“No.” Pan Xiaoxin stopped and held up his basket to show her. “This is all I have.”

“You think I’d believe that?” Fu Miaoxue scoffed. “You’re one of Bai Youwei’s people — clever through and through!”

Pan Xiaoxin gave a helpless, world-weary sigh, then glanced at Fu Miaoxue’s basket. “Miss, did you not pick a single walnut?”

Mentioning this made Fu Miaoxue instantly furious. She rolled her eyes dramatically. “They were stolen!”

Not just stolen — someone had pelted her with rocks on the head. If she hadn’t become a puppet, she’d have a cracked skull and be dead by now!

Fu Miaoxue irritably brushed at the black veil on her head, and clumps of dirt crumbled away.

Pan Xiaoxin picked one walnut from his own basket and placed it in hers. “Miss, you shouldn’t keep wandering around. There are still several hours until the game ends. Pick a few more, and maybe you can win.”

He sighed again, picked up his basket, and walked off.

Fu Miaoxue was taken aback. She picked up the walnut in bewilderment, then stared at Pan Xiaoxin’s retreating figure, and was momentarily struck.

She thought to herself: This little brat is a lot more adorable than Bai Youwei.

……

Pan Xiaoxin made his way to a patch of undergrowth. Looking left and right and confirming no one was nearby, he bent low and slipped into the short shrubs.

He carefully parted a layer of dead leaves, then stuffed the three freshly picked walnuts into the pile beneath.

Under the leaf pile was the stash of walnuts he had accumulated over a long time.

He knew he was small and would easily become a target, so ever since entering the game he had been deliberately appearing weak.

Everyone else filled their baskets to the brim, but he never did — he only kept two or three in his, so that even if someone saw, they’d have no interest in robbing him.

Then he raced against the clock to stash his walnuts away, afraid of being discovered.

This method was highly effective, because most people were drawn to the players with “abundant” baskets and completely overlooked him.

However…

Each time he got two or three walnuts, he had to stash them. This made his walnut-gathering efficiency very slow. After a day and a half of nonstop searching — no eating, no drinking — he had only managed to accumulate ninety-eight.

Not even a hundred…

Pan Xiaoxin looked at his walnuts and let out a quiet, mournful sigh.

It seemed he really was going to become a commoner.

Though being a commoner might be safer, still — who didn’t want to win?

“Haha! I knew you were stashing walnuts!”

A clear, bright female voice rang out. Pan Xiaoxin was startled and quickly turned around, only to find Fu Miaoxue standing right behind him in the undergrowth!

Pan Xiaoxin’s face went completely pale with fright!

Fu Miaoxue took one look at him and let out a disdainful snort. “What? You think I’m going to steal your walnuts? Hmph, who would want them! With this few walnuts, even if you handed them to me for free, it wouldn’t clear the stage!”

Pan Xiaoxin, hearing this, let the terror slowly drain from his face, replaced by a dull, dim look.

He said despondently, “It’s not completely hopeless… The total number of walnuts here is 1,500. If the top 5 people are selected, that averages 300 each. But if players outside the top 5 have been hoarding walnuts, or… or if whoever is in first place has seized more than half the total — then my amount, even if it doesn’t meet the threshold, might still squeeze into the top five.”

A subtle shift moved through Fu Miaoxue’s heart as she murmured the repetition of his words: “Seize more than half the total walnuts…”

Pan Xiaoxin looked at her with suspicion.

Fu Miaoxue didn’t know what idea had struck her, but a wicked little grin curled her lips. She reached out and ruffled Pan Xiaoxin’s hair. “Don’t worry. I’ll get more than half the walnuts. That way, you’ll definitely squeeze into the top five! Kid, quick, thank your big sister~”

Pan Xiaoxin was baffled. “…You… what are you planning to do?”

—