Bai Youwei burst out laughing, then asked, “Tan Xiao, were you two just playing up in the attic?”

“Tan Xiao thought for a moment, then replied with utmost seriousness: “What I said earlier wasn’t quite right — the correct word is ‘researching’! We discovered this whale and, while studying it, sensed something was off, then found the ship!”

Bai Youwei rolled her wheelchair over and examined the ship model carefully. “Hmm… it looks like a pirate ship laden with treasure, which unfortunately sank to the bottom of the sea and ended up inside the whale’s belly. If you interpret it that way, it does fit with the imagery of ‘treasure.'”

“Do you have any ideas?” Yan Qingwen asked her.

More than the others, Yan Qingwen paid close attention to Bai Youwei’s reactions and attitudes — not only because of the composure she had shown during the Lucky Q&A, but also because of the trust that Shen Mo, Tan Xiao, Cheng Weicai, and the others placed in her.

But at this moment, Bai Youwei was languid and unhurried. She shook her head lightly and said, “No — I just feel that… that nursery rhyme seems a bit too simple.”

Yan Qingwen: “Simple?”

“It’s like when an exam just hands you the answer outright — would you call that simple?” Bai Youwei propped her chin in her hand and gazed out the window, murmuring, “The old man in gray robes brought us here with clearly vengeful intent, so… there must be something wrong with this game.”

There had to be a trap — one she hadn’t found yet, hadn’t noticed yet.

Let me think through it from the beginning.

Spring — the bear has woken up, so anxious about losing two of its children…

Now they had found a whole pile of bear “children,” yet there was only one stuffed bear resembling the mother bear outside — why was that?

“Could it be this one?” Su Man picked one out from among a heap of plush bears, removed its little boots, then took off its little hat, and placed it next to the bear Zhu Shu had found. The two did look rather similar — both brownish-grey in color.

Teacher Cheng sighed. “But this stuffed bear doesn’t have a bow.”

Everyone was at a loss.

Silence stretched on for a while. Pan Xiaoxin hesitantly asked, “What if… we ‘borrowed’ a bow from another toy? Would that count?”

Everyone was startled, then turned to look at Pan Xiaoxin.

“Xiaoxin, have you seen a bow like this on any other toys?”

Pan Xiaoxin pointed toward the other side of the living room. “Over there — there’s a plush monkey with a red bow tied to its tail. The style looks about the same.”

To prove his words, Pan Xiaoxin ran over to the corner in a few quick strides and rummaged through a pile of stuffed animals, pulling out a plush monkey.

Hope kindled in everyone’s hearts.

But when Pan Xiaoxin came back carrying the monkey, disappointment was plain on every face.

The bow on the monkey’s tail wasn’t red with black polka dots — it was solid red.

Zhu Shu brought the two bows close together and compared them. The size and style were indeed very similar; the only flaw was the absence of black dots.

Just as they were troubled by this, Pan Xiaoxin spoke again: “There’s a black marker in the small study upstairs — we could draw the dots ourselves.”

Everyone went quiet for a moment after hearing that.

A child’s solution is sometimes so straightforward it catches you off guard.

Adults, long accustomed to the rules and conventions of the grown-up world, find it nearly impossible to return to that simple, unencumbered way of thinking they once had.

It wasn’t that adults couldn’t think of the same approach — it was that they didn’t dare, or they actively avoided it. Cautious and rule-bound, they were reluctant to break with the conventions they knew so well.

“Is doing something like this… cheating?” Lu Ang frowned. “If the bear isn’t satisfied, it’ll ‘rampage,’ according to what the overseer said.”

The interior space was cramped. If a wild beast went berserk in here, no matter how well the ten of them tried to hide, someone was bound to get hurt.