“Michelia alba…” Earth-Snake pondered for a moment, then turned to Qi Xia and said, “Qi Xia, it seems you don’t have much knowledge about plants.”

“Yes, although I’ve studied a great deal of knowledge, I still cannot be comprehensive in all areas,” Qi Xia replied. “Do you know this flower?”

“Michelia alba is also written as michelia, pure white in appearance, but it only blooms during one particular season,” Earth-Snake said. “Do you know which season?”

“I don’t.”

Earth-Snake sighed and said, “It doesn’t fit the saying ‘spring warmth brings blooming flowers,’ because it blooms in ‘early summer,’ reaches full bloom in ‘midsummer,’ and when ‘summer’ disappears, this flower also withers and falls.”

After hearing this, Qi Xia frowned slightly: “This flower appears and disappears together with ‘summer’?”

“Yes.” Earth-Snake nodded, then walked to the corner and began rummaging through books.

Half a minute later, he pulled out an illustrated guide to higher plants from among numerous old books. This book appeared to be poorly preserved, seeming ready to fall apart with just a gentle shake.

He carefully opened the pages, then turned to a picture showing pure white flowers, and turned around to hand it to Qi Xia.

The pages before and after this one had mostly fallen off, leaving only this yellowed picture still precariously attached.

“Michelia alba…” Qi Xia murmured softly, then took the book and looked at it.

This flower appeared to be from the Rosaceae family, each bloom pure white and flawless, bearing yellow stamens.

Qi Xia stared at the flowers for a while, then asked softly, “After the michelia alba blooms, wouldn’t it already be autumn?”

“Exactly,” Earth-Snake said. “The blooming of michelia alba often signifies the end of the flowering season—after this flower blooms, no other flowers follow. This flower represents ‘ending,’ and equally represents ‘the end.'”

After hearing this, Qi Xia nodded: “Thanks to you, I’ve learned new knowledge.”

“Perhaps it’s precisely because the plants here are all withered and dead,” Qi Xia sighed, “that this pure white flower could attract my attention even more.”

Earth-Snake nodded after hearing this and said, “Qi Xia, the flower language of ‘michelia alba’ is ‘beauty at the end of the road.'”

When these four words entered Qi Xia’s ears, a distant memory gradually surfaced in his mind.

At that time, Yan Zhichun had said softly to Qi Xia: “Let’s use the michelia alba then.”

“Yan Zhichun… ‘beauty at the end of the road’…” Qi Xia slowly narrowed his eyes. “When everything has vanished without a trace, what could possibly still be beautiful?”

“Hard to say,” Earth-Snake said. “You’ll probably have to ask yourself for that answer.”

Qi Xia paused for a moment, then nodded to Earth-Snake in acknowledgment, turned around and walked outside.

The remaining people in the room looked at each other. Qiao Jiajin and Qin Dingdong then followed Qi Xia out the door, leaving only Chen Junnan behind.

“Old Snake,” Chen Junnan called out.

“What is it?”

“What’s your game?” Chen Junnan asked.

“My game? You want to have a match?”

“Not exactly,” Chen Junnan said. “It’s just that your venue doesn’t seem to have any dangerous equipment—the only thing that could be used for a game is books.”

“The game does indeed use books,” Earth-Snake said. “But I have many other props here as well.”

Earth-Snake walked to the wall and gently patted it. A hidden compartment revealed itself from the wall surface, immediately followed by a rush of fishy, foul odor.

The hidden compartment resembled a large wardrobe, filled with a dazzling array of killing implements hanging inside, stained with both blood and rust, emitting an extremely unpleasant smell.

“My game is called ‘The Reader.’ It doesn’t matter how many ‘Participants’ there are—I’ll give them books to read aloud, then I and the other ‘Participants’ take turns asking each person questions about the book. As long as they can answer correctly, they pass. Of course, getting it wrong doesn’t matter either—they just won’t receive any reward.”

“Is this difficult?” Chen Junnan asked puzzled. “How does one die in this game? How would you use those killing implements?”

“The difficulty of this game has nothing to do with reading,” Earth-Snake said. “The game has one death condition that runs throughout—before I say ‘game over,’ participants cannot show any facial expression throughout. If their expression changes, they will be killed by me.”

“Facial expression…?” Chen Junnan still felt somewhat confused. “When participating in such a life-threatening game where they could die at any moment, would anyone still be laughing and joking around?”

Earth-Snake pulled out a copy of “The Complete Collection of Jokes” that was about to fall apart from the corner, then turned and handed it to Chen Junnan.

Chen Junnan took the book and found it had developed a patina from wear—clearly since its arrival here, it had been read by countless people.

“If you were to read this book, would you maintain a complete lack of expression throughout?” Earth-Snake asked.

Chen Junnan opened the book and looked through it. It was basically filled with small jokes of one or two hundred characters. Unfortunately, these were all stale, worn-out material—aside from cold jokes, there were only some extremely awkward old bits.

“What, do people who come here have such a low threshold for humor?” Chen Junnan asked. “If this young master reads these terrible jokes long enough, I might cry.”

Chen Junnan closed the book and flipped it to the back, discovering that this book was published way back in 2001.

“Stinking brat, this book has my highest kill success rate,” Earth-Snake laughed. “Think about it carefully—when ordinary people find a book boring while reading, they can simply stop reading. But in this life-or-death situation, even knowing this book is extremely boring, they’ll still grit their teeth and read it to the end.”

“That makes sense,” Chen Junnan nodded. “Then how would they show expression? Under such tremendous pressure, shouldn’t they become more and more expressionless as they read?”

“Blame it on people in this world being too cautious,” Earth-Snake said. “This book is called ‘The Complete Collection of Jokes.’ Even though the person reading this book will discover it has no entertainment value, they’re still deathly afraid that the next joke might be extremely funny, causing them to slip up for a moment, lose the game, and forfeit their life. If it were you… how would you prevent this situation from happening?”

Chen Junnan put himself in that role and realized that if he were reading jokes under this kind of survival pressure while ensuring he didn’t show any expression, the solution he would choose would be to ‘think of sad things’ to neutralize his emotions.

Earth-Snake knew that Chen Junnan already had an answer in his mind, so he walked to his side, slowly reached out his hand, and said, “At such a moment, I would gently pat the other person’s shoulder and tell them ‘don’t be nervous.'”

“You’re really something…” Chen Junnan sighed helplessly and handed the book back to Earth-Snake.