Now the group was out of options. No one could have imagined that just walking down the street as usual would lead to encountering Heavenly-Snake.

Almost all Man-Snake and Earth-Snake games couldn’t escape the category of “question and answer.” From this perspective, Heavenly-Snake must be an expert among them.

Could they escape this predicament merely by asking him questions?

“I have one last question…” Zhang Chenze’s gaze turned cold. “If you know the answer to this question too, then I’ll accept it if you kill me.”

“Go ahead,” Heavenly-Snake sneered. “As long as the question you ask has an answer, I absolutely won’t not know it.”

Zhang Chenze took a deep breath and, learning from Lin Qin’s example, closed her eyes and said, “I have a colleague who goes to the hotpot restaurant downstairs from the office every Monday to eat hotpot alone. His favorite items on the menu are yellow throat and small fish, because the shop gave them very interesting dish names. What are these two dishes called at this restaurant?”

As soon as these words left her mouth, the several people beside her all froze.

“Hm…?” Heavenly-Snake was slightly stunned. Although he had heard every word in this question clearly, he couldn’t understand it at all.

“Yellow throat… what is that?” Heavenly-Snake asked. “Small… small fish…?”

“Five second countdown,” Zhang Chenze continued with her eyes closed.

The air froze before everyone for five seconds. Heavenly-Snake couldn’t say a single word.

“You see…” Zhang Chenze opened her eyes and said, “You also have knowledge you don’t understand… So you have absolutely no right to decide our life and death, right?”

“You made up this question, didn’t you?!” Heavenly-Snake looked into Zhang Chenze’s eyes. After a few seconds, he discovered he had miscalculated—this question actually had a real answer.

Heavenly-Snake’s expression grew colder and colder, and that pale face also began to tremble.

“I absolutely must have you as my assistant…” He looked at the two corpses beside him and said, “You’re far more capable than them…”

“No, I told you—each of us has much knowledge that you don’t know,” Zhang Chenze continued speaking calmly. “If you want to become more and more knowledgeable, then don’t easily kill anyone.”

Heavenly-Snake looked into Zhang Chenze’s eyes once again, his lips moving. “You actually weren’t lying to me?”

“Yes, I don’t like deceiving people,” Zhang Chenze said.

“How strange…” Heavenly-Snake approached her step by step, extending a cold hand and placing it on Zhang Chenze’s neck. “Every time I appear, everyone deceives me… yet you’re the exception?”

When the cold fingertips stained with blood touched Zhang Chenze’s neck, she trembled slightly.

“Your circumstances are so peculiar…” Heavenly-Snake stared into Zhang Chenze’s eyes with a bizarre expression. “You’re so knowledgeable… yet your family is so ignorant? Can you truly endure your own life?”

“I’m different from you,” Zhang Chenze answered. “There are indeed many ignorant people in this world, but I don’t want to make them all become knowledgeable. I can only do well for myself.”

She thought of her own absurd life.

In order to escape that man-eating mountain village, she had been constantly learning new things every moment, only to make herself better. She never expected that it would actually come in handy at this moment.

“That makes sense.”

Zhang Chenze suppressed her fear and spoke up. “I like people who are reasonable. You won’t kill us without reason, right?”

Heavenly-Snake paused for a long while before finally withdrawing his hand.

“You’re right,” he nodded. “What I hate most in this life is when people deceive me. Since you haven’t deceived me and are so knowledgeable, then I have no reason to kill you… Now, tell me where that person called Chen Junnan is, and I can spare you all.”

After hearing these words, Lin Qin and Yun Yao hesitated. Among everyone present, only the two of them knew Chen Junnan’s exact location, and only the two of them knew where “Cat” was.

“Do you have a relationship with that person called Chen Junnan?” Heavenly-Snake asked. “Are you willing to die for him?”

“Of course not. I can tell you his location,” Lin Qin said.

“Hey… are you serious?” Yun Yao asked quietly. “Qi Xia and the others are there too.”

“There’s no other way…” Lin Qin answered quietly. “Even if we don’t say it, he still has ways to read our thoughts. Since that’s the case, we might as well take the opportunity to trade for our own lives.”

Through her earlier observations, Lin Qin had discovered that Heavenly-Snake seemed to have a strange obsession—he liked intelligent people.

In other words… if they led him to Qi Xia, Qi Xia would most likely not die.

Even Zhang Chenze could think of a countermeasure on the spot—there was no way Qi Xia couldn’t think of one.

Moreover, there was “Twin Flowers” stationed there. Even a Heavenly-level “Zodiac” would have to think thrice before making a move.

“Look into my eyes,” Lin Qin said. “The location of ‘Cat’ is in my memory.”

Heavenly-Snake stared into her eyes for a long while, then suddenly widened his eyes.

“Your gaze doesn’t just contain the location of ‘Cat’… it also has images of me clashing with ‘Cat’… You’re planning to have me go fight with that person called ‘Qian Wu’?!”

“What…? No…”

He immediately reached out his hand toward Lin Qin, striking straight for her heart. “You dare to play mind games with me!!”

Lin Qin was stunned. She had never communicated with this type of person before and had no idea what the upper limit of his abilities was.

Just as Heavenly-Snake’s hand was about to pierce through Lin Qin’s heart, an enormous and powerful gust of wind suddenly blew over, causing the several people at the scene to stagger.

Heavenly-Snake immediately stood up and turned around to look. Standing behind him was an old man with a withered face.

The person was standing on tiptoes, his entire body leaning forward at a bizarre angle, his face almost pressed against Heavenly-Snake’s.

“You…” Heavenly-Snake took a step back and reached up to adjust his glasses.

“The stench of a ‘Zodiac’…” The old man revealed his only remaining tooth, his expression strange as he said, “Although this matter shouldn’t concern me… by what right are you brazenly killing Participants in the middle of the road? Who gave you the audacity?”

“You… you are…?” Heavenly-Snake hadn’t felt a sense of oppression from anyone else in a very long time. The feeling this old man gave him was somewhat strange.

“How strange…” The old man opened his dry, yellow, murky eyes wide to look at Heavenly-Snake. “You’ve clearly violated the rules… yet no one has interfered? The balance of this place is so delicate… Once broken, wouldn’t it lead to endless future troubles?”

Heavenly-Snake also widened his eyes to look at the old man before him. What was terrifying was that he couldn’t read any of the old man’s thoughts.

This old man didn’t seem to be human. Only darkness remained in his heart, as if he were a stone without thoughts.

“You… you’re a ‘Divine Beast’?” Heavenly-Snake was stunned.

After all, the only ones who could speak such words to a “Heavenly-level” were “Divine Beasts,” and among the four “Divine Beasts,” the only one he had never met was “Baihu.”

“I am indeed ‘Baihu,'” the old man slowly straightened his body. “Whose ‘Zodiac’ are you? Under whose orders are you killing?”