Bai Youwei wasn’t even sure herself why this thought had come to her.

She and Shen Mo had gone through so much together. They trusted each other completely, were close and inseparable — yet when it came to this one thing, she had instinctively wanted to hide it from him…

Because… she didn’t want him to feel that, in order to win, she was willing to do whatever it took.

Even if it was the truth, she didn’t want him to see it.

This was probably a kind of meaningless vanity — an unwillingness to let her image diminish even slightly in his eyes. She worried over any small detail that might affect the two of them. The way Shen Fei had once made her hesitant and second-guess herself; Fang Yu’s death haunting her for so long; always agonizing over how to treat Yu Zhaohui; and now facing this situation again…

Bai Youwei held on to Shen Mo very tightly. Sometimes she herself didn’t fully understand why.

Thinking it over carefully — perhaps it was because no one had ever truly liked her. Now that she had finally found someone who did, of course she would hold on as tightly as she possibly could.

If he had once liked her at 100 points’ worth, she didn’t want to lose even a single point of that.

Once her mind was made up, her feet stopped hesitating. She moved at a brisk, urgent pace, heading for the little girl’s house.

The little girl was standing at the courtyard gate, as though waiting for someone.

When she saw Bai Youwei hurrying toward her, she broke into a wide grin — as though she already knew what Bai Youwei had come for — and said lightly, “You’re late.”

“Give me monkshood!” Bai Youwei had no time for pleasantries and went straight to the point. “Monkshood makes people transform into werewolves — doesn’t it?!”

“There’s none left,” the little girl said with a smile. “Mother hated the smell of monkshood and told me to burn it all.”

“You didn’t burn all of it!” Bai Youwei snapped fiercely. “I saw it! You kept a bundle — planted it in a flowerpot, placed it right on the windowsill of your mother’s bedroom!”

“It’s gone, there’s none left,” the little girl repeated, shaking her head without any sign of fear at Bai Youwei’s ferocity. “The monkshood on the windowsill was stolen.”

Bai Youwei pressed urgently: “Besides that one pot, are there really no other monkshood plants?! Where did you get your monkshood in the first place?!”

The little girl looked at her with a beaming smile and said nothing.

Bai Youwei pushed on: “How long does monkshood stay alive? Does simply being near it cause a transformation?!”

The little girl smiled. “It’s too late, far too late… Monkshood blooms for three consecutive nights. Tonight is the third night. The werewolf will definitely devour you. You’re going to lose, no matter what…”

“Tell me where the monkshood is!” Bai Youwei grabbed the little girl by the shoulders, her teeth clenched. “Do you think this puts me in a desperate position? Even without monkshood, I won’t lose! If it comes to it, I’ll go head-to-head with him right now and drag as many freakish things like you down with me as I can!”

The little girl tilted her head and seemed to be weighing the credibility of what Bai Youwei had just said.

Bai Youwei also looked at her. After a long silence, the fury inside her retreated, bit by bit, until she was calm again…

She drew a deep breath and said to the little girl, “I forgot — you’re not afraid of death…”

She turned her head and looked at the silver nails in the door panel, murmuring to herself: “Every time I see you, you’re either by the well or in the courtyard. Why do you never go inside?… Could it be because you’re afraid of those nails?”

The little girl’s pupils contracted sharply, and she wrenched herself free from Bai Youwei’s grip in an instant — with strength impossibly beyond what a small child should have.

“If you want monkshood, go to the village chief’s house,” the little girl said, her face emptied of all expression. “If you want to become a werewolf, that is the only path left to you.”

Bai Youwei studied her with cool eyes. “The village chief’s house hides monkshood?… Why hasn’t he transformed into a werewolf?”

The little girl split her lips wide again in that eerie, bone-chilling smile:

“Come out of there alive, and you’ll understand why on your own…”