Yu Yaqing considered for a moment, then nodded. “All right. Let’s make another trip down to the basement.”

The six women finished lunch, tidied up, and went down to the basement together.

The manor’s basement had no lights.

Each of them took a candlestick for illumination, and once they were down there, they lit the torches mounted on the walls with the candleflame.

The basement was cold and gloomy — one side a wall of damp, icy stone, the other a row of iron-cast cages.

Whatever had once been imprisoned in the cages — people, perhaps, or livestock — was long gone. The only things left inside were scattered heaps of dry straw.

Along the outside of the iron bars, however, quite a few things had been left behind. Just as Yu Yaqing had said: empty wine bottles, rusted iron cans. The rotting wooden crates, when opened, released a thick wave of mildew and dust that stung the nose.

They made their way deeper, following the long row of cages.

At last they reached the very end.

Bai Youwei stopped in front of the door of the final cage and said, “Someone come and see if it can be opened.”

Su Man stepped forward and tugged at the lock on the door, then looked up at the others. “It’s locked.”

The cages before it had also been shut, but without locks — they had only been loosely looped with chains, and swung open with a push.

It hadn’t occurred to anyone that the very last one would actually be locked.

Yu Yaqing’s eyes widened with surprise, and she instinctively turned to look at Hu Ya and Cheng Qian beside her.

Hu Ya and Cheng Qian both wore expressions of stunned disbelief, murmuring, “But we checked all of them…”

When Yu Yaqing had brought the group down here, they had indeed searched every cell carefully at the start. But toward the end, some of the cages had been passed over with a glance — after all, even standing outside the bars, you could see everything inside at a glance without having to go in.

Add to that the dim lighting and the oppressive atmosphere, and a hundred-odd cages had only deepened their mental exhaustion and unease —

Through all of these combined factors, they had missed the anomaly in the very last cage.

Yu Yaqing couldn’t help asking Bai Youwei, “How did you know this cage was different?”

Bai Youwei had been sitting in her wheelchair the whole time, never once touching any of the bars. How had she spotted the anomaly faster than any of them?

“Because this is the 129th cage.” Bai Youwei explained calmly. “I’ve been counting since we came in. The extra cage is bound to be significant, though it wasn’t necessarily going to be the last one. That we found it here — I’d call that good luck on our part.”

Luck?

Yu Yaqing had never believed in luck. She believed only in ability.

She narrowed her eyes slightly, appraising the woman in the wheelchair, and said, “You’ve played a lot of games.”

Her tone was certain.

Bai Youwei glanced at her and made no denial. “Mm. Played enough of them. I know the little tricks these games like to pull better than most.”

No bragging, no showing off. A pure statement of fact.

No one quite knew what to say to that.

After a moment of silence, Yu Yaqing said, “I hope you’re right.”

She turned and walked away, calling out, “Hu Ya, come with me. We need to find something to break this lock.”

Hu Ya raised her candlestick and hurried after Yu Yaqing.

— There was a room upstairs that displayed a collection of weapons: saddles, armor, blades, swords, bows, crossbows — a bit of everything.

The two of them found a large cleaver and an axe, returned to the basement, and forced the lock open.

All six women stepped inside.

……

The final cage was identical to all the others.

Nothing but scattered straw on the ground.

“What a letdown…” Hu Ya grumbled under her breath. “Acting so high and mighty, looking down on everyone — and in the end she guessed wrong, and we wasted all this effort.”

She didn’t like Bai Youwei. The woman was clearly a cripple — someone who depended on others just to survive — yet she didn’t know how to read a room, walking around with that superior air of hers as if no one was worth acknowledging.

At least Cheng Qian was better.

At least Cheng Qian understood that the times had changed. She kept her head down and toed the line.

—