Gu Changsheng looked at his eleven-year-old son across the sunlit breakfast table.
Gu Nian was grinning from ear to ear, his chin propped on both hands. Waiting for an answer with the eager bounce of a boy who had just proposed building a backyard treehouse out of spare lumber.
“A play?” Gu Changsheng mused, tapping his porcelain teacup with one knuckle. “You want to scam an Upper-Realm predatory leveling system out of its Rank 7 Core Vault using elementary-school theater?”
“Why not, Dad?” Gu Nian asked earnestly, leaning forward. “You always tell us that working smarter beats swinging harder!
That stupid system only cares about checking boxes on its script list.
It wants to see you on the chopping block, and it wants to see me crying and shooting black-gold Chaos flames into the sky! I already know how to shoot the flames without burning my clothes. We just give it a show, wait for the golden vault doors to open in mid-air, grab the treasure chest, and then I hit Uncle Sausage-Lips with my cast-iron frying pan!”
“The economic logic is completely sound, Big Brother,” twelve-year-old Ye Xiao said, adjusting his wire-rimmed spectacles as he sketched a quick three-step flow-chart on his slate. “If we attack Envoy Xue Sha directly, our return on investment is zero spirit stones because he is currently bankrupt. However, if we trick his system’s automated escrow protocol into opening the Rank 7 vault first, our net profit increases by three Nascent Soul Spirit Crystals…
