Time rewound to one minute earlier.
Li Guanqi, standing on the fatal point, finally understood this endgame—the board had never been left for him.
After nearly two hours of moving, calculating, and planning... after his second exchange of gazes with those eyes in the sky, he suddenly understood a truth.
"Fate had never been generous, and there would never be hope."
Li Guanqi was a kind-hearted man, and kindness often meant retaining a measure of expectation, reliance, and even confidence in all things.
He had always acted that way.
Indeed, this mindset of holding onto hope even in desperate circumstances had, at countless critical moments, given him the morale, courage, and resolve to finally escape death.
But in truth, he knew he had been wrong.
Humans and ghosts could never stand as equals. There would always be a difference between superior and inferior. Beneath the shadow of Heavenly Sea, this unparalleled Great Ghost, employees should never have held hope for Fate.
In other words, Li Guanqi should have understood that from the moment he stepped into Tianhai Hotel, hope was no longer permitted in his Fate.
This had been proven most clearly when he used the white-clad white dragon to guide that White Piece into becoming a living move, intending to use it against Ji Li, only to achieve nothing in the end.
This was Fate. Li Guanqi's Fate. A dead game with no reversal and no Change Fate.
He had spent the previous two hours thinking and planning, yet he had ultimately failed to find where survival lay because he had always misunderstood his own identity.
Li Guanqi, manager of Branch No. 5, the only gentleman in Heavenly Sea—so what?
He was merely a fly, a mosquito, an ant, something any ghost could crush with a casual lift of