The sage was determined to die.

"Is the fire not burning bright enough?"

Ji Bai covered his mouth and nose, his eyes squinting slightly from the smoke, feeling a little unnaturally stinging.

"Yeah?"

Unlike Ji Bai, Chu Ze's eyes widened involuntarily as he stared intently at the smoke, scrutinizing every detail, his serious expression suggesting he wasn't going to overlook even a single speck of ash.

Noticing something, he raised the corners of his lips, giving off a feeling of genuine pleasure.

"Tell me," he said abruptly, looking at Ji Bai, "if a person is engulfed by such a huge fire, will they die?"

Reminded by him, Ji Bai suddenly seemed to realize something, his gaze shifting to the shriveled corpses, and he whispered, "Yes, why can these corpses start such a big fire?"

He paused, then shook his head slightly: "Never mind, this isn't a world that values ​​science anyway."

Chu Ze didn't hear the answer he wanted, but he wasn't annoyed. He just shook his head slightly.

"I wonder if doing this will make that Wenxin appear?" Chu Ze said in a low voice.

Ji Bai clasped his hands behind his head, tilted his head upon hearing this, and said, "So you're not confident?"

Chu Ze gave a wry smile: "How can there be any certainty about something like this?"

"Too."

Ji Bai lifted his eyelids and looked at the towering flames. The orange-red flames spewed out gray smoke, which was choking but had an eerie harmony.

"If that doesn't work, just consider it as witnessing a funeral," Ji Bai said, then couldn't help but add, "Cremation is still quite common in my hometown."

A look of dissent flashed in Chu Ze's eyes, and he rarely spoke up to retort, "The dead should naturally be laid to rest. To be so disrespectfully burned after death is nothing short of turning bones to ashes."

"Brother Ji, what we did was indeed unjust, but there's no need to make excuses for it."

He put on a stern face, looking very serious. "Besides, I have never heard of such an absurd custom in the State of Qi."

Ji Bai touched his nose, sighed, and then lowered his hand without saying anything.

"You don't understand," was all Ji Bai could say.

Fortunately, Chu Ze clearly had no intention of continuing the discussion on this issue with him.

The smoke from the burning flames resembled toxic gases, and the stench served as a warning.

As the smoke grew darker, Ji Bai couldn't help but cover his mouth and nose, his eyes narrowing slightly.

Then, they looked up and saw three plumes of smoke rising from different places, like beacon towers, reflecting each other and gradually converging in the high sky, eventually forming a white shadow like a cloud.

"What is that?"

Ji Bai turned to look at Chu Ze, who had a serious expression on his face, with no hint of a joke.

The white shadows kept shifting, and Ji Bai squinted to look at them, feeling that the complex pattern looked exactly like... a stick figure touching a stone.

An image flashed into his mind at an inopportune moment. Before he could even think of the girl, a woman's voice entered his ears.

Although the girl had hidden herself, her voice still reached his ears.

"This is a drawing of me!" Her tone was a mix of pride and shyness. "How did I end up in this drawing?"

Ji Bai: "..."

It's amazing that she could recognize herself.

The stick figure in the air touched the stone for a while, then seemed to get tired of it, got up, stretched, and pushed open something that looked like a door.

Everyone watched the stick figure's every move without blinking.

The stick figure walked into the door, pulled a heart out of the air, and, seemingly hungry, ate it.

"How come I eat everything?" the girl explained in his ear.

The consequences of eating everything came to pass; soon, the stick figure lay motionless on the ground, as if dead.