“Half of ‘Bing’…” Qinglong’s expression visibly darkened. “Xuanwu… are you lying to me?”

“No, I don’t lie,” Xuanwu shook her head, and all her long hair swayed with the movement of her head.

“Then you just don’t recognize characters,” Qinglong said. “You don’t recognize the character ‘Bing’ at all, so how do you know Qi Xia used half of it?”

“I don’t recognize ‘Bing’, but I recognize half of ‘Bing’,” Xuanwu’s cold voice answered.

After hearing this, Qi Xia found it laughable. Within the bounds of the rules, even Xuanwu would stand on his side.

“I don’t believe it,” Qinglong said again. “I want to come over and see for myself.”

“Audacious,” Xuanwu said with a cold rebuke. “There is no such rule.”

“You…” Upon hearing Xuanwu’s words, Qinglong’s eyes instantly filled with killing intent.

But Xuanwu seemed completely unable to sense it, still looking at him with icy eyes.

“Today, here, I am the referee,” Xuanwu said. “Follow the rules.”

“You’ve truly gone mad,” Qinglong said. “Don’t you know the consequences of speaking to me like this?”

Xuanwu was silent for a moment, then spoke. “The consequences are all severe.”

“…’All’?”

“Not fulfilling the referee’s duties has severe consequences, defying you has severe consequences,” Xuanwu said. “But you said that this time I can defy you.”

Qinglong wanted to rush forward directly and tell Xuanwu who the real “god” here was, but if he did that, this game would end prematurely and the “life wager” would become invalid.

“Qinglong is also confused,” Chen Junnan said quietly to Qiao Jiajin on the side. “That ‘Bing’ character was originally chosen by Xuanwu Big Sis herself. Even if she doesn’t recognize characters, doesn’t she know what she picked? She would definitely know at a glance if it was used.”

“Yeah, yeah, he’s confused.”

A trace of anger flashed across Qinglong’s face, but he still couldn’t figure out how Qi Xia had managed to piece together the character “罧”.

This strange ‘character’ not only couldn’t be pronounced, but one couldn’t even see the components of “Bing” in it.

“Two ‘woods’…” A trace of something unusual flashed through Qinglong’s eyes. Could there now be two “相” (mutual) in the pile of ‘characters’?

After Qi Xia confirmed his answer, he quickly removed all the ‘characters’ from the “Phoenix Book-Carrying Platform” and came to the front of the massive wall structure.

“So what do you say, Qinglong?” Qi Xia asked. “This time, the outcome is clear for all to see, right?”

After hearing this, Xuanwu nodded slightly. “Your ‘character’ looks harder to write, so it has more strokes.”

“Then can I understand that as ‘the referee says I won’?” Qi Xia asked, staring at Qinglong.

After hearing this, Qinglong nodded somewhat reluctantly. After all, the rules of this round were already so obvious that there was no point in continuing to argue.

“You win,” Qinglong said. “Best of three—let’s begin the second round.”

After hearing this, Xuanwu nodded, walked to the wooden box, and began to draw the rules for the second round.

She extended her pale gray arm and rummaged in the wooden box for a while, then once again pulled out a slip of paper.

This time she simply didn’t read it herself, but unfolded it to display it to everyone.

Everyone tilted their heads when they saw the slip of paper in her hand, because Xuanwu had held the paper upside down.

Chen Junnan tilted his head and looked for a while, then read softly: “What is more important to humans wins?”

Seeing that everyone was tilting their heads, Xuanwu seemed to realize something and reached out to turn the slip of paper around.

Everyone straightened their necks and found that the sentence was indeed the same as what Chen Junnan had read.

“So abstract…” Lawyer Zhang said from the side. “What is more important to humans?”

Tiantian also pondered for a while and asked, “Does this refer to a physical object…? Or something on a spiritual level?”

“Either works,” Qinglong answered for Xuanwu. “As long as the ‘character’ we create can be considered important to humans, it qualifies. The more important thing wins, but the prerequisite is that there can only be one ‘character’, and it must include a part of ‘Bing’.”

Hearing these increasingly difficult rules, everyone fell silent.

They could only use one ‘character’, and they had to use its meaning to determine victory or defeat, and this ‘character’ also had to include all or part of “Bing”.

“You’re purely fucking playing dirty now,” Chen Junnan said with a frown. “You’ve already thought through all these rules countless times yourself, right? How is Old Qi supposed to play against you when he’s hearing these rules for the first time?”

“I’m sorry…” Qinglong said. “Once the arrow leaves the bow, there’s no turning back. Moreover, I’m still going first this time.”

After saying this, he turned his head to look at Qi Xia and asked with a mocking expression, “No objections, right?”

Qi Xia knew this was clearly a trap.

There weren’t many ‘characters’ that included a part of “Bing” to begin with, and even fewer that could satisfy the conditions. In other words, there might only be one solution to this difficult problem.

Once Qinglong made the first move, his own chances of losing would increase infinitely.

But at this point, only this could be considered a real gamble.

By forcing out his own potential under the possibility of imminent loss, he would grow once again.

“No problem,” Qi Xia said. “You go first.”

Even Qiao Jiajin on the side could see there was something fishy about this game and hastily tried to stop it. “Don’t! Liar boy, didn’t he choose to go first last time? This time you choose first.”

“It’s fine,” Qi Xia said. “Consider it me going easy.”

“Showing off,” Qinglong said with a curl of his lips. He stepped forward to the back of the giant wall and began rummaging through the various ‘characters’ on the ground.

Soon he had selected his answer and placed a “木” (wood) on the screen.

A few seconds later, he placed a “丷”.

“米” (rice).

“Damn it…” Chen Junnan couldn’t help but curse when he saw this ‘character’. “Old Qi… do you see how dirty this old bastard is playing?”

After hearing this, Qi Xia nodded. Qinglong’s choice of answer was irreproachable. “米” represented “food”, which was naturally extremely important to human survival. This might be the one and only final standard answer.

After all, there were really too few ‘characters’ that included “Bing” and met the requirements.

“First of all, let me state that I don’t accept this!” Chen Junnan hastily explained to Xuanwu. “Although the ‘character’ he wrote on the screen is ‘米’, I don’t think it’s very important, because I can usually get full just eating meat and vegetables.”

“Yeah, yeah, I can get full just drinking alcohol,” Qiao Jiajin also nodded from the side.

“If worse comes to worst, I can still have a bowl of zhajiangmian, or jiaoquan with douzhir. Anyway, your master doesn’t accept ‘米’.”

“Yeah, yeah, curry fish balls and bowl-wing soup are also fine. ‘米’ won’t do.”

After hearing this, Qi Xia shook his head helplessly.

After hearing this answer, Xuanwu raised her head to look at the giant “米” on the screen, as if she were learning how to write this ‘character’. After a few seconds, she slowly opened her mouth to say:

“‘米’… is truly very important to humans.”