# Chapter 860: Competitors
"You're going to tell them the 'truth'?" Jiang Ruoxue asked.
"That's right." I said to her in a very serious tone. "If someone really manages to collect three thousand six hundred 'Daos', everything will start over. So this organization's ultimate goal is to 'protect this place'."
Jiang Ruoxue stared at me for a long time, then laughed. "Is there anything I can help with?"
"Help...?" I thought for a moment, then said, "Actually, just helping me sort out my thoughts is already a big help. I'm not a smart person, I've just read a few more books than others, and sometimes I can't figure things out. You've helped me a lot this time."
"What do you mean 'I'm not a smart person'?" Jiang Ruoxue laughed again. "There aren't that many smart people in this world to begin with. Do you need to emphasize that? I've never heard anyone introduce themselves by saying 'I'm very smart'."
"That's not what I meant..." I shook my head. "Anyway, just listening to me has already given me great encouragement. From now on, I'll try to work in this direction."
In the time that followed, Jiang Ruoxue and I not only became best friends, but also became teammates who worked together, traveling back and forth in this place.
Working with her was much more comfortable than working with Zhang Qiang. Although she had plenty of bad habits, she just wasn't annoying.
She liked calling every pretty girl "wife," and she liked getting handsy with all girls. She would suddenly hug you, and then suddenly ignore you.
She had no plan for anything she did—she acted on whims. Sometimes she wanted to go east, sometimes west, but I felt that was just right.
She lived much more freely than I did.
She told me that people only live a few decades in this world. If you spend all your time being timid and neglecting yourself just to consider others, it's as if you never lived at all.
Although those words were very useful to me, they came too late.
They should have appeared before my worldview and personality had fully formed. I believe I would have lived a more exciting life. But now, if I want to change... it's too late for me.
For almost the next two full years, Jiang Ruoxue and I wandered through the "Land of Endings" as friends.
Although we had set a direction to work toward, this step was much harder than we had imagined.
I told the "truth" to many people, but no one believed me at all.
Trust between strangers is hard to establish in the first place, and it was especially difficult here. Everyone thought you were approaching them with ulterior motives, so before you could even speak, people had already built up their mental defenses.
Under these circumstances, trying to convince someone of an absurd truth with just my silver tongue was nothing short of a fantasy.
I couldn't provide any tangible evidence, nor could I promise them any benefits. I could only weakly and helplessly demand that they do as I said.
But that wasn't reasonable. If someone told me the same thing, I would refuse too.
Fortunately, over those two years, Jiang Ruoxue and I got to know quite a few people and remembered the names of some powerful individuals. Jiang Ruoxue told me that Liu Bei had to visit Zhuge Liang three times before he agreed to help. These people weren't as smart as Zhuge Liang, so maybe we'd need to visit them a few more times.
Besides that, we also had a major "competitor"—a nameless, massive organization active in this city.
Its influence had spread to every corner, and legend had it that its founder was that particularly prominent participant from two years ago.
Since I didn't like participating in large-scale activities, I always took a detour whenever I saw people gathering. Most of the news about them came to me through Jiang Ruoxue.
She told me that this organization was somewhat similar to the one we were planning to build. Although the organization seemed huge, its core members were mysterious. Their supreme leader never showed his face, and outsiders didn't even know his name. He always just delegated tasks to his subordinates.
Now, countless powerful individuals had joined the organization with their teammates from their rooms. They had been breaking through games one after another, seemingly having beaten all the "Zodiacs" here.
I was starting to get curious about that leader. How could he be so capable?
Two years ago, I had doubted this "participant's" abilities. I thought that if he kept going like this, he would eventually run into Aries and lose disastrously.
But now, his organization was growing bigger and bigger, while I remained stuck in place.
As I said from the very beginning, no matter where I go, I can never be the strongest. There's always someone stronger.
If I wanted to accomplish Aries's goal, shouldn't I consider cooperating with him?
But what status did I have now? I was an isolated participant with only Jiang Ruoxue by my side.
Not only were the two of us not strong enough, but what we were trying to do wasn't even presentable. The tone of this organization was completely incompatible with ours.
Then another three years passed, bringing us to about seven years ago.
Jiang Ruoxue and I still couldn't build a powerful organization. Even if we managed to get some temporary companions, they would either leave the organization soon or fall into amnesia.
But I hadn't accomplished nothing. With Jiang Ruoxue by my side, my personality seemed to have grown. I was no longer as cold and numb as before, and sometimes I even liked to joke and chat with people.
But how long would this go on?
It had already been five years. Thankfully, Aries hadn't contacted me yet, so I still had time.
But looking at it from another angle, even after setting a goal, I had achieved nothing in five years. That was really too incompetent.
Time was stuck here, which meant my work goals were also stuck. Even with the same person, I might need to persuade them many times.
And it was on that very day, over seven years ago, that Jiang Ruoxue told me a piece of news—whether good or bad, I couldn't tell.
She said something was spreading like wildfire through the streets. Everyone was saying that the leader of that massive organization seemed to have disappeared.
He hadn't died, hadn't lost his memory, hadn't turned into a native—he had simply "vanished."
But this matter was neither here nor there for the two of us. I didn't care at all. Maybe Jiang Ruoxue still had some connections with them, but they weren't even friends.
A leader of an organization had disappeared. Maybe he was tired, maybe he was fed up, or maybe he had found another path. Where there are people, there are rivers and lakes. Soon, other powerful figures would emerge and absorb this organization.
But what the hell was I supposed to do...?
"Zhichun, what are you thinking about?" Jiang Ruoxue suddenly asked me.
"I..." I fell silent. At this point, I didn't even know what I was doing myself.
It felt like my life had returned to how it was before, without any goal.
I felt like I couldn't become stronger, and I couldn't solve the puzzle Aries had given me.