He Tangtang was itching to go. Dropping into an army crawl, he inched his way toward the cave entrance for a peek, and turned back to Wen Jifei.

Wen Jifei was scrunched in the deepest corner, arms crossed, shaking his head firmly. “Don’t even think about it. My goal coming in here isn’t to be deadweight or cause trouble. My mind has never been clearer.”

It was rare to see Plague Chicken sit still and behave. 

He Tangtang laughed. “I wasn’t trying to drag you along. I was just thinking, if you weren’t here, would they have taken me?”

“No.” Wen Jifei glanced up at him. “Face it, Tangtang. If I weren’t here, Little Qing would say, ‘He Tangtang, you stay put and keep quiet.’ He’d probably even leave someone behind to babysit you.”

A strange logic of compulsory protection for the weakest.

That didn’t sit well with He Tangtang. He stiffened his neck. “Am I really weaker than those Invincible Firewind Wheels in an actual fight?”

“Not necessarily,” Wen Jifei conceded. “If you made Little Qing choose,...