Shen Mo stared fixedly at Bai Youwei.

Time seemed to stop.

Two or three seconds passed before a startled expression—as though waking from a dream—surfaced in his eyes. Then he rose and strode quickly toward her.

Drawing close, his body stiffened slightly. The arm he had been about to extend pulled back. He cleared his throat softly, reined in his emotions, and stood before Bai Youwei to ask, “Are you all right?”

Bai Youwei opened her mouth. All at once she had a feeling of not knowing where to begin.

Are you all right?

She had finally escaped with her life—truly, she was all right now. Yet when she looked at Zhu Shu’s eyes, red from weeping, when she looked at Yu Yaqing’s body covered in wounds, and then thought of those who had died…

How could she say she was “all right”?

In the midst of her silence, someone suddenly wrapped their arms around her.

She was in a daze for a moment, and then her cheek was already pressed against his chest. She heard him say in a low voice, “As long as you’re all right.”

The hoarse voice resonated inside his chest, traveled into her ears—warm.

Her face reddened involuntarily, and she muttered in a muffled voice, “What do you mean, ‘all right’…? Can’t you see that all of us have been injured?”

Shen Mo eased his hold on her slightly and looked over at Zhu Shu and Yu Yaqing.

“I’ll take you out of here. After you triggered Game No. 24, this entire area was placed under lockdown, and the organization moved all its electrical equipment to another location. Yan Qingwen, Shen Fei, and I have been taking turns standing watch here, in case you came out and found no one.”

Without any light, finding the exit in the pitch-black, five-story underground would be anything but simple.

Shen Mo bent down and took Bai Youwei on his back, then led the group out of the underground parking garage.

The road was long. As he walked, Shen Mo asked them about what had happened inside the game.

It was mostly Bai Youwei who spoke.

“…On the final night I couldn’t sleep. The wheelchair was broken and unusable, so I could only prop myself on crutches and wander around. I was already in a terrible mood, and when I saw those rooms glittering with gold and jade, I got even more irritated.

So I threw all the jewelry and accessories into the dollhouse.

And the clothes too.

A lot of the furniture was actually quite beautiful, but I didn’t have the strength to move the heavy pieces, and trying to carry things while limping was just too difficult.

But the weapons—I didn’t leave a single one behind. Weapons are genuinely useful. You can’t bring outside weapons into a game, but these weapons belong to the game itself, so you can use them inside.

…The final reward ended up being a torture instrument. We turned it down. That item is absolutely worthless—whether you use it or not, it just makes your skin crawl.”

At this point, she let out a long sigh and said, “I kind of miss Ball.”

Although Ball liked to be unpredictable, he never skimped on rewards.

—The frog’s mud had saved them who knew how many times. The dollhouse and the snowflake were genuine life-saving treasures, far superior to a flashy but impractical handsome comic-book character—by a margin that wasn’t even close.

Shen Mo listened quietly to her account and smiled silently to himself.

He had no fondness for any of these game inspectors—every last one of them was a product of the doll games. If he were forced to choose one, he’d actually say the rabbit-headed gentleman from the first game wasn’t bad.

That inspector had given Bai Youwei “one-tenth of me.” Without that item, Bai Youwei would have had a very hard time escaping the women-only game unscathed.

……

Because Zhu Shu and Yu Yaqing both had injuries on their bodies, they moved slowly. It took some time before they finally emerged into the open air.

A great many people had gathered outside.

There were members of the research group, members of the security group, Chu Huaijin—the organization’s chief—and Li Li was also present.

They had all learned from Tan Xiao that the women had come out, and rushed over at the first possible moment. Of course, every single one of these people was a man, so they had kept their distance from the women.

Zhu Shu walked up to Li Li with her injured hand held to her side, head lowered. She had a great many things she wanted to say, but didn’t know how to say them.

“Li Li…”

The moment she opened her mouth, the rims of her eyes grew wet. She bit her lip tightly, steadied her emotions, and then continued: “Su Man… she… it was to save me that she…”

Li Li stared at her blankly.