She couldn’t use the rabbit!

The rabbit’s charge was insufficient—it couldn’t cause meaningful damage to the Duke. And besides, the Duke was gripping Zhu Shu in his hand. If the electrical current strayed onto Zhu Shu, it wouldn’t be the Duke in trouble first—it would kill Zhu Shu.

So she threw the four beads.

In the dollhouse, she had been allotted twelve beads in total. She’d used eight. Four remained—these were the very last beads she had.

And the only attack-type items she had left that could take immediate effect.

The beads struck the Duke. She watched with wide eyes, and finally saw the thunder-burst she had hoped for!

*BOOM!*

Yet the Duke’s body only staggered—he didn’t release his grip on Zhu Shu.

The back of him, where the skin had already been charred, was blasted open in a vivid red wound. The Duke turned to look at Bai Youwei over his shoulder, his gaze poisonous to the very depths.

Bai Youwei clenched her jaw, leaned on her cane, and walked forward.

The Duke glanced at her legs and gave a contemptuous smile, then turned his gaze away, dragging the struggling Zhu Shu onward toward the torture chamber.

Bai Youwei’s face went ashen, her steps increasingly frantic. She couldn’t catch up with him.

Suddenly, two figures came charging from behind her, straight toward the Duke and Zhu Shu!

It was Su Man and Yu Yaqing!

They raised their swords and hacked at the Duke with vicious force. Even knowing full well that he was impervious to blades, that he was unkillable—if only they could force him to loosen his grip even a little, enough to free Zhu Shu, then their efforts would not have been in vain.

They stabbed his back. They jabbed at his ankles.

They slashed at his wrist. They hacked at his head.

No matter what the attack, the Duke seemed to understand their aim perfectly—his hand kept its iron grip on Zhu Shu, and never once let go.

With a single hand, he slapped Yu Yaqing into the wall, then swung another blow at the relentless Su Man. The force threw Su Man backward and she fell to the floor, wrenching her already-injured right hand with a pained, muffled grunt.

Now the Duke had finally arrived outside the torture chamber!

The wall pivoted open sideways, revealing the passage. He was on the very verge of dragging Zhu Shu inside, when the struggling Zhu Shu suddenly threw something!

A snowflake.

【Snowflake: Only a snowflake can invite the guest of winter. When the snowflake melts, the guest departs.】

The effect of this item had always been ambiguous and unclear, so none of the women who’d emerged from the dollhouse had ever used it. But now Zhu Shu was on the brink of death, and she’d thrown caution to the wind, gambling her last life-saving item on a desperate chance.

The Duke froze and stopped moving.

Just one second later, a blizzard erupted inside the room. The temperature plummeted!

Rising from the snow came a towering figure nearly three meters tall—an enormous snowman, its entire body white, layered in ice and frost, yet possessed of crimson eyes and razor-sharp claws. It threw back its head and let out a roar like the bone-chilling howl of a winter gale sweeping through.

With one thunderous charge, the snowman slammed into the Duke and sent him crashing into the torture chamber!

Yu Yaqing and Su Man rushed forward and pulled Zhu Shu free!

They slung the others onto their backs—one carrying Zhu Shu, one carrying Bai Youwei—and fled with everything they had.

Of all the things they hadn’t expected, when they passed the room near the staircase, Hu Ya came stumbling out in a panic and ran straight into them!

This time Hu Ya genuinely hadn’t done it on purpose. She had intended to hide quietly and wait for everyone else to die, then go try the key—but the temperature had suddenly dropped, and she’d heard the snowman’s roar, and feeling uneasy, she had decided to leave the third floor and find a safer place to shelter.

What Hu Ya had done was something Bai Youwei and Zhu Shu knew perfectly well—but this was no moment to settle old scores. The beast behind them could catch up at any second.

Everyone sprinted down the stairs.

Hu Ya saw the fighting in the depths of the corridor and bolted down after them in blind panic.

Su Man panted as she ran. “How long can the snowman hold?”

“Not very long.” Zhu Shu’s heart was a blur of dread. “When the snowflake melts, the guest departs—if it were winter right now, this item could hold for a long time. But in the torture chamber… there are braziers burning…”

The snowman would melt soon.

And they had nowhere left to hide.

—