Qi Xia’s words were like a massive battle axe that split Earth-Monkey from the crown of his head straight down to his heels.

A thoroughly bone-chilling cold spread throughout Earth-Monkey’s body.

After so many consecutive rounds of strategic gameplay… had he… ever won even once?

Earth-Monkey sat down in his seat as if his bones had been extracted, his face completely lost in thought.

Thinking back on it afterwards, what a terrifying thing this was? It seemed he had always been suppressed and beaten down by Qi Xia, with absolutely no room to fight back.

His opponent wasn’t even proficient in “gambling techniques”—what he was proficient in was “the human heart” and “deception.”

“No… that’s not right…” Earth-Monkey forced himself to stay alert, looking at Qi Xia with panicked eyes. “You definitely stole cards… your, your cheating was discovered by me…”

“I’m sorry.” Qi Xia shook his head. “The one who stole cards wasn’t me.”

As soon as his words fell, Qiao Jiajin on Qi Xia’s left and Chen Junnan on his right simultaneously pulled out a card and waved it in their hands.

In Chen Junnan’s hand was “Double Ninth.”

In Qiao Jiajin’s hand was “Mid-Yuan.”

“Monkey Brother, we’re the ones who stole the cards.” Chen Junnan said. “But what can you do? We weren’t gambling, and we didn’t use these cards for anything. We just held the cards in our hands and looked at them. Your gambling game only uses five cards total. Us holding one card each in our hands doesn’t interfere with the game, right?”

“That’s right, that’s right.” Qiao Jiajin also nodded. “Fat Monkey, you made these cards beautifully. I really wanted to take one back as a souvenir, so I’ve been holding it and looking at it this whole time.”

“You’re full of shit!!” Earth-Monkey slammed the table hard. “You clearly just passed the cards to Qi Xia! I just saw it with my own eyes…”

Hearing this, Qi Xia suddenly stood up, staring directly at Earth-Monkey with a pair of incomparably cold eyes: “You saw it with your own eyes?”

“Did you see it with your own eyes or not?”

“You…”

“Speak!” Qi Xia instantly widened his eyes, which carried both madness and a trace of amusement. “Earth-Monkey, say it! Exactly who… who caught whom cheating?”

Qi Xia’s words nearly cut off all of Earth-Monkey’s escape routes.

Earth-Monkey could only forcefully swallow down the words that had already reached his lips.

That’s right—if he hadn’t seen those two cards, he wouldn’t have ended up in such a situation at all.

After all, Qi Xia had stained blood on the back of his card from the very beginning, and the one he pulled out at the end was the same card.

Even if he had switched cards midway, it hadn’t affected his final hand. The card he drew at the beginning and the card he revealed at the end were all “Major Snow.”

Could even that red flower dyed with blood have been designed?

What a terrifying person…?

He had calculated everything in advance, but instead of stating it directly, he had set trap after trap over these truths, until he himself fell into the snare.

In this game, who exactly was the prey?

“You…” Earth-Monkey had too many questions and momentarily didn’t know where to begin asking.

“Don’t lose heart, Earth-Monkey. I told you, you didn’t lose on any one particular thing I said, but rather on every single thing I said.”

“So you knew all along that the ‘Full Moon Rule’ allowed not using the ‘community cards’…”

“Of course.” Qi Xia nodded. “After all, the ‘community cards’ have the possibility of directly ‘busting.’ When a ‘Double Ninth’ card is flipped over, everyone’s hand instantly reaches ‘eighteen,’ and the game would judge everyone as losers. This not only doesn’t conform to the rules you Zodiacs design for games, but also cannot serve as rules for a ‘gamble.'”

Earth-Monkey pressed his lips together in silence.

“So I boldly speculated that even if the flipped card would ‘bust’ everyone, people would still need to continue the gamble. After all, everyone still has one ‘hidden card’ in their hand that others cannot guess, and this kind of rule requires ‘discarding the community cards.’ After all, even in ‘Twenty-One,’ once a player’s hand is large enough, they stop letting the dealer deal cards.” Qi Xia said. “Originally we had a probability of directly guessing this rule, but unfortunately—whether it was good luck or bad—the ‘community cards’ in these several rounds were all very small, coincidentally bypassing this rule.”

Earth-Monkey reached up to touch his forehead and sighed softly: “Truly impressive… Qi Xia…”

He hadn’t expected that the tool his opponent used to achieve victory was actually a “hole card” he himself had been hiding all along.

“You admit defeat just like that?” The corner of Qi Xia’s mouth lifted as he looked at Tiantian. “Tiantian, tell Earth-Monkey where he lost.”

After hearing this, Tiantian also revealed a bitter smile, then shook her head and said: “Earth-Monkey… even my coming to shuffle the cards this time should also have been designed by Qi Xia.”

“What…?”

Earth-Monkey suddenly recalled that when he suggested finding someone to shuffle the cards, Tiantian in the distance had suddenly volunteered, and then he had lost this round.

“Just now when I was trying to figure out how to stop Hero Brother’s bleeding, he suddenly grabbed me.” Tiantian said. “He told me that if Earth-Monkey wanted to find someone to shuffle cards in a moment, I must fight for this opportunity, then scatter the cards onto the table.”

Earth-Monkey had never imagined that Qi Xia’s scheme had begun at that moment.

“Once the cards scattered onto the table, Qiao Jiajin would suggest shuffling the cards, and you wouldn’t object either. At that time, he could take advantage of the opportunity to take one card.” Tiantian looked at Earth-Monkey and continued, “You believed no one would steal cards in broad daylight, so at most you would only check if there were any markings, and wouldn’t count the cards one by one. Then Chen Junnan could also take one card.”

Hearing these words, Earth-Monkey said dejectedly: “Going to such great lengths… just to confuse my vision…”

“That’s right, Monkey Brother.” Chen Junnan nodded. “Did you think that every time Old Qi fainted, we were really just supporting him? We were just passing him the cards! To let you, with your fucking discerning golden eyes, get a good long look!”

“Earth-Monkey…” Qi Xia also spoke at this time. “Not only did I know you might be carrying an ‘ability,’ I even boldly guessed that you cannot fully release this ‘ability.’ Your control over this ‘ability’ is very careful—each time you only reveal a tiny trace. So you have no way to simultaneously check what’s happening beneath the table for all three of us, and would only watch me. This is your greatest flaw.”

After listening, Earth-Monkey slowly raised his eyes to look at the three people before him, knowing he hadn’t just lost to Qi Xia alone.

That man called Chen Junnan had been disturbing his psychology from the very beginning, and at the final critical moment, made him personally speak out his “tacit permission of cheating.” Now thinking about it, his every word and every action had been premeditated.

And that Flower-Arm man beside him likewise could not be underestimated. Setting aside that he could similarly disturb his own mental state, just that final statement of “don’t cheat” was unfathomable. His own “spirit vision” had actually vanished without a trace under the influence of that one sentence.

Add to that the nosebleeding kid over there, the card-dealing girl, and that college student…

“The ‘sheep flock effect.'” Qi Xia said softly. “When one person starts lying, the rest of the people will also become lying sheep.”