Chapter 318: A Chaotic Dance of Demons

Here is a question. From childhood to adulthood, we have watched many wuxia dramas, but the number of political strategem dramas we've watched is pitifully small—probably just a handful. Why is that?

The reason is simple. Wuxia dramas can bring visual impact and emotional fluctuations, filling people with yearning.

Political strategem dramas are different. They need to be filmed to allow for two different interpretations. Simply put, they have to be entertaining enough for those who don't see the underlying strategems, while also allowing some people to see the political maneuvering involved. The difficulty is imaginable.

For example, when Chen Ran was alive, he once discussed Journey to the West with other authors.

They unanimously agreed that the arc of the Bottomless Pit, involving the Mouse Demon, was the ceiling of battle of wits: the counterattack of a nobody.

Just look at the beginning and the end.

The beginning: The Mouse Demon lived in the Bottomless Pit, arguably the lowest tier of demons.

The end: The Mouse Demon was brought to the Heavenly Court by Li Jing as his adopted daughter.

The process in between was the Mouse Demon using Tang Sanzang as leverage to engage in extreme back-and-forth tug-of-war with the gods of the Heavenly Court and the Buddhas filling the sky. Ultimately, she succeeded in her gambit and achieved class transcendence.

First of all, the Mouse Demon's angle of entry was extremely precise: she wanted to marry Tang Sanzang.

With 【Marriage】 as an excuse, even if her gambit failed, it wouldn't be considered a major crime.

However, this move perfectly grabbed hold of Spirit Mountain's vital weakness. After all, Tang Sanzang was a monk. Marrying would mean breaking his vows, meaning he would no longer be suitable to be the scripture seeker.

Calculating defeat before calculating victory, striking the snake at its seven inches—these two points alone were enough to show the Mouse Demon's seasoned ruthlessness in setting up a scheme.

Secondly, the Bottomless Pit was intricate and complex, yet Sun Wukong just happened to find the memorial tablets the Mouse Demon had enshrined for Li Jing and his son.

And that wasn't all. One must know that the scripture-seeking team was under surveillance the entire time by the Six Ding and Six Jia, the Five Directions Guardians, the Four-Value Merit Gods, and so on.

In other words, when Sun Wukong learned that the Mouse Demon was Li Jing's adopted daughter, the gods and Buddhas filling the sky basically knew it too.

But despite this 【Knowing】, they had to pretend on the surface that they didn't know.

Then came the tug-of-war between Sun Wukong and the Mouse Demon. There wasn't much to say about this: a crazy gambler holding a nuke (Tang Sanzang's purity) and displaying a mutually assured destruction deterrence.

At this point, emotionally and reasonably, it couldn't be brought out into the open, otherwise Buddhism couldn't afford to lose face. So 【Knowing】 = not knowing.

Sun Wukong had suffered the severe beatings of society; he saw through it thoroughly. Therefore, after going to Heaven, he went straight to Li Jing to solve it 【Privately】.

Next, Li Jing descended to the mortal realm, and the Mouse Demon came out of her pit. There was also a detail: when Sun Wukong rescued Tang Sanzang, all the demons in the Bottomless Pit inexplicably died.

This was perfect; the Mouse Demon even had her tracks completely wiped clean.

Next was the problem Li Jing had to face. Or rather, what attitude should he have towards this adopted daughter with whom he had zero familial affection?

Actually, his attitude wasn't important. The gods and Buddhas filling the sky all knew he had an adopted daughter. If he continued to leave her in the mortal realm, or if he beat her to death, how would the other gods and Buddhas view him?

Moreover, the crime the Mouse Demon committed was merely liking Tang Sanzang.

Then, Li Jing's choice was only one: take the Mouse Demon to Heaven and treat her as a true adopted daughter so that no one could pick out a single fault. At the very least, he had to put up a full front on the surface.

At this point, the Mouse Demon achieved class transcendence, and whether it was the scripture-seeking team, the gods and Buddhas filling the sky, or Li Jing, none of them could do anything about her.

This was like a beggar transforming into a dynasty's princess through a gambit.

It's extremely exaggerated!

Therefore, to achieve class transcendence, you first have to see the opportunity. On the crest of a wave, even a pig can fly.

But to forge iron, one must be strong themselves. After all, when the wave passes, a pig that flies too high...

Will fall to its death!

The Mouse Demon saw the opportunity and was strong herself (intelligence); only then could she succeed.

Let's review her layout.

It really all boiled down to one point...

Point to Surface Expansion!

Using the single point that Tang Sanzang could not marry, she engaged in extreme back-and-forth tug-of-war with the Heavenly Court and Spirit Mountain, trapping the forces of both sides in her scheme.

(The author isn't padding the word count, but rather sorting out the strategic thought process of this Secret Room.)

…

In this Secret Room, who was Tang Sanzang?

Qiu Yinong!

There was no doubt about this. Qiu Yinong's Wheel of Time could reset time.

The cats wanted to keep her until the end.

The mice wanted to send her out.

Therefore, despite the entire gambit seeming extremely complex, it was all actually Point to Surface Expansion centered around Qiu Yinong.

That was why the previous gambits had occurred.

The mice collectively hiding on the first floor, wanting to send Qiu Yinong out.

This was the first layer.

The ordinary Four-Star player, that is, Qiu Hua, deduced the first layer and backhandedly laid down a second layer, trapping the mice on the first floor.

Under the guise of optimizing the search, he trapped the five mice on the first floor, while he took Qiu Yinong upstairs to search. Because only Lin Xuan was upstairs, as long as they were careful, they could keep Qiu Yinong until the end.

This was the second layer.

However, Lin Xuan also deduced the second layer and backhandedly laid down a third layer.

But unfortunately, this third layer was deduced by the mice on the first floor. Gao Lan ran the fastest, intercepted the third layer, and backhandedly laid down a fourth layer.

Lin Xuan deduced the fourth layer and assisted Gao Lan in completing the fourth layer.

And the mice on the first floor deduced Gao Lan's fourth layer, found that he couldn't pull off any flashy plays, and so laid down a fifth layer.

In other words, the gambits so far had a total of five layers of The Winning Move.

Moreover, from the above, Gao Lan didn't know of the existence of the fifth layer, and Lin Xuan didn't know of the existence of the fifth layer either.

Chen Ran, the Youth, Big Gold Tooth, Qiu Hua, and Short and Fat—they only knew of the existence of the first, second, and fifth layers. As for the third and fourth layers, they were just their deductions; lacking objective proof, they existed as uncontrollable variables.

Next, what they had to do was handle the layers they each knew about well.

Then the question arose again.

The first and second layers were very easy to understand, but what exactly were the third, fourth, and fifth layers?

From a God's-eye view, the third, fourth, and fifth layers were hidden within the following information:

One: The Secret Room went dark once.

Two: Gao Lan sent a cat away in the last room on the 18th floor.

Three: Qiu Yinong discovered Lin Xuan in the last room on the eighth floor.

Four: The cats didn't find Gao Lan during their first sweep of the 2nd to 18th floors.

Five: Did Zhou Zhan clear the stage?

As long as one thought clearly about what specifically happened within these five pieces of information, perhaps they could deduce what the third, fourth, and fifth layers were.

However, in reality, the people who truly knew these five layers were highly likely only...

The players who had already cleared the stage.

Even the schemers themselves didn't know if these five layers had all been completely constructed.

Just like the political strategem dramas mentioned above.

Some people only saw the surface-level plot; some people saw the top-tier political strategems hidden within.

If it were a TV drama, there actually wouldn't be any difference between these two types of people.

There was no superior or inferior, since there are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people's eyes.

But, this wasn't a TV drama. This was a life-and-death struggle. There was no such thing as a thousand Hamlets; there was only one true answer. A mistake in deduction...

Meant death!

Chen Ran, Qiu Yinong, Lin Xuan, Big Gold Tooth, Short and Fat, the Youth, Qiu Hua—they all firmly believed in their own deductions, and they were all players with arrogant hearts.

'Me? Avoid their sharp edges?'

'Let's wait and see whose hands the deer dies in!'

This led to what was originally supposed to be a setup to focus fire on the Five-Star Youth devolving into a chaotic dance of demons, as everyone's thought logic was different and they each intervened in the gambit on their own terms.