“I can see you getting more anxious day by day.” Jiang Ruoxue placed her hand on my shoulder. “When we first met, your eyes didn’t look this lost.”

“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “I just feel like I’ve stopped… Although time has stopped in this place, I know I haven’t stopped… but now… I feel like I’ve stopped too.”

“Do you really want to achieve this goal?” She asked with a serious expression once again. “Even if it’s very difficult… even if you have to pay a great price, is that okay?”

I was familiar with this expression. Whenever Jiang Ruoxue became serious, she could always say things I never expected.

“I can help you.” Jiang Ruoxue suddenly said again.

“Haven’t you always been helping me?” I smiled bitterly.

“No… this kind of ‘help’ has a different meaning.” Jiang Ruoxue shook her head. “Once I choose to help you from a higher level, it means I’ve completed my mission.”

“What do you mean…?” I didn’t quite understand Jiang Ruoxue’s words. “Your ‘mission’?”

“Do you remember…?” Jiang Ruoxue smiled and pinched my cheek. “The reason I’ve been able to appear here for five consecutive years is because I sensed you needed me. Once I help you complete this matter, my task will be finished, and you won’t need me anymore. ‘Cause and effect’ will no longer allow us to meet.”

“What…?” I was stunned.

“When that time comes, if we want to see each other, we can only rely on true ‘fate’.” Jiang Ruoxue smiled. “Our spawn points are very far apart, almost at opposite ends of this city. Meeting up won’t be so easy then.”

“I’m a bit confused…” I frowned at her. “Ruoxue… you clearly could have other ways to help me directly, yet you’re willing to waste five years of time?”

“Waste…? No, no, no.” Jiang Ruoxue shook her head. “Zhichun, everything in this world follows ’cause and effect’. If something doesn’t follow ’cause and effect’, then as long as we ‘deduce the cause from the effect’, we can still arrive at the answer.”

After five years together, I could roughly understand what Jiang Ruoxue meant.

“Are you saying… these five years are also part of ’cause and effect’?”

I understood, but I didn’t want to understand.

“Are you saying that once you help me solve this matter… you won’t be able to act together with me anymore?” I asked again.

“It’s not quite that absolute.” Jiang Ruoxue shook her head with a bitter smile. “Zhichun, this city isn’t small. Finding a specific person precisely within it isn’t a simple matter. Once I remove the ’cause and effect’ that allows us to meet and choose to use it to help you build an organization instead, our meetings will become much more difficult. That’s all.”

After saying this, she seemed to notice I wasn’t too happy and smiled mischievously. “After all, we don’t even know each other’s phone numbers, so we can’t contact each other normally. Right?”

I wasn’t in the mood to joke with her. I just asked with a dejected expression, “Then what are you going to do?”

“I’ll help you from the other end of the city.” Jiang Ruoxue answered. “You said it yourself—this organization doesn’t need ‘cooperation’. Everyone operates alone. If that’s the case… then let’s split up and recruit members separately at the two ends of the city. We don’t need to communicate with each other at all. Perhaps one day this organization will become incredibly powerful.”

“But how… can you help me?” I asked.

Jiang Ruoxue took a step forward, stood in front of me, then grabbed my hand and took a deep breath before saying slowly, “Yan Zhichun, establishing an organization isn’t difficult. You just need to understand the logical relationships within it.”

After saying this sentence, beads of sweat appeared on her forehead. After pausing for a few seconds, she continued, “From now on, as long as you speak the truth with sincerity, without any deception, the other party will believe everything you say.”

I felt Jiang Ruoxue’s condition was a bit strange. In just the time it took to say a few sentences, beads of sweat as large as soybeans slid down her face, as if she were completely exhausted.

After finishing, she quickly released my hand, bent down and took several deep breaths, then wiped the sweat from her face and said, “How big must this organization be… Why is it so exhausting?”

“Are you alright?” I looked at her with some concern.

“Don’t worry.” She smiled at me with a slightly weak expression. “Zhichun, now you have the potential of a ‘King’. What comes next will happen naturally.”

“So what exactly did you do…?”

“Nothing much, just told you about the ’cause and effect’ that will inevitably occur.” After taking several deep breaths, she asked me, “So, what will this organization be called?”

“Name…”

“Right.” After calming her breathing, Jiang Ruoxue said to me, “We’re partners now. I’m also going to recruit companions. How can it work if I don’t know the name?”

At this moment, I lowered my head and thought about the organization we were about to establish.

From now on, we would walk a completely different path. Actually, not just us—every “Participant” here seemed to have their own path.

Some could participate in games with peace of mind, some established gangs with great fanfare, others gambled their lives with the “Zodiac” in games, and some even put on masks and became “Zodiac” themselves.

There’s a Roman saying: “All roads lead to Rome.” But I didn’t like that expression. Although simple and straightforward, it lacked a certain artistic conception.

I preferred what the Daoists said: “Three thousand great paths, each can lead to divinity.”

We would abandon all other possibilities, deviate from the main path, and cultivate only one. Not only that, we would take this single path to its ultimate peak. This was destined to be an extreme route with no way to turn back.

In Daoism, there’s a special name for people who practice this way. They’re called—”‘Extreme Path’.” I said.

“‘Extreme Path’…?”

“That’s right. Our organization will be called ‘Extreme Path’.” I looked at Jiang Ruoxue and said, “Everyone who joins the organization is an ‘Extreme Path Practitioner’. The organization’s goal is to ‘protect the Land of Ends’. We need these people to make ‘Extreme Path’ their lifelong faith. Since everyone doesn’t know each other, the recognition code will be ‘Long Live Extreme Path’.”

After that cycle, Jiang Ruoxue, just as she had said, never appeared at my spawn point waiting for me again.

Her identity changed from a friend by my side with whom I could talk about anything, to a distant partner who was very difficult to meet.