Bai Youwei drifted back to the rest hall in a daze.

Tu Shenshi walked up with a smile. “Please, Your Majesty, select the next battle.”

She blinked slowly, her expression still carrying the blankness of a game just finished, and a selection panel appeared before her—

Battle 1: The Clown. Battle 5: Comic Man. Battle 10: The Ball. Battle 20: The Grey-Robed Elder.

Of the four options, Battle 20 and Battle 10 were grayed out and unavailable.

Bai Youwei’s gaze drifted between Battle 1 and Battle 5, and without overthinking it, she chose Battle 1.

Because Battle 1 was the only battle with no minimum player count. A single person could participate. Battle 5 required at least five players.

Though she had won this time, it had been a hard-fought victory. The white gloves’ endless stream of tools had inflicted enormous damage on her team, and she had no way of knowing whether everyone would have recovered by the next battle.

So, as a precaution, she chose Battle 1.

Thinking back now on that man… he was truly deranged. He had even gone so far as to kill his own teammates who were trapped in the pit! Absolutely out of his mind!

Thank goodness he was dead…

He was dead…

From now on, she would never encounter someone that twisted again.

Bai Youwei was still lost in thought when Tu Shenshi asked, “Two mazes have already been unlocked. Would you like to enter now?”

Bai Youwei blinked and looked at it.

“While physical enhancement has limits, strengthening self-healing ability somewhat would be of benefit in your future battles.” Tu Shenshi spoke softly, in an unhurried and gentle tone. “In war, injuries are inevitable.”

Bai Youwei hesitated. “I… let me think about it.”

The maze could increase self-healing ability—but it also came with danger.

Most of her companions were badly injured right now, and she wasn’t sure whether she should go.

Tu Shenshi watched her quietly.

Behind her, Shen Mo stepped forward and lightly placed a hand on Bai Youwei’s shoulder. “Let’s go back first.”

Bai Youwei nodded.

Everyone left the rest hall.

Tan Xiao and A’Long urgently needed medical attention; Ashalina had used the mud but was also not lightly injured; and then there was Yu Chaohui…

Yu Chaohui’s wounds, compared to the others, were actually the least severe—but the most difficult to treat, because his life force had been drained. Slow recuperation was the only option.

After returning to the headquarters tower, Chu Huaijin sent in a medical team to take up residence and provide medical support for the injured. Then he separately sought out Bai Youwei and Shen Mo to understand the details of the battle.

The matter of Zhang Yu was also clarified.

—When Bai Youwei had told him to go after Han Lu, he had lied and said he hadn’t caught up. That was precisely when Han Lu had pleaded with him to put on the Heart Resonance Ring. Rings weren’t all-powerful either—you had to be close for them to allow two people to “resonate in heart and mind.” Mentioning all of this now seemed too late anyway…

Han Lu was gone. Zhang Yu naturally could not remain as a subject. Bai Youwei demoted him to commoner and paid him no further mind.

With one of the white gloves gone, the headquarters had lost the crowd of admirers and grown a little quieter.

The way people looked at Bai Youwei had also subtly shifted.

Something like admiration, something like reverence—mixed with a hint of… something hard to name. Rejection and aversion.

It was the way one might gossip in the tabloid era—talking about a female celebrity going from obscurity to meteoric fame, and beyond the envy, inevitably adding with a practiced air: “For someone to get that famous, sure she’s got some talent, but who knows how many men’s beds she’s rolled through…”

Bai Youwei was sitting in the cafeteria when she heard two servers talking:

“She even eliminated the white gloves player… terrifying…”

“Right? You’d have to have such a scheming mind… no one with a soft heart could pull that off, would they?”

“Honestly, I couldn’t do it. I have a soft heart—I feel bad for stray cats and dogs on the side of the road…”

“Ha, well, how could we compare ourselves to a king…”

That sort of chatter—impossible to tell whether it was praise or criticism—was grating to hear regardless.

—