Jessica said:
"Really?"
Wen Xishu said:
"How many Tower Climbers have you encountered?"
"Wenren Mirror is the one that left the deepest impression. Then there was a married couple. Their abilities weren’t great, but they had good insights. As for the other Tower Climbers, they were quite lackluster. One even insisted I was tricking him. It forced me to kill myself on the spot..."
Jessica wasn’t having it easy either:
"My greatest advantage is that when I die, I remember everything as the loop restarts. But the Priest doesn’t remember any of it."
"Since the Priest is evil, opposing him isn’t inherently evil. The Priest can’t purify my obsession with him, and with each purification and each loop... I’ve gradually managed to hide some thoughts."
"Once, the Priest even discovered my special trait. He realized that I desired to oppose him, and he knew that I retained my memories... But when the next loop started, everything was reset again."
"I’ve battled the Priest numerous times, but he’s too strong. I can only hope for a variance, and you Tower Climbers are that variance."
Wen Xishu said:
"Tell me, what should we do?"
Jessica’s expression turned serious:
"Confess, I’ll go and confess to the Priest. During the confession, the Priest will shut the church doors. You need to sneak inside, or rather, you need to hide inside early. When the Priest starts the purification process, there will be a circular domain!"
"Within that domain, everyone’s evil thoughts will be purified..."
"The same goes for you. If you enter that domain, you’ll likely lose your aggressiveness, unless you truly believe that your actions aren’t evil but just."
Wen Xishu said:
"I have some resistance to psychic invasions, keep going. What happens next?"
In Deceit Tower, once you speak of your evil deeds in the accident room, the victim will descend into reality.
But the ones constructing Deceit Tower probably include the obsessions of the town’s people and the Priest’s obsessions. Some rules are beneficial to the players.
Desire Tower is different.
Jessica said:
"Next, the power that breaks the barrier between reality and story will take effect..."
"The person you committed the evil deed against during your confession will appear in reality... For example, if you harmed me, I would be forcibly summoned by that power."
"But that won’t be the real me. It would be another ’me’ created by a force strong enough to affect the real world."
"Killing the other me won’t affect me at all, but if the Priest kills the target... your evil thoughts will be purified. The Priest will also consume the power of the summoned person. Got it?"
Wen Xishu understood.
In other words, the person confessing must be the perpetrator. During the Priest’s purification process, the perpetrator’s internal evil thoughts will be eradicated while summoning the ’victim.’ The Priest then consumes the ’victim’ and gains their power.
Indeed, this was different from what Wen Xishu experienced in the Deceit Tower’s Castle Story Gathering.
In the Castle Story Gathering of Deceit Tower... Wen Xishu felt that he summoned the real An Family Brothers, Jack, and Jennifer.
He even felt a sense of crisis when he intended to summon Wen Chaohua.
Wen Xishu said:
"How different is the fake you, created by that power breaking through the reality barrier, from the real you?"
Jessica shook her head:
"No difference, almost identical."
Wen Xishu made a sound of acknowledgment and understood.
Jessica added:
"Remember, the evil deed must have genuinely occurred. But the target of the evil act can’t be the Priest. In other words, not the Caster." Jessica sighed again.
Clearly, she had tried.
"I once thought that since the evil deed had actually occurred, my malice against the Priest was also real. Could I make the Priest summon the Priest and have the Priest fight the Priest?"
"It didn’t work. The Priest simply said calmly, ’So you hold malice towards me.’ Then I died."
Wen Xishu had to admit, Jessica was indeed the most miserable of the Broken Ones.
Jessica said:
"Everyone in this town will become increasingly evil under the Priest’s influence. Consuming those victims... doesn’t actually make the Priest much stronger."
"But purifying evil thoughts makes him very strong."
Wen Xishu understood.
The Priest’s power comes from two sources.
The first source, absorbing the victims in the story.
The second source, converting evil thoughts into combat power.
One has to admit, this ability is truly invincible...
Because the Priest is the source of evil, the townspeople will periodically become twisted and evil. The Priest will periodically gain evil acts.
Once people become evil, they’ll commit violence, creating victims. During the confession process... the victims will be consumed by the Priest.
In essence, the town continuously provides the Priest with power.
At this moment, Jessica spoke the most crucial sentence:
"Remember, how evil the deed is doesn’t matter, but the victim must be powerful. Because the only one who can break the situation is the summoned victim."
"So... in your experiences, is there anyone particularly strong that you have wronged? They have to be very powerful. Otherwise, they’ll just be consumed by the Priest, making him stronger."
Jessica wasn’t sure.
After being transformed into a good person, she really wanted to get rid of the Priest, the source of evil. But the Priest was too strong, so Jessica could only pin her hopes on the Tower Climbers.
"If you don’t have such an experience... you’d better not provoke the Priest, or you’ll die. I’ll provide you with an escape plan."
Wen Xishu never expected that one day, a Broken One would help him this much, even preparing a plan B for him.
After listening to Jessica’s account, Wen Xishu realized... the Priest was indeed hard to deal with.
The Priest himself was already very powerful, and in Desire Tower, it was hard to encounter anyone with significant experiences.
After all, if you can commit violence against a strong person, it means you are stronger. Such people don’t climb Desire Tower. Ordinary Tower Climbers can’t deal with the Priest at all.
However, the survival difficulty of this task isn’t actually high because the Priest plays the role of a good person. In other words, you can just hang on and still clear the mission.
But Wen Xishu wasn’t the type to just hang on. He was already thinking about how to kill the Priest.
In Deceit Tower, An Rongzai, the Ghost Bride, the Shoe Woman, and Jiang Qing couldn’t do anything to the Priest. So in Desire Tower, defeating the Priest seemed almost impossible.
"There’s a chance the Priest in Deceit Tower is stronger, and the one in Desire Tower is relatively weaker... But if I miscalculated, the Priest will just absorb the powers of An Rongzai and the Ghost Bride, among others."
"So, I must summon someone capable of a one-hit kill."
Wen Xishu realized a crucial point.
In the Castle Story Gathering, the things summoned were likely real.
In Desire Tower, the ones summoned during the confession purification process were simulated by some power that broke through reality...
One was real, one was simulated; this might be due to the difference in strength between the Priests in the different Towers or the special rules of the land of obsessions.
But ultimately, this was a breakthrough.
Wen Xishu immediately thought:
"Although the simulated victims are almost identical to the real ones without any difference..."
"But essentially, they are different."
Another thought surged in Wen Xishu’s mind. The last time he attempted to summon Wen Chaohua, he had a feeling of being targeted by some super terrifying presence.
It was like a sniper was targeting him from the dark.
But what if the one summoned was just a simulated version?
This thought rapidly took root and grew.
Wen Xishu said:
"When do we start?"