncanny resemblance to the mucus produced during a nasty head cold, hence the name.
It was remarkably thirst-quenching, and since it was so thick it even had a mildly satiating effect.
Cheng Shi smiled. "How do I stomach it? The moment it hits your mouth you can't chew through it. It just glug-glug-glugs its own way down."
"…"
The other man's face grew even paler. He gagged a few times, then said speechlessly, "That's harsh, bro. I've seen you out here every time and your complexion's always steady. Your ladder score must be pretty high. Why do you torture yourself running solo dungeons every day?"
Of course it was because Solo Trials had lower difficulty and less pressure.
This was common knowledge, so Cheng Shi smiled and said nothing.
"Oh right, we've been neighbors this long and I still don't know which god you follow. Spill it! Maybe if we get matched together next time, we can coordinate in advance," the young man called out again.
"What about you?" Cheng Shi asked in return.
"Me? Didn't I tell you, I worship [Order]. Doesn't it show? 'Where civilization's fire burns, order endures!'"
Saying this, the young man surnamed Xie stood at attention and performed a gesture of lightly tapping his right fist against his left shoulder, the signature salute of [Order] followers.
The posture was textbook perfect and obviously well-practiced, but Cheng Shi knew the other man was lying.
This was not a conclusion drawn from reading micro-expressions or body language; it was Cheng Shi's ability, or rather, the Faith Talent granted to him by his god.
Ever since he began following "that one," he had become extraordinarily sensitive to lies.
Whenever someone lied, he could sense it. Though he couldn't pinpoint exactly which sentence was the falsehood, combined with the conversational context, it was enough for him to figure things out.
Cheng Shi didn't expose him. A neighbor was nice to chat with occasionally to break the monotony, and there was no need to make things awkward.
"Hey, bro, playing coy is no fun. Saying it won't hurt anything. What, are we rivals or something?" The other man kept pressing.
Cheng Shi curled his lips and counterattacked: "What's your [Ladder of Audience] score, and what's your ID? Let me see where you rank."
The young man surnamed Xie faltered at these words. He asked with a mix of surprise and suspicion: "Are you really an [Order] follower?"
Cheng Shi shook his head, his smile dripping with amusement. "No, I'm a follower of [Chaos]."
"!!!"
The other man was visibly stunned. His pupils contracted sharply, his brow furrowing.
Cheng Shi's tone was utterly matter-of-fact, so casual that it sounded as though he genuinely could browse the [Ladder of Audience] rankings for [Order].
In the [Faith Game], there were six Destinies, arranged in opposing pairs. Under each Destiny were two to three gods, and even among the gods themselves, there existed adversarial relationships.
Just like [Order] and [Chaos]: they belonged to [Civilization] and [Primordial Chaos] respectively, their essential natures poles apart, the wills they championed worlds apart. Naturally, their followers were mutually hostile within the game.
However, the opposing sides of faith shared the same [Ladder of Audience] ranking, and each could see the other on the leaderboard.
The young man surnamed Xie's expression shifted again and again. He didn't report his score, nor did he press any further, because he was indeed not a follower of [Order].
At this moment, moonlight spilled across his face, yet it could not illuminate the gloom clouding his features.
He couldn't quite read Cheng Shi's true depth.
"You're not lying to me?"
Cheng Shi smiled. "I never lie to people."
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