Bai Youwei murmured, “We are the masters of this dollhouse, and they are its guests. The master entertains the guest… if we bring the wrong item and anger the guest, we face the guest’s rampage.”

She seemed lost in thought, glancing over at the music box on the chest of drawers.

The crystal ball noticed her gaze and shifted slightly. “Hey — why are you looking at me?”

“Nothing,” Bai Youwei said. “I just think that nursery rhyme is quite catchy. Could I hear it again?”

“Of course.” The ball said generously, “Come over and wind the mechanism — that’s all you need to do.”

Shen Mo walked over, picked up the music box, and wound it two or three times. The music began to play, along with that nursery rhyme —

Spring — the bear has woken up,

So anxious, having lost two of its children;

Summer — the rain falls so hard,

Pitch black, impossible to see where the treasure lies;

Autumn — who has come?

Look, the Nail-Tooth Monster has opened its mouth — but where have all its teeth gone?

Winter, winter has finally arrived~

Which little doll will live to see the snowflakes fall?

Hearing it a second time, Bai Youwei’s puzzlement remained unresolved. She propped her chin in her hand and muttered, “Strange… why would it be this straightforward…”

Yan Qingwen glanced at her. “In spring, find the bear’s children; in summer, find the treasure; in autumn, the Nail-Tooth Monster has no teeth — taken literally, that should mean finding the teeth. We don’t know what the Nail-Tooth Monster is yet, so the teeth aside for now. The last line — ‘which little doll will live to see the snowflakes fall’ — must mean which player survives until winter.”

“If you take it all at face value, there’s no obvious difficulty,” Shen Mo said, glancing around the room. “Unless what we need to find isn’t in this house.”

Bai Youwei furrowed her brow and looked at the crystal ball. “Are you sure what we need is inside the house? It would be completely unfair if it were somewhere out of bounds without any hint — you’d be cheating.”

“Of course it’s all inside this house!” The crystal ball huffed indignantly. “Every overseer’s game is absolutely fair and just! How could we possibly sabotage the players on purpose and prevent them from clearing the game? Am I really that wicked?”

Bai Youwei: “Yes, you are.”

The crystal ball leapt up!

It shot up half a meter into the air, as though beside itself with fury!

“You player — you’re absolutely outrageous! If I were really that wicked, do you think all those people you played with last time would have cleared the game safe and sound?!”

Bai Youwei: “If you weren’t so wicked, we wouldn’t have had to grind all the way to the ninth round to clear the game last time.”

The ball: “…”

Yan Qingwen said, “So you two have met before?”

“What — you haven’t?” Bai Youwei grew curious. “You’ve cleared games before too. Which overseers have you encountered?”

“The first overseer I met had a rabbit’s head. The body looked like a gentleman’s, but the voice was like a lady’s. The second one…” Yan Qingwen said. “…was very tall.”

“Golden hair and blue eyes? Looked like the male lead from some out-of-fashion girls’ manga from the 1980s — limbs absurdly long, like a noodle person?”  Bai Youwei asked.

Yan Qingwen smiled in spite of himself and nodded. “I’ve never actually read girls’ manga, so I couldn’t say whether that’s accurate — but yes, golden hair and blue eyes.”

“That one has a lot of tricks up its sleeve, always backing people into a corner,” Shen Mo said with a slight frown, clearly not a fan. “I’d rather not run into it again.”

“I thought it was quite interesting, actually — quite inventive.” Bai Youwei smiled. “The one I least want to encounter again is that gray-robed freak. The game was so dull, and honestly a bit tacky.”

“The rabbit-headed one’s game was actually decent,” Yan Qingwen commented. “Simple, direct rules, without all the twists and turns.”

Bai Youwei agreed. “Right — the simpler the rules, the more they test the game’s balance. And the rabbit-headed one is a lot cuter than the others.”

Before they knew it, the three of them had started debating which overseer had the best game design.

The crystal ball listened from the side, growing itchy with impatience, and finally couldn’t help drifting closer to ask: “What about me? What about me? How is my game?”