Chapter 107: Cheating Transaction

The cold rope tightened instantly.

Zhao Xiaofu had no time to remove the rope before she was hoisted into the air.

She strained to straighten her legs, trying to brace against the stool, but could not reach it; she tried to pry a gap between the rope and her neck, but her oxygen-starved brain lost control of her body.

In reality, she merely kicked and thrashed uncontrollably, her hands flailing aimlessly…

Su Mi, near the bookshelf, saw this and immediately moved to save her—but the moment he stirred, a whip lashed out and flung him across the room.

Su Mi’s side burned with pain; for a moment, he could not rise.

On Wu Xian and the other two’s table, a fresh whip mark now appeared—Liu Xiucai’s warning to them: do not interfere in Zhao Xiaofu’s death, or you’ll ruin his amusement.

Jiang Xianglan had finished writing two checked essays; now came the problem of how to pass them to Wu Xian and the others.

Moments later.

This might mean Liu Xiucai, like the toad, had excellent motion vision but terrible static vision!

If true, there was plenty of room for manipulation!

To survive in the Study Tomb, perhaps all one needed was to stall until dawn—avoid checking lessons, avoid selecting exams—and thus evade most risks.

Wu Xian wrote a line on paper, then slowly lifted it to display to Liu Xiucai—who remained utterly unmoved by the words.

Du E and Wu Xian began writing on their papers simultaneously.

Simply handing the paper over would earn a whip, and the hard-won essays would be torn to shreds; but Liu Xiucai kept his gaze fixed—there was no way to slip it over unnoticed.

But merely surviving was not enough for Wu Xian.

While waiting for Jiang Xianglan to write, Wu Xian began scribbling on the rice paper with his brush—after all, his writing could never satisfy Liu Xiucai, so he might as well just give up.

Wu Xian exhaled deeply, shook his head, and cast aside his turbulent thoughts.

Wu Xian had written: “I can fetch the birthday gift for you. Can you distract his gaze?”

Both wrote again simultaneously.

Su Mi slammed his fist into the floor and rose silently from the ground.

Du E’s face was expressionless; she stared at the corpse for a long while.

In this cruel Fudi, everything must be weighed by profit and survival; blindly wasting your few remaining tools on strangers with already low survival odds only lowers your own chances.

Having witnessed this prolonged death.

He suddenly thought of something.

In the Fudi, he had seen many deaths, but never found them special.

Liu Xiucai was now in high spirits.

His bulging eyes gleamed with satisfaction; Zhao Xiaofu’s final struggles were the most beautiful dance to him.

“Master Liu is truly a divine being!”

But if one followed Liu Xiucai’s rules.

Jiang Xianglan covered her mouth and wept, unable to look toward the partition—she and Zhao Xiaofu had been close friends, otherwise they wouldn’t have traveled together; but under the threat of Liu Xiucai’s whip, she dared not even cry out loud, let alone save her friend.

Without a word, Du E understood Wu Xian’s intent.

The mindset of all five present had shifted slightly.

Du E’s written words required deciphering: “I can knock over his food box. Can you help me pass an essay?”

After communicating with Du E, Wu Xian, under Liu Xiucai’s very eyes, communicated with the still-shaken Jiang Xianglan.

Jiang Xianglan, already terrified of fetching the birthday gift after Zhao Xiaofu’s fate, nodded frantically the moment she saw Wu Xian’s words.

After the test was complete.

But Wu Xian’s gaze flickered slightly.

He had once told Jing Ke: nothing was worth his sacrifice; so even if he lived again, Wu Xian would still watch Zhao Xiaofu die.

Unlike the four humans.

Only Qi Zhiyong’s death had shaken Wu Xian slightly.

“What’s different this time…?”

Wu Xian did not regret failing to save her.

Du E caught sight of the words on the paper—her expression cracked.

In this Fudi, the order of entering the tomb mounds matters—that means no tomb mound is isolated.

“Perhaps because she wasn’t evil, and I had the ability to save her, yet did nothing—and watched her die slowly…”

Wu Xian wrote: “Yes!”

In the flickering candlelight, the pale yellow glow cast Zhao Xiaofu’s hanging form—a sight that chilled the heart.

Perhaps the harvest from the Study Tomb will affect their survival in another tomb mound, or determine access to some reward; whichever the case, if Wu Xian fails to obtain the birthday gift, he will surely lose out.

Wu Xian wanted to use this method to transmit information, so he first ran a test.

With this hypothesis, Wu Xian recalled how Liu Xiucai had inspected Su Mi and Zhao Xiaofu’s lessons earlier.

Thus, Wu Xian and the other three could only watch helplessly as Zhao Xiaofu’s struggles weakened, her strength faded, her eyes bulged, her tongue protruded, and she died in a horrific, agonizing posture.

Moments later, both slowly lifted their papers.

“Write me two short essays, and I’ll fetch the birthday gift for you!”

Liu Xiucai reached into the food box, pulled out something, crunched it in his mouth with a crunching sound, foul juice coating his lips, then sucked it all back with a thick, fleshy tongue.

“If my guess about Aunt Liu being a snake demon is correct, then the fellow who teaches the Young Master and still earns respect might also be some kind of demon!”

But choosing what to test was tricky: insulting Liu Xiucai might anger him; writing nonsense might make him ignore it—or worse, sense the intent; only lavish, groveling flattery could test whether he could actually see the words on the paper.

With Wu Xian’s chicken-scratch handwriting, he could never write an essay meeting the standard, and thus could never earn the chance to fetch the birthday gift.

Wu Xian’s expression turned dark, his eyes now holding a flash of brutality and killing intent.

The snack he ate was unmistakably a plump, well-fed southern cockroach!

This sight disgusted Jiang Xianglan and Du E terribly.

Du E drew a checkmark.

On the paper, seven large characters were clearly written.

As he looked at the rice paper, he kept shaking it!

Either he encountered death only after the corpse was already still, or he was powerless to help, or the dead deserved it—sometimes Wu Xian had even killed them himself.

A good performance is very appetizing.

So Wu Xian intended to break Liu Xiucai’s rules.

Even though Wu Xian understood all this, he still felt a strange heaviness in his chest.

Zhao Xiaofu’s death was not shocking—it was something else.

The most important thing now was ensuring his own survival and maximizing gains within this room.

“Fat head, big mouth, covered in pimples, bulging eyes, bloated belly, eats cockroaches, whips perfectly…”

“This Liu Xiucai might be a toad!”

Wu Xian had prepared for this.

He gave Du E a glance—the cheating operation began.

(End of Chapter)