The leaderboard with the highest weight, the Gospel Board, actually required candidates to be pure, flawless maidens!
While Yaxiu knew everyone loved beautiful girls, for even a god to be this shallow was simply too much!
"Young Miss, let me see the past winners of the Gospel Board. I need to thoroughly investigate the Omniscient Weaver's specific tastes!"
"Can't you spend points to look at them yourself?" Annan touched her amethyst earring and said, "Though even if you look back, you won't see much—because the first-place Echoers of the Gospel Board throughout history have always been veiled maidens, their faces entirely concealed."
"Huh? The Omniscient Weaver hoards them all for Himself?" Yaxiu looked down at Lisi, pulled the Distortion Mask from his robes, and slipped it onto her face. "Like this?"
"Where did this demon king and little witch crawl out from?" Annan said crossly. "Forget it. I never once considered using Lisi to deceive the Gospel Board. Setting aside the fact that Lisi doesn't meet the requirements in the slightest, as I just mentioned, the first place on this board was already locked in before the Weaving Ceremony even began."
Although Yaxiu thought Lisi was the most adorable little girl, she certainly had nothing to do with 'innocent,' and was quite a ways off from 'kind.' When she grew up, she would definitely become a manipulative beauty who toyed with people's emotions, making others love and hate her in equal measure—Yaxiu had always felt Lisi had claimed the wrong parents; she should have called Aunt Bogin her mother instead. That would have been a true matching of talents.
Igola asked, "Then who was predetermined to take first place on the Gospel Board?"
"The next Yisu Empress."
Annan scanned the room and said slowly, "The first place on every Gospel Board becomes the Yisu Empress for the next fifty years. The Emperor currently residing in the imperial capital of Nabistin was the first-place winner of the previous Gospel Board.
"Ever since the founding of the Yisu Dynasty, this tradition has never seen an exception and has never changed."
Igola frowned. "Every single one?"
"Every single one."
"No anomalies ever occurred? Is it possible someone else made the board, but the Isu royal family adopted them into the royal clan before the rankings were published—"
Annan shook her head. "Trust me, when I first thought of claiming the divine wish, the first option I considered was taking first place on the Gospel Board. And it wasn't just me—who wouldn't want a divine wish? Do you think clans like Burdette, Mercury, and Kasri haven't harbored thoughts of seizing the divine wish?
"Yet the reality is that the Isu royal family has held a firm grip on first place on the Gospel Board for hundreds of years, never letting it slip into outside hands." She shrugged. "It's precisely because of this board that I was bold enough to lead you all in profaning the Gospel—the Isu royal family has already been profaning the Gospel for centuries!
"How could every generation of the royal family possess the purest maiden in all of Gospel? The only explanation is that the Isu royal family mastered a method to deceive the Gospel, stealing the greatest prize of the Weaving Ceremony!
"Even if the Gospel nullifies every other leaderboard, it won't nullify the Gospel Board—because it doesn't need to weave anything for it at all. The Isu royal family has already prepared the answer for it!"
Yaxiu felt Lisi squirming restlessly in his arms. He rubbed her white-haired head and asked, "But why does the Weaving Ceremony have such a bizarre leaderboard as the Gospel Board in the first place? Can the purest maiden increase productivity, or can she enrich everyone's spiritual needs?"
Once or twice would be one thing, but having this board in every single Weaving Ceremony was far too strange, especially compared to the other boards—the Art Board catered to spiritual and cultural needs; the Family Board guided clans on which new thighs to hug tightly; the Scheme Board foretold the major events of the next fifty years...
The purest maiden possessed no achievements (good or evil), nor could she guide societal life. While admiring one occasionally was nice, it hardly justified making it the sole permanent leaderboard of the Weaving Ceremony, right?
Was the Omniscient Weaver truly selecting imperial concubines?
"The Gospel has never given an answer on this point," Annan said. "Currently, there are three mainstream schools of thought: First, the Omniscient Weaver wishes for everyone to become innocent, pure, and kind, and established this board to entice us to emulate them; second, the Gospel Board is the foundation of the other nine leaderboards, and any change to it would cause the collapse of the Weaving Ceremony, so the Omniscient Weaver left it untouched; third, the Omniscient Weaver is female and prefers women."
The first reason was easy to understand—those below emulate what those above favor. However, societal ethos clearly couldn't be steered by a single leaderboard, let alone one with only ten spots.
If it could be expanded to a hundred million spots, perhaps Yaxiu might see a Gospel Country populated entirely by beautiful girls.
The second reason was also completely reasonable. It was just like a mountain of legacy spaghetti code: you had no idea why it worked, but as long as it did, you didn't touch it.
"But why guess that the Omniscient Weaver is female?" Yaxiu felt baffled. "Shouldn't the guess be male?"
Annan asked, "If you were designing a board to select women, would you place the highest weight on 'kind and innocent'?"
"Hmm..." Yaxiu pondered. "Hard to say. For me, there are many qualities in women that I value greatly."
Annan asked, "And the most important?"
"I'm a bit embarrassed to say it, but probably figure."
"If you're embarrassed, don't answer so quickly!" Annan stole a quick glance at herself and scoffed, "Shallow!"
"If it were me, I'd probably value her strength," Harvey said.
"Mhm, I understand," Yaxiu nodded. "After all, she'd also be your combat tool. Strength really is the most important."
"I'm not talking about a corpse." Harvey glanced at him. "In my opinion, the finest woman is one who can kill my targets as swiftly and cleanly as possible, then bring their corpses back to me..."
"Excuse me, but we're discussing sexual function here, not functional utility." Yaxiu turned to Igola. "What about you?"
Igola shot back a cold look. "The qualities I value are the same as the Gospel Board."
"Because pure and innocent women are especially easy to swindle?"
"Because such women don't exist at all," Igola said. "Children learn to toy with living beings from an early age; during adolescence, desires stir and evil cravings run rampant; in youth, they witness society's tangled web of good and evil... Unless she grew up completely isolated from the world, how could a pure and innocent maiden possibly exist? I'd like to see what sort of freaks and monsters the future board dredges up."
"According to the 'Swindler's Strategy Guide,' the more a swindler verbally disdains something, the more he secretly adores it." Yaxiu grinned cheekily. "Who would have thought you actually liked the pure and innocent type, Igola... Ah, I get it now!"
Igola raised an eyebrow. "Fool, what did you 'get' this time?"
"Anfiel fits that description perfectly!" Realization dawned on Yaxiu. "No wonder the Gospel predicted you and Anfiel would marry in the future! So that's why—she matches your tastes completely!"
"Daddy, what's the 'Swindler's Strategy Guide'?" Lisi asked. "If I study it, can I become a swindler?"
"No, but studying it will teach you how to deal with swindlers." Yaxiu turned toward the young butler. "What about Banjie? What do you value most?"
Banjie was slightly taken aback, then smiled. "Hasn't the topic drifted a bit?"
"Indeed," Annan said. "Regardless of why the Omniscient Weaver established the Gospel Board in the end, all we need to know is that it has become our greatest obstacle.
"My original plan was to compete for rankings across several earlier leaderboards, allowing one of you to amass enough weight to completely overshadow the first place of the Gospel Board, thereby securing first priority for the divine wish.
"That's why I'm not particularly pleased, even though I'm currently the highest in priority." Annan spread her hands. "With only two placements, I cannot displace the 'First Gospel.'
"Now, I actually sincerely hope the other leaderboards haven't been nullified, but the probability is low. Since the Omniscient Weaver intends to speed up the Weaving Ceremony, He wouldn't accelerate just a single board."
Yaxiu hesitated for a moment and asked, "Have you ever thought that even if the Weaving Ceremony hadn't sped up..."
"That even if we had taken nine first places, the divine wish would still be predetermined for the First Gospel? Of course I considered that possibility, and I think the odds are very high," Annan said calmly. "But so what?"
*But so what?*
If she gave up simply because hope was slim, Annan never would have led them on this scheme to profane the Gospel in the first place. This was a conspiracy against a god; from the very beginning, she had already braced herself to lose everything.
Yaxiu couldn't see a single trace of regret in Annan's eyes. She was like a moth in the darkness—plunging into the flame was her destiny. It was just that even now, Yaxiu still didn't know what she yearned to burn.
"Since every Yisu Emperor in history has received the divine wish," Igola asked, "what did they wish for?"
"No one knows." Annan shook her head. "Those are two of the Three Great Mysteries of the Gospel: why past empresses always make the board, and what past empresses actually wished for."
Yaxiu asked, "What's the third mystery?"
Annan glanced at him. "Who the men of past empresses were... Though we're fortunate enough that one of the answers is sitting right in front of us."
Yaxiu felt terribly wronged—if the other rankings on the Happiness Board were satirical parodies of him, then the wedding at tenth place and the Empress at first place were absolute fabrications!
He hadn't even met the Empress; how could the Gospel decide he would claim her all to himself in the future?
Worse still, the Happiness Board hadn't even shown the Empress's face. He couldn't even see what sort of new wife the Gospel had assigned him!
"Lisi," Yaxiu chatted idly with Lisi, "do you think the Empress is pretty?"
Lisi blinked. "I think... maybe about as pretty as Lisi when she grows up?"
Harvey let out a burp and drawled, "So that means you have no chance of seizing the divine wish anymore, Annan?"
"'We,'" Annan corrected his phrasing before continuing. "Theoretically, we have no chance. But while nullifying the other leaderboards, the Gospel also delivered the sharpest blade to solve all our problems right into my hands."
Igola froze, then immediately realized something and shot to his feet. Staring at Annan, he said, "An unprovable hypothesis cannot serve as the primary basis for a decision!"
"Yet this is the only chance we have left." Annan met his gaze. "After coming this far, even if it's the faintest spark, I must make it flare into a blaze."
Yaxiu watched the two suddenly bickering, completely at a loss.
*An optimist, a pessimist, and me?*
Yaxiu said, "Before you two start arguing, could you switch to a normal language? We can't understand a thing when you're just meowing at each other!"
The Swindler glared at the Purple Moth for a long moment before slowly sitting back down. His face was as calm as a placid lake, but turmoil raged in his heart—even though he had acquired knowledge of the Dominance Faction, even though he had experienced the mental sea of tens of millions at Burdette, he still could not overturn Annan's slave contract through the mind faction!
The Gospel accelerating the Weaving Ceremony had disrupted not only Annan's rhythm, but also Igola's plans!
He had intended to use the power of the mind faction to forcibly break the contract before the final leaderboard was released. His debt contract with Evalin had been the homework and final exam the Swindler assigned himself—as long as he could nullify Evalin's debt, Igola was confident he could free them from Annan's control!
But everything had happened far too fast.
Their peaceful days had been far too brief.
The Purple Moth looked toward the cult leader. "Yaxiu, although the Gospel used you to nullify the board, it also granted you an unprecedented special authority.
"You are a 'Disruptor of Fate' recognized by the Gospel. Any impact you cause falls under 'a reasonable minor deviation within the bounds of destiny.' Applied to the leaderboards, it means that regardless of whom you influence, she can still make the rankings, but her placement will be nullified.
"This was not the Gospel's original intention, but a temporary new rule set up to accelerate the weaving process. However, since it is a new rule, the Gospel will continue to abide by it, or else it would cause contradictions between earlier and later boards."
Yaxiu caught on as well: since the Gospel had used Yaxiu to wipe the Happiness Board's mess, the Gospel had to acknowledge that Yaxiu was a piece of toilet paper capable of wiping away the future.
This was precisely what Annan meant by "Disruptor of Fate"—unbeknownst to himself, Yaxiu had acquired a Gospel-region-exclusive license to kill: he could kill (nullify) the future of anyone in the Gospel!
Yaxiu caught a glimmer of understanding. "Do you mean to say you want me to..."
"If you kill an Echoer who hasn't yet appeared on the board," Annan said, "the Gospel won't go out of its way to modify the rankings, because 'you can destroy the future' is already an established new rule. It will simply follow this logic and nullify the slain person's ranking.
"Yaxiu, you are a blade gifted to us by the Gospel.
"As long as you kill the first place of the Gospel Board before it happens, the Weaving Ceremony will nullify her ranking, and I will legitimately become the highest in priority!"
After a brief silence, Harvey suddenly chuckled. "So, we're finally going to kill someone? Who's the target?"
Banjie wore a troubled expression, Igola's brow was tightly knit, and Lisi buried her head deep in Yaxiu's chest.
"The future Yisu Empress," Annan said. "The princess residing in the imperial capital of Nabistin.
"Yaxiu must be the one to kill her to complete our final profanation of the Gospel.
"Therefore, there are two pieces of news. The good news is that you only have one last job remaining. The bad news is that this job may very well become your last." Annan dabbed her mouth with a handkerchief and said, "Destination: the imperial capital of Nabistin. Mission objective—
"Assassinate the princess."
Chapter 433