Yaya jumped in before Ye Tianxie could answer. “Yaa! Of course it counts, because you and big brother are together. Big sister, do you want to answer Yaya’s questions too? Then listen carefully — there are five questions left, and if you get even one more wrong, then you really won’t be allowed in. Question six… A chicken and a goose fall into an ice pit at the same time. The chicken freezes to death, but the goose lives. Why is that?”

Su Feifei glanced at Ye Tianxie, who looked thoroughly torn, and answered. “That one’s so easy. Because that goose was a penguin, and penguins aren’t afraid of the cold!”

Ye Tianxie: “……”

“Yaa! Big sister is so clever, she got it right.” Yaya took the lollipop out of her mouth and stared at Su Feifei in astonishment. “Then question seven: what can you hit that doesn’t take the least bit of strength?”

“The hay, obviously. Hitting the hay doesn’t take any strength at all.” Su Feifei had the answer out at once.

Ye Tianxie: -_-！！

“Yaa! Big sister, you’ve got it right again.” Yaya was more astonished still, and a little uneasy now as well — because by the rule Big Sister Creator God had laid down, they were not supposed to be allowed in today, and if Big Sister Creator God ever found out…

“Now listen carefully to question eight… There are six apples in a little wooden basket, and six children each get one — but there’s still one left in the basket. Why is that?”

“That one’s easier still. Because one of the children carried off the basket with his apple still inside it — so there’s still an apple in the basket.”

Ye Tianxie: “！@#￥%……”

“Big sister… you got it right again. You’re so amazing.” Little Yaya was plainly getting nervous now, nervous enough that she stopped working at the lollipop altogether. She thought hard for a good long while before going on. “Then… question nine. One day Xiao Ming (Xiao Ming: why is it always me? What did I ever do to you?) was riding on Big Ox’s back, and they passed a meadow grown thick with the most tender green grass — so why didn’t Big Ox eat any of it?”

Su Feifei thought for a moment and answered, all smiles, “Because Big Ox is a person, and of course people don’t eat grass.”

Ye Tianxie: （⊙o⊙）……

This time it was Ye Tianxie’s turn to say nothing, standing alone in the freezing wind watching a girl and a woman trade question for answer, question for answer. Every question that came and went dealt his fragile heart another brutal blow… He had always fancied himself second to none for cleverness, and the two of them had not left an inch of him unscathed.

“Wuu… big sister, you’re so clever, you’re much cleverer than idiot big brother. You got it right again.” Little Yaya’s voice was so aggrieved it was one step short of a sob. She bitterly regretted having jumped in a moment ago to say that Su Feifei could answer. If she’d known… if she’d known, she should never have let her answer at all.

“There’s one last question left, isn’t there, little sister?” Su Feifei brought her pretty face in close, the corners of her mouth curving.

Brain teasers had been the game she and her mother played most when she was small. Her mother had been gone a long time now, but whenever she was alone she would still hunt down all sorts of these funny little puzzles, or make up amusing ones of her own to entertain herself, quietly calling back the happiness of those days and the sound of her mother’s voice, the look of her face… She was, frankly, a master among masters at this. She had worked out how questions like these were built when she was very young indeed, and Yaya’s were child’s play to her — the simplest kind there was.

“Then… question ten…” Little Yaya thought about it very, very seriously for a long while, as though ransacking her head for the hardest one she had, and at last said, “Xiao Ming (Xiao Ming: Yaya! You and I are not finished!) writes his girlfriend seven letters every day and posts them all together, but his girlfriend Xiao Li only ever gets one letter a day. Why is that?”

“That’s easy. Because Xiao Ming is a terrible flirt, and he’s got seven girlfriends! Am I right?”

Ye Tianxie: （>_<）

Yaya had spent half the day squeezing that question out of herself, and Su Feifei answered it offhandedly the instant it was out. Yaya’s face drooped, but the lollipop stayed clamped tight in her hand.

“Five right and we get to go in, don’t we? We’ve already got five right, so can we go in now?” Su Feifei said it to a thoroughly crushed Yaya with an air of triumph — and Ye Tianxie’s face was doing something that made it hard not to laugh outright. She knew perfectly well that his failure to answer any of them said nothing about his intelligence next to hers; it was only that he had never come across them before and had no idea what shape the answers were supposed to take. Ask a man used to walking in straight lines, used to solving a problem by the fastest and most direct route, to go around a bend, and of course he ties himself in knots.

“Big sister, you’re so amazing… wuu, Yaya keeps her word, she’ll let you in.” Yaya said it, timid and hard done by, and moved one small hand. There was an enormous crash, and the wall of ice in front of the Ice-Severed Wolf Den came thundering down, laying open a cave mouth with a white mist of cold drifting out of it.

“Goodbye, little sister… Tianxie, let’s go.” Su Feifei said her goodbyes to a pitiful Yaya, who looked as though she had done something monstrously wrong, then tugged at a somewhat dazed Ye Tianxie and started toward the Ice-Severed Wolf Den.

“Feifei, how did you know the answers to all of those… had you heard those questions before?” Ye Tianxie asked, feebly. Five straight for him… plus yesterday’s six, eleven questions wrong in a row, against Su Feifei’s five out of five. A gap like that — he didn’t want to live.

“No.” Su Feifei blinked her big eyes at him, then gave a small laugh to herself. “Hee. Tianxie, there’s a good boy… don’t be upset, it’s perfectly normal that you couldn’t answer them, it doesn’t mean you aren’t clever at all.”

Ye Tianxie: ╭（╯^╰）╮

“Ding… Your friend ‘Shield That Breaks a Thousand Armies’ has come online.”

“Ding… Your friend ‘Autumn Waters’ has come online.”

He was just about to reach the mouth of the Ice-Severed Wolf Den when the prompts sounded in his ear. He hurriedly pulled Su Feifei to a stop, got Zuo Pojun on the communicator and called, “Pojun, get to the Ice-Severed Wolf Den, right now — right now… oh, and remember to tell Qiushui not to come. It’d be dangerous for him.”

“Ahh… got it, right away!!”

He put the communicator away and walked back over to Yaya, who was looking thoroughly puzzled. “Here, little sister. One more pair of Snow-Treading Shoes…”

Elsewhere, Zuo Pojun put down his communicator and let out an excited roar. “Oh hahahaha, Second Brother’s calling me to the Ice-Severed Wolf Den for a quest, and off I go!!”

“Bingo! Second Brother’s summons will forever be the most beautiful sound in all the world. Dear Third Brother, kindly spare me three minutes — I really must go back and restock my pitifully depleted arrows and potions.” Murong Qiushui was flushed with delight, that lovely face of his like peach blossom in full bloom, a beauty beyond anything of this world; had he then given one coquettish smile, it would have been more than enough to one-shot any male player walking past on the spot.

“Hah! Go on, go on. Second Brother made a special point of it anyway — only me, and it’d be dangerous if you came.” Zuo Pojun finished and was gone in the blink of an eye.

“OH!! No! You can’t do this to me!!” After a brief silence, Murong Qiushui, like a wife abandoned and left to pine, let out a cry of the most heartbroken grief.

Before long, Zuo Pojun had appeared in front of the Ice-Severed Wolf Den. He spotted Ye Tianxie and Su Feifei waiting there straight away and came trotting eagerly over. “Second Brother. Young Mistress Su. I’m here.”

“Mm. Change your shoes and we’ll go in.” Ye Tianxie traded him the black Snow-Treading Shoes he had just bought.

“Oh. Right.” Ugly beyond belief though they were, Zuo Pojun got them on smartly all the same and followed Ye Tianxie toward the Ice-Severed Wolf Den. Passing Yaya, he gave her several long looks and greeted her while he was at it. “Hello, little sister… goodbye, little sister.”

Yaya: “……”

The Ice-Severed Wolf Den was very cold. That was Zuo Pojun’s first impression of it, and Su Feifei’s.

The Ice-Severed Wolf Den was very beautiful… that was their second. It was a world made wholly of ice, and its purity — a beauty in which not one flaw could be found — was something nobody could grasp without standing in it. Take the cold out of the place and it would have been perfect.

“Second Brother, are you telling me that yesterday, the first time you came here… you failed?” Zuo Pojun asked, astonished. Knowing Ye Tianxie as he did, for even him to come away from a first attempt empty-handed… how terrifying did the difficulty have to be?

Back then, Ye Tianxie had killed even a little Immortal Beast in the space of a blink.

“Mm. Which is why I need your help.” Ye Tianxie said it looking straight ahead. The first stretch of the Ice-Severed Wolf Den was passage and nothing else — no monsters, no danger of any kind.

“This…” Zuo Pojun shook his head, a little embarrassed. “Second Brother, you know what I’m capable of. If even you couldn’t get through it, the most I’ll be here is cannon fodder… and you’ll probably have to split your attention to protect me.”

“Don’t you worry. My Tianxie is very clever, he’d never be silly enough to call a big fellow like you out here just to be cannon fodder. Just do what my Tianxie tells you when the time comes,” Su Feifei put in. On the word “clever,” the muscles of Ye Tianxie’s face gave a slight twitch.

“Oh. Right, right.”

This eldest son of the Zuo family, who would go berserk if anyone else so much as ruffled him, had always been like a plain, honest, biddable little fat boy in front of Ye Tianxie — and now he was starting to show that side of himself in front of Su Feifei too… His eyes kept drifting back to the place where Su Feifei had her arm hooked through Ye Tianxie’s… Their closeness was so natural, so easy, that his mind ran away with him entirely.

Could they really… really… really…

Then what about Xian’er… and Big Sister… what happens then?

Thinking of all that, Zuo Pojun said nothing at all aloud, but privately he had a real headache coming on. There was a great deal he understood that Su Feifei did not.

“So, Second Brother, how confident are you of getting through this time? Can we really do it?” Zuo Pojun asked, still not entirely easy. It wasn’t that he had no confidence in himself. It was that he knew the distance between himself and Ye Tianxie far too well.

“None at all. I just can’t stomach the thought of actually failing. This time, whatever happens, we go all out.”

They walked the first stretch of passage, then got through the broad ice avenue where deadly icicles could come down at any moment — alarming, but without harm — and stood at last, once again, before the dreadful Ice-Bone Severed Road.

(End of Chapter 201)