At first, Little Bad King thought Old Chu had given him too obvious a hint, triggering the penalty that drastically increased the assignment's difficulty.
But on further thought, that explanation did not seem very sound. If that counted as breaking the rules, punishing him and Old Chu directly would have sufficed. There was no need to implicate the other Travelers and remnant souls involved in the assignment.
That made no sense... Besides, Little Bad King knew the Heavenly Dao found him "very annoying" and would love an opportunity to give him a thorough thrashing. If he really had broken the rules, it would surely have punished him straight into a cranial orgasm, rather than taking such a ridiculously unnecessary detour.
The difficulty of every assignment related to "Past events: Seven Friends" had soared, yet it had nothing to do with punishment. The likeliest explanation was that the "situation had escalated," with more people or greater powers getting involved. The Heavenly Dao believed the Travelers would struggle to handle this development with their Spirit Beast Bodies alone, and so had given them the chance to use an Infiltrator Token.
The moment Little Bad King thought of the words "unknown difficulty," he involuntarily pictured the Myriad Spirits Five Tigers gambling with drool dripping from their mouths. Other people's teammates could either single-handedly push down an entire lane or support the team. His teammates spent every waking moment plotting against each other, falling into infighting after barely three sentences.
Ugh, which bastard turned the Park District into this mess? I'd better never catch him, or I'll flick his dick good and hard... Utterly shameless and oblivious to it, Little Bad King muttered inwardly, *The Five Tigers lack brains, but they're all fierce fighters. We can't win this battle through brains alone, then, and