“You’re adding rules…?” Qinglong narrowed his eyes at Qi Xia. “You haven’t even practiced this game yourself, yet you plan to interfere with the rules?”

“Is that not acceptable?” Qi Xia asked in return. “Let’s make this game have even more variables.”

After Qi Xia finished speaking, he glanced at Xuanwu standing behind Qinglong and noticed she seemed to be spacing out. He cleared his throat and asked again:

“Referee, is that acceptable?”

Hearing this, Qinglong’s face showed a trace of displeasure. “I designed this game, so I am the referee.”

“No, you are clearly a participant in this game,” Qi Xia said. “Where is the logic in a participant being their own referee?”

Hearing Qi Xia’s words, Xuanwu felt they made perfect sense, so she nodded and said, “Being your own referee—that’s against the rules.”

Qinglong paused for a moment, then nodded. “Since the referee has spoken, then go ahead and add your rule.”

After hearing this, Qi Xia said, “We should still use all the previous ‘characters’ to disassemble and recombine them into new ‘characters’, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then I have an idea now,” Qi Xia said. “We each designate one ‘character’ that cannot be used and eliminate it from this game. In the upcoming character assembly phase, the eliminated ‘character’ cannot be used. But to increase the variables, we won’t tell each other which ‘character’ we’ve eliminated.”

Everyone present fell silent after hearing this, looking at him. Even Qinglong and Xuanwu didn’t understand what Qi Xia meant.

“You don’t even know what ‘requirement’ is contained in that box yet, and you want to add this rule directly?”

“Yes.” Qi Xia nodded. “So what do you think?”

Qinglong’s eyes flickered rapidly as he contemplated the upcoming possibilities. He had a feeling this seemed like some kind of trap, but if he refused at this point, morale would take a hit going forward.

“It doesn’t matter,” Qinglong said. “Go ahead and designate. Which ‘character’ do you want to eliminate next?”

“I’ll take Xuanwu to choose,” Qi Xia said. “Xuanwu appears not to recognize characters, but she’ll at least know that it is a ‘character’. We’ll each go to that pile of ‘characters’ to make our selection, then hand both ‘characters’ to Xuanwu.”

Qinglong considered Qi Xia’s proposal. Since Xuanwu indeed couldn’t recognize characters, even she wouldn’t know which ‘characters’ both sides had eliminated. Overall, this requirement seemed reasonable.

“Fine.” Qinglong nodded. “You go first.”

After hearing this, Qi Xia said nothing more and turned to walk toward the nearby pile of ‘characters’. Xuanwu followed closely behind him, standing beside Qi Xia like a statue.

Then Qi Xia bent down with his back to Qinglong and rummaged around a few times, producing rustling sounds.

Under everyone’s unclear gaze, Qi Xia selected a ‘character’, then held it up in his hand, raising it before Xuanwu’s face.

Xuanwu paused for a few seconds, then extended her hand from behind her black hair and took the ‘character’ from Qi Xia’s hand.

Qinglong watched all of this and couldn’t help but feel that Qi Xia’s idea seemed to have some loopholes.

For this “elimination,” Qi Xia chose first and he would choose second. Theoretically, when he went to examine the pile of ‘characters’, he would know which ‘character’ Qi Xia had taken.

But even so, Qinglong still didn’t understand why Qi Xia would add such a useless rule.

After Qi Xia finished selecting, Qinglong also stepped forward and lowered his head to quickly count these ‘characters’. Very soon, he discovered a strange problem.

The number of ‘characters’ didn’t seem to have decreased.

Aside from the one “Bing” that had been taken away, there were still thirteen ‘characters’ here.

Qinglong immediately felt something was wrong, then bent down and prepared to reach out and examine them.

At this moment, Qi Xia turned his head and gave Chen Junnan and Qiao Jiajin a highly suggestive look.

The two immediately understood what Qi Xia meant.

“Hooooo~~~~~~~”

What followed was the sound of wild geese flying across the sky.

“Junnan boy! What’s wrong with you?! Is your body hurting too much? You must hold on!”

“Your master might have gone blind, Old Qiao, quickly help me look!” Chen Junnan shouted. “Some old bastard is afraid he’ll lose too badly, so now he’s trying to find clues in a pile of ‘characters’. Am I blind?!”

“Junnan boy! You’re not blind!” Qiao Jiajin also yelled. “He really is looking at the ‘characters’!”

“Oh my goodness!” Chen Junnan slapped his forehead. “Your master really hoped I was seeing things wrong. The great and famous Qinglong is actually playing dirty with us? Not only does he blow biased whistles and cheat, now he’s even playing dirty for real! Old Qi, you’re being foolish!”

“Foolish!”

Hearing Qiao Jiajin and Chen Junnan’s comments, Qinglong couldn’t help but furrow his brow, and his mental state became disturbed at this moment.

Why hadn’t the ‘characters’ decreased in number?

The numerous ‘characters’ scattered into various radicals and tangled with messy iron chains piled together, making Qinglong feel even more confused.

If the ‘characters’ truly hadn’t decreased, it meant that before Qi Xia selected a ‘character’ to hand to Xuanwu, there had actually been a full fourteen ‘characters’ here.

When exactly did an extra one appear?

He had generally observed the entire process of this game from the high platform, but after all, he had “Spirit Hearing,” not “Spirit Vision.” Could he have missed some important information?

He had personally witnessed that even Zhang Lijuan hadn’t successfully created a ‘character’ on site. The ‘character’ in front of her was one Qi Xia had exchanged with her, so what exactly was this…

“Old Qi! Rest in peace as you go!!” Chen Junnan shouted with heart-wrenching emotion. “We’ll pass down your dashing heroic bearing from generation to generation!”

“You must hold on, Junnan boy!” Qiao Jiajin added. “You still need to tell them about Qinglong’s dashing heroic bearing!”

“Can your master even tell them?!” Chen Junnan retorted. “He’s a god, after all.”

“Of course you can! A dashing god who bullies us!”

The noisy sounds continued to ring out in the distance, and Qinglong also felt his mental state becoming increasingly turbulent.

Although these two were being unreasonable troublemakers, what they said wasn’t entirely wrong.

What exactly was he afraid of…?

Afraid of a ‘character’ that Qi Xia had somehow conjured up from somewhere?

Afraid that Qi Xia would defeat him?

Or was he afraid that Xuanwu could actually kill him?

Even if he lost this game and Xuanwu went berserk on the spot, it would be impossible for him to be suppressed by Xuanwu’s martial force.

“Ridiculous,” Qinglong said. “Without realizing it… I actually became serious.”

He casually picked up an “Xiang” from the ground and turned to hand it to Xuanwu.

“This one.”

Xuanwu paused for a moment, then reached out to take the ‘character’.

At this moment, Qi Xia also raised the corners of his mouth. All the “groundwork” had been completed. Next, it would depend on the “rules.”

He and Qinglong took their positions in front of the display screen, and Xuanwu reached into the wooden box and rummaged around for a few moments before finally pulling out a slip of paper.

This slip of paper was the rule needed for the first round of character creation that would follow.

Xuanwu held the slip of paper and looked at it with confusion for a long time, then handed it over with a helpless expression, passing it to Qinglong.

Qi Xia took a step forward and leaned in to look. On that slip of paper, it clearly read:

“The one with the most strokes wins.”