The sage was determined to die.

"What?"

The short man was completely unaware that Ji Bai was faking his limp. After realizing it, he couldn't help but feel a little scared.

"Then he..." he opened his mouth, then said, "was he deliberately lying in wait for us here?"

"Whether it's true or not doesn't really matter, does it?"

Wang Zhong looked at his chapped palms. He had previously obtained a low-grade literary heart, and the power that was originally scarce and uncontrollable was now becoming abundant because of that lucky fragment.

His rank and the attribute of his power did not change, but he did become much stronger.

"The result is what matters most." Wang Zhong slowly revealed a smile.

The short man standing to the side thought about it carefully and realized that what the other person said made sense. He sighed and suddenly thought, "Thinking about it this way, that kid is quite cunning."

The short man swallowed hard and muttered to himself, "He didn't want anything else, just the IOU we gave him. Could it be a trap?"

Upon hearing this, Wang Zhong suddenly fell silent for a moment, then turned to look at the other person, pondering:

"I don't think it's a scam, but they probably really want money."

……

Ji Bai held the IOU in his hand, and for some reason, his mood improved considerably.

"Hey, this thing is actually just a check."

Ji Bai carefully put it away, not even caring about the dirt on it. After all, who would dislike the money in their hand?

"It's also thanks to my good acting skills; most people don't have such good acting skills."

As Ji Bai walked, he kept thinking, constantly filling in the gaps in his plan in his mind, while simultaneously conducting the next round of target selection. The map and threads that only he could see had undoubtedly expanded considerably.

"However, this shouldn't be called a 'hanging'," Ji Bai said, unusually serious. "It should be called a 'half-hanging'."

……

When the three of them acted together, they always picked up lone individuals, while when Ji Bai acted alone, he always encountered groups.

What surprised Ji Bai, but not so much, was that not everyone he encountered was his target, but they were generally quite cautious.

Someone like him, who walks alone through the mountains of books and appears to be covered in wounds but is not dead, usually falls into one of three categories: a madman, a strongman, or someone who is both mad and strong.

There's no need to target the former; it's a waste of time. As for the latter, it's best to run away as soon as possible.

To Ji Bai's surprise, he thought he looked familiar, but he encountered several people who were complete strangers.

At this moment, the two stared at each other, the other looking dull and not very smart, and it was unclear how he had managed to sneak in.

It seems that he has a completely different personality from Wang Zhong, whom I encountered before.

He looked at Ji Bai, frowned slightly, and asked, "Are you all alone?"

Ji Bai glanced at the three or four people opposite him, and with a single glance, he saw that there was no Wen Xin among them, and immediately lost interest.

He nodded, skillfully using the sob story to dissuade the other party: "I was abandoned by my teammates."

The man looked at Ji Bai, a hint of sympathy in his eyes: "Ah, brother, we really are in the same boat."

Ji Bai looked at the other person, a strange sense of curiosity rising within him.

"Were you three abandoned by your teammates too?"

The man shook his head. At first glance, the three of them were unremarkable, and even their wounds were not particularly noticeable.

He sighed and said, "Our boss has been killed."

"Killed?" Ji Bai asked.

"We were killed by a woman," he said. "We were lucky, too ordinary, she didn't even notice us."