# Chapter 129: The Witness
"Sacrificial Lamb?" Qi Xia looked at Yun Yao with a puzzled expression.
Wasn't it "Disaster Invitation"?
Wait...
Qi Xia lowered his head silently.
The first person to achieve "Echo" wasn't Han Yimo, but that "tenth person" with the strange smile on his face!
He was the one who "Echoed" with "Sacrificial Lamb."
But what did "Sacrificial Lamb" mean?
"The second one was 'Disaster Invitation'—the one written on the screen." Yun Yao continued to explain. "I've rarely seen someone trigger two 'Echoes' on the very first day. Even among 'Echoers,' most people choose to activate their abilities in the later days."
"Then it seemed like... 'Frame-up'?" Yun Yao recalled. "That 'Echo' only appeared for a very short time. I might have misseen it."
Qi Xia listened and nodded with a heavy expression. That was Xiao Xiao's doing.
"Next came 'Stimulation,' and then..."
"Wait!" Qi Xia quickly stopped Yun Yao.
Stimulation?
Based on the sequence, Qi Xia knew that the person who achieved this "Echo" was Officer Li.
But what did "Stimulation" mean? He thought for a long time but couldn't connect "Stimulation" to conjuring objects out of thin air.
"Go on. What came after that?" Qi Xia asked.
"The later 'Echo' was more interesting... I vaguely remember it was the first half of a four-character idiom." Yun Yao looked up, thinking hard. "What was it...?"
"Ah! I remember now!" Yun Yao said with a smile. "It was 'Reach into the Bag'!"
"'Reach into the Bag'...?"
"That's right." Yun Yao nodded. "It's from the idiom 'reach into the bag and take something out.'"
Qi Xia silently repeated these two words a few times, and a faint sense of unease began to rise in his heart.
So this was Officer Li's "Echo."
But why wasn't it "Creation"?
Could it be that Officer Li's ability wasn't creating objects out of thin air, but rather "taking out existing objects"?
That was indeed abstract.
In other words, Officer Li could only "take out" things, not "conjure" them.
When he pulled out the metal lighter from the "Land of the End," the lighter in the real world would disappear.
This was what they called "reaching into the bag."
So no matter what, he couldn't have produced three thousand six hundred "Dao" before his death... unless he really had that many.
"I'll have to find a chance to tell him this information..." Qi Xia muttered to himself. "Otherwise, that man will keep trying to kill himself."
Speaking of which... why was there a "Stimulation" between Officer Li and Xiao Xiao?
Who used that ability?
Qi Xia felt quite puzzled. Since he had just arrived at the "Land of the End," he was very attentive to the timing of each bell ring.
He remembered that Xiao Xiao's bell was immediately followed by Officer Li's.
"No..."
Qi Xia frowned cautiously.
After Xiao Xiao had killed both Qiao Jiajing and Tiantian, Qi Xia had fainted for a short while due to extreme headaches.
If there really was an "Echoer" who appeared during that time, it could only have been in that short window.
But who was it?
Qi Xia thought for a moment, then shook his head.
He seemed to have fallen into a misconception.
Who said that an "Echoer" had to be someone he knew?
There were countless people in this city playing their own games. Anyone could hear the "Echo."
"The last one was someone I knew," Yun Yao said, touching her cheek. "It was a person from 'Jidao.' Their 'Echo' was called 'Cause and Effect.'"
"Cause and Effect..." Qi Xia nodded silently. This was the "logical relationship" that Jiang Ruoxue kept talking about.
Looking at her ability, it seemed she could first determine the "result" of something, then create a "cause" that conformed to logical relationships.
When she changed the password on the iron box, she had said something similar.
The letter inside the iron box was the password to open the door. The letter said "Long live Jidao," so "Long live Jidao" was the password.
In other words, no matter what the original password was, as long as Jiang Ruoxue activated her ability, whatever was written in the box would unconditionally become the password.
These abilities sounded more bizarre than the last.
But fortunately, Jiang Ruoxue seemed to have a weakness: if she couldn't figure out the logical relationship between two things, then "Cause and Effect" couldn't be established.
The most obvious example was when she wanted to save Qi Xia but admitted she couldn't.
Because people die from severe injuries, she couldn't forcibly change that logic.
"I've never encountered such a dense concentration of 'Echoes' before." Yun Yao smiled. "It made me think for a moment that 'Heaven's Gate' and 'Jidao' had started an all-out war ahead of schedule."
"Have your two organizations ever gone to war before?" Qi Xia asked.
"Probably not." Yun Yao thought for a moment. "I'm not sure, because I've also lost my memory before. After all, it's impossible for everyone to obtain an 'Echo' in every single cycle. So besides Chu Tianqiu, all the members of 'Heaven's Gate' have lost their memory to varying degrees. For example, Zhang Shan... last time he died suddenly on the second night. He didn't even have a chance to obtain an 'Echo.' But that's fine. As long as one person remembers what happened before, 'Heaven's Gate' won't fall."
Even though Yun Yao was smiling, Qi Xia could hear a trace of sadness in her words.
Come to think of it, "Heaven's Gate" was probably the saddest place in all of the "Land of the End."
Because most of the people there retained their memories. They knew clearly that they could never escape.
Qi Xia couldn't imagine how much inner struggle they had gone through before they were willing to stand together and face death generously.
But the ordinary people without "Echoes" were different. Every experience was fresh to them. They always believed they had just arrived, so they naively thought there must be a way to escape.
Perhaps that was why "Heaven's Gate" was located in a school—because they needed to pass down memories "from generation to generation."
"What is Chu Tianqiu's 'Echo'?" Qi Xia asked again.
"I don't know," Yun Yao replied.
Qi Xia thought he had misheard. "What did you say?"
"I said I don't know." Yun Yao repeated.
"You don't know...?" Qi Xia felt this was a very strange answer.
"Not only do I not know, even Chu Tianqiu himself doesn't know." Yun Yao smiled. "The trigger for his 'Echo' is very unique. Unfortunately, every time he 'Echoes,' he inevitably dies. So even he doesn't know what his ability is."
"Oh?" Qi Xia suddenly thought of something. "Is the trigger for Chu Tianqiu's 'Echo' also near death?"
"Of course it's not that simple." Yun Yao gave a wry smile. "Qi Xia, the trigger for Chu Tianqiu's 'Echo' is 'witnessing the end.'"