The sage was determined to die.

Chu Xi looked at him warily, her vigilance unwavering, her back muscles tense. Suddenly, she said, "A person isn't a hostage, is they?"

"What's it called?"

Ji Bai thought for a moment, then said in a very good-natured tone, "Are you sending me to my death?"

Chu Xi frowned, then slowly relaxed, suppressing her temper as she said to him, "You can leave now."

"I don't want to fight with you."

Chu Xi turned his face away, seemingly not wanting the person in front of him to see his expression. He said, "My brother told me to avoid you when I see you. The situation here is still unclear. You don't need to come here alone to go against all of us, do you?"

His eyes flickered with a mixture of light and shadow, and he deliberately suppressed his aggression when facing Ji Bai, simply saying, "My brother said we should keep to ourselves."

Ji Bai hadn't expected the firecracker to go silent so easily. He tried to provoke him: "Why is it always your brother who says everything? Don't you have your own thoughts?"

Upon hearing this, Chu Xi looked at him with a strange expression and suddenly asked, "Isn't it you who makes the decisions regarding Qi?"

Ji Bai knew this was a trap, but he still nodded.

"That settles it then." Chu Xi said naturally, "Of course my brother makes the decisions here, so what's wrong with listening to him?"

"That's different." Ji Bai shook his head. "We're very democratic here; this was a decision made after discussion."

"After discussing it, I listened to my brother, and the outcome was the same anyway."

Chu Xi wiped the blood from his face, his brow twitched, and he suddenly said, "Don't try to sow discord between us brothers."

Ji Bai: "...I think I'll talk to your brother instead."

……

Chu Ze was playing with a lot of bone skewers in his hand.

When he saw Ji Bai, he didn't seem particularly surprised. He simply nodded and said, "You're here."

Ji Bai leaned back with his arms crossed, looking at this overly calm person, and said, "If someone who doesn't know us hears you greeting us like that, they'll think we're very close."

Chu Ze nodded and smiled at him, "Really? We've met so many times, we're not exactly strangers, are we?"

Ji Bai's brow twitched. He wasn't stupid; he could guess most things without the other party pointing them out.

"...Didn't you say you didn't want a superior-grade literary talent?"

Ji Bai narrowed his eyes slightly, a hint of amusement in his voice: "Why the sudden change? Aren't you Chu people always fond of playing the subservient role?"

It's obvious that this provocation is anything but polite.

The person in front of him seemed to have no temper at all, and Chu Ze still smiled at him: "Yes, but isn't that what you're here for?"

Ji Bai pointed to himself: "Me?"

Chu Ze fiddled with the bone skewer in his hand, as if they were not human lives, but just light pieces of paper.

"The rubble is hidden behind the pearl, so it naturally goes unnoticed. I trust you completely."

"You trust me so much to get so many Wenxin?" Ji Bai asked with a cold laugh.

Chu Ze smiled and said, "Yes."

"If I'm not mistaken, you're even willing to make deals with scholars from small countries who have passed the imperial examinations?"

Without any preamble, Chu Ze said directly, "Let's make a deal."

"With you?" Ji Bai said, "What's the point of working with you?"

"There are still some."

Chu Ze's gaze was not dimmed as he looked at him. He said, "You don't really care that I killed someone, do you? As long as you don't care about that, we can still cooperate."

Ji Bai suddenly fell silent.

"Why would you say that?" he asked. "What if I care?"

"You won't."

Chu Ze maintained his gentle smile: "Shouldn't you be more concerned about Shushan?"