Yu Chaohui paid no attention. He pinned Zhang Yu to the ground and wrenched both arms behind his back!

Zhang Yu struggled uselessly. His tightly clenched fingers were pried open one by one!

“Damn it—it really is a tool!” Yu Chaohui tore the ring free, his expression dark as a thundercloud.

Zhang Yu screamed, “Give it back!”

“You traitor!” Yu Chaohui shoved Zhang Yu away with a kick, then handed the ring to Bai Youwei. He despised betrayal above all else.

Bai Youwei took the ring from him. Information about the item surfaced immediately in her mind:

【Mind-Link Ring: As the name implies, two people who each wear one ring are able to share thoughts and intentions with one another.】

In other words, the rings came as a pair.

Zhang Yu wore one. The other was presumably in Ye Chong’s possession.

All the shouting and struggling just now—Ye Chong had likely already received the message through the ring and knew the mole had been caught.

Not that it mattered. Given Ye Chong’s character, he would certainly make no move to save Zhang Yu.

Bai Youwei lightly tossed the ring into the air and caught it again. She looked down at Zhang Yu on the ground. “Tell us why. What did they offer you? Or what did they threaten you with?”

Zhang Yu hung his head and said nothing.

Bai Youwei smiled lightly, unbothered, and continued, “It was my carelessness, too. You were someone we recruited from the base—and Ye Chong also recruited people from the same base. It’s a small circle. Knowing someone on the other side is entirely normal. Is there someone among their group who is… a friend of yours?”

Zhang Yu suddenly snapped his head up, lunged toward Bai Youwei, and threw himself to his knees before her, begging!

He kowtowed again and again.

“Please! I beg you all! Can’t you lose this battle?! You have plenty of puzzle pieces, don’t you? Even if you lose, nothing will happen to you! You just need to win the next battle to qualify for the finals! Please, concede! I’m begging you to concede…”

Bai Youwei’s expression instantly went cold.

A’Shalina snapped, “Are you out of your mind?! You want us to forfeit on purpose?! Are you insane?!”

Zhang Yu was sobbing uncontrollably. “We won’t suffer anything if we lose—but they will die if they lose! That person over there… he only gave Lu Lu one puzzle piece. If she gets eliminated, she’ll actually die! Please, have mercy! I’ll do anything you ask—be your slave, your servant—just please, please concede this game!”

A collective silence fell. No one knew what to say.

Ye Chong had actually given his own people only a single puzzle piece? Wasn’t he afraid that once they died, he’d never be able to recruit followers again?

Yu Chaohui pushed aside his anger and asked bluntly, “Who is Lu Lu?”

“She’s my girlfriend…” Zhang Yu knelt on the ground, his face a mask of remorse. “We made an agreement—each of us would choose a king with good odds of winning. That way, whichever of us backed the winning king, at least one of us would make it to the new world. But we didn’t expect… that our two kings would end up facing each other like this…”

Bai Youwei said coldly, “It wasn’t coincidence. It was a high probability. If you had done your research on both sides—on who each king had recruited—you would have known that both Ye Chong and I chose Battle 10. By the second round of the Labyrinth War, the number of kings had been nearly halved. The kings who lost are concentrated in Battle 1 and Battle 5. Very few kings could select Battle 10, so the chances of encountering each other were extremely high.”

Zhang Yu clawed at his hair in anguish. “I didn’t know… I thought we wouldn’t run into each other! Please! Just concede! You can’t beat White Gloves anyway, and now Shen Mo is eliminated too—why keep fighting to the bitter end?! Concede! I beg you, please concede…”

“Stop raving!” A’Shalina had heard enough. She stared at Zhang Yu in disbelief. “Even if we concede, do you think White Gloves will let us go?! Do you think your girlfriend will be safe?! Give it up! We are not going to concede!”

—