After listening, Qi Xia only felt deep sorrow.

From the big picture, the path they were walking now wasn’t any different from ten years ago.

To be precise, the current progress wasn’t as fast as before.

Very few “Echoes” had manifested now. Lawyer Zhang, Doctor Zhao, and Tiantian all didn’t have clear “Echoes.”

Even though everyone knew they couldn’t repeat the same mistakes, who could avoid this situation?

A room of nine people. A full seven “Echoes.”

Even if Xiao Ran at that time couldn’t help at all, Qi Xia knew he absolutely hadn’t held this team back.

But thinking about it again, the current personnel configuration seemed a bit better than back then.

The nine people currently staying in the room were all “Echoes.” Lin Qin had eliminated Xiao Ran and brought “Stimulation.”

Plus his own “Endless Life”… could this team accomplish things?

“Unfortunately, you left…” Chen Junnan said with a heavy expression. “We met countless comrades in the Land of the End, but you left.”

In Chen Junnan’s description, the “Land of the End” at that time had no “Extreme Path,” “Cat,” “Heaven’s Gate,” or any other factions. Only the team led by Qi Xia was the “hero” of this city.

Numerous powerful “Echoes” from Chu Tianqiu’s room, Zhang Shan’s room, Qian Duoduo’s room, and even Su Shan’s room came because of their fame, forming a rare golden age where the entire “Land of the End” was united as one.

The “Zodiac games” at that time were very different from now. Usually, as long as Qi Xia stepped up, most games would be easily solved.

This situation forced the “Zodiacs” at that time to collectively reduce the “Tao” rewards to slow down everyone’s collection efficiency. Usually, after an entire team participated in an “Earth-level” game, they could barely obtain one or two “Tao.”

Just when they were about to collect 3,600 “Tao,” the leader of this massive team, Qi Xia, disappeared overnight.

He only mentioned to his trusted confidants Chen Junnan and Qiao Jiajin that “I found a way out,” then disappeared forever from the interview room.

“Old Qi, from that day on, I was placed in command during the crisis and took over this huge team for you.” Chen Junnan’s expression became increasingly gloomy, as if he thought of some extremely sad memories.

“But this young master really felt it was incredibly strange…” He shook his head, saying word by word, “Ever since you disappeared, those ‘Zodiac’ games started changing… Once we gambled to death the original ‘Earth-level,’ a new ‘Earth-level’ would bring even stronger games… Games I could barely handle before now required me to rack my brains every single time… It was like they received a comprehensive enhancement, completely on a different dimension from before.”

In Chen Junnan’s description, the original “Earth-level” games would just cause participants to die, but overall the difficulty wasn’t great.

As long as one could be cautious, not only would they not die, they could even return with a full load.

But since Qi Xia disappeared, this situation was gone forever.

Hearing this, Qi Xia slowly frowned.

If his guess was correct, this matter was probably related to him.

“So our team quickly fell apart…”

Because the number of accidental deaths increased rapidly, most people were forced to leave the team. Chen Junnan also couldn’t find them all back one by one. In just five or six cycles, all the achievements everyone had accumulated before went up in flames.

“At that time, even people in our own room started losing their memories… Old Qiao, Old Li, Little Han, and I became the last hope in the room…” Chen Junnan said, covering his forehead. “But Little Han gradually began to go mad. Because his ‘Echo’ was too dangerous, I could only be forced to abandon him and chose to act alone with Old Qiao and Old Li…”

But the problem was that these three were almost all impulsive players, causing their shortcomings to be too obvious and leading them to experience countless failures in succession.

“Old Qiao… you’re really something…” Chen Junnan looked up at Qiao Jiajin. “At a critical moment, I gave you ‘Scapegoat,’ but you broke my technique… Who taught you to use ‘Echo’ like that?”

“Oh…?” After hearing this, Qiao Jiajin laughed stupidly. “Was I that sharp before?”

“Old Qiao died so many times all alone during that period…” Chen Junnan turned to look at Qi Xia again. “This is all because of you… Old Qi, you left him behind.”

Qi Xia’s expression was also somewhat desolate. It seemed that ever since arriving at this place, all that awaited everyone was despair.

“So I gave up.” Chen Junnan said. “I didn’t want to go out anymore. I wanted to find a few like-minded people and earn some benefits for our families here.”

“What…?”

At this moment, a figure in a leather jacket silently came to the door of their room, but she didn’t reveal herself, just leaned against the doorway and lit a cigarette.

“At that time, I brought two teammates from the room and went to find Qian Duoduo and Zhou Mo. In my memory, they were people who had absolutely no reason to go out.” Chen Junnan seemed to have also noticed the figure at the door, but he didn’t expose it, just continued speaking on his own. “At that time, we came to this prison, planning to accomplish something great.”

“Your so-called great thing…” Qi Xia asked. “Is becoming ‘mercenaries’ to earn money for your families…”

“Old Qi, that’s only the first layer of meaning.” Chen Junnan interrupted. “As I said, the ‘Zodiacs’ have comprehensively grown, but the ‘Participants’ have comprehensively degraded. We’ve opened up a huge gap with the ‘Zodiacs.’ We need to bide our time and hide our strength. Before collecting enough intelligence, we absolutely cannot rashly make a move. I need to gather a group of people who won’t lose their memories here as ‘signal towers.'”

After speaking, Chen Junnan looked at Qi Xia again: “At that time I thought… if… I mean if one day… that bastard Qi Xia could come back… we would be a professional team that had endured countless trials in the ‘Land of the End,’ and also be the thirteenth ‘Zodiac’ hidden here. Unfortunately, all our members are ‘Echoes,’ so we don’t have the qualifications to become ‘Zodiacs.'”

“So it’s ‘Cat’…” Qi Xia said in a low voice.

“That’s right. Actually, I didn’t want to call it ‘Cat’ at first…” Chen Junnan smiled bitterly. “I’m ‘Big Baby,’ Old Qiao is ‘Second Baby’…”

“So that’s how it is…” Qi Xia narrowed his eyes and asked. “What about the rest?”

“The rest are a Miss Zhang who’s a ‘Three’ (san) escort lady, Officer Li who’s a ‘Sir’ (sounds like ‘four’), Qian Duoduo who’s only ‘Five’ (wu) feet tall, plus Zhou Mo who only wants to pass Saturday (Liu – ‘Six’)… Including me, Chen Big Baby, and Qiao Second Baby, our six people are the ‘Calabash Seven Brothers’…”

“Wait… wait a minute…” Qi Xia clearly didn’t understand. “You’re six people, what ‘Calabash Seven Brothers’?”

“Fool… haven’t you watched ‘Calabash Brothers’?” Chen Junnan sighed. “Among the seven brothers, one is the invisible baby, so our six people can play the seven brothers.”