Zhao Yi: "You brat, don't make it sound so tragic, okay? In the end are you comforting me, or am I comforting you?"

Lin Shuyou: "It doesn't matter anymore."

Zhao Yi: "Fine."

Lin Shuyou had originally planned to carry Zhao Yi back to where he was, but at Zhao Yi's request, he carried him over to stand in front of Brother Xiao Yuan.

Zhao Yi rubbed his wrist, then touched the spot over his heart, and said in surprise:

"Hey, the crack of my Gate of Life and Death has changed a bit."

The crack of the Gate of Life and Death had been stimulated by a real brush with life and death, and was no longer the same as before.

Li Zhiyuan: "Now is not the time to think about gains. If you die, everything goes to waste."

Zhao Yi steadied his mind. After a while, he spread his hands, looked at his palm lines, then raised both hands to his face to feel his own bones.

"It feels like something's been left inside my body. I need some time to examine exactly what it is."

"Then what were you spacing out for just now."

"Li, not everyone can be like you, able to cut off all feelings and desires."

Li Zhiyuan lifted his head and glanced at Zhao Yi, then lowered it again, crumpling all the papers in front of him into a ball, with a sheet of Yellow Paper stuffed in the middle. Once it self‑ignited, it set all the papers ablaze.

"Hey, don't!" Zhao Yi hurriedly bent down. Unwilling to step on them, he directly used his hands to slap out the flames on top. "I was wrong, okay? I shouldn't have said that about you!"

The rescue was in time. Though the edges were all burned, most of what was drawn on them was preserved.

In every drawing the person was him, with all kinds of lines appearing on his body, and they all had one thing in common: there was a black dot between his brows.

Zhao Yi immediately closed his eyes, his hands forming a Seal. The crack of the Gate of Life and Death opened, faster than Zhao Yi had expected.

But Zhao Yi had no mind to care about that right now. He simply lifted his hands upward, and a black mark surfaced between his brows. The exact pattern couldn't be made out; it looked like a drop of ink, exactly the same as in the boy's drawings.

"What is this?" Zhao Yi rubbed it with his right hand, while his left hand calculated. "It's, it's, it's…"

Li Zhiyuan: "A Puppet Seal. Over in the Underworld they probably call it 'substituting death and returning to the living'."

Zhao Yi: "You figured it out long ago?"

Li Zhiyuan: "Actually you could have seen it long ago too."

"I can't remove it. It's like it's locked onto me. That shouldn't be possible. How could they leave something like this on me in such a short time? And also…"

Zhao Yi's gaze narrowed slightly as he began to activate it. The black dot between his brows kept darkening then lightening, as if flickering.

"…there's a response, a very strong connection. How did they do that? It shouldn't be possible."

Li Zhiyuan: "The Book of Life and Death."

Zhao Yi: "But my name's already been crossed out."

Li Zhiyuan: "But you didn't die."

Zhao Yi: "Then how can it resonate this clearly, like it's specially targeted and tied to me? Don't tell me the Book of Life and Death has only my name written on it?"

Li Zhiyuan: "There's a whole bunch of names there. You're not eye‑catching at all. But the one that gets rubbed out instead becomes the most conspicuous."

Zhao Yi: "So, the next stick of incense is Puppet? They're going to turn me into a puppet?"

Li Zhiyuan: "Originally I couldn't guess it, could only pick at random via elimination. But you died and came back, and that instead nailed down the form of the second stick of incense."

Zhao Yi continued flipping through those drawings. They were all methods of breaking the game that the boy had previously deduced. Thinking back on the boy burning the papers earlier, it was clearly not because he was mad at Zhao Yi's teasing.

"Hold up, Li, you deduced this many and all of them failed?"

"Mm."

"What the hell are you doing!"

"Hm?"

"Aren't you supposed to be capable? Aren't you supposed to be amazing? Yet now, when you clearly know what I'm about to face, you can't deduce a way to break it?

And these methods drawn on the papers, I think they're all pretty good. Can't we at least try them?"

"If we try them you'll die. No point."

"You…"

"Have you forgotten how fast everything came when the first stick of incense burned out?"

"I remember."

"When everything can be triggered instantly, any amount of prior arrangements becomes utterly flimsy. Also, for other people who get hit by this Puppetry Technique, there actually is a chance to remedy and break it. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

Pre‑emptively restrain the limbs, Seal the consciousness—then even if they become a puppet under control, they can at least put up some resistance.

But your consciousness, because of the crack of the Gate of Life and Death, I'm not confident I can Seal it, and you yourself probably can't either.

And if you are controlled, and the other side orders you to kill yourself, then even if your limbs can't move, you still have too many options to carry out suicide.

In short, according to my deduction, if we go by the strength of the first stick of incense, any preparation in advance is wasted effort, and remediation afterward will be too late."

Zhao Yi: "Another dead end? Has he really become that powerful?"

Li Zhiyuan: "Not him—them. Didn't we already confirm it's six of them."

Zhao Yi: "But this is way too ridiculous. With a method like this, doesn't that mean they can kill whoever they want, whoever they want dead has to die?"

Li Zhiyuan: "When King Yan calls for you to die at the third watch, who dares keep you till the fifth? Doesn't that fit perfectly?"

The boy paused, then continued, "Also, we can't fall into a thinking trap. They can't leave Fengdu, they can't come out, but the strength of the skills they use isn't reduced because of that. And with six of them behind it, this skill's strength… is already way over the proper limit.

With that kind of disparity, the way they look at us is like the way we look at ordinary people.

We have countless ways to make an ordinary person die without resistance and without a sound.

Likewise, for them looking at us, it's the same."

Zhao Yi: "Then what are we going to Fengdu for, when the gap's this big?"