Du Lai certainly wouldn’t die — if he did, there’d be no explanation for his later entanglement with Fu Miaoxue.

Bai Youwei followed behind and watched as Du Lai was taken into a room. Not long after, two men carrying medical cases arrived in a hurry and were ushered inside by a bodyguard.

In the moment before the door swung shut, she caught a glimpse of professional medical equipment and surgical lights arranged within.

It seemed this estate played host to uninvited guests on a regular basis — and those guests sustained injuries on a regular basis as well — which had apparently made a full set of medical facilities a practical necessity.

There was a bodyguard stationed outside the door. Bai Youwei didn’t go in, only stood in the corridor and waited.

The people inside walked past her as though she were air, not one of them coming over to ask why she was standing there.

She waited a little while outside, and then heard a faint clink — the sound of something metallic dropping into a glass container. After that, she waited another hour before the doctors finally finished and came filing out.

Bai Youwei kept waiting.

She waited until the east sky grew pale and dawn arrived.

Servants in the courtyard were already up early, sweeping fallen leaves. The kitchen had begun preparing breakfast. Bai Youwei looked down at the time — Fu Miaoxue’s dream had now lasted nineteen hours.

Far too long…

Bai Youwei suspected that the labyrinth system had deliberately increased the difficulty because it viewed Fu Miaoxue as royalty.

If that was really the case, the system had an absolutely miserable sense of humor.

At half past six, Du Lai was rolled out of the room on a hospital bed by the bodyguards, heading in the direction of the elevator.

Bai Youwei hadn’t even realized there was an elevator in this estate. She puzzled over this silently as she fell in behind the hospital bed, following it all the way to Fu Miaoxue’s room.

The attendant at the door knocked carefully: “Miss, he’s been brought.”

After a moment, the door opened. Fu Miaoxue appeared behind it, hair loose and tumbling down, wearing a pale pink silk nightgown.

She’d only been awake a short while — there was still a trace of grogginess and impatience in her eyes. “Is he alive? Because if he dies in my room, all of you can die along with him.”

The bodyguard seemed accustomed to the young miss’s way of speaking and replied with an unruffled expression: “The bullet has been removed. The doctor repaired the ruptured blood vessel, administered anti-infection medication. With a few days of rest, he’ll make a full recovery.”

“Fine then…” Fu Miaoxue yawned. “Bring him in.”

The bodyguard wheeled Du Lai into Fu Miaoxue’s room. Bai Youwei slipped in too —

Fu Miaoxue’s room was breathtakingly opulent. Every corner spoke of princess-like luxury and refinement. But none of that was what made Bai Youwei’s eyes go wide. What astonished her was the enormous cage set in one corner of the room.

It was pure gold in color. The base was circular, its bars fashioned to resemble twisting vines, each one intricate and dazzling. In the morning light, they cast long vertical shadows across the floor, as beautiful as a work of art.

The moment Du Lai arrived in the room, a collar was fitted around his neck, and he was placed inside the golden cage.

He was still unconscious — and yet he had already become Fu Miaoxue’s “dog.”

The bodyguards and servants finished their tasks and filed out one by one. Only Bai Youwei remained.

Fu Miaoxue didn’t seem to notice at first. It wasn’t until she had shut the door that she finally became aware, studying Bai Youwei with a puzzled look. “How strange… You shouldn’t be here. And yet somehow, when I see you standing in my room, it feels perfectly normal.”

“Because we’re friends.” Bai Youwei replied without missing a beat.

Fu Miaoxue nodded thoughtfully. “Mm… you’re right. We are friends… I rarely have a friend. Then stay here.”

She dropped the matter without another thought and went into the dressing room to change.

Bai Youwei shifted her attention back to Du Lai.

Through the bars of the cage, she noticed that his eyelashes gave a barely-there flutter. A quiet suspicion formed in her mind — had Du Lai already woken up? Was he still thinking through how to deal with Fu Miaoxue, and playing possum in the meantime?

Bai Youwei considered this for a moment, then raised her voice toward the dressing room: “Why do you have a cage in your room?”