Chapter 962: The Ninth Person
"Ugh..." Earth Tiger covered his face, stammering and unable to speak.
The Earth Chicken before them, with her bright plumage, looked furious—no one dared to provoke her.
"Heh..." Black Sheep sneered from the side, "Liable Tiger, where's that temper of yours? That fierceness you showed us? 'A real man takes responsibility,' huh?"
"What the hell do you know, you dead Black Sheep?" Earth Tiger muttered. "No wonder you've never had a partner... serves you right..."
Black Sheep froze, then stood up without a word and walked toward the short knife on the ground. Lying Flat Dog hurried over to stop him.
"Hey hey hey... forget it, let it go..." Lying Flat Dog grabbed Black Sheep tightly, but found him unusually hard to hold back this time.
"I'm going to kill him... I'm definitely going to kill him..."
Seeing this, Office Drone Rat and Chuunibyou Pig could only join in to help—it seemed Earth Tiger's words had hit a particularly raw nerve.
"Haven't you had enough?" Earth Chicken put her hands on her hips, smiling while the veins bulged on her forehead. "Have I been giving you all too much leeway...? How many days has it been? Aren't you afraid of exposure?"
"Don't be mad first..." Earth Tiger said with a placating smile. "Sister Quail, actually we—"
"Who the hell is a Quail?!" Earth Chicken shouted.
"No, no, Sister Earth Chicken, just hear us out first." Earth Tiger quickly stepped forward, guiding Earth Chicken to sit down beside him. "We just did an experiment, and we found that our chances of exposure are actually very small..."
Earth Chicken angrily pushed away Earth Tiger's hand. "I don't want to sit! Don't push your luck. You all do nothing but fight and argue here every night, and you call that a small chance of exposure?"
"It's true!" Earth Tiger briefly recounted the "experiment" he had just conducted.
"Fine... fine..." Earth Chicken nodded. "Cyan Dragon can't hear, right? His 'Spirit Hearing' doesn't work, right?"
"That's right!" Earth Tiger looked somewhat pleased.
"Then how did I hear it?" Earth Chicken said with a fake smile. "Do you believe that nearly a dozen rooms along this corridor all heard that 'Cyan Dragon, I'll screw your grandpa'?"
"Uh..."
"Cyan Dragon didn't hear it. Does that stop you from dying?" Earth Chicken said. "Any random person could walk up to Cyan Dragon and say a couple of words, and your countdown to death would already begin."
"Th... that seems to be the case." Earth Tiger scratched his head.
"And what makes me most angry..." Earth Chicken sighed again, "I had a friend visiting me today. I was originally planning to say a few good things about you all in front of her... But no, you just had to do nothing but embarrass me. How am I supposed to introduce you to her like this?"
"Friend...?" Earth Tiger was stunned. He turned to look at Black Sheep and Earth Rat, his two "advisors," only to find them equally bewildered.
"Boss Chicken..." Earth Rat stepped forward with a fawning smile, "You want to introduce us to your friend? What kind of friend is it?"
"You still have the nerve to ask..." Earth Chicken frowned. "A friend on 'the same path,' of course. And what happens? She finds out her future teammates are not only cursing out Cyan Dragon next door but also fighting and arguing—a textbook death-seeking squad."
"Pfft!" Earth Rat stepped forward a few more paces after hearing this. "Boss Chicken, that's not fair to say! The very fact that we argue so fiercely shows how vibrant this team is! We're all full of energy, just looking for a place to flex our muscles!"
Earth Chicken thought for a moment, then slowly stood up and looked at the people in the room. "Are you sure Cyan Dragon really can't hear?"
"I'm not dead yet, so I guess not," Earth Tiger replied.
Earth Chicken fell silent again, then turned toward the door and said, "If that's the case, then come on in... let's talk."
A soft sound came from outside the door, and then a figure slowly walked in.
Everyone looked over and saw a female Earth Bull. She was slim, not wearing a suit, but lazily dressed in a shirt with several buttons undone at the bottom, revealing abs that put every man in the room to shame.
Earth Rabbit and Earth Tiger instinctively tightened their own suits, covering their bellies.
Looking around the room, only Lying Flat Dog, shirtless in his suit jacket, had comparable abs.
"Everyone, pleased to meet you," Earth Bull said.
Everyone nodded to her symbolically.
"Sister Quail, who is she...?" Earth Tiger asked.
"Big White Tiger... if you call me 'Quail' one more time, I swear I'll slap you three thousand times."
"Ah! Wrong, wrong! Sister Earth Chicken, who is she...?"
"She's the only person I've been able to trust in all these years," Earth Chicken said. "You don't need to ask about the specifics. Just remember that she's more trustworthy than any of you."
"Wha—"
Earth Bull took a deep breath, then turned to look at Earth Chicken. "Can these people really be trusted?"
"Don't worry." Earth Chicken patted her on the shoulder. "This Big White Tiger and that Black Sheep are Brother Yang's students, and the others also have some connection to Brother Yang."
"'Brother Yang'?" Earth Bull was taken aback.
"Brother Yang is... 'him,'" Earth Chicken said.
"Alright, if that's the case..." Earth Bull nodded, turned back to close the door, and addressed everyone. "Everyone, I'm not entirely sure how this team of yours was assembled, but we should all have roughly the same goal—to carry out Qi... Brother Yang's plan."
"Yeah!" Everyone nodded in agreement.
"And to be safe, he split this plan into two phases, spanning a long period of time, and told me and Earth Chicken separately," Earth Bull continued. "When he was still a 'participant,' he told me part of the plan. After he became a 'Zodiac,' he told the other part to Earth Chicken. Later, he probably used some tricks to make sure Earth Chicken and I met on the 'train.' Then the two of us pieced together the complete plan, and waited until today to tell all of you."
Everyone was stunned for a moment, and the room fell into a terrifying silence.
As ridiculous as it sounded, only Qi Xia or White Sheep could have pulled off something like this.
Before Earth Chicken and Earth Bull met, not even a "Celestial Serpent" could read the full contents of the plan.
"But I have to warn you beforehand: once I tell you this plan, there's no turning back," Earth Bull said. "If we run into a 'Celestial Serpent' and he gets a look at us, everyone's situation will be in danger. So anyone who isn't ready should leave now, and don't drag the rest of us down."
Upon hearing this, everyone could only look at Office Drone Rat. After all, he had always claimed to be a "fence-sitter," but no one expected him to be sitting more steadily than anyone else.
"Alright... then I'll take it that all of you are willing to listen to this plan and work toward it," Earth Bull said.