New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live-Chapter 1107: The Wager

Tian Kuo gave Alexander a skeptical look.

"You think the demons I keep sealed inside the pagoda could get free? What nonsense are you on about, boy?"

Alex wanted to slap him awake from his delusions. Make him see that even if he thought he was all-powerful in the human world, he couldn’t hold a candle to some beings he’d already met.

The demon infiltrator he had found in the Ash Elf kingdom alone would mop the ground with him, let alone something from the trip in the past he’d taken in the time-loop dungeon.

"You don’t believe me?" Alex asked, exasperated.

"Why would?!" Tian Kuo exclaimed, raising his hands to the sky.

"I have been in this world for millennia, and never once has a demon I sealed awakened from the slumber I force them into. Why would it change now, after so long?"

Alex expected that answer, but he had already come up with his own.

"What if I could prove you wrong? Prove to you the demons you sealed are barely contained. Prove they will easily escape once the mana flow returns to this world plentifully?"

Tian Kuo scoffed at Alexander’s suggestion. But the confidence in his tone and demeanour filled with worry.

"And how would you do that?" he asked, his own confidence wavering.

"Easy. I’ll prove to you that your seals won’t hold through the mana pouring into the world by flooding the room with mana. I’m certain at least one seal will break within seconds, and I can even deal with the demon for you. But, in exchange, you’ll have to promise to help us."

The fox didn’t like the confidence in his tone.

’Does he know something I don’t? No. Impossible. He is too young to have any knowledge I wouldn’t be privy to. He’s bluffing,’ he thought.

But Alexander’s smirk kept nagging at the back of his mind.

’What if he’s not... What then?’

"And what if you’re full of shit and it fails? What do I gain from partaking in this childish wager of yours?" he asked, trying to turn this into a negotiation.

If he could win something out of this, then, possibly, the boy would call off his bluff. Right?

But Alex’s grin only got wider. And Kary also smirked, opening her mouth to take over.

This was her time to shine.

If Alex was willing to wager on something, she was willing to bet herself into it as well. He wasn’t the gambling type, after all.

If he was putting out a wager, he already knew he would win.

"How about we leave the mountain, never come back, and you get to keep Liu Yan for yourself? Make him into whatever kind of cultivator you wish," she offered, putting her interlaced fingers on the table.

Liu Yan immediately turned his head to look at her, his gaze widening in bewilderment.

"Uhh... I’m not—

But before he could end his sentence, Kary lifted a hand to interrupt him.

Looking at Alex with confusion, he saw the man’s grin unwavering and his body still motionless.

Liu Yan felt a hand on his right elbow, below the table, and turned to look at Rì-Chū, who winked at him.

It barely reassured him, but he kept any further complaints to himself. For now.

The fox didn’t miss this interaction, and even though the bewildered reaction of the young prodigy made him smile internally, the calm shown by the others only made him feel even more reticent to agree.

Seeing he was having second thoughts, even though he was the one to ask what he’d get in return, Alex pressed the issue and sweetened the pot.

"What if I add that we’ll send any awakened with Qi potential your way? What say you?"

Tian Kuo scoffed.

"How would you even know who to send my way? You don’t have Qi yourself. You couldn’t possibly know how to spot a person with Qi potential."

Alexander’s grin turned to a smirk.

"You clearly underestimate my ability to gauge someone’s potential at a glance. It’s fine. Your loss, really. But I’m confident in my ability to judge someone’s power through my senses.

"I’m also more than confident I can sense at least three demons in your pagoda that are only a push away from breaking their seal. I can prove it to you if you stop being such a coward. Accept the deal," Alex mocked.

His arrogance tipped Tian Kuo off the ledge of hesitation he’d been standing on.

"You arrogant little—Fine! I’ll lead you to the sealing chamber. But once you fail, don’t go reneging on your deal. Or I’ll make sure you or your group never leave this place alive. You may think you can fight me on equal footing, but this pagoda still holds many secrets that can knock you off your made-up pedestal, boy," he threatened.

"Fine by me," Alex shrugged, chuckling at the threat.

At best, the threat was benign. At worst, it was empty of any substance.

In either case, he doubted he wouldn’t be able to spot the formation activating in time to do something about it.

This entire time, he had been studying it, and forcing his perfect mana sense to adapt to the foreign energy. It still wasn’t up to his taste, but it was already detecting this ’Qi’ to a much better extent.

A perk of the energies not being too different, aside from their purity, he surmised.

Seeing Tian Kuo rise to his feet, everyone around the table followed suit, and as soon as they were standing, the chairs disappeared from behind them.

"Follow me. Don’t wander off the path I’ll make, or you’ll get lost inside the pagoda forever, and I won’t bother going looking for you," the fox spat.

Almost all of them gulped at the thought of staying locked in here forever, at the mercy of this fickle being.

But Alex couldn’t care less about this added empty threat. He could already tell the fox was lying.

How could this cautious beast ever let someone loose within his pagoda, which could only be his home and temple, without knowing if they would mess something up?

With a wave of his hand, the fox made a black door appear before him and pushed it open, an ominous feeling washing over everyone.

"Anyone too weak to handle a demon, I recommend staying here," Tian Kuo said, trying to lessen the number of people seeing his sealing chambers.

But no one budged.

"Lead the way," Alex said, pointing to the door.

’Tch. Arrogant humans.’