“Question five…” Yaya’s voice, which by now had Ye Tianxie’s nerves on a knife edge, sounded in his ear again. “This one’s really easy, so big brother had better listen carefully! Mmm… does big brother know who the Mercenary King of the Lost Continent was a hundred years ago?”

Ye Tianxie’s whole body jolted, and the confidence that had been battered out of him seemed in that instant to come flooding back. He straightened his chest and said, brimming with certainty, “I do. It was Ren Zhanqing.”

Yaya clapped her small hands and said, laughing, “Wah! Big brother is so clever! Then the question is this… if Ren Zhanqing were still alive today, what would be different about the Lost Continent now?”

Having finally hit on a question he could half answer, he could not afford to fail this one. Ye Tianxie thought it over very carefully for a long while, then said, “If Ren Zhanqing were still alive now, the Lost Continent would have a new and strongest ‘Heaven Soul mercenary corps.’ Its Mercenary Guild and its mercenary teams would certainly be far more flourishing and far stronger than they are today.”

“Wrong!” Another bucket of cold water came down over Ye Tianxie’s head. “If Ren Zhanqing were still alive now… what would be different about the Lost Continent is… there’d be one more living person in it!”

Ye Tianxie: “……”

It struck him all at once that he seemed to have wasted the last twenty-odd years of his life.

“Question six… Ten questions, and you have to get five right to enter the Ice-Severed Wolf Den, and big brother has already got five wrong! If you get even one of the next five wrong, then you can’t go in today! Listen carefully! Question six is… why can a mouse fly?!”

Black lines ran down Ye Tianxie’s forehead. “How would I know… a mouse can’t fly at all!”

Yaya: “That’s wrong! A mouse can fly, because it ate an immortality pill.”

Ye Tianxie: “……” What kind of answer was that!

Yaya: “So then, big brother, why can a snake fly?”

Ye Tianxie answered with no expression whatsoever, “Because it ate an immortality pill.”

Yaya: “Wrong! Because it ate the mouse.”

Ye Tianxie: …… (utterly speechless)

Yaya: “So then, why can an eagle fly?”

Ye Tianxie’s face went wooden. “Because it ate the snake!”

Yaya: “Wrong wrong wrong! Big brother, you really are so stupid — because an eagle could fly in the first place!”

Ye Tianxie: “￥#×%%#&￥！……”

Yaya blinked her bright eyes once and said, lips pushed out, “Big brother, out of ten questions you’ve already got six wrong in a row. So Yaya can’t send you to the Ice-Severed Wolf Den today. Because Big Sister Creator God said that if you’re not clever enough, the really scary wolf inside will eat you up. Big brother can come again tomorrow… Oh! And big brother has to remember to bring enough money tomorrow, because the magic power in the Snow-Treading Shoes only lasts twelve hours, so if you come again tomorrow you’ll have to buy a new pair.”

Looking at that plump little pink face and those innocent eyes, Ye Tianxie finally understood what a profiteer was… A thousand gold a pair, and you had no choice but to buy them; and having bought them you might well not get to use them, since all they bought you was the right to answer her questions. And if you failed to pass the questions… next time you had to buy another pair.

You little brat… would it kill you to let people buy them after they pass?!

“All right. Goodbye, little sister.” Ye Tianxie forced up a badly deformed smile and made his farewells, then turned away with a heart full of resentment — but instead of portaling out, he walked off toward a corner.

“Bye-bye, big brother… Huh? Big brother, where are you going? This place is closed off, you can’t get out.” Yaya called out the reminder without getting down off her snowman.

With his back to Yaya, Ye Tianxie gripped the Hour of Fate and said in a low voice, “Guoguo, come out here, quickly.”

“Wuu… no! There’s a horrible smell out there.” Guoguo’s timid little voice came into his mind almost at once.

“It’s all right, we left that place ages ago. It’s very pretty outside now — snowfields. I’m sure you’ve never seen them,” Ye Tianxie coaxed.

After a brief silence, a small ball of white light appeared on Ye Tianxie’s shoulder. Little Guoguo edged out beside him, cringing, pinching her own small nose tightly shut — and then her eyes went wide all at once, her mouth fell open, the hand pinching her nose let go, and out of her came a delighted “Waaah!”

“Snow… so this is snow? It’s so pretty!”

To the north here was a high, snow-covered broken valley, and below the break lay the vague outline of a cave mouth blocked in front by an enormous wall of ice — that would be the entrance to the Ice-Severed Wolf Den. Everywhere else was a vast expanse of white, snow blanketing the earth, and the occasional vegetation or tree was likewise covered or blossoming with snow, giving off a beauty at once pure and magnificent.

It snowed every winter in Jinghua, and when Ye Tianxie was small, winter and snowy days were the things he feared most in the world, because they were when he came closest to death. Later she appeared, and it was watching snow with her that wore away the frozen despair snow had always brought him, until he could see the beauty in it instead. The snowscape here was purer than the real world’s and far more striking to the eye. Ye Tianxie did not go so far as to be amazed by it, but little Guoguo, who was clearly seeing snow for the first time, was plainly entranced… For after all, pure things were what she loved best, and what she most wanted to be near.

Ye Tianxie kept his patience and did not interrupt, letting her take in the white world around them, listening to the crisp little cries and bursts of laughter she gave now and then. Three minutes later, Ye Tianxie finally came out with the reason he had called her.

“Guoguo, come down here first… Do you have any lollipops on you?”

Drifting down out of the air, Guoguo heard that and was instantly on the alert. She asked nervously, “Master… what are you planning… You’re a grown-up, you’re not allowed to snatch a little girl’s lollipops.”

The corner of Ye Tianxie’s brow twitched. He went on, “Look, that little big sister over there… no, little sister. She looks even younger than you, and she’s so cute. Shall we give her a few lollipops to eat?”

Guoguo looked twelve or thirteen however you counted it, and Yaya, however you looked at her, was a yellow-haired little slip of a girl of eight or nine… who was, of course, very much more cunning than your average little girl.

“No! No no! The lollipops are all mine and I can’t give them to anyone else… I just can’t!” Guoguo hurriedly backed off a considerable distance, shaking her head hard, watching him with her guard fully up, for all the world as though afraid he was about to grab them.

“All right.” He had known that was how it would go. Getting something Guoguo liked out of her hands was flatly harder than pulling a tooth out of a tiger’s mouth… Going by countless past experiences, anything he wanted from Guoguo had to be paid for at N times the value. Ye Tianxie said helplessly, “If Guoguo gives me three lollipops now, then this evening I’ll go and buy Guoguo a hundred more… plus I’ll have your Sister Feifei make lots and lots of the desserts you like best. How about it?”

Whip! Three lollipops appeared in Guoguo’s hands at once and were delivered into Ye Tianxie’s, and she said with a giggle, “I knew Master was the best to Guoguo! You have to keep your word, or Guoguo will be very very angry!”

The Guoguo who had been all worry and fear a moment ago turned remarkably happy and pleased with herself in an instant, and she handed the lollipops over so fast she might have had them ready in advance — waiting only for him to say that sentence. Looking at the three lollipops in his hand, Ye Tianxie could not help sighing inwardly. Little girls were supposed to be a byword for purity and innocence; how was it that the Guoguo at his side and the Yaya he had met today were both craftier than foxes…

Lollipop: a sweet that children like to eat. Effect: on use, hunger gauge -2, HP recovery 5.

The lollipop’s attributes were feeble enough to be beneath notice — but if this lollipop had appeared in front of an ordinary player, it would inevitably have caused an uproar. That such a thing as a lollipop existed in this world was nothing in itself. The crucial point was this lollipop’s wrapper…

If someone said this lollipop had been brought here from the real world in the first place, who would believe it? A hundred percent of people would take it for a joke.

The Hour of Fate appearing in the World of Fate; Guoguo moving freely between the World of Fate and the real world; and the ability she plainly possessed to carry objects from either world freely into the other… Ye Tianxie had known for a long time that what these things pointed to had to be some extremely terrible truth.

His instincts told him that if this truth were ever uncovered… what followed might well overturn heaven and earth. The things Prometheus had said before the World of Fate opened, and his uncanny suicide and his last words… and the name of this game world — Fate!

While other people played the game for the game’s sake, he had been quietly seeking that one answer that must not be uncovered.

That said, the only thing Guoguo had ever brought over from the real world so far was lollipops. More than once Ye Tianxie had tried every kind of coaxing and inducement to get her to bring something else into the World of Fate and see what startling effect it might have — and every time she refused, lips pushed out, on what were evidently firm principles… After failing repeatedly, Ye Tianxie had had to give it up.

He put two of the lollipops back in his pack and, holding the third, walked over to the little girl Yaya, who had been watching him this whole time without blinking, full of curiosity. Seeing him come closer, Yaya asked curiously, “Big brother, why haven’t you left yet? You got all your questions wrong, so if you want to get into the Ice-Severed Wolf Den it’ll have to be tomorrow… Eh? What’s that pretty thing in your hand?”

“It’s candy… it’s called a lollipop.” Ye Tianxie brought the lollipop up in front of Yaya’s eyes as he said it. Sitting on the snowman, Yaya was just barely at the same height as he was. “This is something you can eat, and it’s very good. Try it and see.”

“Something you can eat?” Yaya blinked once, then raised her head and said warily, “Big brother, Big Sister Creator God said you’re not allowed to accept bribes. So no matter what, Yaya isn’t letting you into the Ice-Severed Wolf Den today.”

(End of Chapter 188)