Watching this scene, Su Man’s blood immediately began to boil with indignation!

She despised this sort of bullying above all else!

It was simply infuriating!

If not for the fact that there were several of them and she had an unhealed hand injury, she’d have leapt out long ago to give those worthless scoundrels a lesson!

Yan Qingwen was always warning her not to be impulsive, not to act on her temper, not to throw caution to the wind the moment her anger flared — she knew this wasn’t a good trait, but a temper was not something you could change just by wanting to.

The motorcycle drove past the car.

Those people had completely failed to notice her presence. With so many dolls nearby, even if they’d caught a glimpse of Su Man, they’d probably lazily mistaken her for just another doll among the rest.

Once the motorcycle’s sound faded into the distance, Su Man climbed out of the car. She found that the dolls up ahead had been knocked every which way by the passage of the bike, and a natural path had formed between them.

She furrowed her brow deeply.

Then shouldered her pack and followed the track the motorcycle had left behind.

The motorcycle hadn’t gone very far.

Not because they didn’t want to go further — it was that the bespectacled man being dragged behind had reached the absolute limit of his stamina. Fearing he might die, they stopped to rest.

Su Man had been following them carefully the whole time.

She hid behind the roadside greenery, which, long untrimmed, had grown lush and thick — more than enough to shield her from view.

Through the gaps in the leaves, Su Man observed them cautiously.

She was thinking: actually, this worked out rather well. She knew nothing about this labyrinth, so following behind them and letting them serve as pathfinders wasn’t a bad plan. If something happened to these people, she’d have advance warning of the hidden dangers lurking in the labyrinth.

What she still didn’t understand was who these people were and why they were holding the bespectacled man captive.

The bespectacled man lay collapsed by the side of the road, utterly drained. The few young men seemed unworried about him escaping — the rope had been carelessly tossed aside, untied and unsecured, with no one specifically watching him.

Understandable. The man had been tortured to the verge of collapse, both legs bloodied and torn. How would he run? Even if he tried, how could he outrun these three fit, able-bodied captors?

Su Man bit her lip, pondering how to rescue him.

She needed to think not only about how to save him, but about what to do with him afterward — after all, this was a labyrinth. She could barely protect herself. How was she supposed to look after someone else too?

Just as Su Man was wrestling with this, one of the young men picked up a water bottle, walked over to the bespectacled man, crouched down, unscrewed the cap, and upended it — water gushing down over the man’s knees.

The clean water washed away the grime blackened with dried blood, exposing raw, vivid wounds. The man let out a stifled groan, and both legs twitched involuntarily, beyond his control.

“How’re you holding up? Still able to walk?” The young man wore a denim jacket and a metal chain around his neck. His voice was cold. “Even if you can’t walk, that’s fine — you’re already crippled anyway. One leg more or less doesn’t make a difference…”

Su Man paused at that.

…He was already crippled?

But just now she’d watched him running and stumbling along behind the motorcycle — his walking looked perfectly normal.

The young man’s accomplice snapped irritably, “This guy just needs a good beating! If we didn’t need him to show us the way, I’d have done him in already!”

The darker-skinned one of the group spoke up, “Hold on — even if we finish him off, we should let me have a few rounds first. He’s got fair skin and a pretty face. Quite the type.”

The accomplice cursed viciously: “Damn it! Of all the times for that — when we get out of this hellhole, you can do whatever you want, and nobody’ll care!”

The young man in the denim jacket stood up, frowning. “That’s enough. He’s in no shape to travel today. You two go set up the tent. I’ll go find water — we’re out.”