“Qian Wu really did lie…” Qi Xia murmured to himself.

“What do you mean?”

He briefly explained his speculation to everyone, his eyes revealing a peculiar expression.

Qian Wu may indeed have deceived all the members of “Cat,” keeping them working tirelessly without knowing the truth.

But for “Cat,” for Qian Wu…

Did he have any other choice?

Although “Cat” didn’t have many members, and each one had a stubborn temperament, they were all excellent “Echo” wielders.

These people may have truly committed wrongs in the real world, may have wronged their families, but at this very moment they were all striving for their families, willing to die miserably here again and again without any regret.

This was the “path of redemption” they sought in this sunless hell.

Qian Wu wouldn’t expose this lie, nor would they expose it themselves. Even if members of “Cat” discovered some clues in certain aspects, they would unconditionally believe that their families truly became wealthy in the future. This was probably the last line of defense maintaining their sanity all along.

If you carefully considered the methods of Chu Tianqiu and Qian Wu, you would discover that their “transactions” with the “Zodiacs” were quite abnormal.

Everyone here said that “The End” was full of sinners who deserved to go to hell. People either broke the law, did wrong things, or were immersed in regret for their entire lives. They said everyone was on their way to hell when they were pulled here to select a “God.”

It clearly sounded like a place full of evildoers, but ironically, the two people who chose to take desperate risks and make deals with the “Zodiacs,” whether it was Chu Tianqiu or Qian Wu, neither of them had a starting point for themselves.

They could have been completely selfish and abandoned this choice.

Chu Tianqiu painstakingly established an organization to provide everyone with food and help, while Qian Wu established an organization to let everyone constantly grow stronger while obtaining redemption.

Compared to other members in the organization, these two leaders not only received no substantial rewards, but also dug out countless eyes of their teammates to use as currency, then covered their own eyes with hands stained with their teammates’ blood, deceiving everyone, and finally bearing heavy psychological burdens.

Even if one day everyone could obtain redemption within the organization, these two people had no way to return to the past.

If there was a “cause” for creating this situation… then Qian Wu’s cause definitely came from Chen Junnan, and Chen Junnan’s cause came from himself.

What about Chu Tianqiu?

Qi Xia touched his chin, feeling the answer was quite obvious—his cause came from Wen Qiaoyun. He was shouldering the mission Wen Qiaoyun should have completed.

Everyone here was guarding a hope that could barely see the light.

How important was “hope” to a life that could still think?

In the 1950s, Dr. Curt Richter from Johns Hopkins University conducted an experiment about “hope.”

He threw a white rat into a bottle filled with water, and the rat kept struggling in the water to survive. After struggling for fifteen minutes and finding that survival was hopeless, it finally drowned exhausted in the bottle.

Later he modified the experiment. When the rat was about to drown, he reached out and pulled it up, giving it a moment to catch its breath, then threw it into the water again.

The experimental results completely changed from this point. How long did this rat thrown back into the water struggle?

Not fifteen minutes, not one hour, not even one day.

It struggled in the bottle full of water for a full sixty hours, always believing that a hand would pull it up at some moment, but unfortunately, it never waited for it.

This was the power that “hope” gave to life.

As long as hope still existed, even if all the people in this hellish place were submerged in deep water where they couldn’t breathe, people would not choose to give up.

“I think Qian Wu shouldn’t have lied to me,” Qi Xia said. “Although he made a deal with the ‘Zodiacs,’ I estimate that even he himself doesn’t know where those eyeballs were used.”

“Is that possible…” Chen Junnan said. “He himself knows that Xuanwu’s ability is ‘Immortality’ and ‘Forgetting Worries.’ Wouldn’t he have anticipated it?”

“He’s curious, but he can’t figure it out,” Qi Xia said. “After all, he doesn’t know what ‘Heavenly Snake’ is doing, and has no way to immediately connect those eyeballs with the abilities of the ‘Divine Beasts.'”

“You’re right. Who the hell could think of this kind of thing except a madman?” Chen Junnan said. “Who would gouge out eyes and install them on someone else’s back for no good reason?”

“Now we can basically have a general understanding of the ‘Divine Beasts’ abilities…” Qi Xia said. “‘Cat’ gathered all these people with different ‘Echoes’ together, which just happens to directly reveal the abilities of the ‘Divine Beasts’ to us. Now that I think about it, even Xuanwu’s ‘Reaching into the Bag,’ ultimately also came from ‘Cat.'”

After Qi Xia finished speaking, he froze, then looked up at the streets here.

“Wait… if we say it this way… could this city also come from an ‘Echo’… and it’s very likely ‘Cat’s’ ‘Echo’…”

Chen Junnan and Qiao Jiajin beside him were both stunned at the same time, saying: “‘Clever Object’…?”

“No wonder… no wonder…” Qi Xia said with gleaming eyes. “No wonder only here can you find a city… Five cities floating above the vast void… What kind of madman could do such a thing?”

“What… cities floating above the void?” Chen Junnan asked. “What did you remember again, kid?”

“It’s too long to explain…” Qi Xia shook his head. “I suspect someone created heaven and earth in the void, creating cities out of nothing… because in other places I simply didn’t…”

Speaking to this point, Qi Xia decisively stopped speaking and swallowed the words he was about to say.

“Ah…? When you say ‘out of nothing,’ you mean…?”

“Haven’t you noticed?” Qi Xia came back to his senses and pointed at the dilapidated buildings here. “The buildings here are very difficult to date. It seems like shops from every era exist. Not only are there high-rise buildings here, but there are also farms, schools, and prisons existing simultaneously. Under normal circumstances, how could these four types of buildings be so close to each other?”

“It seems to have always been this way,” Chen Junnan said. “Is there a problem with that?”

“There’s no problem, I just know who built this city now…” Qi Xia said. “This is truly an astonishing feat.”