"I accept your bet," Joe said, after a silence long enough to suggest that the deliberation behind it had been genuine. He had turned the proposition over from every angle and arrived at the same conclusion each time, which was that Max, despite whatever qualities had so thoroughly convinced the family heads of the Black Dragon Clan, was not going to cross the eightieth floor on a cultivation base that sat at the third level of the Rebirth Realm.
His confidence in that assessment had not moved by a single degree since Mathew had first proposed the number, and he felt no need to pretend otherwise. "But I also have a condition," he added, his voice carrying the measured weight of someone who had decided exactly what he wanted before opening his mouth.
