I’m Trapped in a Cube - Chapter 104

Ci Xing was an outlier.

An outlier who did not believe in gods.

When his tribesmen went to perform rituals, he would stay on the stone pillars of the Needle Stone Forest , watching the various creatures fly by.

“Ci Xing, if you don’t respect the Father God, you’ll pay the price,” some tribesmen advised him. Ci Xing had heard such words many times.

“I’m not disrespecting him. I just don’t understand,why must we worship him? He never even responds to us,” said Ci Xing, confused.

“Nonsense!” The tribesman walked away angrily.

The Father God hadn’t appeared for a long time. The older mineral tribe members said that the Father God used to let them enter the battlefield, to train them.

But whenever Ci Xing asked what the battlefield was like, those old mineral tribe members would suddenly get stuck, saying they’d forgotten.

Probably just rumors, Ci Xing thought as he looked at those carvings of the Father God on the buildings, even suspecting his tribesmen had all been deceived.

He had never seen the Father God himself, only heard his tribesmen talk about the Father God’s greatness every day.

“What was so great about him?”

The tribesmen also followed the Father God’s will, constantly strengthening themselves, training, and every so often going out into the Needle Stone Forest to fight powerful creatures.

But this only led to the loss of many tribesmen.

Ci Xing couldn’t understand at all. Wouldn’t it be better to just stay in the Needle Stone Forest? Why insist on going out?

The mineral tribe’s strength was already enough, and with the terrain of the Needle Stone Forest, there was no creature that could threaten the tribe.

It was just asking for trouble.

Whenever Ci Xing couldn’t help but ask, the old mineral tribe members would always answer that the Father God wanted the mineral tribe to pursue strength and wisdom. Now that the battlefield was gone, the only way was to go outside and fight creatures.

“This is the price-the price of strength. It’s something you must face,” the old mineral tribe members patiently advised him. “This is the Abyss .”

Ci Xing got annoyed listening and went back into the mineral vein, watching the newborns being nurtured.

“If this keeps up, they’ll all die out.”

It took a long time for the mineral veins to produce new children. Because of years of fighting, the number of mineral tribe members had already dropped a lot.

“What does this have to do with me? It’s all their own doing,” Ci Xing thought, shaking his head and brushing away his worries.

Just then, Ci Xing heard a commotion in the distance; the tribesmen were all running to the altar.

“The Father God has descended!”

Hearing this, Ci Xing hurried back to the altar, pushing his way to the front.

But when he got there, what he saw was not the majestic rainbow giant.

It was a thin, gray mineral tribe member.

“Take these relics  and leave the Needle Stone Forest for now. I may be about to face a calamity, and it could affect you,” said the unremarkable gray mineral tribe member, with many relics floating around him, handing them out one by one.

He also told the mineral tribe members the costs and abilities of these relics.

When it was Ci Xing’s turn, the gray mineral tribe member gave him a red , saying, “Its ability is to change material. Used on mineral tribe members, it can enhance emotions, but it will spread,so be careful.”

“Each person can only use it once. The cost is to recognize yourself.”

“Recognize myself?” Ci Xing didn’t understand.

“Yes, no matter what you become, this headscarf will let you see your true identity and then lock in your self-awareness-nothing can change it.”

Ci Xing was a bit surprised. Wasn’t that a benefit?

The gray mineral tribe member was about to hand out more relics, but suddenly turned back to Ci Xing and said, “Once you put on this relic, the cost will trigger temporarily. You can use this.”

Now Ci Xing understood: as long as he wore the headscarf, his self-awareness would be locked, but if he didn’t use the ability, the cost wouldn’t always be present.

If he didn’t want to use it, he could just take it off.

“Really useful, but there doesn’t seem to be much use for it,” Ci Xing thought.

Then he was pushed out of the way, holding the headscarf and not knowing what to do.

“Where’s the Father God? Didn’t they say he descended? Where is he?”

It wasn’t until the gray mineral tribe member left that Ci Xing learned from the others that this gray mineral tribe member was the Father God.

So ordinary looking.

The Father God’s image dropped a few notches in Ci Xing’s mind, and he began packing up to leave the Needle Stone Forest.

But to his surprise, the other tribesmen refused to leave.

“How can you all trust the Father God so much, but now not listen?” Ci Xing couldn’t believe it.

“We want to fight alongside the Father God, not run away,” the tribesmen told Ci Xing calmly.

“The Father God is facing a calamity. To cling to life is not the way of the strong.”

At this, Ci Xing only felt his tribesmen were completely unreasonable.

“To retreat in the face of difficulty is the way of the wise!”

Leaving those words behind, Ci Xing angrily left the Needle Stone Forest, thinking his tribesmen had gone mad with stupidity.

“Fools! Utter fools!”

He cursed, but inside, Ci Xing was deeply worried.

He didn’t know what calamity the Father God spoke of, only that if the Father God, who hadn’t appeared in so long, was coming in person, it couldn’t be a small thing.

So, he cherished his own life.

After leaving the Needle Stone Forest, Ci Xing began to travel, finally able to observe all the interesting creatures.

“It really is better out here than in the Needle Stone Forest.”

All kinds of environments, all kinds of creatures-compared to the dull life in the Needle Stone Forest, it was much more interesting.

He began his journey, adventuring in the Abyss, and the relic the Father God gave him proved very useful.

That cost of locking in self-awareness let him escape many dangers.

During this time, he came to appreciate the importance of strength, and also gained the experience of tempering himself in battle.

“Maybe they were right after all.”

So, after traveling for a while, Ci Xing finally decided to return to the Needle Stone Forest, planning to face the calamity with his tribe.

But when he returned, all he found was ruins.

He rushed to the old gathering place and found everything destroyed.

It was like the whole Needle Stone Forest had been turned upside down, with no trace of what once was.

“What had happened?”

It wasn’t until Ci Xing saw the collapsed stone pillars and the cracks in the rock walls that he began to guess.

He dug desperately at the old settlement, digging for a long time, even making a huge hollow, but found no trace of his tribe.

Ci Xing didn’t know how long had passed before, one day, he finally dug up something familiar-the tip of a spiral shell building.

As he kept digging, the ruins of the entire civilization appeared before him.

Collapsed buildings.

Broken mineral veins.

Destroyed carvings.

The bodies of his tribesmen.

……

In that instant, the words his tribesmen once said echoed in Ci Xing’s mind.

“Ci Xing, if you don’t respect the Father God, you’ll pay the price!”