Fu Miaoxue was silent for a moment, then asked: “If this truly is a dream, how many times have you looped through it?”

Bai Youwei frowned: “What?”

“You just said that if you don’t leave, you’ll keep looping forever. How many times have you looped?” Fu Miaoxue walked to the side of the sofa, resting one hand on the nearby vase, and smiled as she asked, “And when you looped—have you ever seen this?”

Her slender pale fingers reached inside the vase and touched a hidden mechanism. The next second, three iron arrows shot from the mouth of the lion stone sculpture on the wall behind!

One of them pierced straight through Bai Youwei’s chest and lungs.

The scene before her began to blur. Fu Miaoxue unhurriedly stepped closer, her tone leisurely: “Actually, I already half believe you. This might truly be a dream—otherwise why would I have this feeling of déjà vu… But, you see, I really do dislike the way you speak to me.”

Bai Youwei: “…”

*Damn it all!*

…

Bai Youwei was back outside the estate’s front gate.

She suppressed her furious rage, pressed the call button, and entered the estate.

After finding Fu Miaoxue, she produced the friend’s invitation card again and said: “There’s something important I need to discuss with you privately. It’ll only take a few minutes and won’t interfere with your lunch.”

“Certainly.” Fu Miaoxue looked her over. “All of you, step back—I’d like a private conversation with my friend.”

Joanna bowed: “Miss, I’ll wait for you in the dining room.”

Once everyone had withdrawn and only the two of them remained in the sitting room, Bai Youwei stepped forward without a word, first taking the gun, then smashing the vase!

Fu Miaoxue: “…”

Joanna, hearing the commotion, turned around and came back, hesitating in the not-so-far distance: “Miss?”

Fu Miaoxue watched Bai Youwei, the doubt in her eyes deepening by the moment.

Bai Youwei didn’t care whether Joanna could overhear or not. She said everything over again one more time:

“Fu Miaoxue, you are inside a dream right now! I am telling you plainly—at lunch today, Joanna will scold you, and then you’ll storm off furiously to the garden! There you’ll meet a gardener who can do magic tricks and make you laugh! …And once you and he come back from the treasure vault, the dream will return to its starting point! Unless you jump from the top floor, you’ll be trapped in this loop forever!”

Bai Youwei laughed coldly as she looked at Fu Miaoxue, then continued: “To verify whether it’s a dream, you’ve killed me twice now. You really didn’t need to go to all that trouble—I have a better method. Just wait a moment.”

Having said that, she turned and quickly left.

Fu Miaoxue pressed her lips together and stood where she was, her expression rigid.

She didn’t have to wait long before Bai Youwei returned—and she had brought Du Lai with her.

Fu Miaoxue didn’t recognize Du Lai, yet somehow, she couldn’t keep her gaze from lingering on him, with a persistent feeling that she had forgotten something important…

Then she heard Bai Youwei say to her with a ferocious smile: “You like to kill people, don’t you? You want to verify whether the dream is real, don’t you?”

The moment she finished speaking, Bai Youwei raised the gun!

The very gun she had taken from the tissue box!

—Bang!

Du Lai’s temple was pierced through. He fell heavily to the ground.

The color drained from Fu Miaoxue’s face in an instant. She stared at the man on the floor, unable to believe what she was seeing.

She didn’t know him at all—and yet it felt as though a great hole had been scooped out of her heart! Wave after wave of cold was pouring in, so icy that her whole body shook!

Joanna and the bodyguards all came rushing over.

“Miss, are you alright?”

“Miss? Miss?”

Bai Youwei watched her being fussed over by her subordinates with cold eyes, a mocking smile at the corner of her mouth: “Fu Miaoxue—I can’t lay a hand on you, but surely I can lay a hand on a lowly little gardener in your household? If you want to stay in the dream, be my guest. Every loop, I’ll kill him once. Two loops, I’ll kill him twice. I’ll make you watch him die every single time. So—do you still want to stay here?!”

Fu Miaoxue’s lips trembled. “…Bai Youwei, you devil… You devil!!”

—