*— When you look up at the stars, have you ever wondered if the stars are also looking at you?*

*……*

Bai Youwei opened her eyes to an endless night sky. The moon cast cold white light, and the stars blanketing the heavens were sharp as needles.

She forced herself to sit up, feeling something soft and fuzzy beneath her hand.

She looked down. A plastic face stared right back at her — a delicate, beautiful black-haired doll.

Bai Youwei: “……”

She was cursing in her heart.

The doll was incredibly lifelike. Its snow-white plastic skin had the soft give of real flesh, its glass eyes were deep and dark, and even its lashes were distinct, strand by strand.

Looking further out, she realized that everywhere her gaze reached — there was nothing but dolls!

A dense mass of arms and legs, thick and thin, male and female, all tangled together. Hair of every length and color wound in layers upon layers. Countless dolls were piled into an enormous pit that stretched beyond sight — it was practically a mass grave!

The only difference was that the bodies heaped here were not corpses, but human dolls indistinguishable from the living.

Bai Youwei felt nothing but a headache. Just what kind of world had she ended up in?

She stood and took a few steps, then spotted her rabbit — its fur caught in the hair of several dolls. It was frantically kicking its legs in place, writhing and scratching, but the strands only wound tighter.

Bai Youwei rubbed her temple and said helplessly, “Even you followed me here. So this world still falls within the domain of the doll worlds…”

“……” The rabbit went still.

Bai Youwei sighed, bent down, and pulled the strands of hair free, then turned away without another glance and began wandering through the massive doll-filled pit.

She stumbled around in a full circle. Nothing but dolls.

She hadn’t found Shen Mo.

The two of them had clearly entered together, yet now they were separated. That left Bai Youwei in a difficult spot.

Although she held the authority to open the gates between worlds, Shen Mo’s status was that of a subject — without finding him, she had no way to proceed to the next world.

What was she supposed to do now?

“Hey! Is anyone there?!” Bai Youwei called out, “Help! — “

“Help…”

“…lp…”

“…”

The vast pit echoed her voice endlessly back to her.

Even she felt it was foolish. In a place like this, not a living soul in sight — what good was calling for help?

But if no one helped her, how was she supposed to climb out of here? …If Shen Mo were here, he’d surely find a way…

The more she thought about it, the more despondent she felt.

Venturing into a new world was always risky — she just hadn’t expected the danger to arrive this fast. And besides, as the King, why didn’t she have even a single special ability?

Bai Youwei searched herself and found, as expected, that all her items were gone — including her overpowered doll house. Her physical abilities seemed to have carried over, though: strength, speed, agility, all still reasonably intact.

It seemed that the upgrades from the labyrinth remained effective in every doll world. Otherwise, the moment she left that world, she should have reverted to her original state — back to being a cripple.

So if she entered the real human world, would she become a cripple again? …That wasn’t good. It seemed her decision back then had been too impulsive. Hmm… really too impulsive…

While she was mulling this over, voices drifted down from above —

“I thought I heard someone calling for help just now…”

“That’s impossible. There are only dead dolls here. How would a living person end up down there…”

“But I really did hear it.”

“Yao Yao-jie, I think I heard it too…”

“Yi-gege, I’m scared…”

Bai Youwei furrowed her brow and looked up.

How strange. By the sound of it, these were a group of children.

But in a place as eerie as this, in the dead of night — what were children doing here?

She was still puzzling over it when a head appeared over the rim of the pit.

It was a clear-featured boy, around sixteen or seventeen.

Their eyes met directly. Then, from beside the young boy, heads popped up one after another like sprouting mushrooms!

One, two, three, four… counting the first boy, five little kids were staring fixedly down at her, as if watching a chimpanzee at a zoo!

After a long moment, the smallest child whispered, “Yi-gege, there’s an auntie down there.”

Bai Youwei’s face fell. Her mood instantly soured!

*Auntie?* Clearly she was a *big sister*, thank you very much!

—