After the freakish girl and her freakish mother disappeared, Tu Shenshi appeared again, standing in the doorway with a smile, and addressed the Inspectors:

“Tangtang sneaks in to eat candy every half hour, but she has cavities, so her mother always comes chasing after her to drag her away by force.

Your task is to find the item that does not belong to the Candy House, and carry that item out through the main door to leave the Candy House.

Be warned — you must be quick, because once the main door has been eaten by Tangtang, everyone trapped inside the Candy House will be considered to have failed the game.”

“The rules sound simple enough, but what if we pick the wrong item?” Bai Youwei asked.

Tu Shenshi replied: “As punishment, you will endure a strike of a hundred thousand thunderbolts.”

Bai Youwei: “……”

Tu Shenshi looked at her with a smile, and at the Inspectors behind her, and said: “I wish you all a Happy Children’s Day.”

With those words, his figure vanished.

Bai Youwei was utterly speechless. She turned back and asked the other Inspectors: “Has it always been this twisted?”

Inside the Candy House, all the Inspectors fell silent.

After a long while, the grey-robed elder let out a low sigh, its voice raspy as it said: “The river of time is long, and loneliness must be relieved one way or another. Let’s start searching quickly — we only have half an hour.”

It gathered its wide sleeves and drifted through the room like a ghost, no longer paying attention to the others.

The remaining Inspectors also scattered, searching for the so-called item “that does not belong to the Candy House.”

Only Bai Youwei and the ball didn’t move.

“Why aren’t you searching?” Bai Youwei asked the ball.

The ball rolled in a quiet circle and asked: “And why aren’t you searching?”

Bai Youwei said: “The rules say to find the item that doesn’t belong to the Candy House, but they don’t say how many such items there are. There are six of us in total. If there are six items, one per person, then there’s no need to rush. But if there’s only one item, a fight is plainly going to break out……”

She paused, swept a glance at the others, and said calmly: “I’ll wait for you all to finish fighting.”

The ball: “……”

The comic-panel man: “……”

The grey-robed elder: “……”

The puppeteer: “……”

The will-o’-wisp: “……”

Bai Youwei looked at them all inexplicably: “What are you standing there for? Go and search — regardless of whether there’ll be a fight or not, at least find the item first~”

Everyone felt a complicated mix of feelings, not knowing quite what to say, and each silently went to search.

Bai Youwei, meanwhile, walked on her own to the door, raised her hand and rapped on it. The sound was muffled and dull.

The door was made from very thick chocolate sandwich biscuits, the surface coated in hardened amber-colored sugar glaze, studded with colorful candy buttons and crushed nuts — colorful and beautiful.

She felt somewhat relieved. A door this thick would surely take that freakish girl a considerable amount of time to eat through entirely.

After checking the door, she went to check the windows.

The windows were made of very thin rock candy and could be broken easily. Since the rules had already specified that they needed to carry the item out through the main door, breaking through the window would presumably count as a violation.

So what could the item that “doesn’t belong to the Candy House” be?

……It should be some object whose material is different from candy, right?

Bai Youwei’s gaze slowly swept through the room, tracing along the ceiling inch by inch.

She had been living very comfortably recently, and being suddenly swept here to participate in a game had caught her quite off guard.

For no particular reason, she had no desire to be struck by a hundred thousand thunderbolts, so she needed to think carefully about this game.

Half an hour was passing quickly.

All six Inspectors had come up empty-handed.

In this Candy House of over a hundred square meters, they had checked the doors, windows, floors, and ceiling. The tables, chairs, and furniture had all been examined without missing a thing. Candlesticks, wall paintings, tablecloths, vases — they had even taken a sip of the water in the vases——

It was honey water.

—