Chapter 672: The Leading Sheep

Qi Xia's words struck Di Hou like a giant axe, splitting him from head to foot.

An ice-cold chill spread through Di Hou's entire body.

After so many rounds of this game... had he ever truly won even once?

Di Hou slumped onto his seat, his face blank and lifeless, as if all his strength had been drained away.

Looking back, how terrifying this whole thing was. It seemed he had been completely controlled by Qi Xia the entire time, with no room to fight back.

The other person wasn't even skilled in Du Shu – what he was skilled in was human nature and deception.

"No... that's not right..." Di Hou mustered some strength, his eyes darting towards Qi Xia. "You definitely cheated... I caught your Lao Qian..."

"I'm sorry." Qi Xia shook his head. "The one who cheated wasn't me."

As he said that, Qiao Jia Jin on Qi Xia's left and Chen Jun Nan on his right each pulled out a card and waved it in their hands.

Chen Jun Nan held the Chongyang.

Qiao Jia Jin held the Zhongyuan.

"Monkey brother, we're the ones who took the cards," Chen Jun Nan said. "But what can you do about it? We didn't use them to gamble, and we didn't use the card for anything. We just held it in our hands and looked at it. Your game only uses five cards in total, so us holding one doesn't interfere with the game, right?"

"Yeah, yeah," Qiao Jia Jin nodded. "Fat horse, you made this card really nicely. I wanted to keep one as a souvenir, so I was just holding it and looking at it."

"You're talking nonsense!!" Di Hou slammed his hand on the table. "You just handed the cards to Qi Xia! I saw it with my own eyes..."

Hearing that, Qi Xia suddenly stood up and fixed Di Hou with icy, piercing eyes. "You saw it with your own eyes?"

"I... I..."

"Did you see it with your own eyes?"

"You..."

"Say it!" Qi Xia's eyes widened in a frenzy, mixed with a hint of a smile. "Di Hou, go ahead and say it. Who exactly caught whom cheating?"

Qi Xia's words cut off all of Di Hou's escape routes.

Di Hou swallowed the words that had been on the tip of his tongue.

Yes, if he hadn't seen those two cards, he wouldn't have ended up in this mess.

After all, Qi Xia had smeared blood on the back of his card from the start, and the card he finally revealed was the same one.

Even if he had switched cards midway, it didn't affect the final outcome – the card he drew at the beginning and the one he showed at the end were both Da Xue.

Was even that blood-stained red flower part of the plan?

What a frightening person...

He had anticipated everything in advance but didn't reveal it directly. Instead, he set trap after trap on top of the truth until Di Hou fell into them.

In this game, who was really the prey?

"You..." Di Hou had so many questions he didn't know where to start.

"Don't be discouraged, Di Hou. I told you, you didn't lose because of any single thing I said – you lost because of everything I said."

"So you already knew that the Man Yue Gui Ze could be played without using the Gong Gong Pai..."

"Of course," Qi Xia nodded. "After all, a Gong Gong Pai could directly cause a 'burst.' If a Chongyang is flipped, everyone's hand would instantly reach eighteen, and the game would declare everyone a loser. That doesn't align with the rules of your Zodiac-designed game or a proper 'gambling' setup."

Di Hou pressed his lips together and stayed silent.

"So I made a bold guess that even if a card causes a 'burst,' the gambling would continue, since everyone still has a hidden 'dark card' that others can't predict. That would require discarding the Gong Gong Pai, just like in Twenty-One, where players stop drawing if their hand is big enough." Qi Xia continued, "We could have figured out this rule by chance, but unfortunately – whether good luck or bad – the Gong Gong Pai in these rounds were all small, conveniently avoiding the issue."

Di Hou reached up to touch his forehead and sighed softly, "You're really something... Qi Xia..."

He never imagined that the tool Qi Xia used to win was the very "bottom card" he had been hiding.

"Is that enough to make you admit defeat?" Qi Xia smirked and glanced at Tian Tian. "Tian Tian, tell Di Hou where he really lost."

Tian Tian responded with a bitter smile and shook her head. "Di Hou... even me coming to shuffle the cards was probably part of Qi Xia's plan."

"What...?"

Di Hou suddenly recalled how, when he suggested finding someone to shuffle, Tian Tian had volunteered from afar, and then he lost the round.

"Just now, when I was trying to stop the bleeding for Hero brother, he suddenly grabbed my hand," Tian Tian explained. "He told me that if Di Hou asked for someone to shuffle, I had to seize the opportunity and scatter the cards on the table."

Di Hou never realized Qi Xia's scheme had started that early.

"Once the cards were scattered on the table, Qiao Jia Jin would suggest reshuffling, and you wouldn't object. That's when he could slip a card away," Tian Tian added, looking at Di Hou. "You figured no one would openly steal a card, so you'd only check for marks, not count them one by one. Then Chen Jun Nan could take another card too."

Di Hou said despondently, "All that effort... just to confuse me..."

"Yeah, Monkey brother," Chen Jun Nan nodded. "Did you think we were really helping Old Qi every time he fainted? We were just passing him the cards! All so your sharp eyes could get a good look!"

"Di Hou..." Qi Xia spoke up at that moment. "Not only did I know you might have an ability, but I also guessed you couldn't fully release it. You handle this ability very carefully, only showing a hint of it each time, so you couldn't watch all three of us under the table at once – you only watched me. That's your biggest weakness."

Di Hou slowly lifted his eyes to look at the three of them, realizing he hadn't just lost to Qi Xia.

That man named Chen Jun Nan had been disrupting his mind from the beginning and, in the end, made him admit to "condoning cheating." Now, thinking back, every word and action of his had been premeditated.

And the tattooed man beside him was no one to underestimate either. Aside from how he could disturb Di Hou's thoughts, that final line of his – "don't cheat" – was baffling, as it made Di Hou's Ling Shi vanish without a trace.

Add to that the kid with the nosebleed, the girl dealing the cards, and the university student...

"It's the Yang Qun Xiao Ying," Qi Xia said softly. "When one person starts lying, the rest turn into lying sheep."