Lord of Mysteries 2: Circle of Inevitability

Chapter 956 New Speculation
Jenna didn't actually go to Xinhong District to find Lumian and Ludwig. Instead, she chose a nearby hotel, booked a room, and checked if she would also be kicked out.

Nothing happened overnight. After waking up, she immediately returned to Dechuang Garden and sat in a corner of the lobby, facing sideways towards the door leading to the interior of the residential complex.

After about ten minutes, she saw Franca.

Franca was still wearing her old-fashioned black-framed glasses and dressed in a relatively conservative office lady style.

Seeing this, Jenna breathed a sigh of relief, changed her sitting posture, and turned her back to Franca to avoid meeting her.

The purpose of her early return to the residential complex was to confirm whether the current "Luo Fu's" behavior style was consistent with the previous Franca. If she had removed her disguise and changed into makeup and clothes that best highlighted her features, maximizing the charm of a Witch, Jenna would have to consider finding an excuse to prevent "Luo Fu" from going to work, delaying her for a day.

Now it seemed that the style of the "Luo Fu" NPC would continue as before.

…

Tech Building, 10th floor.

Franca sat down at her desk and leisurely made herself a cup of coffee.

At this moment, she saw Zhou Mingrui walk in, so she smiled and said, "Are you looking for Luo Shan? She hasn't arrived yet."

"I thought you two would come together." Zhou Mingrui didn't hide his surprise.

In his view, whether on the surface or secretly, Luo Shan and Luo Fu had a very good relationship and a special connection. They should be the type to wait for each other and go to work together.

Franca smiled and said, "I asked her, and she said she had something holding her up and told me not to wait for her."

"I see…" Zhou Mingrui nodded and turned to walk out of the Administrative Department.

During this period, he had been coming to ask Luo Shan about various company news more frequently than before, leading to some idle people in the Administrative Department spreading rumors about him and Luo Shan.

Zhou Mingrui walked at a moderate pace to the entrance of the Administrative Department, unable to wait for Luo Fu to ask him to wait.

He actually came to find Luo Fu today, not Luo Shan. He originally thought she would take this opportunity to hint at something again, but unexpectedly, Luo Fu didn't even have the thought of chatting with him casually, being polite but somewhat distant.

Zhou Mingrui frowned slightly, not turning back to look again, and left the Administrative Department directly.

Something feels a bit off… He had just grumbled inwardly when he saw Luo Shan walking over with a pancake and a cup of five-grain soy milk.

"Good morning," Luo Shan greeted cheerfully.

"Good morning," Zhou Mingrui smiled, "I just went to find you, but you hadn't arrived yet. Luo Fu said you were held up by something."

Luo Shan looked around. "Want to ask me about something again?"

The two chatted casually for a few sentences, each walking towards their own department's office.

Suddenly, Zhou Mingrui's phone vibrated.

He took it out to look, and it was a message from Luo Shan, who he had just been chatting with: "Don't talk to Luo Fu about anything today, wait until tomorrow."

The moment he saw this message, Zhou Mingrui thought the two girls' relationship had suddenly broken down, and they were trying to isolate each other by forming cliques. But after reading it carefully again, he came to a preliminary conclusion.

Does Luo Shan mean that today's Luo Fu has a problem, don't contact her, and it will be fine tomorrow?

Why would there be a problem? She was still normal yesterday…

Is it because of our chat last night about the vending machine, the Assassin drink, and subsequent troubles? This seems a bit like, a bit like when The Star in the group suddenly went offline when mentioning key things…

What kind of problem could it be, who gave the problem, and why is it there today but solved tomorrow?

One question after another flashed through Zhou Mingrui's mind, but he couldn't find reasonable explanations for many of them.

…

13th floor, Security Department.

Lumian and his partner Old Xia had patrolled all floors once, finding no security risks.

After sitting in a room that looked more like a rest area for security guards than an office, Lumian took out his phone.

Since Franca had already left the dreamscape, she could meet with the Major Arcana card holders, so he no longer needed to pass yesterday's experimental results, along with the matter of the associate dean of Musha Hospital being suspected to be the matriarch of the Church of Earth Mother, Roland, through the Star Dream Provisions Store.

Most of the results of this experiment were within his expectations, with the only pleasant surprise being: Luo Shan's memories were still there, all the memories of interacting with Franca and Jenna were still intact!

This means we can 'cultivate' dream characters… but we're not sure to what extent understanding the truth will bring anomalies to dream characters…

In the future, there might be a situation where: all five of us, and even subsequent coin holders, are completely kicked out of the dream, only able to observe, yet there are quite a few dream characters who have inherited our will and cause, still striving to awaken Mr. Fool, and they are part of the dream, unable to be kicked out!

This is a change in thinking, it doesn't have to be outsiders, it doesn't have to be us, NPCs can also play a role…

At that time, well, these dream characters won't be kicked out, but they can be killed or corrupted, just like the Oracle.

When enough dream characters are killed, isn't that also a kind of stimulation for Mr. Fool? This also counts as a disaster for the dream city, with a large number of important characters dying or falling…

Demonesses and Hunters—are they really meant to bring calamity?

Lumian mocked himself, then selected "Intis Group Grimm" and opened the chat interface.

He slightly raised his chin, with a rather cold expression, using voice input to send a message: "How are you doing with the recent matters?"

Sitting in another chair two or three meters away, Old Xia heard this voice and these words, and suddenly shuddered, feeling that this kid Li Ming somehow seemed more like a team leader than Team Lead Xu.

After a few minutes, Grimm replied: "Haven't found a way to make Huang Tao return to the Mother's embrace yet.

"Without Huang Tao's cooperation and acquiescence, there are many things we can't do now. Currently, we can only use the authority of the Security Department to monitor Zhou Mingrui's actions. We've installed pinhole cameras and bugs at his seat, and planted a trojan on his computer. This allows us to discover problems immediately from his browsing history, search history, and call records, and prevent them in time.

"A few days ago, Zhou Mingrui had thoughts of resigning and searched for specific procedures and precautions, but later he didn't do it and hasn't looked at articles or videos on this aspect again.

"Without Huang Tao's cooperation, we can't keep him through promotion and salary increase for now. We must solve this problem before he actually resigns."

Lumian read it carefully and felt that Grimm, or rather the children of the Great Mother in the dream city, hadn't thought about how to cooperate with the Celestial Worthy to turn Zhou Mingrui into a Witch for now. They were more focused on monitoring, observing, and trying to keep Zhou Mingrui staying within the Intis Group where they had great influence, not resigning and leaving.

It feels like what the children of the Great Mother are currently doing is maintaining balance and obtaining the latest intelligence changes at any time…

This basically matches the judgment of the Major Arcana cards and me regarding the intentions of the evil gods…

After muttering to himself for a couple of sentences, Lumian stood up and began pacing in the office.

He was thinking about how to use Grimm and other children of the mother, and also about the matter of Mr. Fool drinking the Assassin potion.

Frankly speaking, when he learned that the Celestial Worthy induced Mr. Fool to drink the Assassin potion, attempting to make him gradually become a Witch, change gender, and thus cause cognitive issues, Lumian felt it was a bit absurd.

In his view, gods were all divine, and except for a few pathways that needed to emphasize gender, they shouldn't care whether they were male or female. Those ancient beings who had lived for thousands or tens of thousands of years might be even more so.

Would Mr. Fool really have cognitive issues because of becoming female?

Recalling that Mr. Fool required to be referred to as "he" rather than "He," Lumian reluctantly accepted this reason.

At the same time, he also suspected that the Celestial Worthy wanted to use the conflict of symbolically non-neighboring pathway Beyonder characteristics to drive Mr. Fool mad, thus gaining the upper hand and achieving victory—the Demoness pathway was not adjacent to the Seer, Apprentice, or Marauder pathways.

After killing the reanimated female corpse Panatiya and learning about her mission, Lumian's internal balance leaned more towards the speculation that the Celestial Worthy wanted to use the conflict between non-neighboring pathways.

Panatiya was supposed to make Zhou Mingrui fall in love, and after he drank the Witch potion and changed gender, stay by his side. Wasn't this equivalent to helping Zhou Mingrui, helping Mr. Fool stabilize his mental state?

This was somewhat contradictory to the speculation of using gender change to cause cognitive issues for Mr. Fool.

And if stabilizing the mental state was for Zhou Mingrui to drink higher sequence Demoness potions, accumulating more madness, it seemed more reasonable.

Now, following this line of thought, Lumian had new questions: Why did it have to be the Assassin potion, the Demoness pathway?

As long as it was a potion from a pathway not adjacent to Seer, Apprentice, or Marauder, it could achieve the purpose…

Does becoming female early on indeed have its effect, bringing mental hidden dangers?

Combining this with the fact that most of our team are Demonesses, and the Celestial Worthy specifically brought a Demoness marionette into the dream city, does this indicate that inducing Zhou Mingrui to drink the Assassin potion, rather than other non-neighboring potions, has hidden reasons?

Lumian immediately went through various specialties of the Demoness pathway in his mind.

In just a few seconds, he thought of a term: "Mirror Person"!

Becoming a Witch not only changes one into a female but also creates a corresponding, fixed Mirror Person.

From this Sequence onwards, Demonesses can use mirrors to create avatars and use corresponding magic.

And from Lumian's current experience, Mirror People were more extreme, more vicious, more sinister.

What the Celestial Worthy actually wants is to make Mr. Fool have a Mirror Person, and then by doing certain things to the Mirror Person, or making the Mirror Person do certain things, achieve the goal of winning this confrontation? Confusing the real with the fake, turning the fake into real? Lumian fell into deep thought.

At this moment, his phone vibrated, and the new incoming message was from Anderson Hood.