Xu Huo made an inviting gesture. "I still want your items, after all."
Gao Xiaoyan was equally straightforward. She placed the City Sandbox and the two promised B-class items on the table, then said, "He's outside."
Xu Huo nodded and immediately pulled Ren Man into his Spiritual World.
Unlike his spirited resistance before, Ren Man now seemed gloomy and dejected. He looked up at Xu Huo, seemingly wanting to ask him something.
Xu Huo told him to show his Spiritual World.
Ren Man didn't resist. After revealing a corner of the Spiritual World he'd successfully opened, he said, "Actually, you didn't set any traps in my Spiritual World, did you?"
"What makes you say that?" Xu Huo asked with interest.
Ren Man knew his own limitations. "My Spiritual World is tiny. What could there be to pull a dirty trick over?"
"Besides, you didn't interfere while I was evolving. Even though I'd only just opened my Spiritual World, I could still tell."
"Since you're so sure, you should explain that to Gao Xiaoyan," Xu Huo said.
Ren Man looked like a boy whose rose-colored glasses had shattered, leaving him bitterly disappointed by the real world. The youthful optimism he'd once carried seemed to sink away all at once.
"I want to keep my promise," he said. "And I don't want so many people to die."
"When I was returning to the base city, I saw a lot of infected children. They were around ten years old. Every time I came back, they'd run after the vehicles. I don't understand—if they die too, what future can the base city have?"
"Do you know when people will listen to reason?" Xu Huo pointed to the table beside them. Only after sitting down did he continue, "When force has decided the winner."
"Your