“See!” Qiao Jiajin said with a smile. “I told you! This character only has one pronunciation—it’s pronounced ‘bīn.'”

Qi Xia didn’t know how to explain this situation and could only silently nod.

No matter what, the pronunciation of “梹” was relatively easy to guess. If they encountered other obscure characters next, that would truly be a gamble.

Although Earth-Dragon mentioned in the “rules” that “writing homophones” was to prevent both teams from using obscure characters, after pondering for a long time, Qi Xia felt that forming twenty-eight characters without using obscure ones was somewhat fantastical.

Qi Xia lowered his head and looked at the “兵” in his hand again. Logically speaking, now wasn’t the best time to form “characters,” since they had too few “characters” on hand. But helplessly, the opponent had already launched an attack, so they could only take it one step at a time.

He picked up “兵,” or more precisely, a “丘” and an “八.” This “八” character was welded together as a whole and couldn’t be separated.

Qi Xia first placed “丘” up and gained one point, then separately placed “八.” Unfortunately, the “八” character was a complete unit and couldn’t be further formed into “乒” and “乓,” otherwise they would have gained two more points.

With this, Qi Xia’s team’s total score was seven points: “兵,” “木,” “目,” “相,” “梹,” “丘,” “八”—still twenty-one “characters” short of the twenty-eight points.

In that case… could the radicals in hand form other “characters”…?

Qi Xia experimented, placing several possibilities on the “Phoenix Holding Book Platform,” but quickly discovered that not every combination could be received as text by the screen.

After trying several possibilities, a strange “character” once again appeared before their eyes. The screen clearly displayed:

“Character prototype ‘朳’ received. Please write a homophone.”

“This…” Qiao Jiajin was stunned again. “Is this character pronounced ‘pā’ or ‘bā’?”

After hearing this, Qi Xia felt that Qiao Jiajin had truly raised a question worth considering.

Although the character “八” was pronounced “bā,” in many commonly used characters, once “八” was combined with a radical, it would change pronunciation, like “趴着” (lying prone) and “扒手” (pickpocket).

Besides that, Qi Xia couldn’t think of any other common characters containing “八.” In his current memory, there were two characters each whether pronounced “pā” or “bā.”

“Still have to take a gamble…” Qi Xia said.

He reached out his hand and, after thinking for a few seconds, wrote a homophone on the screen—”巴.”

—”Creation Successful.”

A total of eight points.

“Phew…” Qi Xia took a deep breath and shook his head. “As expected, I don’t really like this reckless feeling—it’s no different from being an ordinary gambler.”

“It’s okay, Liar!” Qiao Jiajin patted Qi Xia’s shoulder. “Scoring points is good!”

Qi Xia nodded and continued looking at the scattered “characters” in his hand. He had deduced many times and always felt something was missing.

Why were there so few “characters” that could be formed?

“We can still form one more character,” Qiao Jiajin said, pointing at the radicals in Qi Xia’s hand. “This one, and this one—these two can form a ‘character.'”

Qi Xia looked down and saw that Qiao Jiajin was pointing at “目” and “八.”

“These two…?”

“Right,” Qiao Jiajin nodded. “This is ‘貝’ as in ‘shell.’ Liar, how did you overlook such a simple ‘character’? Are you missing what’s right under your nose?”

“This…?” Qi Xia frowned slightly. He naturally knew what character Qiao Jiajin was talking about, because this wasn’t about missing what was under his nose—it was a direction he had never envisioned.

Traditional characters…?

“‘貝’…” Qi Xia stroked his chin. Whether it could be formed or not, they could just try directly.

So he chose to place “目” and “八,” one above the other, and put them up.

The screen flickered for a while and displayed a line of text never seen before—

“Character ‘貝’ received. This character does not count toward this game’s score. Please create again.”

“Ah…?” Seeing this, Qiao Jiajin reached out and tapped the screen. “It’s broken, Liar. This screen seems unable to recognize characters! It doesn’t even know ‘貝’!”

“It shouldn’t be ‘unable to recognize characters’…” Qi Xia said. “Think carefully—from the beginning, the ‘characters’ Earth-Dragon gave us omitted traditional forms. ‘車’ is ‘車,’ ‘馬’ is ‘馬,’ so purely ‘traditional characters’ shouldn’t count toward the score. At least ‘貝’ doesn’t count.”

Qiao Jiajin was silent for a long time before slowly saying, “Is this game targeting me…?”

Qi Xia knew this game wasn’t just targeting Qiao Jiajin, but all the “Participants.” If traditional and simplified characters could be used freely, their probability of winning would increase somewhat.

But now…

“Wait…” Qi Xia looked at the scattered characters on the screen, his eyes flickering slightly. “I seem to have been too constrained by the concepts of radicals and components… When Cangjie originally integrated these characters… how could he possibly be limited by these concepts…”

Thinking of this, Qi Xia reached out and picked up “八.”

He gently moved his fingers, rotating the small metal character “八” one hundred and eighty degrees and placed it on the “Phoenix Holding Book Platform,” forming an “inverted eight.” Under Qiao Jiajin’s puzzled gaze, he picked up “木” and placed it below the “inverted eight.”

“Huh…?” Qiao Jiajin looked somewhat confused. “This is…?”

“Only this way can we get enough characters…” Qi Xia murmured softly. “No wonder I felt there weren’t enough ‘characters’…”

This time the screen flickered even longer than before. After a few seconds, a line of red text appeared:

“Character prototype ‘米’ received. Please write a homophone.”

After seeing this, Qiao Jiajin was stunned for a long time before exclaiming in admiration, “I… damn!! This can form ‘米’… Liar, you’ve got a good brain!”

“I should have thought of it earlier…” Qi Xia said. “Now there are more ‘characters’ that can be formed.”

Qiao Jiajin stared at the screen for a long time before feeling something wasn’t right: “Liar… do you… know the homophone for ‘米’?”

“‘米’…?”

After hearing this, Qi Xia stroked his chin. Speaking of this pronunciation, the most commonly used character was naturally “米” itself, but writing “米” now obviously wouldn’t count.

“Got it.” Qi Xia raised his eyebrows and reached out to tap on the screen.

His sharp, knife-like handwriting scratched across the screen, leaving behind a bright red character—

“羋.”

“…?” After seeing this, Qiao Jiajin was slightly stunned. “Liar, you really know a lot…”

“Creation Successful.”

A total of nine points.