At Shen Tang's instruction, Gu Chi secretly let the news slip.
This edition of Biographies of Famous Ministers and Scholars differed from the registers they knew. Giving everyone advance warning would both help them prepare mentally and let her test their opinions of the two predetermined spots, making it easier for her to adjust them.
What did they think?
In four words—utterly unexpected!
Put into one sentence—
"The one above is practically a fairy!"
Shen Tang's peculiar train of thought had left Qian Yong and Wei Shou unable to continue their wager, costing them a month of free wine. Their hearts ached, but they had also developed a deeper "wariness" of Shen Tang—not wariness of how uninhibitedly she acted, but wariness of how she lured men and women alike wherever she went. No, not lured them—hooked their souls and claimed their lives!
Qian Yong clicked his tongue, looking shaken.
He said, "With just a few words, she can make people hand their very lives over to her... How can someone so terrifying exist in this world?"
If Qian Yong had been twenty or thirty years younger, he dared not imagine how audacious his thoughts might have become—if he could prostrate himself at this person's feet in this lifetime, dying once would be worth it! For that, she could regard him as a subject or as a plaything; it made no difference.
So long as he could follow her forever, that was enough.
If they won, they would be sovereign and subject for life; if they lost, they would march together into the Yellow Springs.
Wei Shou sneered. "You make it sound as though you don't want to hand it over now."
Qian Yong sighed. "I'll speak from my conscience here... If this happened to me, and she told me to