Chapter 1183: The Winner
“Since you’ve made your decision, esteemed leaders, please wait a moment,” Ground Rat said. “I need to confirm whether this will pose a threat to my own life.”
“Your life?” Qin Dingdong frowned and crossed her arms. “Brother Rat, do you think older sister here has that kind of time?”
“I don’t have a choice,” Ground Rat replied. “Do you know what stage we’re in right now?”
Chu Tianqiu turned to look at him as well.
“It’s the ‘betting’ stage.”
Ground Rat grinned, raising both hands—one with five fingers spread, the other with four.
“The Vermilion Bird is choosing a gambling table that suits him to place his bet. The table he picks becomes his casino. The respected leaders present here have a one-in-nine chance of dying…” Ground Rat bared his yellowed, rat-like teeth. “Such a dangerous gamble, and we can do nothing but wait. Exciting, isn’t it?”
“So you’ve done nothing either?” Chu Tianqiu asked. “It seems you knew the plan earlier than we did.”
“Shamefully, I should indeed be proud of this.”
Ground Rat chuckled and retracted one of the four fingers.
“Originally, each person had a one-in-eight chance of dying—each door carrying a 12.5% mortality rate,” Ground Rat continued. “Through my efforts alone… I reduced everyone’s death probability to one-in-nine, which is 11.1%. Do you have any idea how great a merit it is to spread that 1% reduction across so many people?”
Chu Tianqiu nodded. “You’re the ninth person we didn’t account for, and you opened a door on your own. That kind of reckless behavior doesn’t seem like you.”
“Yeah…” Wei Yang chimed in. “Why are you so eager all of a sudden, you dead rat? Back when I was in trouble, you snitched on me fast enough, didn’t you?”
“Oh, I really do need to explain that.” Ground Rat lowered his head, avoiding Wei Yang’s eyes. “If I don’t make it clear, you might think I’m not a ‘weathervane’ after all.”
“You—!”
“Though the saying goes, ‘A weathervane sways with the wind,’ we still have to know which way the wind blows,” Ground Rat said. “Your strength is mediocre, and you managed to provoke the higher-ups. Being betrayed by me was only natural. But the other sheep is different—I still haven’t found any reason to betray him.”
“So you ‘single-handedly reduced the death probability of everyone involved in the plan by 1%’?” Chu Tianqiu said with a smile.
“Exactly.” Ground Rat tapped his head. “Saving a single ‘door’ alone really isn’t my style. This was the only strategy I could come up with. Even if you hadn’t initiated a deal with me, I would have found a way to make the ‘participants’ walk through my ‘door.’”
“Interesting.” Chu Tianqiu nodded. “That’s a line of thought I hadn’t considered.”
“So the more people involved in this plan, the greater my contribution,” Ground Rat said. “If you happen to run into Brother Yang, please put in a good word for me.”
“I’ll try.” Chu Tianqiu turned to look into the distance after speaking. “So… is the ‘betting’ over?”
…
“Something feels off…” Sky Dog frowned, whispering to Sky Snake beside him.
Sky Snake and Sky Dog had just finished their work and returned to the room. Azure Dragon was already seated there.
“What?” Sky Snake caught Sky Dog’s look and immediately widened his eyes. “What the hell does ‘boarding’ mean…?”
“I… I’m not sure if I understand it correctly, but that organization called ‘Jidao’ seems to…” Sky Dog looked up and met Azure Dragon’s gaze.
Azure Dragon appeared not to have heard the commotion below, and he looked at Sky Dog with slight confusion. “What about ‘Jidao’?”
“I…”
Sky Dog had originally intended to let Azure Dragon decide the matter, but to his surprise, Azure Dragon couldn’t hear anything. Something seemed to have happened to him that temporarily disabled his “Spiritual Hearing.”
“Speak.”
“Ah… well… ‘Jidao’ seems to want to ‘board’ something,” Sky Dog replied. “But I’m not sure what this ‘vehicle’ really is…”
“’Board’…?” Azure Dragon pondered for a moment, then said, “If others said that, I’d need to go check personally. But ‘Jidao’ is an exception.”
With that, he closed his eyes and activated an extremely refined “Heart Capture.” He still had a sliver of consciousness left inside Lin Qin’s brain. As long as he could extract Lin Qin’s thoughts, he would know the entire movement of “Jidao” directly.
“First you destroy the great bell, and now you want to ‘board’… White Sheep, you never expected I’d keep a trump card. Even if you knew about this needle, you couldn’t remove it.”
He probed Lin Qin’s current mind and quickly discovered an unusual problem.
Lin Qin’s mind was empty—only wandering through mundane thoughts.
When to eat, when to drink some water.
“What kind of thoughts are these…” Azure Dragon opened his eyes slightly and looked at Sky Dog. “Are there many people saying ‘board’?”
“No,” Sky Dog replied. “Just one or two.”
“Probably nothing serious,” Azure Dragon said. “No matter how hard they try to hide it, a person’s thoughts cannot be concealed.”
Upon hearing this answer, Sky Dog silently lowered his head.
Normally, Azure Dragon would have gone down to investigate immediately. But now his eyes were bloodshot, and he sat motionless around the round table. If he used any more “Divine Arts,” he might suffer from belief overload.
“Good… that’s good then…” Sky Dog nodded, avoiding Sky Snake’s eyes.
But in that brief moment, Sky Snake seemed to have read something unusual.
…
“Tch, we can’t go through the door now?” Zhou Mo stared at the portal in front of her, looking impatiently at Ground Pig.
“Not yet. I have an uneasy premonition.” Ground Pig gazed at the empty distance, his hands beginning to move. “Perhaps our luck is about to run out here.”
“Tch, don’t tell me… we won?” Zhou Mo chuckled, pulling a flare from her waist.
“Miss Hot-Tempered, let’s make a pact,” Ground Pig said.
“What?”
“If you survive, tell Qi Xia to carry my belief and live on.”
“Tch, that line is way too chuunibyou. I can’t say it,” Zhou Mo replied. “If we really hit the jackpot, you survive and tell him yourself.”
As her words fell, a feather of crimson red drifted down from the sky.
Everyone in “Jidao” stared at that feather as it fluttered slowly. The moment it touched the ground, a figure draped in a feather cloak already floated before them.
Zhou Mo raised a finger and pressed it lightly against her ear, speaking to the other teams of “Jidao”:
“Everyone, you’re safe.”