“Get up! Get up!!!” Bai Youwei pulled and hauled at him. “You can’t die here!!!”

Her strength gave out, and she fell. When she got up again, she found that the flowers and grass beneath Yu Chaohui were almost entirely soaked through with blood.

Bai Youwei felt sudden terror.

She had placed the rabbit token on her own number—to win!

She had scattered flower seeds throughout the forest—also to win!

But others wouldn’t see it that way. They would only think: you clearly could have avoided the risk! Why did you manufacture sacrifices?—As if anyone else, placed in her position, could have done better.

It was always so easy to criticize from a place of safety.

Bai Youwei refused to accept it. She bit hard on her lower lip, got to her feet, seized both of Yu Chaohui’s sleeves, and dragged him out of the flower bed.

Slowly. With great effort.

Yu Chaohui asked in a ragged voice, “Does Shen Mo know about the flower seeds?”

Bai Youwei’s movement froze.

“He doesn’t, does he…” Yu Chaohui said hoarsely. “If the commander knew, he wouldn’t have agreed…”

Knowing Shen Mo’s character—he would fight with everything he had to eliminate opponents, but he would not fight with everything to kill them. Being manipulated by the game, causing humans to slaughter one another—that was the thing Shen Mo despised most.

But Bai Youwei scattering flower seeds meant that from the very start, she had never intended to leave the opposing eight players any path to survival.

If you thought it through, you’d find her cold-blooded. Cruel, even.

Bai Youwei’s eyes reddened. She bit her lip, said nothing, and kept dragging him forward.

Yu Chaohui continued, “You saving me now… isn’t out of genuine care either. You just… don’t want me dead because you can’t explain it to the others…”

He stared up at the sky, murmuring in confusion: “Why would it be like this… why would someone like you end up as our king…”

Bai Youwei crouched down. At the most inopportune moment, in the middle of the flower bed, she began to cry.

Perhaps it was the shame of being seen through. Perhaps it was the grief of not being understood. The vulnerability came without warning—tears ran down of their own accord, dripping and falling…

They were always straightforward and upright, while she was always underhanded and ruthless.

She had thought she had finally escaped the pettiness of her old life, that from now on she could stand a cut above—arrogant, pleased with herself, proud… But in truth, she was still the one people disliked, resented, feared.

Bai Youwei closed her eyes, swallowed the tears. “…If you want kindness and victory both, Yu Chaohui—where in the world does that kind of thing exist?”

Hearing those words, for some reason, Yu Chaohui laughed.

His face was a ruin of blood and burned flesh from the hydrogen blast, but the corner of his lips curved up, and from where skin met raw flesh, little threads of blood seeped out—pitiable and ghastly all at once.

“If I die…” he said softly, “If—I die… tell them it was the white gloves that killed me.”

Bai Youwei stared at him, stunned.

Yu Chaohui closed his eyes. “A king can’t have blemishes on her record… Since you’ve already come this far, keep going… Don’t lose, you cannot lose. Otherwise Fang Yu and I will have been too pathetic… too pathetic…”

—The entire special operations unit had been like brothers to one another, yet they had fallen one after another. Only he and Fang Yu had been left, struggling through one bizarre game after the next. And after all that effort to survive—one had died by lightning, the other was succumbing here among the flowers.

What a wretched way to die…

If Bai Youwei ended up losing after all this, he would question whether his own life had meant anything.

Bai Youwei clenched her teeth, stood up. “I won’t let you die here! You won’t die! Don’t you dare die!”

……

Blue sky. White clouds. Green grass.

The wooden ball wrapped in leaves squeaked and rolled to the center of the meadow, looking left and right, taking stock of the numbers.

“This battle has officially concluded. Settlement is now commencing.

“Total number of players: 16.

“Winning King: 1. Surviving subjects: 3. Eliminated subjects: 12. Of those, 8 died.

“Deducting 10 puzzle pieces from the losing King; deducting 1 puzzle piece from each eliminated subject; puzzle pieces held by the 8 deceased players are reclaimed by the system…”

—