The sage was determined to die.

"There are far too many dramas about brothers killing each other. It's just ordinary people harming each other, so there's nothing interesting about it."

After Ji Bai finished speaking, he seemed to hear something and muttered to himself, "What I said really ruined my image."

He looked at the girl, whose expression contained many things he didn't yet understand. She scoffed and said, "You're quite cold-blooded."

Whether someone is cold-blooded or not, there are many things beyond their control, aren't there?

Ji Bai glanced back at the brothers. The noisy and mocking ending was not unexpected, just as he had imagined. The drama of brothers killing each other did not bring an equal reward.

"You lied to them?" he asked, looking at the girl.

"It was their greed that deceived them." Though it was the same face, it revealed an expression she would never show. The girl sneered, "Pain has different levels, doesn't it? Even if they died a hundred times, it wouldn't be enough to move that heart. What could I do?"

After saying these words, she suddenly said, "Actually, I'm also taking the blame for her, aren't I?"

"A scapegoat?" Ji Bai asked.

The girl looked at her hands; her ten fingers were clean and smooth, with nothing on them except for calluses from reading and writing.

She said, "If someone who only knows how to read and write suddenly becomes a murderer who harms countless people, even if she stops doing evil in the future, can she still pick up that carefree pen?"

Ji Bai's Adam's apple bobbed: "Is this a threat?"

The girl shook her head, not looking at his face, and said softly, "If that's what you think, then that's fine too. I just wanted to tell her that I don't owe her anything."

"Even if we're talking about who owes whom," she said, her voice lowering slightly, "it should be her who owes me, and only she who owes me."

Ji Bai thought for a moment, then suddenly spoke up: "You're telling me all this not just to bolster your courage, are you?"

The girl froze for a moment, then quickly returned to her previous posture, and sneered, "What are you trying to be brave about? You're overthinking things."

Ji Bai neither confirmed nor denied it, his gaze unfathomable, and he chuckled lightly, "Is that so?"

……

Meanwhile, the lakebed is crystal clear and clean.

The old tortoise was swimming around, its four claws working with extra force, as if it were searching for something very carefully. Unfortunately, things didn't go as planned, and after a long time it found nothing, all it gained was an increasingly tired body.

The heaviness in his body reminded him that he had less and less time left.

"We still need a trigger..." the old tortoise murmured. "What kind of trigger?"

Before long, he gradually stopped moving. Because he was in the water, time suddenly slowed down for him, as if something had locked him there.

As he was pondering, the water suddenly rippled violently, and a clean, cold hand, like that of a corpse, slowly grasped his head.

The hand had very long and slender fingers, but its strength was astonishing, rendering him instantly immobile. He couldn't even move or turn around.

Even though the person was underwater, their voice was perfectly clear.

"I knew you weren't dead," the man said to him. "We're such good friends, why pretend to be dead in front of a junior?"