Earth-Ox picked up the rope and tied it around her waist, then walked over to stand beside the pit.

Under everyone’s watchful eyes, she lifted her leg and stepped into it, then lay down on her side, hugging her knees with both arms.

She looked as if she were lying on an extremely comfortable sofa, her expression calm and indifferent.

“Are you ready?” Earth-Ox asked from within the pit.

The two men at the other end of the rope heard this and quickly reached out to grip the rope in front of them tightly. The fat man stood at the very end of the rope, using it to tie a dead knot around his waist, while Wang Ge in front of him wrapped the rope around his waist several times.

Qi Xia watched the two men coldly, feeling that Earth-Ox was still being too soft-hearted.

When she had thrown out those two corpses, it was to give the two men one last chance to back out, but these two had clearly been dazzled by the massive prize of “nine hundred and sixty Dao,” and now they had considered every possibility except escape.

“Dead men walking,” Qi Xia muttered.

“We’re ready!” The two men hadn’t heard Qi Xia’s mumbling to himself, and shouted into the pit at Earth-Ox while gripping the rope.

“Then… let the game begin,” Earth-Ox said.

The air suddenly froze at that moment, and the tense atmosphere spread from the two men outward, gradually permeating the entire venue.

After hearing these words, the two men took a deep breath and immediately pulled on the rope while leaning backward. Their hands gripped the rope while their feet pressed against the ground, both of them leaning back at a forty-five-degree angle.

Unfortunately, things didn’t go as they wished. Even though they had exerted all their strength and thrown their full body weight into it from the first moment, they failed to drag Earth-Ox out of the pit.

Their teeth clenched tightly, their faces flushed red from the strain, and not even a sound of breathing could be heard—only the rope constantly swaying in the air emitted faint sounds.

The rope appeared to be specially made, soft in texture yet extremely sturdy. At this moment, the rope was stretched taut like a steel cable, but Earth-Ox on the other end remained completely unmoved.

No matter how much force they exerted, they felt as if the other end of the rope was tied to a century-old tree—forget about moving it an inch, they couldn’t even budge it by a hair’s breadth.

Qi Xia watched the two men struggling with all their might and found a wooden crate behind him to sit down on again. If his guess was correct, Earth-Ox, just like before, wouldn’t end this game right away.

The two men in front of him would never give up no matter what—this was normal human psychology. When you’re just one step away from the goal, even if you know you’ll fail, you’d rather try than give up.

Many people who walk through this world have experienced countless failures, and the key point is that they won’t actively give up even when they see the shadow of failure approaching.

One of the most harmful phrases in the world is—”since we’ve already come this far.”

But “having come this far” doesn’t necessarily mean you must “lose”—you can even leave first and find an opportunity to “come back again.”

These two men had misjudged Earth-Ox’s strength from the very beginning, but Earth-Ox had indeed given them a chance. Now in the second round, the two had voluntarily jumped into a dead well, beyond even the gods’ ability to save them.

The two men and Earth-Ox remained in a stalemate for over two minutes. If this were an ordinary tug-of-war, they would have determined a winner by now, but because Earth-Ox couldn’t exert force and could only lie in the pit, the two men gripping the rope found themselves in a difficult dilemma.

“Don’t give up…” Wang Ge gritted his teeth, squeezing out a few words from between them, “Even if she has great strength… there should be a time when she runs out of energy…”

“I’m trying my best…” the fat man also said, “Come on…”

The two men seemed to have given themselves a brief pep talk, thinking it might improve their current deadlock, but a few seconds later their legs began trembling even more violently.

“The divine strength of the ‘Zodiac’…” Qi Xia muttered while stroking his chin, “What exactly is the relationship between this ‘divine strength’ and ‘Heaven’s Vigor’…”

Qi Xia knew that the operating principles of this entire space all came from “Echoes,” or what could be called “immortal techniques.”

If the immortal techniques of “Heavenly-level” and “Divine Beasts” were both “Echoes,” then naturally the “divine strength” possessed by “Earth-level” beings was the same, and this “divine strength” bore a striking resemblance to “Heaven’s Vigor.”

“But ‘Heaven’s Vigor’ includes self-healing,” Qi Xia thought to himself. “The ‘Zodiac’ clearly don’t have ‘self-healing’… Is the problem with the ‘Zodiac’ themselves, or with Zhang Shan…? Could there be other abilities in this place similar to the effect of ‘Heaven’s Vigor’ but without the ‘self-healing’ component…”

He sighed and looked up again at Earth-Ox in the distance.

Earth-Ox wasn’t lying motionless in the pit—just as Qi Xia had anticipated, she too was trembling slightly, though the amplitude was so small it was barely visible.

She was completely using her core abdominal strength to withstand the body weight of these two men.

When she had just swung the four corpses around and then transformed her body into a slingshot to fling them far away, she had already demonstrated her terrifying core strength to the two men.

Unfortunately, they had never understood.

The “Zodiac Ascension Gambling Contract” had once mentioned that anyone who became an Earth-level “Zodiac” would have physical attributes at least ten times stronger than an ordinary person.

There were several key points here: first was “at least,” and second was “ten times.”

In other words, if the person granted “divine strength” had previously undergone rigorous training, their physical attributes upon receiving “divine strength” would far exceed this number. Therefore, “Earth-level Zodiac” also varied in strength.

For example, the obese Earth-Monkey could never defeat the muscular Earth-Tiger through sheer force, no matter how you looked at it.

Similarly, if physical strength was simply increased to “ten times” the original, an ordinary person’s muscles and skeletal structure wouldn’t be able to withstand it, so their physical bodies would also be greatly enhanced. What increased along with this was their body weight—their seemingly frail bodies possessed muscle mass and bone density more than ten times that of ordinary people.

Therefore, trying to pull an “Earth-level” being out of a small pit using a rope was like asking these two men to use a rope to drag a shipping container stuck in a hole.

“Unfortunately, a shipping container doesn’t kill people, but an ‘Earth-level’ does,” Qi Xia said softly.

Just as the two men were about to reach complete exhaustion, they felt the rope in their hands shift slightly.

Because their hands were already burning with a numb, tingling sensation, they didn’t immediately realize whether the rope had moved forward or backward.

“It… it seems to have moved…” Wang Ge struggled to raise his head and said to the fat man behind him, “Put in more effort… that woman is about to give in…”

“I… I’m trying…”

The two men exerted the last of their strength pulling backward on the rope, but Qi Xia keenly noticed that their hands were gradually slipping from their original positions, and the areas their palms had brushed over were dripping with blood.

Their palms had already been torn open from the forceful pulling.