The white porcelain cup wasn’t large — just an ordinary drinking cup taken from the resting quarters.

The glasses-wearing man explained quietly: “I thought of the plan, but the thing is… not everyone can pull it off. It requires someone with exceptional physical skill — someone who can press the voting button and immediately dodge the electric strike. Looking at you two, I can tell right away that you’re both exceptional individuals……”

Fang Yu cast him an impatient look. “Save the hollow flattery. I don’t need it. Just tell me what to do.”

“What to do……” The glasses-wearing man smiled, his voice dropping lower still. “It’s very simple. As long as you’re fast enough, you can press number 11 before the gadget reacts. She claims it triggers a lightning strike — who knows if that’s even true? Maybe it’s just a bluff. Would the electric shock really be as powerful as she described? What would happen if you threw a heavy object from a distance?…… No matter what, we’ve all survived to the final round with great difficulty. We can’t give up like this. At most it only takes two votes to eliminate her. Let’s all win this game together.”

Yu Chaohui held Fang Yu back and tried to dissuade him once more: “We still can’t be certain she’s the X-Guest……”

“If it’s not her, who else could it be?!” Fang Yu said through clenched teeth. “She’s clearly a red-eye, and yet she’s been mixed in with the yellow-eyes. She’s made it through this many rounds without a scratch — that in itself is completely unnatural! And that doctor was eliminated because of her scheming too, wasn’t he? The X-Guest is almost certainly her — or else it’s the person in the suit! “

The glasses-wearing man immediately said: “Don’t worry about that gentleman. I’ve already arranged it with my yellow-eye companions — they’ll give him a full sweep of their votes. And the short-haired woman from the red-eyes group is actually quite suspicious too…… In any case, in this final round, as long as we eliminate the four most suspicious people, we’re guaranteed to win.”

Fang Yu frowned: “In that case, will we have enough votes? The two of us plus you and those two yellow-eyes — that’s only five votes in total. How do we eliminate four people?”

“Don’t worry.” The glasses-wearing man smiled. “To be precise, we have seven votes.”

“Seven votes?” Both Yu Chaohui and Fang Yu looked surprised.

The glasses-wearing man said: “That’s right. Other than the short-haired woman and the wheelchair woman, I’ve made contact with everyone else. As expected, people have long been dissatisfied with those two women. So this vote, as long as we work in concert, we’re certain to eliminate the X-Guest.”

Fang Yu’s brow remained tightly furrowed as he continued to think.

Yu Chaohui was actually quite conflicted too. The game was fundamentally a competition — there was no need to stand on ceremony. Though Bai Youwei was on the same side as Shen Mo, if the ones who won were him and Fang Yu, that would obviously be the better outcome.

But the hierarchy between superiors and subordinates was etched into his bones. Turning on his own “allies” in a game — something about it felt deeply wrong.

“Fang Yu, with the commander’s abilities he’s certain to make it to the end. Since we’ve already promised to become his subjects……”

The glasses-wearing man’s eyes glinted as he cut in with a smile: “With all due respect, the Doll World’s games are endlessly bizarre. The strong aren’t always truly strong, and the weak aren’t always truly weak. Perhaps by the time we win our way out, your so-called commander has already been demoted to a subject himself.

People ought to look out for themselves. I’m also just a subject — the doctor vanished here and now he’s gone, just like that. What could I do? In the end, you can only rely on yourself, can’t you?”

Fang Yu gave him a cold look. “You’re right. Better to save yourself than to wait for someone else to come save you.”

Yu Chaohui wanted to argue further, but then the inspector called out loudly from above:

“Hey! You lot who haven’t voted yet — are you thinking of forfeiting? Forfeiting equals automatic elimination~”

The sphere on the roof rolled back and forth impatiently.

Everyone else was staring in their direction too.

Yu Chaohui let out a long, heavy sigh and stepped into the voting booth —

—