The sage was determined to die.

Chu Ze looked at his hands.

Despite having just acquired Wenxin, his expression showed no joy whatsoever, as if it were not a treasure everyone was vying for, but rather a stone that could be found anywhere by the roadside.

The fragment that was taken slowly dimmed, and a faint pain emanated from it.

He closed his eyes, and the pain from his fingertips gradually weakened until it disappeared completely.

"Brother," Chu Xi, who hadn't dared to take a deep breath, spoke up only after seeing that her brother was alright, her tone urgent, "How are you? Are you alright?"

Chu Ze shook his head slightly, and judging from his expression alone, there was absolutely no trace of disappointment.

However, as the younger brother, he keenly sensed something was amiss.

Without thinking too much, he asked, "What's wrong, bro? Isn't this what you wanted?"

Chu Ze paused for a moment, his dark eyes darted around, and a self-deprecating smile appeared on his lips.

"Perhaps." He changed the subject, but it was unclear who he was asking: "Do you think there really are people in the world who are so selfless?"

Chu Xi didn't understand the sentence at first.

After saying this to himself, Chu Ze reached out and crushed the fragment in his hand into dust.

The seemingly solid crystal had now completely turned into a withered leaf. He didn't even have to use any force to crush it into tiny fragments, like a handful of fine soil, which then vanished in the wind.

While Chu Xi was still puzzled, his brother did not hide anything and said to him directly, "Although this Wenxin does belong to our Chu Kingdom, the process of obtaining it was incredibly easy."

"I think," he looked at his palm, now completely clean, "it must be thanks to this thing?"

Chu Xi, as always, hadn't quite grasped the situation and blurted out instinctively, "Then wouldn't he have helped us?"

The next second, a look of doubt crossed his face, and the inherent skepticism of a royal descendant surfaced: "What is this person up to? Surely it's not out of kindness?"

Kindness?

Even though Chu Ze liked to argue with his younger brother in other ways, he didn't argue with this one.

"Not really." His gaze was deep and unfathomable. "Is it a trap? What kind of trap?"

……

"Sigh," Ji Bai put away the paper in his hand, and, following local custom, stuffed it into his pocket. "These days, doing good deeds is never understood."

His dramatic style of starting with zero frames and performing without any script was something that the person next to him, while not entirely accustomed to, was somewhat used to.

Yan Ming was even able to cooperate to some extent with this.

"What's wrong with you now?"

"Me?" Ji Bai looked melancholy and said, "Of course I'm thinking about how I can do more good deeds."

Oh dear, he's gone crazy again.

Yan Ming silently shifted his gaze away; his cooperation had its limits.

Seeing that no one was paying attention to him, Ji Bai wasn't annoyed. With a blade of grass he'd somehow gotten his hands on dangling from his mouth, he asked, "Do you think our Second Prince will change his mind halfway through?"

"What do you mean?"

When the other party mentioned the Second Prince, Yan Ming naturally couldn't pretend to be ignorant, so he had no choice but to ask, "You miss him?"

Just as Ji Bai was about to utter the word "get lost," he replaced it with a smile. He even squinted his eyes and affirmed, "Well, I guess so."

The next second, Yan Ming subtly increased the distance between himself and Ji Bai.

I always feel there's some danger in being with this person.