“Understood.” Shen Mo nodded calmly. “In that case, you and Du Lai are the first opponents I intend to defeat.”

Fu Miaoxue stared at him, struck speechless.

Cheng Weicai spoke up: “Xiao Shen is absolutely right! Standing at the pinnacle of power may feel gratifying, but only in the short term — and a world like that is distorted and unstable!

For everyone’s sake, for the sake of the entire world, we should work together to restore things to how they were, so everyone can live in peace!”

“Oh, what sanctimonious talk!” Fu Miaoxue gave a scornful snort. “Speaking so nobly, as if you haven’t got a single selfish bone in your body — who would believe that? When you become the final king, you might end up being worse than us!”

As she said this, her sharp eyes caught Bai Youwei lowering her head, and she immediately pointed straight at her: “See! That proves I’m right! Even she looks guilty!”

“…” Bai Youwei looked up, irritated. “…Would you just be quiet!”

Shen Mo said evenly: “You’re not entirely wrong — as long as someone is human, they will have selfish desires. But what I want to do isn’t driven by a wish to save all of humanity or to achieve world peace. I simply… don’t want to be domesticated.”

Fu Miaoxue paused.

Bai Youwei lowered her head further.

Shen Mo continued: “What do you think the doll game actually is? It sets up a series of rules, and now it’s created something called war — pushing us to slaughter each other with everything we have, drawing out every extreme facet of human nature. We’re like little white mice in a laboratory, subjected to one experiment after another. In the end, all our suffering amounts to nothing more than a string of data.

And this so-called Labyrinth War may be the final experiment. The king is the result this game wants to harvest.”

As he said this, Shen Mo looked deliberately toward Du Lai beside Fu Miaoxue.

“A king who treats the world through the lens of the game — even if he wins, it is the game that has won. Humanity would still be the loser.”

Du Lai said nothing, his brow furrowed.

Teacher Cheng nodded in profound agreement, a heavy expression on his face. “That’s exactly it… the game wants to turn us into monsters. If we want to truly win, we must return the world’s fate to human hands.”

He let out a sigh, then asked: “Do any of you know about a news story from a year ago — a university student who hired someone to commit a crime?”

Everyone shook their heads.

There was so much news online every day. A student hiring someone — in a sea of bizarre and shocking stories, it would have been nothing more than an unremarkable ripple.

“I was assigned to work at that school for a period of time,” Teacher Cheng said. “It was a completely ordinary middle school. There were good students and struggling ones, and occasional fights broke out, but always within manageable limits. But then…

A transfer student arrived. This child had previously been in a juvenile detention facility. The moment he arrived, he became the top of the social hierarchy — he devised a series of rules for the other students, imposing punishments and heavy fines on anyone who violated them. Many of the kids suffered greatly. We teachers tried to intervene, but it did little good. He dragged the entire school into chaos. Students couldn’t learn in peace, conflicts broke out constantly, and if someone got bloodied in a fight, they were considered impressive and cool…

In the end, the teachers and principal made a tremendous effort — contacting families, the education bureau, every department available — and finally managed to have him removed. We assumed the school environment would improve because of that. But it didn’t… not at all.

The situation at the school only worsened. Those bullying rules didn’t disappear just because the transfer student was gone. A group of students, fighting to seize the so-called top position, went so far as to hire someone to kill a former classmate.

That child… he had left behind the seeds of evil.”

—