“Hmm…?” Zhou Liu didn’t quite understand Qi Xia’s words. “You’re planning to…?”

“I want to trigger a ‘Fury,'” Qi Xia said. “When the ‘daytime period’ is about to end, you relay my exact words to her. Because Qiu Shiliu is emotionally unstable and her ‘Echo’ is useless, she’s the first one I’m abandoning. This is the leader’s decision.”

“Tsk, are you sure…?” Zhou Liu paused. “From my understanding of Shiliu, something like ‘betrayal’ will absolutely enrage her to death…”

“Even better if she’s enraged to death,” Qi Xia agreed, then turned around to say to Wang Ba, “Sorry for saying some harsh words earlier, but I should now know what kind of person you are. From now on, my real plan will be revealed to everyone step by step. Please follow my arrangements.”

“You…”

“This ‘game’ isn’t just practice,” Qi Xia said. “First, I want to win. Second, I want all of you to achieve ‘Echo.’ Third, I want you to know my capabilities. Fourth, I want to take down the ‘Earth-Mouse.'”

After hearing Qi Xia’s words, the three people could only look at each other in bewilderment. This person before them seemed very normal, but was he actually a madman?

Normal people entering an Earth-level game wouldn’t even say they “want to win”—they could only say they “want to survive.” Yet he had put forth four objectives in succession and expected to achieve them all in this confusing game.

“Putting… putting aside everything else…” Luo Shiyi frowned and looked at Qi Xia. “You just said you want to take down the ‘Earth-Mouse’…?”

“Yes,” Qi Xia nodded. “I already have a general idea of how to have everyone survive and achieve victory in this game, but at the final moment… I want to push the ‘Earth-Mouse’ into a desperate situation. This still requires your help.”

Luo Shiyi felt his brain had already stopped working. From hearing the rules until now, it had been a total of less than twenty minutes.

Since everyone had the same twenty minutes, why was it that only this man called Qi Xia could think so much?

“Luo Shiyi,” Qi Xia called out, then looked at the pomegranate in his hand. “Are you certain there was only one fruit in your room?”

“I’m certain,” Luo Shiyi nodded. “When I went in, there was only one pomegranate on the plate.”

After hearing this, Qi Xia turned to look at the remaining two people. “What about you? How many fruits were in your rooms?”

“Four small oranges,” Zhou Liu said. “These little oranges really made me anxious. Obviously I could grab them all with one hand, yet I could only take three.”

Wang Ba was silent for a while, then also spoke up. “You all saw my room—four dragon fruits. I also took three.”

After hearing this, Qi Xia looked again at the three peaches in his own hand, feeling this was bad news—the total amount of fruit was probably not enough for five people to survive.

Just as Qi Xia had initially predicted, for five people to avoid being “starved to death” in six rounds, they needed at least twenty fruits.

But now there was one room with only one fruit.

Even if all the other rooms had four fruits each, the total would only be seventeen. At least two “mice” would starve to death.

But… could there be another possibility?

“Tsk, so the number of fruits in the rooms isn’t fixed…” Zhou Liu thought for a while and asked, “But there’s still one room we haven’t been to… Could that room have…”

“Probably not,” Qi Xia shook his head. “Following your logic, the remaining room would need at least seven fruits to barely reach the quantity we need to survive, but that’s not reasonable.”

Seeing Zhou Liu’s puzzled expression, Qi Xia pointed at the small oranges in her hand. “Even this type of small fruit only had four pieces, which means fruit size doesn’t affect the placement quantity. ‘Four pieces’ should be fixed.”

“Then why was there only one pomegranate in my room?” Luo Shiyi asked doubtfully. “Isn’t it because the pomegranate is too large?”

“We can only know this answer after seeing Qiu Shiliu,” Qi Xia said. “Next round we need to occupy the rooms.”

“Tsk, how should we do it?” Zhou Liu said. “Should we try to enter the third room we haven’t been in yet, and take away the four fruits inside as well?”

“No… that room will be the room the ‘cat’ focuses on guarding next,” Qi Xia said. “Whether it’s ‘mousetrap’ or ‘search,’ one of the countermeasures will definitely target the third room. After all, from the ‘mice’s’ perspective, only that room has the most gains, so we can only avoid it and temporarily can’t act rashly.”

“Then…”

“Next, two people will go ‘rescue,’ and the other two will continue searching in the rooms that have already been searched,” Qi Xia said.

“Two people rescue?” Wang Ba froze for a moment. “We’ve already confirmed that Qiu Shiliu is in the ‘Cat House.’ Why do two people need to go rescue her?”

After hearing this, Qi Xia pondered for a few seconds. “I just have a guess, so I must personally go to the ‘Cat House’ to take a look. If this guess succeeds, I can’t do it alone—I must have someone cooperate with me.”

Everyone fell silent again after hearing this.

“Then I’ll go with you,” Luo Shiyi said.

“Good,” Qi Xia nodded, then turned to look at Zhou Liu and Wang Ba. “The two of us will be responsible for bringing Qiu Shiliu back. You’ll be responsible for continuing to ‘search.’ Remember, you can go to any room except room number three.”

“Tsk, but this time we can only get two fruits at most,” Zhou Liu said. “Moreover, if one of Wang Ba and I gets caught, then we can only bring back one fruit and lose one teammate. What should we do then?”

“You can’t say that,” Qi Xia said. “According to the rules… this time, unless both of you are caught, we can at least bring back two fruits.”

“What?”

“The rules said that the person ‘transporting fruit’ can not only transport their own fruit, but can also carry all the fruit ‘searched’ for by other people together,” Qi Xia paused and added, “That means even if you’re caught or chased by the cat, you should be able to hand over the fruit in your hands to your teammate… Besides this, I can’t think of any other situation where you could transport someone else’s fruit.”

Zhou Liu and Luo Shiyi nodded, then looked at the fruit in their hands. They had obtained ten fruits this round, enough to keep all the “mice” satiated for two rounds, but what about the remaining rounds?

Food would become increasingly scarce, and the “mice’s” situation would become increasingly dangerous.

“Should we consume the fruit now?” Luo Shiyi asked Qi Xia tentatively.

“No…” Qi Xia shook his head. “Only you and I need to consume them. The others don’t need to.”

“What?” Luo Shiyi and Zhou Liu were stunned. “Logically speaking, all five of our satiety levels have dropped. You’re only consuming two fruits?”

“You need to understand one thing,” Qi Xia said. “Even for real mice, the food they find can’t possibly be divided equally among every companion. If we hope for everyone to eat their fill, there’s no point in trying to win this game. The ones who can truly receive large amounts of food are only those mice on the front lines.”

“What about the others?” Luo Shiyi asked.

“Try to maintain one bar of satiety,” Qi Xia said. “The Earth-Mouse said that even if satiety drops to 0, we won’t die. As long as it doesn’t drop below 0, the collars around our necks won’t explode. The optimal solution for this game should be that at the moment of victory, everyone’s satiety is precisely at 0.”