Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

I should have known better! I shouldn't have thrown away the unfinished breakfast when I was cleaning up the trash!

[You specifically mentioned lunch earlier! I thought there would be something special or important for lunch! But who knew... it would be something like this!]

She instinctively decided to get up and leave...

"Aren't you hungry? I can hear your stomach rumbling. Your cells are screaming for nutrients." Alice's puzzled voice came from across the room. "Is this not to your taste? But you haven't even taken a bite."

Ming Yanwei raised her eyes, her gaze catching the scene of the witch in front of her picking up a banana slice covered in chocolate and placing it to the lips of another witch. The purple-haired girl sitting next to her, who always maintained a cold and aloof expression, showed a slightly embarrassed expression when Ming Yanwei looked over. She subtly averted her gaze, but still opened her delicate little mouth and swallowed the banana slice in one gulp, along with Alice's two fingers that had been holding the food!

“…Sorry, I don’t really like eating anything too greasy.” Ming Yanwei’s eyes twitched. She even saw the girl named Patchouli gently licking the remaining chocolate stains on Patchouli’s two fingers, her pink, delicate tongue unabashedly entwining around the witch’s fingertips—perhaps for Patchouli, what she really wanted to eat wasn’t actually chocolate or a banana wrapped in chocolate.

She could see the blush on the purple-haired girl's cheeks and the thin mist in her eyes. And a strange, distorted atmosphere, one that made her feel deeply melancholy, was quietly spreading throughout the cabin.

She wasn't quite sure what it was, but her intelligence and experience quickly gave her a rough guess. This guess, however, only deepened her sorrow.

[It seems... they're treating my gaze like some kind of condiment... What is this? Some kind of trendy embarrassment p-lay?! Don't think I don't know you witches are actually a bunch of mentally strong people, you bastards! Getting shy because of someone else's gaze... are you kidding me!]

Can't you guys even try to understand the sadness of being single?!

"Sweet? But I don't think so." Alice smiled and shook her head at Ming Yanwei's suggestion. She gently pulled her finger from her lover's lips—a long, glistening thread still clung to her slender fingertip, connecting it to his pink lips. "Everything requires trying. What you see with your eyes doesn't represent the reality of this world. And the truth needs to be experienced firsthand."

She brought her fingers, adorned with glistening threads, to her lips and slowly wiped them away. With her other hand, she flicked the fingers, and one of the crispy-on-the-outside, tender-on-the-inside roasted fish from the main dish of the "Dead Stargazing Fish" dish was restrained and moved by the force, then gently floated onto the plate in front of Ming Yanwei.

“A narrow-minded perspective is not conducive to your future growth. You cannot accept the information that ‘stargazing is a terrible dish’ as truth just because you get it from the outside world. You should know that truth can always stand the test of time, and you should not make a judgment lightly before you have verified it yourself.”

The bent fork was straightened again by the force field, and then the knife floated gently into Ming Yanwei's other hand.

“The sights you see, the sounds you hear, the smells you experience—these things are all products of heavy processing. And to survive better in this world, you need a deeper understanding of the nature of the things you encounter,” Alice said, turning her head slightly and gesturing for Ming Yanwei to enter.

“Here, have a bite,” she said with a smile. “Use your taste buds to verify for yourself whether this traditional food, which has been passed down on this island for nearly a thousand years, is really as bad as you think. Try to see if that so-called authority is trustworthy.”

She spoke softly, her eyes sincere, a faint smile playing on her lips. That smile radiated an almost overflowing confidence, a confidence that even infected Ming Yanwei's emotions, causing her mind to begin working.

[Perhaps I'm wrong? Perhaps the food just looks bad?]—that's what she thought to herself.

[After all, it's a tradition that's been passed down for thousands of years, and the fact that a tradition hasn't disappeared means there's some kind of secret to it. Perhaps those who say it's bad or a culinary disaster online are just making subjective assumptions?] — She thought to herself.

[Well, it won't hurt to try. After all, they all ate with such relish, which at least means the food isn't bad for them. And since they're fine with it, then... I should be able to too, right?] — She thought to herself.

She thought to herself, and the thought immediately drove her body to act. Before she knew it, her knife and fork had successfully dissected the lifeless stargazing fish before her, placing the freshest, tenderest, and most visually appealing piece of meat to her lips. All she needed to do was open her mouth, separate her teeth and tongue, and then…

...take a bite.

It's a very simple action, requiring little effort and time. Most importantly, performing this action won't cause any harm. So... why not do it?

She thought so, and she did so.

The moment the teeth fall and the act of chewing squeezes out the juices from the fish, the various tactile and gustatory senses on the tongue begin to operate rapidly. They break down the complex taste stimuli and, together with the tactile stimuli generated by chewing, converge them into a complete information stream that is sent to the brain.

—And the taste feedback from the brain comes the instant the food is swallowed whole.

The next second, Ming Yanwei abruptly turned her head and violently retched onto the floor beside the table. The complex neural stimulation, processed by the brain, resulted in nausea and vomiting, accompanied by the violent working of her heart and lungs and spasms in many organs!

The conclusion is obvious, and there's only one answer: it tastes awful.

—'It tastes terrible!'

She felt as if she had almost lost all ability to think and act. Every part of her body, every organ, and every vital organ was performing only one task at this moment: to do everything in her body that was related to 'that piece of fish' to completely expel it from her digestive system. She felt her head throbbing violently, and her nose and eyes were filled with a sour, aching sensation.

At the same time, Alice's voice came from beside her.

“As I said before, truth needs to be tested by oneself. However, I also said that authority is not necessarily trustworthy. So congratulations, you have proven the relative truth that ‘that dish is indeed hard to eat’ through your own experience. At the same time, you have also proven that authority is not trustworthy and that your own judgment may have been correct from the beginning.”

Ming Yanwei, leaning on the table, barely managed to give her the middle finger. The poor archer girl gasped for breath, and after a long while, she managed to catch her breath and lift her head with difficulty.

"I didn't expect you to be so bored. Are all witches this twisted?" she said bitterly. "Is it really that fun to exploit and trample on your companions' trust? You're absolutely awful!"

She said this, and awaited the impending counterattack.

However, she did not receive what she expected; there was no argument, no heated debate after a fit of anger. All she heard was the witch's long sigh.

“It seems I had too high expectations of you, or is your thinking so simple that you can’t observe anything other than what’s right in front of you?” Alice shook her head gently, looking at her with a melancholy expression. “Then let’s take this as the second lesson. Didn’t you notice… you didn’t vomit anything? Your stomach isn’t empty. Why are you gagging at the table? And more importantly…”

"...Why would you think I would like to eat this kind of thing?"

The next moment, everything before her shattered instantly. The real world then revealed itself—she was still in the gyroplane, but through the porthole, she saw not the bustling city shrouded in fog, but abandoned neighborhoods filled with ruins—the nausea and vomiting still lingered in her mind. But the fullness in her stomach and the strength flowing through her limbs told her she had already eaten lunch.

Alice's voice came from across the room—she looked up and saw the blonde witch sitting about five meters away directly opposite her, and Patchouli still piloting the gyroplane in the cockpit. A sense of foreboding suddenly rose in her heart.

"Everything you just saw was a dream woven by your subconscious, and my intervention was limited to a few simple words... It's quite unexpected that your understanding of us is so unique." Alice looked at her with a half-smile, a smile that sent chills down her spine.

“We have reached the no-man's-land, and now we are heading to our destination. Unfortunately, the mental pollution here is quite severe. So, ten minutes ago, you asked me to impart some knowledge on how to better survive in this area… Although you probably weren't very satisfied with the lecture, I think you'd better take notes.”

"First, trust your own judgment and don't be swayed by external influences."

"Second, don't stare at one place; pay attention to the details around you."

“Then…” Alice lifted the silencing spell that had been cast when she tried to apologize.

"You should set off now."

Chapter Twenty: Doesn't your conscience hurt?

"...So, you were summoned by Death in the British prison. Then, with the guidance of Anubis, you successfully escaped and returned to Egypt to complete the final trial?" In the third temple along the pilgrimage route, Zheng Zha listened to O'Connor's account of the current situation while examining the statue's remains, which had been a living being twenty minutes ago but was now just a pile of fragments.

Until half an hour ago, the reincarnators had been secretly following Chu Xuan from a distance, as instructed. Then, just as the protagonists entered the temple and were met with a devastating attack from the statues seconds later, the reincarnators from the Central Continent team revealed themselves, entering the battlefield as reinforcements. Through their actions and strength—the latter being the key—they secured a temporary peace with the main characters.

It was truly a fierce battle. The animated statues could shoot out high-energy death beams as thick as buckets from their eyes, while their bodies were surrounded by more than a dozen intertwined and complementary curse halos, powerful enough to weaken an elephant into a newborn quail in an instant. As a result, most of the cloaked servants died instantly. Imhotep was even punched into the ground; if he hadn't been able to turn into sand after regaining his magic, he would probably have been dead for good.

Moreover, this animated statue possessed three almost contradictory qualities: immense strength, swift movement, and an iron-hard body. Even Zheng Zha, after activating his Destruction state, had to slash at the statue's chest more than a dozen times before he could barely shatter the core of this behemoth, causing it to cease functioning and disintegrate into fragments.

A dozen or so dollars.

It seems that Zheng Zha's side is stronger.

However, due to the overwhelming military force of the Reincarnators and the lingering bond forged from their past camaraderie with O'Connor, the two sides, who could have easily engaged in a deadly battle upon meeting, were able to maintain a fragile peace. Under Zheng Zha's persuasive words, a temporary, fragile alliance was forged, and the exchange of intelligence began.

Clearly, O'Connor wasn't consumed by his past life from thousands of years ago. Or rather, his past self and he were cut from the same cloth. He had the same personality, the same lover, the same passions—his past self was his present self. His past life was his present life. And because Imhotep was by his side, his actions instigating war could be explained. This also meant that his corruption by foreign knowledge was far less severe than imagined.

However, it was only him. Because Evelyn wasn't here, and since Evelyn wasn't here, and he possessed that foreign knowledge, the answer was quite simple.

“Yes, that’s right.” O’Connor glanced at the Central State team members who had come into his view, a rather complicated expression on his face. “When we woke up, we found ourselves under house arrest. Those British guys had us taken back to Britain and interrogated us about what had happened… It was a terrible memory. At first, they were polite to me and Evelyn, but gradually, their attitude worsened. We were all terrified, so we had to find a way to escape. Who knew…”

He shook his head.

“That group deliberately forced us to run away because they wanted to figure out the purpose of that strange drawing you left behind—I heard them say while I was being monitored that the drawing had driven more than a dozen people crazy—but they were helpless. So they deliberately lured us away, hoping to figure out how to use the drawing by observing our actions.”

“…I had no idea what that was. But Evelyn guessed what the Englishmen were thinking. She had intended to use this opportunity to try and trick the group of Englishmen. But when her fingers touched the drawing, however…” A melancholy look appeared in his eyes.

"...I don't quite understand what happened back then. I only saw what seemed like a strange door open, and then my memory is a jumbled mess. When I came to, I found a bunch of inexplicable knowledge in my head, and these strange tattoos on my body. And then..."

“Then my order found him,” Imhotep replied slowly, his pale brown eyes scrutinizing. “The great Grim Reaper revealed this to my followers, allowing them to infiltrate the prison during the chaos and seize my remains. By divine grace, I was reborn, and then I happened to encounter this fellow trapped in the prison with me, so I took him with me. Then we spent two whole years hiding and running across Europe before finally managing to make it back to Egypt.”

He was lying. The wanted poster in the British officer's hand was the latest document. It only listed Evelyn and O'Connor. If they had truly fought side by side for two years, it could only mean that before that, Imhotep had been operating on the European continent as Evelyn.

Zheng Zha subtly shifted his position, and before he could make a move, he heard Chu Xuan's voice transmitted through Zhang Jie's mental link.

This only represents two possibilities: First, Imhotep impersonated Evelyn for the past two years. Second, they believe we know nothing about the events of this era, meaning they know our identities as reincarnators. Of course, there are other possibilities, but they are very small and can be ignored for now.

Do not act rashly; continue to maintain this ambiguity with them.

Chu Xuan's telepathic message only took him a few tens of milliseconds, and given Zheng Zha's reaction speed, it was clearly impossible for him to reveal any obvious flaws in such a relatively 'long' period of time. So he did nothing, simply watching the interaction and performance between O'Connor and Imhotep as if he hadn't noticed anything unusual.

“Hey! I’ve saved you more than once in the past two years! I was the one who brought you here!” O’Connor complained. “You’re as fragile as a newborn baby right after your resurrection!”

“So that’s why I’ve been able to tolerate you until now.” Imhotep glanced at O’Connor, then looked at Zheng Zha and asked seemingly casually, “Oh, right, I remember there was a blonde woman in your team, wasn’t there? I think her name was Alice? What, isn’t she here?”

“She…” Zheng Zha opened his mouth, carefully choosing his words.

Tell them she went to the East. Come up with a good reason, and let them know we are reincarnators. Don't mention Patchouli, and don't let them associate her with Britain.

“She went to the East,” Zheng Zha replied. “She said it wasn’t appropriate for her to meet you at this time, so she’s temporarily separated from us to do other things in the East.” He thought for a moment and added, “She’s very interested in a Qin Dynasty tomb in the East and plans to study it.”

“Is that so?” Imhotep smiled, a smile that was hard to decipher as either goodwill or malice. “It’s better not to meet, after all, she’s a woman who can fight that monster… Alright. We’ve stated our purpose, now it’s your turn. What is your purpose in coming here? I don’t think this is a chance encounter.”

He spoke these words, and with them, the cloaked followers in their ranks all turned to look at the Middle-earth team—they were O'Connor's servants, their cloaks concealing humanoid flesh and blood formed from tentacles. Their action signified that O'Connor had decided on his side.

“Sorry.” O’Connor shrugged. Even though he looked mostly like an ancient person, he still retained the unruliness and cynicism characteristic of American cowboys of this era. “I think I should stand next to this bald guy who has been fighting alongside me for more than two years.”

[Note that this is a bluff, a test; a fight is unlikely—given their knowledge of our identities, they are most likely probing our main quest. Don't reply to him; just keep an eye on the bracelet on Imhotep's wrist.]

Zheng Zha glanced at the Scorpion King bracelet on Imhotep's wrist but said nothing.

“This is what you’re after? Ah, I’m sorry, we can’t hand this over.” O’Connor tilted his head slightly. “The god Anubis gave us an oracle; we must take this bracelet to his pyramid for a trial, and then that noble god will grant me the power to return to Britain to reclaim Evelyn, and to help this bald man reclaim his order. So, if this is it, then I’m sorry.”

Give them a little threat, but don't mention the bracelet.

“You can’t beat us,” Zheng Zha said in a deep voice.

“Is that so? I think so too. You are so much stronger than you were three years ago. I don’t doubt that you could kill both of us with a single slap. But I think if you did that, that noble god might have some objections.”

[We've basically determined their objectives and stance. Tell him we can help them reclaim Evelyn and Imhotep's order from Britain. Remember, don't mention Anshuna.]

So Zheng Zha opened his mouth.

................................................

Seconds later, in the no-man's-land within British territory...

The voice of the supreme god rang in Alice's ears.

—'The Zhongzhou Team's Reincarnation Squad has triggered the main quest of Legend of the Gods and Demons II ahead of schedule. The difficulty has been adjusted to the highest level under the current world view, and the number of side quests and reward points obtained have been doubled.'

—'Main quest: Kill the Scorpion King. All allies will receive 6,000 reward points and one B-rank side quest. Failure will deduct the corresponding reward points and side quest reward.'

—'Side quest: Complete Anubis's Trial to obtain 20,000 reward points and two A-rank side quests. No penalty for failure.'

“It seems things are progressing fairly smoothly over there.” Alice turned her head and glanced at Patchouli beside her. “Although it took longer than expected, they should have touched the Death Bracelet and formed a cooperative relationship with the main characters of the story, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to start the main quest yet.”

“It was expected,” Patchouli replied. “We had already concluded that Anubis, the only god of this world, needed an agent, and the protagonists of this story, who were already destined for greatness, were simply there by chance. But since the god has made his choice, he must be respected. And if we want to participate, we must prove that we are better than them while obtaining permission.”

“And they have to be many times better,” Alice added.

“Okay, many times over.” Patchouli pouted. “This damned geopolitical discrimination…”

There's no way around it; the natives are always more trusted by the world than transmigrators. And for Anubis, the sole god who guards the sacred vault and knows everything about both reincarnators and the main god's space, while the reincarnators aren't that different from the natives, He will obviously give them a greater test. And this time, since the word 'trial' was conveyed directly through the main god even before they arrived at the pyramids, His will is crystal clear.

Very simple.

If there are difficulties, we must overcome them; if there are no difficulties, we must create them. And without a doubt, this big shot is clearly happy to create some extra difficulties for the reincarnators of the Central Plains team.

[To be honest, I now even suspect that Imhotep is Anubis's representative or even incarnation in the predicted records. If not, it makes no sense that he and Ansuona, two mere natives with almost no potential and whose genetic locks hadn't even reached Tier 1, were absorbed into the Reincarnation Team after Zheng Zha had already advanced to Tier 4. And even before they were recognized as members of the Central Continent Team, Imhotep had already entered the Saint's Vault together... and ultimately, without his help, the Central Continent Team wouldn't have been able to escape from the Vault!]

This is utterly unreasonable, such a massive waste of human resources... I simply cannot understand it.

Her gaze met Patchouli's in mid-air, and messages that were unsuitable to be spoken aloud, or even thought about, were exchanged through their unique way of communication. Last time, she had been troubled for a long time after Patchouli told her that the Emperor had seen through her dreams. Now, she had finally found a more secretive way to communicate.