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While continuing to progress my relationship with Fang Thirteen, I didn’t forget my true background——a pitiful man who had recently lost his wife. Just establishing this background wasn’t too difficult. All I needed to do was eat as I usually eat, drink as I usually drink, smile as I usually smile, dally around with Fang Thirteen as I usually dally around, then on some certain nights, or some certain dialogues when my ‘wife and children’ are brought up, I just needed to pretend to be silent or choked with sobs, then quickly recover my normal state.

Is it worth sympathizing with someone who drowns himself in his own sadness every day? Perhaps in the beginning it would be possible, but just like Xiang Linsao, harping on about one’s own pain every day will gradually cause the people around them to become fed up with it. On the contrary, when the more optimistic people expose their inner vulnerabilities, the destructive power produced is even bigger. So as far as I’m concerned, I basically don’t need to meticulously plan or do anything special. As long as I occasionally expose my vulnerability, my glorious image of being a “even though he lives a difficult life, he incessantly encourages the surrounding people”-person will appear in other people’s hearts.

But this isn’t enough.

It’s still the problem that I’ve been pondering before. I can continuously raise Fang Thirteen’s favorable opinion of me here since, after all, without my command, Abyss City over in the north and West-Resisting City in the south won’t launch the final attack. Basically, I am in complete control of the situation and can drag it on for however long I want. But the problem is that leaving things as status quo won’t lead to a decisive result.

It can be inferred at this point through common sense that Fang Thirteen, at this moment, is the type to hand out unlimited pardons and infinite doting to her younger brother.

Admittedly, I can use some methods to raise my position in her heart and reduce her favorable impression towards Fang Lita. But if there isn’t a real “incident” to act as a turning point, even if I max out the favorability bar, it’ll just be a “hard to choose” situation to Fang Thirteen at the very best. There would be no guarantee that she would be partial to me. Furthermore, I don’t know how long it would take me to reach that point.

It’s said that companionship is the longest confession, but it’s very sorrowful to accompany a girl whose heart isn’t present with you.

It can be said that in my plan, raising her favorability bar is a necessary process, but it isn’t the entire plan.

After Fang Thirteen slowly began trusting me more, I started the next step of the plan.

I’ve already placed a seed of resentment within Fang Thirteen’s heart through my previous trick of injuring myself to gain her sympathy.

But in Fang Lita’s opinion, he still maintained only a certain degree of trust in his older sister. At the very least, he very much trusted his own sister in the field of deploying battle formations. As long as this premise was still present, it would be impossible for him to do anything out of line. Because, in the bottom of his heart, his older sister was able to play a role in sorting out the messes he got himself into.

Therefore, he would always do some petty tricks during the time Fang Thirteen wasn’t around, even to the point of being half-mad and half-stupid as he scolded Fang Thirteen the other day, yet coming over to obediently apologize the very next day.

Thus, I found myself a night to once more infiltrate into Fang Thirteen’s room.

This time, I was still moving softly and quietly into the room, but it wasn’t for the purpose of peeping at documents but rather, in order to place a sealed letter into Fang Thirteen’s bookcase. Fang Thirteen might not have been able to see, but there was still a very small bookshelf in the bedroom with several heavily dust-laden books in it.

I speculated that this was the bookshelf that Fang Lita once used when reading books aloud to Fang Thirteen in the past, but afterwards, Fang Lita no longer read any books to his own older sister. As a result, these books had always stayed in their respective places without being used ever since.

I slowly inserted the letter in my hand into her bookshelf, between two books, merely exposing a tiny corner of it.

During the process of doing this, I intentionally bumped into the bookshelf and cause Fang Thirteen, who was on the bed, to suddenly turn over and question with a low shout:

“Who?!”

I didn’t speak and instead used a heavy, rough as possible voice to gasp for breath, just like Fang Lita when he was under the control of Charm Demon magic. To be honest, if my level of achievement was perfect, I would totally imitate Fang Lita and speak several vulgar words at this time. But because I wasn’t the best voice mimicker out there, I could only use this sort of method.

As for why I needed to imitate Fang Lita, it was to leave a foundation for future plans.

Fang Thirteen didn’t suspect that it wasn’t him. It wasn’t because she’s stupid, but rather because the only one who usually pants in such a manner and runs into her room is just Fang Lita, so there’s no other target for her to suspect.

Therefore, Fang Thirteen quietly probed with a frown:

“A’ta?”

I didn’t answer. Rather, I suddenly rushed out of the room as I panted, making it seem as if I were panicked.

Things went just as I expected since Fang Thirteen didn’t mention this matter at all the very next day. Regardless of whether it was me or Tila, not a peep of this event came out of her.

Evening of the next day, I slipped out of the City Lord’s mansion and sent a message via carrier pigeon.

The information transmitted was quite simple. It was to make Abyss City and West-Resisting City ship out an appearance of their rearguards being attacked, thus slowing down the front line offensive. And if possible, choosing to hold back the troops without moving and get into a deadlock with Fang Thirteen.

As a result, in the following several days, Fang Thirteen’s become increasingly wrinkled and tensed up.

Not only that, the amount of times Fang Lita came over to eat meals also increased in these several days.

I heard Fang Lita bring up Abyss City and West-Resisting City’s trend to Fang Thirteen several times with them all practically being probing inquiries:

“Sister, it must be that Fang Yuan, that damned fatty’s, money and grain reserves have dried up. He has only a few small cities in the first place, so there aren’t many methods for him to earn money. The main forces of his army have been used all up in the front lines, it’s very possible that he won’t be able to hold on. We should take the initiative to attack now, we’ll absolutely be able to win by a landslide!”

“Sister, I heard today that West-Resisting City’s people have retreated 1.5 kilometers, have pulled out of our territory, and are now lingering around the borders. If nothing bad had happened to them, would they be like this? I think we should give it a try! If we continue to drag things on like this, it will absolutely be detrimental to us. How could it be that they can come whenever they want and leave whenever they want, they definitely must pay some price!”

“Gosh, he infuriates me. Sister, did you know? Fang Yuan that damned fatty sent me a letter saying that there will inevitably be a day when he takes my life. Who does he think he is? He’s just a pig-like waste, how dare he bluff and bluster in front of me. Sister, we need to teach him a lesson, you can’t always watch on as your younger brother gets bullied right? I know you love me the most.”

“Sister, sister……”

Fang Lita spoke these kinds of words more and more frequently, but Fang Thirteen’s brows kept locking tighter.

When these whinings had just begun, she was still kind enough to explain to Fang Lita:

“Since Fang Yuan has taken the initiative to declare war on us, he definitely has some assurance. At the very least, it’s impossible for him to run out of money and grain in such a short amount of time. For these past few years, he’s been in charge of carrying out commercial activities in Yun Hai, so while he seems normal, he most definitely has earned a lot of money without us knowing.”

“There’s even less of a need to speak about West-Resisting City as the number of powerhouses in Li De’s hands aren’t small. That Moon is also within West-Resisting City and with Bai Huang’s support, it’s simply not possible for such a minor logistics issue to pop up……”

But no matter how Fang Thirteen explained it, Fang Lita kept asking the one single crucial question:

“Then why have they stopped their advance when they clearly can continue and successfully tear down our cities?”

Fang Thirteen pursued up her lips, unable to provide an answer because she was also a little confused.

The amount of times she’s sighed has been increasing each passing day.