They actually felt there was no need to take such a risk at all, but Saint Lord Taichu had no intention of following their arrangements or listening to them. He had organized this ranking tournament himself. If they trusted him, they could come; if they did not, they could stay out of the way.
There would absolutely be no nonsense like, "If you're unhappy, then don't come. If I'm unhappy with you, I won't come either." Saint Lord Taichu felt that from what these people were saying, it was clear there were still quite a few fish that had slipped through the net behind the scenes.
Because of the previous incidents of bribing referees, Saint Lord Taichu suspected that some people had been bribed by the referees and then gone on a rampage through the rankings. To Saint Lord Taichu, however, none of that held much meaning anymore.
"Saint Lord Taichu, I want to ask you something. I wonder if you can tell me—if we compete in the rankings again and lose, causing our results to keep declining, what are we supposed to do afterward? Do you know that we're all feeling terribly helpless too?"
"Do you really think it's necessary to make us suffer so much? Forget it, Saint Lord Taichu, just let us go. We're even more fragile than you imagine. We simply can't keep up with this pace. We've barely finished one match, and the next second you're making us compete again. I don't think anyone could accept that."
Saint Lord Taichu thought to himself, *I never forced any of you. If you can accept it, then come. If you can't, then don't come. Why make such a huge mess out of it? If people who didn't know better heard this, they'd think Saint Lord Taichu had