Where the Cage Was, Riverside Castle

Chang Shuai was indeed a man of great cunning.

Ding Ru was actually just as calculating. Everyone in the Ding Family had been played in the palm of his hand. But he lacked true wisdom—the kind of wisdom that seemed foolish on the surface.

In that regard, he fell short of Chang Shuai.

But Chang Shuai had latched onto a very powerful patron—Xu Qiuyan's mother.

Xu Qiuyan's mother was now in charge of the Administration Bureau. But I knew there had to be someone behind her. I couldn't call her a puppet, but she definitely wasn't the one in the dominant position.

Thinking it over again, I really couldn't say how genuine her feelings for Xu Zheng were. If you said they weren't real, even Xu Qiuyan would feel that was unfair to her. But if you said her feelings were truly sincere, seeing what Xu Zheng had become made it impossible not to have doubts.

So I thought there was another possibility. Perhaps she hadn't wanted Xu Zheng to undergo such a change in the first place, but the interest group behind her wanted Xu Zheng to show sufficient sincerity. That sincerity was more something Xu Qiuyan's mother should have offered, so someone had to be sacrificed. Xu Zheng was the one who had to be sacrificed.

And his sacrifice had likely been voluntary, because of Xu Qiuyan's mother.

As for what Xu Qiuyan thought about all this, I didn't know. She didn't seem willing to discuss it with me too much either.

"The cage isn't in this underground city, is it?"

"What? Underground city? You call this an underground city?" Monkey looked utterly confused.

I froze for a moment. I thought the scene around me had changed, but when I took a closer look, I was indeed in