The Man-Snake looked at Chen Junnan with some bewilderment. After a long pause, he tentatively said:

“Everyone on the mountaintop acting as messengers together…? Is this sentence your answer…?”

Chen Junnan: “Can it be?”

“I’m not sure,” the Man-Snake said. “Because it sounds more like you’re posing a question rather than giving an answer. If you’re certain you want to answer this way… you can elaborate.”

Chen Junnan had initially wanted to explain a few things, but upon careful consideration, the Man-Snake didn’t actually know the answer to this question at all. So the best approach at this moment would be to bluff as much as possible and make the other party believe what he was saying.

Therefore, what came next couldn’t be “elaboration”—it had to be “nonsense.”

“I think it’s like this…” Chen Junnan said. “In your question, theoretically the messenger can risk his life to reach the second mountaintop, which means the probability of death and survival are about the same—at least fifty-fifty. So if everyone on the entire mountaintop instantly disperses, with each person acting as a messenger choosing diverse routes to reach the other mountaintops, it can preserve half the forces with one hundred percent certainty.”

“Wait… hold on.” The Man-Snake was somewhat confused by Chen Junnan’s reasoning. “Is that how you calculate it? Isn’t your scenario way too idealistic?”

“What?” Chen Junnan blinked. “My scenario is idealistic? Oh, so these two mountaintops of yours can’t see smoke signals and can’t make phone calls, surrounded by a group of people—that’s not idealistic?”

“Uh…”

“Your ninety-nine people think everything’s fine, but one person thinks the dish is too salty—that’s not idealistic?”

“Alright… alright, continue,” the Man-Snake said.

“Exactly, these are hypotheses made under idealistic circumstances to begin with,” Chen Junnan nodded. “So I believe that if we consider each mountaintop’s forces as ‘1,’ a single ‘1’ can’t break through the encirclement. But now one mountaintop has ‘1.5,’ so a unilateral breakthrough should probably work—like an unsheathed sharp blade, you know?”

The Man-Snake hadn’t been in contact with Chen Junnan for long, but he always felt something was strange—this person’s thought process was extremely unconventional. Listening to him speak always gave one a confused feeling of wanting to believe.

“But this isn’t right, is it?” the Man-Snake said. “The question is how to make the two mountaintops launch a breakthrough at the same moment. What you’re describing has become one mountaintop breaking through alone.”

“But the meaning of breaking through separately is…”

“Don’t forget,” Chen Junnan interrupted. “The general of Mountaintop A also has a certain probability of disguising himself as a messenger and reaching Mountaintop B. After the two generals meet face-to-face, they can communicate directly, eliminating all intermediate steps. At that point, the two can even count down three, two, one, and lead their own people to break through separately from the front and back mountains. The timing would be precise and accurate, without any deception.”

The Man-Snake felt that if Chen Junnan had truly been born in ancient times, he might indeed have been a promising talent skilled in military strategy. Unfortunately, this was currently all armchair strategizing, and under these theoretical circumstances, the answer he gave would be difficult to accept as the standard answer.

It was like those imaginative childhood answers that, while correct from certain angles, were often thoroughly refuted by the reference answers.

Then again, if they could really make everyone on the entire mountaintop disperse on the spot to become messengers, why not just order them to disperse and flee on the spot?

“I still need to think about this,” the Man-Snake said. “I can’t shake the feeling that your tactic can only work if one of the generals is you. With anyone else, it simply wouldn’t work.”

“Tch.” Chen Junnan was dismissive. “Believe it or not, even if you come up with eight hundred tactics, this young master’s tactic still has the highest success rate.”

The Man-Snake turned to look at Jin Yuanxun, who hadn’t spoken for a while: “What do you think?”

“I…” Jin Yuanxun lowered his head and thought for a moment before saying, “I feel like… the problem doesn’t seem to lie with the messengers, you know.”

“Oh?”

“The problem is that the two great generals don’t trust each other, so even if the messengers transmit the orders countless times, it’s useless, you know.”

After hearing this, the Man-Snake nodded thoughtfully: “That also makes sense. So how do you think they should be made to trust each other?”

After hearing this, Jin Yuanxun extended one finger and tapped the left side of the table, saying: “This is Great General A.”

“Mm.” Chen Junnan and the Man-Snake both nodded simultaneously.

Jin Yuanxun then pointed to the right side of the table: “This is Great General B.”

“Mm.”

Jin Yuanxun extended one hand, formed it into a fist, and placed it in the center of the table, exactly between Generals A and B: “Ah, they’re too far apart and can never trust each other, so at this point, there needs to be a ‘Tiantang Kou’ in the middle.”

Chen Junnan was startled: “You’re inserting an advertisement, kid?”

“No, no, no.” Jin Yuanxun shook his head. “Ah, brother, this is what ‘Tiantang Kou’ has been doing all along before. Acting as a communicator between the two mutually distrustful forces of ‘Zodiac’ and ‘Participants,’ simultaneously transmitting messages to both sides.”

Seeing Chen Junnan and the Man-Snake looking confused, Jin Yuanxun explained further: “Meaning privately communicating with both sides separately.”

“Alright, alright, alright…” Chen Junnan waved his hand. “The way you use these little phrases is really vivid and lifelike. You’re going to work your little Chu to death, aren’t you?”

Jin Yuanxun naturally didn’t understand what Chen Junnan was referring to, and simply shook his head: “This is something that must be done as the ‘intermediary,’ you know.”

The Man-Snake didn’t dwell on Jin Yuanxun’s phrasing, but asked thoughtfully: “So in this scenario, how would you establish ‘Tiantang Kou’?”

“I feel like you could find people that both generals trust, have them wear enemy army clothing at the central location, and establish a temporary intermediate point,” Jin Yuanxun said. “All messages are transmitted to the intermediate point, and then transmitted out from the intermediate point, you know. Both sides trust this intermediate point, and the people who come only need to run half the distance, you know.”

Jin Yuanxun’s Chinese was spoken haltingly, with some grammatical inversions, but Chen Junnan and the Man-Snake instantly understood his meaning.

“Hsss…”

After the two made that sound, they looked at each other.

“I won’t ‘hiss’ anymore,” Chen Junnan said with an embarrassed laugh. “You’re the snake, you ‘hiss,’ you ‘hiss.'”

The Man-Snake felt that once again, it was Jin Yuanxun who made sense. This so-called “intermediate point wearing enemy army clothing” was only known to their own people, so from every aspect, it could be considered safe.

But this was also theory. It sounded very reasonable when described this way, but what about the actual situation?

Fortunately, this time the actual situation had a real example that could be verified.