Chapter 1017: First Mistake

"How about we give it a try first...?" Qiao Jia Jin said. "What will happen if we fail? Will the character be swallowed?"

"I'm not sure," Qi Xia replied. "I only know this will be very risky."

Qiao Jia Jin looked at the "?" on the screen and sighed. "Deceiver... In this game, how often do rare characters come up?"

"Probably quite often," Qi Xia said. "After all, the thickness of a dictionary exceeds what most people imagine, and even the strangest radicals can form uncommon characters."

"In that case..." Qiao Jia Jin pondered, "instead of using other characters to test, let's just go with this one. Since there's no way to answer it correctly anyway, it's not a big loss if we get it wrong."

Qi Xia thought Qiao Jia Jin's point made sense. Guessing wrong on a rare character was easier to accept than making a careless mistake on a simple one.

"Alright," Qi Xia nodded. "Anyway, Chu Tian Qiu will make mistakes too, so in this round, it's about who makes fewer errors."

Qi Xia carefully considered the current situation and felt that even if guessing the character wrong led to it being swallowed, it was still acceptable.

After all, he had already made full use of the "xiang" character to score points. If this character disappeared from the game entirely, Chu Tian Qiu would suffer a greater loss.

He would forever lose the chance to use radicals like "mu," "mu," and "wang," and even if neither of them reached twenty-eight characters in the end, Qi Xia's collection wouldn't necessarily be smaller.

Qi Xia reached out and touched the rough screen.

Next, he had to write a homophone for "?".

Unfortunately, it was impossible to guess the pronunciation of this character anymore; he only knew it wasn't the "lin" that Qiao Jia Jin had mentioned.

With over 1,300 possible pronunciations for Chinese characters, he could only be grateful that Qiao Jia Jin had ruled out one of them.

"Deceiver... Which character are you planning to write?" Qiao Jia Jin asked.

"The one you mentioned earlier... the 'mo' from 'one mold,'" Qi Xia said.

Qiao Jia Jin paused for a moment and asked, "Are you really not considering 'lin'?"

"Maybe next time..." Qi Xia said.

In his view, "mo" was the best option at the moment, since it could be pronounced as "mo" or "mu," and either one had a good chance of being correct if he guessed right.

So, he moved his fingertip and slowly wrote the character "mo" on the screen, his heart growing tense.

After all, the chances of getting the pronunciation wrong were high, and he might have to face the consequences of guessing incorrectly.

As expected, a few seconds later, the entire display screen turned red, and a line of red text appeared:

— "Creation failed."

What Qi Xia hadn't anticipated was that the Feng Huang Xiang Shu Tai didn't swallow the character; it simply lost its magnetic force in an instant. Several metal characters fell to the ground like unglued ornaments, making a clattering sound.

The text on the screen flickered a few times and then changed:

"Red side's first creation failure, final score minus one."

Qi Xia and Qiao Jia Jin both frowned at this message, and the score on the screen dropped from "ten points" back to "nine points." Among the ten created characters floating nearby, one of them dimmed.

The "mi" character's glow looked grayer than the others, as if it had become inactive.

"I... lost..." Qiao Jia Jin was stunned. "Not only doesn't this 'lin' character count, but the 'mi' we just made doesn't count either."

Qi Xia bent down to pick up the characters, feeling a bit puzzled.

He wasn't surprised about guessing wrong, but he thought the penalty was too light.

The characters hadn't disappeared, no one had died, the game hadn't changed, and even the referee hadn't shown up—it was just a deduction of one point...?

In that case, when encountering a rare character with a slight chance of success, wouldn't it still be worth trying to guess?

Get it right and gain a point; get it wrong and lose a point—it sounded just like an ordinary gamble.

But although this was a game from the "Di Long," it ultimately came from the "Qing Long." Would he really set up something so ordinary?

"Wait..."

Qi Xia's gaze fixed on that line of text on the screen, and a word caught his attention:

— "First creation failure."

"First..." Qi Xia seemed to realize something key.

In other words, the deduction of one point was due to the "first creation failure." Following that logic, would a "second creation failure" result in losing two points...? Or would the penalties become increasingly severe, even leading to something like characters being swallowed?

Qi Xia reached out and touched the Feng Huang Xiang Shu Tai. Although at the beginning, all the characters had appeared by flipping this black metal magnet, now it was firmly locked and couldn't move at all.

In other words, if it weren't for the loss of magnetism but an actual flip, turning all the characters to the back side, there would be no way to retrieve them.

"Swallowing characters is possible... just not right now," Qi Xia said.

"What are you talking about?" Qiao Jia Jin asked.

"The cost of mistakes will get higher each time, but he's giving us some leeway for errors," Qi Xia said. "But no matter what, a 'creation failure' will always be a loss for us—the hard-earned characters might be invalidated. So, for any rare characters we're unsure about, it's best not to try."

"Alright," Qiao Jia Jin nodded. "This time, it's my fault."

"No, we have to 'test' eventually," Qi Xia said. "Chu Tian Qiu will definitely 'test' too, but there's a difference between this and 'crossing the river.' If their pieces that can't cross break the rules, we'll both share the information and know the outcome. But with 'creating characters,' we won't... Chu Tian Qiu won't tell us the results of his tests, so we'll have to try it ourselves sooner or later. Now we've done it... Just treat that strange character as if it doesn't exist."

"Fair enough," Qiao Jia Jin nodded, then turned around. "In that case... Deceiver, I'll go wait by the writing area for their game to end."

"Fist, you..." Qi Xia hesitated, "you know the best place to wait for them, right?"

"Of course."

Qiao Jia Jin stretched his neck, swung his arms, and then squatted down to stretch his legs. "To completely block their way back, I should guard the 'river channel,' right? The moment I see the big guy there, it'll be time to make a move."

"Be careful," Qi Xia said.

"Got it."