Chapter 58 Two Outlaw Heros Are Drugged and About to Be Executed

0:00The Legend of Jigong Chapter 58 Right, and I want to jump straight into how our two legendary heroes actually end up paralyzed, just staring at a poisoned cup of wine. Let's do it. Because to understand the trap, we actually have to start earlier in the day with a seemingly noble act that just goes horribly, horribly wrong. As they so often do. Right. So the inciting incident takes place in the woods far away from the inn where we meet our protagonist, Lyming and Chenliang. And we should establish these two are heavy hitters in this world. Yeah, they're not just random guys. No, not at all. Lyming is known as Wind in the Clouds, and Chenliang is the sacred hand-white wolf. Great titles. Right. And they have just cornered this opportunistic bandit named Wang Gi. He's a man who essentially makes his living praying on vulnerable travelers, and Le and Chen they have him completely dead to rights. Like game over, they are about to finish him off.

1:02But then Wang Gi pulls out the absolute oldest, most seemingly pathetic trick in the book. He literally points over their shoulders and yells, our boss is here. It is, I mean, it's the playground distraction. Literally. Like look behind you. Exactly. But the thing is, in a high stakes life or death situation, the human's startle response is actually incredibly difficult to override. Really? Even for like highly trained martial artists. Even for them. Because when someone suddenly points and yells about an approaching threat, your biological instinct is to look. The brain prioritizes new, unknown potential threats over subdued ones. Wow. So, Le and Chenliang, despite all their training, they both turn their heads. And the second they do, Wang Gi just bolts. That Texas Gribes him running like a dog losing its home in a fish escaping a net. Which is such a vocative language. It really is. Like he is operating purely on raw animal desperation. He just runs and runs until he encounters this massive water ditch. And the text specifies this ditch is three-jang wide.

2:02Right. And for context, a zang is roughly 3.3 meters. This means Wang Gi is staring down a ditch or like a rushing stream. That is about 10 meters a graph. That is huge. That's like an Olympic long jump distance. It's massive. And he just throws himself into it, thrashing through this freezing water. He's purely out of a primal urge to survive. Which brings us to honestly this critical psychological moment for our hero, Chenliang. Because he pursues Wang Gi right to the edge of this massive ditch. He watches the villain desperately fighting the water. And Chenliang just stops. He just gives up the chase. Yeah. He runs the calculus in his head about the effort required to cross that water or like find a way around it. Yeah. And he decides it is simply too much of an inconvenience. Right. And then the internal monologue actually rationalizes it by thinking, let's consider it a bargain for him. And that phrasing a bargain for him, it perfectly encapsulates the arrogance of mercy when it isn't rooted in true compassion.

3:03Right. It's just laziness basically. Exactly. It's rooted in convenience. This is not genuine mercy at all. It is pure complacency. Chenliang and Le Ming fundamentally underestimate their enemy here. Yeah, I do. He gave you Wang Gi as a nuisance who is retreating rather than recognizing him as a highly lethal threat who is definitely going to hold a grudge. I always think of it like finding a termite in your house. Oh, that's a great analogy. Right. You see it scurrying across the floor and it ducks behind the dry wall. You look at the wall, you realize you don't have a sledgehammer handy and you just think, well, I don't really want to tear open the dry wall today. I'll just let him have that one. And that termite is absolutely going to come back to bite you. Exactly. You're a whole house. You cannot leave the threat unaddressed just because there is a minor obstacle in your way. No, leaving the termite behind the dry wall guarantees structural damage later by allowing Wang Gi to escape. But just because of a 10 meter water ditch, Chenliang and Le Ming are leaving a highly motivated,

4:06deeply humiliated predator right in their ecosystem. It's such a bad move. It is. I think how often do we in our own lives abandon a difficult task or leave a conflict unresolved simply because the immediate next step is slightly inconvenient. Oh, all the time. Right. We avoid the awkward ombarization or maybe we skip the final security check on a project just because it requires effort. We don't feel like expending in that exact moment. Yeah. But here, the stakes of that avoidance are literally life and death. And what's crazy is their complacency is immediately followed by this genuinely beautiful altruistic moment that paradoxically makes their situation even worse. It really does. Because after Wang Gi escapes, the man he was actually trying to rob comes out of hiding. This is Gao Wangrui. And Gao Wangrui is just incredibly grateful. The text uses his introduction to really establish the severe stakes of the robbery. Right. He's not a fighter. Not at all. He's a businessman who runs a money shop outside the Northgate of Longyu County.

5:09And he emphasizes his vulnerability by explaining that he is the single root, the only heir for three branches of his family. That's a lot of pressure. Emense pressure. If he dies on this road, an entire family lineage and a whole business empire just collapses. So it makes him a super high value target for bandits. And it immediately shifts our heroes into this protective mindset. Like they act like total boy scouts here. They do. They actually retrieve the 30 tales of silver that Wang Gi had forced out of Gao and they return every single piece of it. They assure Gao they aren't bandits and they send them on his way with his money. But then, and this is the turning point, Chen Liang makes this tiny pivot. He suggests they secretly shadow Gao Wangrui. Right. Because he argues that Gao is traveling alone. He's never been out of his hometown and he is carrying a lot of silver. So he suggests they just follow him from a distance, you know, just to make sure he gets a bit further down the road safely. It sounds so nice. It does. And we really need to analyze the mechanics of tragedy here because Chen Liang's decision

6:10is fundamentally noble. It is warmhearted. But practically speaking, it ties the fate of highly capable, fast-moving heroes to the slowest possible denominator. Yeah, it anchors them to the pace of a terrified civilian. Exactly. It completely delays their journey. And while they were playing secret bodyguard, the weather turns. The text is very clear that a heavy rain begins to fall. And because they chose to walk slowly behind GaD, they are now caught out in the elements. They're freezing. Cold, wet, hungry and exhausted. Like the noble choice directly creates the physical vulnerability that forces them to seek immediate shelter. It's a complete subversion of the standard hero narrative. Yeah. Normally doing the right thing gets your reward. Right. The right thing layered on top of that earlier, arrogant mistake of letting the villain go creates an immediate crisis. Their physical distress compromises their judgment and it makes them desperate for comfort.

7:11And Laming thinks he has the perfect solution for that comfort. He says he knows a place nearby called the Dong Family Inn. He was there like two years ago when he was sick and the old manager of the inn took amazing care of him. He remembers it so fondly. He remembers it as this ultimate safe haven with just generous service. So they had there completely unaware that they are navigating by a dangerously outdated map. And memory is a very, very dangerous compass in a volatile environment. Oh, for sure. When they arrive, the spatial layout of the inn is deliberately detailed in the text. You have the main gate and immediately upon entering, you face a shadow wall. A shadow wall? Yeah. It's a traditional screen wall meant to ensure privacy. But also in Feng Shui, it's specifically designed to block malevolent spirits from entering the courtyard. Oh, the irony there is just brilliant. It isn't that bad. Like the shadow wall is structurally designed to keep evil out. But the evil is already inside running the place. Exactly. They walk past the wall, seeing the North Main Room and the East and West Side rooms, and

8:14they are expecting the warm embrace of this old manager. But they are actually walking into a masterclass in institutional decay. Because laming is operating on data that is two years old. And in the precarious underworld, they navigate two years as an absolute eternity. We constantly fall into this cognitive trap in our own lives too. I'm all the time. We rely on past positive experiences. And we just assume permanence. We assume a brand is always reliable. Or maybe a certain investment is always safe simply because it was true in the past. It's like going back to your favorite independent coffee shop from college, right? Remember this generous owner who always knew your order. But you walk in today and the vibe is just off. Right. The lighting is weird. The portions are smaller. The staff looks completely miserable. And you eventually realize it was quietly bought out by some private equity firm that just slashed all the costs. Your nostalgia completely blind you to the current reality. And a hostile takeover is exactly what occurred at the Dong family in.

9:14Though through a much more predatory mechanism than private equity. That bit more violent just a bit. The text reveals that the generous old manager, Mr. Dong passed away and he left the end to his two sons, the young managers. But these sons, they lacked their father's work ethic and his moral compass. They fell heavily into vice drinking, whoring and gambling. And their primary drinking buddy, like the guy actively feeding all their vices, is none other than Wang Ga. The very bandit are heroes just let escape. Yes. Wang Ga, who is also known by his underworld nickname, the Greensprout God. And he sees this incredible opportunity in these degenerate sons. Yeah. And that nickname, Greensprout God, it implies this sort of rural, untamed menace. Wang Ga targets the vulnerability of these young managers. He realizes they are drowning in gambling debts and they are desperate for liquidity. Just me cash fast. Exactly. So he doesn't need to take the end by force or bring it to the ground. He just acquires control of the entire end for a few hundred strings of cash a year.

10:19That economic detail is wild to me. It's fascinating. Because a string of cash is generally what a thousand copper coins. Roughly. So a few hundred strings might be a decent chunk of change for a peasant, but compared to the land value and the steady income of a reputable, fully functioning hospitality business, it is a catastrophic undervaluation. It's pennies on the dollar. Like how does a legacy crumble that quickly? Crumbles because the young managers no longer value the generational legacy at all. They only value the immediate liquidity to fund their addictions. Right. They just want the next fix. Wang Yi swoops in, offers them a small, guaranteed allowance so they can keep gambling without the burden of actually running a business. And in return, he gets the keys to the castle. He transforms a place historically dedicated to hospitality and safety into a lethal trap for wealthy travelers. He essentially leases a murder franchise. That's exactly what it is. He recruits these low-level bandits to act as the in-staff. So when a lonely traveler with heavy luggage checks in, they simply never check out.

11:23It is a complete inversion of the safe harbor concept. And this is the spider web that lay, ming, and Chen Lang are walking into, completely blind, just trusting the ghost of a dead man's kindness. And the craziest part is, while lay and Chen are walking in the front door expecting a hot meal, Wang Yi is already inside. He beat them there. He beat them there. And we must examine Wang Yi's mental and physical state when he arrives back at his stronghold, because it really sets the stage for all the psychological manipulation that follows. Yeah, let's talk about his state, because he is an absolute mess. Completely. He lost his ear to Chen Lang's blade, so he's bleeding profusely. He jumped into that 10 meter ditch, so his clothes are completely soaked with freezing rain and ditch water. Mentally, he knows he barely escaped with his life. He is secretly regretting ever crossing paths with liming and Chen Lang. He is experiencing a profound narcissistic wound. Yeah, his ego is shattered. Completely shattered. And remember, he is the leader of a gang of ruthless thugs.

12:23His entire authority rests on the projection of power, invulnerability, and street credibility. If he walks into his own base and admits he was beaten up, mutilated, and forced to swim through a muddy ditch just to survive, his authority evaporates instantly. They'd eat him alive. Exactly. In a criminal hierarchy built on fear, perceived weakness is an immediate death sentence. He has to construct a false reality to survive. And the lie he comes up with to save face is incredible. Like, he sits down with his crony, Wuji Fang, who had the text notes, is a bit of a joker, like a guy who likes to talk a lot. We have a gossip of the group. Yeah. And when Guy claims he was at a restaurant in a small town, just having a quiet meal when a vicious knife fight broke out among the locals. So he positions himself not as he failed predator, but as a brave bystander. He paints himself as this heroic peacekeeper. He claims no one else dared to intervene, but he boldly stepped in to break up the fight. And during this heroic intervention, he claims someone accidentally sliced his ear off.

13:27Accidentally. Right. And he says he chased the assailant into the water, which neatly explains the wet clothes, but then the crowd begged him on their knees to spare the man's life. It's so bold. He even tells you, Fang, the guy is coming here tomorrow to cow-tow and apologize to me. It's amazing. He takes every piece of damning physical evidence, the missing ear, the wet clothes, and weaves them into this narrative of supreme heroism and magnanimity. He doesn't just deny the defeat, he totally inverts it. And it really highlights the vulnerability of leadership built on terror. He is trapped by his own inflated image. Yeah. As the truth, his men might turn on him. So he must construct a false reality where he is still the undisputed benevolent alpha, but as we know, reality is about to knock on his door. Literally. Because Laming and Chenliang arrive at the inn at that exact moment, Wang Yi is sitting in the corridor having a drink, trying to soothe his ego, and he sees the very men who just mutilated him walk through the gate.

14:27The panic must have been intense. So his physiological response is immediate panic. He knocks his own lantern to the ground, smashing so they can't see his face in the dark, and he just skrees into the back room. And his physical panic completely betrays the heroic lie he just told. Ji Feng, the crony, comes back to the room. Now Ji Feng didn't recognize their faces in the dark courtyard, but he heard their names. So he tells Wang Yi that the new guests are the famous wind in the clouds and sacred hand white wolf. And Ji Feng, thinking like a smart innkeeper, suggests they befriend them, comp their meals, and get in their good graces. Which forces Wang Yi into his second lie. Because he can't maintain the accidental bar fight story anymore. His crony literally wants to invite his attackers in for drinks. He has to completely reframe the narrative on the fly. He must pivot from being the heroic peacekeeper to being the victim of unprovoked aggression. It feels exactly like modern PR spin or toxic celebrity apology video. Yes. He got caught, but he just doubles down with a new, even more manipulative story.

15:30He tells Ji Feng that those two guys are actually his sworn enemies. He claims he was doing a legitimate job earlier in the day, saw them, politely bowed, and called them uncles. But according to this new lie, they demanded half his money, attacked him, and when he dropped his silver and bent down to pick it up, they cowardly sliced his ear off. The layers of deception are profound. He turns laming and Chen Liang into greedy aggressors. He paints himself as polite, respectful, and honorable, and crucially, he provides a convenient excuse for his injury. Bending down to pick up a coin. Exactly. It was a moment of distraction while retrieving his property, not a defeat in fair combat. And the genius part of this manipulation is how he weaponizes his fabricated victimhood to radicalize his crew. That's the scariest part. He tells Ji Feng they should drug and kill the guests. He says they have silver on them. You guys can keep all their money. I don't even want it. I just want revenge. He completely aligns his personal cowardly desire for revenge with his crew's insatiable

16:31greed. By offering them all the financial reward, he ensures their complete unquestioning cooperation. It's so manipulative. He constructs a reality where his men believe they are executing two cowardly thieves, rather than murdering two legendary dangerous heroes. Which sets the trap in motion. Longy whips his men into a frenzy, but he stays hidden in the back room like a coward. He sends Ji Feng out to do the dirty work. And the visual the text gives us of Ji Feng is very specific. Yes. The clothing. He is wearing a blue jacket, a black apron, and white socks. The attire is just perfect camouflage. The blue jacket and black apron are standard working class in Keeper Garb. But the white socks are a particularly interesting touch. Really? Why the socks? In a muddy, rainy environment, pristine white socks suggest someone who stays indoors. Someone who manages the house rather than working the fields or traveling the roads. Oh, wow. It completes the illusion of domestic harmlessness. It is so subtle.

17:31So Ji Feng walks into the east room where liming and Chenliang are settling in. And what follows is honestly one of the most brilliant and serious menus of deceit I have ever encountered. It really is a masterpiece of lying. Chenliang asks what they have to eat. And Ji Feng doesn't offer this grand, suspicious feast. He offers tofu. Specifically, he says, we have stir fried tofu, braised tofu, dried tofu, and shredded tofu. Four types of tofu. It is wonderfully mundane. It's so funny because it's so boring. Exactly. Tofu is cheap. It is an everyday staple and offering four variations of it just suggests a kitchen that is really trying to stretch limited resources. Right. And Chenliang is freezing and he's starving. He tells Ji Feng they don't want four types of tofu and asks if they have literally anything else. Ji Feng's size acts all put out and delivers this perfectly constructed excuse. He apologizes and says their main chef got hired out to cook for a local wedding today. Local wedding. Yeah. He says the chef took all the good ingredients and even borrowed all their proper cooking

18:33tools. So all Ji Feng can offer is two chickens boiled in plain water, no soy sauce, no seasoning, and two caddies of wine served straight out of a bottle because they don't even have a proper wine jug left. And you have to remember when we evaluate situations for threats, our brains look for anomalies that signal danger. Right. So why wouldn't these street smart heroes notice the red flags of a dark courtyard, a smashed lantern, and a bizarrely limited menu? They should have seen it. Because the lie is perfectly calibrated to disarm suspicion through mundanity. A local wedding borrowing the chef in the pots is just an annoying inconvenience. It provides a highly plausible, incredibly boring explanation for why the inn is understaffed and the food is terrible. It uses their own understanding of social obligations against them. Precisely. Furthermore, stating that there is no soy sauce is a brilliant subtle manipulation. I was wondering about that. Why specify no soy sauce? Well, poison in the underworld was often a powder or a liquid that could alter the color

19:35or taste of food. Soy sauce being dark and very salty was commonly used by assassins to mask the presence of poison. Oh, so by preemptively declaring there is no soy sauce, jeeping unconsciously signals that the food is pure, unadulterated, plain boiled chicken. That is wild. It's like a scammer purposely putting a typo in a fishing email. Exactly like that. The imperfection makes it look like it came from a real flawed human being instead of a slick automated trap. The evil is cloaking itself in everyday, frustrating, bad customer service. The heroes think they're just having a miserable night at an underfunded inn completely unaware they're being set up for murder. Blinded by their fatigue and their outdated trust in the dong family in the reputation, they just accept the explanation. They just eat it. They eat the chicken, they drink the wine, and the trap snaps shut with terrifying speed. They have a few sips of the wine. And suddenly, gently angstops. He feels a tightness in his chest, this heavy, suffocating feeling.

20:38Laming says he feels it too. And in that terrifying second, Chen Liang's vast underworld experience finally kicks in, but it's just too late. Way too late. He realizes what's happening, and he speaks in the secret argo of the Greenwood, the underworld slang. He asks, hazy duo chiama. Right. This loosely translates to, did the comrades put drugs in the food or drink here? And using the slang is a desperate tragic attempt. It's a way of signaling we are in the life too, we recognize the play. It is a final plea for professional courtesy among thieves. But there is zero courtesy. Laming physically collapses, tumbling right off his chair. Chen Liang's mind stays sharp for a few seconds longer, just long enough to hear the voice of the man coordinating from the shadows. He hears Wang Yi's voice. Yes, and in that moment, Chen Liang realizes the bitter irony. The man he spared at the 10 meter ditch is the man who just killed him. Then Chen Liang goes down, completely paralyzed. In the physical paralysis mirrors the structural paralysis they walked into.

21:41They are completely immobilized, completely stuck. And as they lie there, unable to move, we witness a brutal lesson in the total lack of honor among thieves. Wang Yi walks out of the back room, holding his knife, the heroes are subdued, the job is done. And immediately Wang Yi changes the terms of the deal with his own men. Of course he does. Because to get them to do the poisoning, he promised them all the silver. But now that the risk is zero, he completely reneges. He claims the package of 30 tails they found on the heroes, saying he stole that earlier in the day, which is a lie, a total lie. He claims another package of five tails for himself. And he tells his crew that if there's any extra silver hiding in the hero's boots or something they can split that, he claims the 30 tails which let us remember isn't even his. It belongs to the civilian money shop owner, Gao Guan-Gurli. He leaves his crew with a hypothetical non-existent reward. It is a stunning betrayal that reveals the true nature of his leadership. And the crew is furious. The text notes that G-Fong and the others realize they have just committed a capital crime,

22:43the murder of two famous heroes for absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. They didn't get a share of the real money. But they are too terrified of Wang Yi to say a single word. Because Wang Yi's coalition is fundamentally weak. It is not held together by loyalty, brotherhood, or mutual profit. It is held together entirely by lies and fear. It is intimidation. Exactly. The cronies know they are being cheated, but hierarchical terror keeps them compliant. However, a coalition built on such brittle foundations is highly vulnerable to disruption from the outside. And that disruption arrives precisely at the worst possible moment for Wang Yi. He is standing over the paralyzed heroes, knife raised, literally about to slit their throats, and then allowed pounding echoes through the courtyard. The monk arrives. Someone is banging on the heavy Frank Gates again, yelling, open the door. I'm here to sleep. The timing is miraculous. But to understand how this miracle arrived at the door, the narrative demands we look

23:45back. Yeah, we have to rewind. We have to rewind several hours back to the middle of the day to understand the unorthodox force about to enter the inn. Right. We have to introduce the monk, Ji Gong. And we see him earlier in the day at a different, much-favor town. He is spending time with some local figures, Jing Zhang, Ma Jun, and two official constables named Chai and Du. The establishment figures. Yeah, they have a nice meal. They find a dry inn, and they go to sleep. Everyone is warm and comfortable. But Ji Gong does not allow comfort to persist. At the second watch, which is roughly mid-evening, a time when everyone has settled into deep rest. Ji Gong abruptly wakes up the two constables. He shakes them awake with a massive lie. He yells, get up! The criminal Hua Yanlong is hanging himself in the woods right now. We have to go catch him. And the constables, doing their official duty, they scramble out of bed. They leave the dry inn and trudge out into the pitch black night. It is pouring rain. The mud is thick, just sucking at their boots. They are absolutely miserable. Finally, one of the constables turns to Ji Gong and asks exactly where Hua Yanlong is.

24:46And Ji Gong replies with absolute calm? I don't know. The constable is understandably furious. Like he demands to know why Ji Gong said the man was hanging himself if he didn't even know where he was. And Ji Gong simply smiles and says, I just wanted you to get up and experience the rain and the mud. Rain falling on your head, mud squishing under your feet, it's much better than sleeping. It is a profoundly absurd, seemingly malicious moment. It really is. I really have to push back on Ji Gong's behavior here. Reading this, my sympathies are entirely with the constables. Our supposedly holy monk is acting like a complete troll. A troll, yeah. He acts like a fraternity prankster, dragging working class cops through freezing mud for absolutely no reason. It just feels petty. It is a completely valid frustration, but we must synthesize the archetype of the trickster figure, which Ji Gong perfectly embodies here. Okay, how so? The trickster does not operate on conventional logic, nor do they respect the boundaries of comfort or social hierarchy.

25:49The constables represent the status quo. They represent rigid, predictable, bureaucratic thinking. They sleep when it is dark. They pursue criminals only one told. They are completely reactionary. They play by these established rules of society. Precisely. Ji Gong operates outside those normal rules by forcing the constables into physical discomfort by breaking their routine with an absurd lie. He is jarring them out of their complacency. He is waking them up. He is proving that the world is unpredictable, muddy, and chaotic. He operates on a different frequency. Fundamentally, that chaotic rule-breaking energy is exactly what is required to defeat a hidden evil like Wang Yi. That makes sense. As a conventional hero, like Limeing, walks right into the trap because he expects the world to follow the rules of hospitality. Yes. The trickster shatters the trap by refusing to play the game by treels. Exactly. So, after ditching the annoyed constables in the mud, Ji Gong makes his way through the storm to the dong family in.

26:50He is the one knocking on the door. Ji Feng, the disgruntled crony, yells through the door that they have no empty rooms and tells him to go away. And a normal person would accept that rejection and seek shelter elsewhere. Or try to force their way in. Right. But Ji Gong doesn't kick the door down with righteous martial arts fury. He steps back into the shadows. He takes his small, humble cloth bundle and he begins to repack it. He pucks it up, reshapes it, making it look massive and heavy. Creating an illusion. Then he goes back to the door. Ji Feng looks through the crack, sees this giant bag, and asks why a simple monk is carrying such a huge load. And here is where Ji Gong weaponizes the very flaw that holds the villains coalition together. Ji Gong leans in and whispers through the door. I'm not a regular monk. I am a secret bodyguard. And I am carrying immensely valuable items. I have a crystal cat's eye. I have a whole coral tree. I have priceless antiques. I am terrified of being robbed out here. Please, you must let me in. If we compare Ji Gong with Wang Yi, the brilliance of this moment becomes so clear.

27:51Oh yeah. Both men are absolute masters of deception. They both construct false realities to manipulate the people around them, but their underlying motives and targets are entirely opposite. Wang Yi uses lies to stroke his own fragile ego, cover up his cowardice, and trick his men into committing murder for free. His lies are destructive and entirely selfish. What Ji Gong uses lies to dismantle the machinery of evil. He recognizes that the villains fatal flaw isn't just their capacity for violence. It is their insatiable blinding greed. In Ji Feng, looking through the crack in the door, here's the words crystal cat's eye and coral tree, his psychological state is completely overridden. It's hilarious because Ji Feng just realized, like minute to go, that his boss was scamming him out of amazely 30 tales of silver. He's already primed to be greedy. Yes, he is frustrated, angry, and incredibly greedy, and suddenly a monk shows up, claiming to have a coral tree.

28:51Think about how absurd that is. It's deeply absurd. A secret bodyguard carrying a massive fragile oceanic coral tree in a cloth sack through a rainstorm in the middle of the night. It makes zero logical sense. But greed obliterates logic. Ji Feng abandons all critical thinking. He doesn't question the logistics of the coral tree at all. He only calculates the potential payout. He runs back to Wang Yi completely forgetting about the fact that his boss is currently standing over two parallel men with a knife. He bursts into the room and yells, there is a monk outside with tens of thousands of tales worth of treasure, claiming they could each make seven or eight thousand. The disruption is total. Like the sheer gravitational pull of their own greed pulls them entirely off their murderous task. Wang Yi immediately lowers the knife. He orders his men to lock the paralyzed heroes in the east room and let the monk into the main room. He's hooked. Ji Gok hasn't thrown a single punch. He hasn't used any magical blasts of energy. Yet he is completely disarmed at deadly situation simply by dangling an invisible fabricated

29:54carrot in front of him. It is a profound philosophical victory over brute force. Ji Gok understands that you don't defeat a trap by fighting the metal jaws, you know. You defeat it by tricking the hunter who said it. And that is exactly where the chapter leaves us, right on the precipice of Ji Gok stepping into the courtyard, ready to unleash his particular brand of chaotic justice on the end.