Both Shen Mo and Bai Youwei were taken aback.

“We’re… the ones doing something?” Bai Youwei said, half amused and half exasperated. “Shouldn’t that be *you*?! Our car was following *yours*, and now we’ve ended up in this godforsaken place!”

Du Lai had dropped his earlier easy-going manner entirely. He was unusually agitated and shot back, “What are we supposed to have done?! We were heading to the labyrinth, and this godforsaken place is obviously not it!”

Du Lai’s girlfriend complained, “Can you all stop saying ‘godforsaken’ every other word! It’s already frightening enough, and now you have to bring up ghosts every other sentence!”

Bai Youwei was completely speechless. The most ghost-like person in the entire group was *her*! Soaked through, wrapped from head to toe in black, not even her eyes or nose visible, and she was complaining that their language was frightening?!

Absurd! Could anything possibly be more frightening than the way she looked right now?

The rain was quietly intensifying.

Shen Mo frowned. “Get in the car first, then we’ll talk.”

Du Lai didn’t stand on ceremony. He grabbed his girlfriend’s hand and got into the back seat, immediately bringing in a wave of cold, damp air.

“Our car won’t start,” Du Lai said, wiping the rain from his face and addressing Shen Mo. “What about yours?”

Shen Mo sat back in the driver’s seat and tried to start the SUV — no response.

“The car won’t start,” he said in a low voice.

“Du Lai, look!” His girlfriend tightened her grip on his arm in alarm. “Something is coming this way!”

Bai Youwei looked too. In the distance, a point of light had appeared — at first barely the size of a soybean, then slowly growing larger… This point of light swayed gently in the dark, rain-filled curtain of night, like someone carrying a lantern and slowly walking toward them.

But when it drew nearer, they realized it was not a lantern — it was a ball of pale blue ghost fire!

Even with rain falling all around it, the flame seemed completely unaffected, drifting languidly through the air until it arrived in front of Shen Mo’s car. The leaping flames vaguely formed the face of a ghost —

*Ding! Welcome to the Doll Game! The theme of this game is ‘The Bone-Carrying Woman.’ The rules are as follows:*

*One: Refuse the game, and you become a doll!*

*Two: Fail the game, and you become a doll!*

*Three: Clear the game, and you are rewarded with a doll!*

That familiar voice rang out, and all four people in the car exhaled in unison.

Compared to an unknown accident, at least a game was controllable — a game had rules.

But then, the thought of playing a game alongside someone of uncertain allegiance made their nerves tighten all over again, just as they had begun to relax.

Bai Youwei looked back at Du Lai with suspicion. “Du Lai, did *you* start this game?”

“Me?!” Du Lai let out a cold laugh. “Miss Bai, you really do overestimate me. I don’t have the ability to command an arbitrator!”

Bai Youwei’s brow furrowed slightly.

It seemed Du Lai didn’t know that certain items could activate games — for instance, the gold coin that Tan Xiao had once obtained.

Shen Mo observed the scene outside the car and said, “Normally, a game shouldn’t exist right next to the labyrinth. This particular game may have been caught without time to relocate when the labyrinth expanded.”

Based on their past experience, and the intelligence provided by Professor Song, they knew that every game shifted away when the labyrinth moved — so the area around the labyrinth’s perimeter often formed what appeared to be a safe “buffer zone,” a region with neither labyrinth nor game.

Of course, that safety was only temporary, because the labyrinth could expand at any moment.

And after the labyrinth disappeared, the games in the vicinity would still be drawn to relocate toward it.

The base in Shanghai had been built by exploiting exactly this characteristic.

Bai Youwei looked around. Besides that floating, eerily still ball of ghost fire, there was nothing else to see in any direction — just absolute darkness.

“If we’ve already entered the game, why haven’t we seen the arbitrator?… Could it be that ball of fire *is* the arbitrator?”

—