Fu Miaoxue held out her hand toward him. “Don’t ask questions. Lend me 10 walnuts first, and I’ll give you 200 back later!”

Pan Xiaoxin: “……”

Never in his life had he seen someone borrow things with such unabashed confidence.

But still, he dug around in the bottom of the leaf pile and pulled out ten walnuts. With the intent of just keeping the peace, he handed the walnuts to Fu Miaoxue.

Fu Miaoxue tossed aside her basket, bundled the walnuts up in her skirt, and slipped away with furtive, shifty steps.

Pan Xiaoxin was completely at a loss.

……

In one corner of the forest, there was a clearing, and in the clearing stood a small wooden cabin.

Fu Miaoxue found no inspector present.

When they had first entered the game, there had been a puppeteer inspector outside the cabin who explained the rules to them. But now the cabin door was closed — the inspector was presumably going to appear only at the very end of the game.

Fu Miaoxue clutched her skirt full of walnuts and made her way around to the back of the cabin. There she removed the black veil covering her head and stepped out of the black gown.

Beneath the black gown was a pale pink slip dress.

She tied the walnuts together in groups of three or four, then hung them from her neck, wrists, and waist. She piled her hair up high in a bun and tucked a walnut leaf on each side as ornamentation —

Then a cold smile played at the corner of her mouth, and she strolled out from behind the cabin with unhurried poise. She looked nothing at all like the black-robed, veiled figure she’d been when entering the game!

Now she was, in every sense of the word, a genuine walnut puppet!

“How dare they steal my walnuts… Hmph. I’ll steal them all back.” Fu Miaoxue swept a vicious gaze across the forest, then dragged the two large bamboo crates from in front of the cabin to her side. And then — she stood perfectly still.

Yes. Completely without movement.

……

Time passed second by second. As the game drew toward its conclusion, more and more players gathered in front of the cabin.

They saw the “walnut puppet figure” standing before the cabin and were puzzled. They also noticed the bamboo crates beside the puppet, which appeared to be specifically for collecting walnuts.

“What’s going on? Can we hand in walnuts already?”

“It should be time, I think — only ten more minutes left.”

“Hey! Are we supposed to hand them in early?”

Fu Miaoxue looked at them with a pleasant smile. “Welcome, everyone, to this game. I am the inspector’s assistant. To avoid any disputes during the final settlement, you may submit your walnuts here in advance. Once submitted, walnut counts will no longer change.”

“Inspector’s assistant?” someone said skeptically. “I’ve never heard of an inspector having an assistant…”

But Fu Miaoxue’s appearance as a puppet was far too convincing. No one would ever imagine that a puppet could be a player. So no matter how strange it seemed in their hearts, they never suspected Fu Miaoxue, and one by one they emptied their collected walnuts into the two bamboo crates.

Other players arriving at the cabin saw this scene and assumed without question that it was a part of the game. Without overthinking it, they followed along and poured their walnuts into the crates.

The two bamboo crates were soon filled to overflowing.

“Can the results be announced now?” a player asked.

Without changing her expression, Fu Miaoxue replied in the flat, even tone of a puppet figure, “Once all players have completed their submission, the results of this game will be announced.”

“Who hasn’t submitted yet?” asked an impatient burly man, scanning the crowd with a glare. “Hey! If you haven’t submitted, get it done — stop wasting everyone’s time! You few with that tiny number of walnuts — stop hiding them. You’re never going to win anyway!”

This burly man was the first person at the start of the game to rally others into an alliance. He had organized a five-person squad dedicated entirely to robbing other players of their walnuts! As a result, the walnut count held by his squad was the highest of any player group. Barring the unexpected, the five of them were all but certain to win.

Perhaps it was the imminence of victory that made him especially arrogant. He bellowed and hollered for quite some time — until, at long last, the final player arrived, fashionably late —

The last person to reach the cabin was Pan Xiaoxin.

—