Ghost-fire was in agony.

Boundless, searing agony.

It looked at Bai Youwei, then at the others behind her — Shen Mo, Tan Xiao, Cheng Weicai, Pan Xiaoxin!

“It was you!!! …”

Before it even finished speaking, all four of them shook their heads in unison.

Tan Xiao shook his hardest of all, his bedraggled, nest-like hair swishing back and forth, shaking off every last shred of responsibility. “Nothing to do with us! That wasn’t our hand!”

After her initial surprise, Bai Youwei recovered quickly and, rather than looking guilty, studied ghost-fire with frank curiosity. “Strange… it was only a bit of jewelry. Why such a big reaction? Would this get you punished? What kind of work system do you inspectors operate under? Is there a reward-and-punishment system? Do you compete with each other? Are there ranks among inspectors?…”

Ghost-fire dreaded this kind of relentless interrogation!

“There’s none of that!” it snapped. “Questions unrelated to the game, please do not—”

“Ah!” Bai Youwei suddenly let out a light cry, pointing at the dollhouse entrance. “The hand came back out!”

Ghost-fire gave a violent shudder!

It watched the small white hand come scurrying back toward the tomb chamber and cried out in alarm, “Game reward settlement: complete! Complete!”

A shimmering blur passed before everyone’s eyes —

The scene shifted. They were standing on the side of a road, and not far away sat their car.

The game was over.

…

In a vast diamond-shaped void, a pure-white cube pulsed with intermittent flickers of light.

Ghost-fire hovered before the cube, burning in silence.

A sphere rolled past it.

“Well, well! What a rare sight — I actually caught you repairing your game!” The sphere stopped to gawk. “You look absolutely terrible. Did you get robbed? Ha ha ha!”

At the core of ghost-fire’s blue-green flames, the center had gone ashen white — that was its expression.

Ghost-fire said nothing. The sphere continued: “Players have been getting fewer and fewer lately, and games are being triggered less and less often. I’m so bored — even when I want to repair my game, there’s no opportunity!”

Ghost-fire: “…”

Apparently truly bored, the sphere rolled in a few circles in place before addressing ghost-fire again. “What’s gotten into you? Just because your avatar is a ghost-fire doesn’t mean you have to be as silent as an actual ghost~”

Ghost-fire finally could bear it no longer and spoke, with weighty gravity: “Your dollhouse… caused my game very significant damage. Since you have nothing to do right now, you should conduct a thorough audit of your own game instance to prevent similar incidents from happening again!”

Sphere: “…”

Two seconds passed. Then the sphere said sulkily, “How can you call it my dollhouse… it hasn’t been my dollhouse for a long time. Besides, the dollhouse can’t be used during games — players can’t even get inside it. How could it possibly cause any impact?”

Ghost-fire grew agitated. “But items can get inside! And players can come back out from it!”

Players coming out was easy enough to understand. The dollhouse game had always encouraged players to actively participate, so in its design rules it would never block players from entering the game — only from leaving the game!

As for items being able to get inside — that the sphere genuinely could not grasp. It muttered: “Well, whoever’s item it was, go find that person — it has nothing to do with me, anyway.”

Ghost-fire: “But…”

Before it could finish, every cube in the void suddenly flickered in unison!

One by one, all the inspectors began emerging from their own game instances — rabbit-head figures, comic-strip figures, gray-robed elders… they gathered together, as though convening for some great occasion!

The sphere exclaimed in delight: “Wonderful! This is the notification that the maze has reached its halfway point!”

Rabbit-head looked around. The cubes were gradually returning to normal.

“We can begin preparations for the maze war segment,” it said calmly. “The number of activated puzzle pieces has exceeded 55. The preliminary tournament is about to begin. Please make the relevant preparations.”

—