“Never be able to advance?”

Zhang Qiang’s mouth instantly gaped open upon hearing this.

“What do you mean…” he asked somewhat incredulously. “If a ‘Zodiac’ can never advance… then why would they choose to become a ‘Zodiac’? What kind of logic is this…? What would it be for?”

Baiyang pondered for a moment before saying, “For ‘absolute safety.’ As long as you don’t violate the rules, no matter how many times you die in the interview room, you’ll always revive. This is ‘safety.'”

“Absurd… absurd…” Zhang Qiang frowned slightly. “Isn’t this putting the cart before the horse… This isn’t ‘absolute safety’ at all, is it? It seems more like finding a place to hide yourself… If you’re stuck in a room forever… then…”

“Listen to me,” Baiyang said while glancing at the clock from the corner of his eye. “This entire city is one massive deception. Everyone says that after ‘Zodiacs’ become ‘Heaven,’ they can get out, but the truth is no one can possibly become ‘Heaven.'”

As soon as he finished speaking, before Zhang Qiang and I could respond, the sheep behind him seemed stunned.

“What kind of joke are you making… Baiyang…” the sheep said with a trembling voice. “Is what you just said also a lie to deceive us?”

“This one isn’t,” Baiyang said. “And every sentence I’m about to say next won’t be either.”

“What do you mean…” the sheep said with flickering eyes. “If you’re not lying, does that mean the highest we can reach is ‘Earth-level’?”

“Yes.” Baiyang nodded.

The sheep paused for a long while, then reached out to grab Baiyang’s arm. “You’ve left a path for these two people, but what about me…? I don’t want to be ‘Earth-level’ for my entire life.”

“You, I have my own arrangements for,” Baiyang said. “As long as these two ‘Participants’ disappear, you’ll naturally become ‘Earth-level.’ At that time, you can wait for me in the ‘Earth-level’ position. As long as you can survive until that day, I’ll take you down another path.”

After hearing this, the sheep felt something was off. “Wait a minute… Baiyang, what do you mean by ‘wait for you’…? After these two people disappear, won’t you also become ‘Earth-level’?”

“No, not now,” Baiyang shook his head. “I still have many things I haven’t finished handling, so I can’t become ‘Earth-level.'”

“Don’t ask about that,” Baiyang said with a sigh. “I have many matters to handle, and besides, I’m quite pressed for time right now. If you can all agree, this might very well be the last time we meet here.”

“You… wait a minute…” the sheep’s eyes showed some nervousness. “You’re not going to sell me out, are you? Now that the two of us killed Man-Dog, you’re going to disappear on me?”

“No, sheep, listen to me.” Baiyang placed his hand on the sheep’s shoulder, then said softly, “Now I’ll give you the first piece of advice. When you become ‘Earth-level,’ you must establish your game venue in an extremely remote and uninhabited place. Never think about killing people. Try to drag out the time as much as possible.”

“Drag out the time…?”

Baiyang nodded, then continued, “If my guess is correct, for a very long period ahead, there won’t be any intelligent leaders appearing in this city. Even if new people unexpectedly establish organizations, they won’t know the truth of this world. I’m not certain what they’ll do. Very likely they’ll start hunting ‘Zodiacs’ like in other cities. At that time, your situation will become dangerous. You all know… in this kind of place, if the ‘leader’ goes mad, the remaining people might follow him into madness.”

“The ‘Minnow Effect’…” I blurted out.

“What?” Baiyang looked at me.

“I… I said this is the ‘Minnow Effect,'” I said in a low voice. “This viewpoint is like a principle I’ve seen before.”

Baiyang pondered for a moment and said, “Interesting. Can you tell me about it?”

“Uh…” I hadn’t expected someone like Baiyang to have knowledge he didn’t know about. I could only explain seriously, “The ‘Minnow Effect’ refers to how minnows, usually because they’re individually weak, choose to live in groups and take the strongest as the leader of the school. If one artificially turns a strong minnow into a disabled one, this fish will lose its self-control and its movements will become disordered, but the other minnows will still blindly follow as before, becoming disordered along with it.”

Baiyang nodded thoughtfully, then muttered in a low voice, “Right… this is good… this is absolutely perfect… Engraving the brief name of an effect into the subconscious is much more convenient to access than complete knowledge…”

“What…?” I didn’t understand and was slightly stunned.

“Nothing.” Baiyang stared at me. “Yan…”

“Zhichun,” I said.

“Yan Zhichun. Where did you see all these principles and theories?”

“Uh…” I tried hard to recall. “Basically from various scattered books—economics, management, psychology, logical thinking, game theory, and so on…”

“Good, I understand.” Baiyang nodded, as if calculating something in his mind.

At this moment, I felt Baiyang had become even more terrifying.

In order to keep up with the thinking of the strong, I forced myself to finish two books every week and then memorize all knowledge useful to me. This was only to make myself know more and be able to handle more thorny situations.

All the principles and effects in books had brought many insights to my life.

But if Baiyang hadn’t read so many books… it could only mean that unlike someone like me who worked hard through acquired effort and needed ‘knowledge’ as a weapon, his thinking was naturally that of a strong person.

I also understood this principle only after growing up. Some people learn from books about other people’s methods to manufacture cars, while others can truly ‘build cars behind closed doors.’

The sheep beside us didn’t seem to be listening to what we were saying. He just reached up to scratch the mask on his face. Right now, he looked just like when I last saw him—still with an expression of complete disbelief.

“Baiyang, how… how do you know so many secrets about this place?” he asked.

“Don’t ask about that.” Baiyang raised his hand to interrupt him. “You just need to know… whether it’s the ‘Zodiacs’ final task of ‘killing 3,600 people’ or the ‘Participants’ final task of ‘collecting 3,600 Dao,’ neither can be completed. Otherwise, both will bring fatal disaster.”

“We can’t even collect ‘Dao’…?” I asked again.

“That’s right.” Baiyang nodded. “Explaining it does require a lot of time. I’ll try to make a long story short.”

What Baiyang said next once again exceeded my expectations.