The sage was determined to die.

"Hey," Ji Bai nudged Yan Ming's arm and speculated, "Do you think people drop gold coins when they die?"

Yan Ming looked at him strangely, his eyes conveying "Are you crazy?" and "You should get treatment sooner rather than later."

"I don't understand what you're saying," he compromised.

Ji Bai pointed to the real corpses and said, "After they were killed, these fake corpses became real. Let's consider this our gain. Do you think the people who killed them got nothing?"

Yan Ming's head was throbbing: "That shouldn't be enough to cause a gold coin explosion, right?"

That doesn't make sense.

Ji Bai sighed. He wanted to make a joke about Mario, but the other person wouldn't understand at all.

"...Let's assume this is a game."

Ji Bai calmly spoke, holding up three fingers, and said, "The rules of the game are very simple: divide into three teams, kill each other, and the team with the most survivors will win the Wenxin."

Upon hearing the key words, Yan Ming immediately understood. He nodded, then belatedly realized, "Damn, so many of us were killed..."

Ji Bai interrupted the other party's imagination: "There weren't that many people, but we did lose some initiative."

"Then what do we do?" Yan Ming said. "If we go kill someone too, will we be able to find anyone?"

Unlike the states of Chen and Chu, major powers act in unison, unlike these states formed later in life, where trust between them is more fragile than dried rice stalks.

"What's the big deal?" Ji Bai shook his head. "Just move these real corpses over there to scare people. Anyone with a brain won't dare to act rashly again."

Ji Bai looked at Yan Ming with a deep gaze: "Wenxin isn't like cabbage. Even if a few Wenxin do emerge in the end, are you willing to share them with them?"

Yan Ming swallowed hard and muttered, "Shouldn't these things be done secretly? Why did you blurt out your thoughts..."

Ji Bai suddenly smiled, put his arm around his shoulder, and lowered his voice as if they were discussing some kind of conspiracy.

"Isn't this how you always design things? You use people and then kick them to the curb, why are you making such a fuss? Hmm?"

Yan Ming: "..." That includes you too.

Ji Bai punched him on the back twice, then changed the subject: "But if you really do that, you'll fall into their trap."

"What do you mean?" Yan Ming asked, confused. "It's not the game or anything you mentioned..."

"Hmm," Ji Bai said, "but I prefer hidden routes."

……

"Another bookmark."

Chu Xi wiped the blood off her face, picked up the bookmark, and handed it to Chu Ze.

He said, "They are all scholars from small countries, none from large countries. And there are none of those beggars."

Chu Ze looked at all this thoughtfully, and suddenly said, "Just killing people shouldn't yield a high-grade literary talent."

"Brother, you didn't originally want it to be that tall."

As a normal person, Chu Xi naturally wanted to make a name for himself with his superior literary talent, but after so many years of exposure to his surroundings, he had long since resigned himself to his fate.

"A mid-grade product isn't so bad," he began to comfort himself skillfully. "Something is better than nothing."

Something's not right.

Chu Ze suddenly said, "Shushan wouldn't set up such a boring scheme. There must be something hidden among those fake corpses."

What is it?

Chu Ze closed his eyes, and the past scenes began to replay one after another. He kept looking for subtle differences in them.

After a long while, he opened his eyes.