After surviving two consecutive death games, Mo Bai finally arrived at the final stage, and this bizarre three-way romance had reached its conclusion as well.

Mo Bai pulled the host over and asked, "How do I obtain that heart?"

The host replied, "If your lover gives up their life for you, you will receive a warm, beating heart."

Mo Bai asked, "My lover is here, and my lover's lover is here too. If one lover dies, is that enough?"

"Of course not," the host said. "Your lover has two lovers. If they die, we can't determine whether they died for you or for the other person. You and the other lover still have to compete to determine the winner."

"You could've just said that only one person can survive this death game in the end," Mo Bai summarized.

"What if all three of us survive the first round? Or only one person dies?" she asked.

The host explained, "If all three survive, it proves the three of you have exceptional compatibility. On behalf of the Love Amusement Park, I would then bless you to grow old together and remain united forever.

If only one person dies, the remaining two must participate in the game again to prove the compatibility between them."

That was troublesome.

The Ferris wheel scenario could not be allowed to repeat itself.

If all three survived, then the Phantom Butterfly would effectively be the winner, and both Mo Bai's and Pang Mian's souls would become trapped in the amusement park as slaves to love.

Someone had to die in the first round, either the Phantom Butterfly or Pang Mian.

Mo Bai currently had 894 Love Value. On the other hand, Pang Mian and the Phantom Butterfly hadn't participated in many dating games, so the Love Value they had earned through gameplay should not exceed 500.

Pang Mian had only spent 51 Love Value during the first two stages, meaning he still had at least four hundred remaining. Meanwhile, Phantom Butterfly had to give Love Value to two people every round.

In the first stage, it had given Pang Mian 210 and Mo Bai roughly 100.

In the second stage, it gave each of them 150.

Across both rounds, it had spent a total of 610 Love Value.

There was no way the Phantom Butterfly had earned that many points through the games alone.

The excess points must have come from Pang Mian.

It was precisely because Pang Mian had provided so much Love Value that the Phantom Butterfly was convinced that he had been corrupted by the Love Amusement Park.

Little did it know that Pang Mian possessed an External Brain.

Seeing how Pang Mian still adored the Phantom Butterfly even after it transformed into Lin Xiafei, Mo Bai suspected that Pang Mian had given the Phantom Butterfly the maximum possible amount, 1314 Love Value.

Adding together the points earned through the games and those provided by Pang Mian, even after spending more than six hundred points, the Phantom Butterfly should still have somewhere between 1000 and 1200 Love Value remaining.

As Mo Bai calculated how much Love Value her two enemies still possessed, and how much they might give each other, she considered how to kill them both.

The problem was that this stage didn't test how much one was willing to give.

It tested the difference in Love Value.

That made things much harder to manipulate.

While Mo Bai was still calculating possible distributions, Pang Mian, who had remained silent until now, suddenly raised a stiff hand and said,

"Can... we... put... the reward... out... first?"

His tone was awkward and mechanical, and even his wording was broken and unnatural.

He sounded like a puppet being controlled.

Mo Bai immediately realized that the External Brain had taken over.

The real Pang Mian had made his move.

But why did the External Brain want to see the heart?

The host said, "Well... the heart is a special prize personally sponsored by our park director. We don't have the authority to handle it ourselves. You'd have to ask the director."

Mo Bai immediately asked, "What if the director dies?"

The host hesitated.

"In that case... visitors would probably have to search the amusement park for it themselves."

"I also request that the reward be brought out in advance," Mo Bai said at once.

Whatever the External Brain's objective was, she needed to know the heart's exact location.

Otherwise, if the Phantom Butterfly died during the game, the amusement park was so enormous that she might never find it.

Looking heartbroken, the Phantom Butterfly said to her, "Mo Bai, you don't trust me.

"I already told you that if you loved me, I would hand the heart over to you. As long as we both survive the Deathly Love Drop Tower, I'll give it to you."

Its devastated expression was genuinely pitiful.

Beside it, Pang Mian was already uncontrollably wiping away the Phantom Butterfly's tears.

The scene was painful to watch.

Mo Bai replied coldly and mercilessly, "That's right. I don't trust you. Isn't that exactly what you like about me? What, you don't like me anymore?"

Clutching its chest, the Phantom Butterfly said, "I like you most when you're cruel to me."

"Enough nonsense," Mo Bai said as she glanced at Pang Mian.

"Hurry up and bring out the heart. Your little sweetheart is planning to kill both of us in the very first round."

Naturally, the Phantom Butterfly didn't want to reveal the heart ahead of time.

But both Mo Bai and Pang Mian were worried that if it died, they would never find it.

Neither of them was willing to begin the game unless the heart was displayed.

In the end, the Phantom Butterfly had no choice but to order the staff to bring out the prize.

Five minutes later, a drone flew toward the Drop Tower.

Suspended beneath it was a heart wrapped in roses and thorny vines.

This was the most important item in all of Disease Town. If that heart is destroyed, the Disease Town instance would be more than halfway cleared.

The remaining portion involved the mother and daughter's bodies hidden somewhere within the town.

Leaving aside the question of how to destroy the heart, they first had to obtain it.

Mo Bai's fingers twitched. With a single thought, she could use Inequivalent Exchange to steal the heart.

The card required her to exchange it for an item of the same category.

A heart for a heart.

It didn't matter whether the replacement heart was alive or dead, human or nonhuman.

As long as it was a heart, it qualified.

Minor defects didn't matter either.

Long before destroying the Plague Garden, when she had been surrounded by rotting corpses and roses, Mo Bai had casually taken a decayed heart from one of the corpses.

She had crafted a small wooden box from part of the manor's doorway, placed the rotten heart inside, and stored it in her Storage Pouch.

At any time, she could exchange the rotten heart for the crucial item.

But she wasn't sure whether she would obtain the rose-covered heart as a whole, or only the heart itself.

If the card treated the heart and the roses as separate entities, then stealing only the heart would break the seal.

The moment the seal was broken, Gao Siyun would immediately sense the heart's existence. She would descend with Yang Lingxi's body, merge with the heart, and become an Ultra-Star Rank monster.

If that happened, Mo Bai would be responsible for an unimaginable disaster.

Suppressing the urge to steal the heart, she decided it would be safer to obtain it through the proper victory reward.

Pang Mian looked up and stared intently at the heart.

Then he turned to Mo Bai and the Phantom Butterfly and said, "Hurry... and... start... the... game."

He was no longer bothering to hide his objective.

Pang Mian was the first to walk toward the Drop Tower seats.

Meanwhile, Mo Bai cautiously asked the host, "This Drop Tower of yours guarantees death, right? There won't be loopholes in the rules like in the previous two games, will there?"

The host replied speechlessly, "Couples who come to our amusement park usually hope the Drop Tower won't kill them."

"I'm different," Mo Bai said.

The host explained, "We're at the final game now. The Love Amusement Park will absolutely not allow anyone to exploit loopholes anymore. Do you see the black dot beneath each Drop Tower seat?"

"I see it," Mo Bai replied.

The game had not yet begun, so the seats were still on the ground. Directly beneath each seat was a black circular spot roughly five centimeters in diameter.

The host said, "That's a twenty-meter-long triangular spike. If a challenger's drop height exceeds fifty meters, it will spring upward and impale them as they fall. It's one of the amusement park's safety measures.

Under normal circumstances it isn't activated. We only use it when challengers specifically request it."

"Activate it," Mo Bai, Pang Mian, and the Phantom Butterfly said in unison.

The host, whose microphone was even shaped like a heart, fell silent.

Do you three actually love each other?

After confirming that the Drop Tower had measures guaranteeing death, the three took their respective seats.

The Drop Tower was cylindrical. They sat at three separate points around the cylinder, unable to see one another's screens.

Each seat contained a tablet for entering Love Value.

Mo Bai turned hers on.

The names Pang Mian and Lin Xiafei appeared on the screen, meaning she could assign Love Value to either teammate.

Actually, during the previous two games, she and Pang Mian could have given Love Value to each other as well, but neither of them had bothered.

The rules of the Drop Tower were simple:

If there was a difference between the amounts of Love Value given, then the person who gave more would be punished.

Logically, the safest strategy would be to give no Love Value at all.

In a two-person game, the Phantom Butterfly would be unbeatable.

It would never give Love Value. Its lover, not wanting to die, would also give none. Then, both sides would end with zero.

The visitor's soul would remain trapped in the amusement park forever, and the Phantom Butterfly would be the winner.

But with three participants, the rules changed.

Each person could give Love Value to the other two.

Now, whoever received the most Love Value would avoid punishment entirely.

The remaining two would have their drop heights determined by the gap between their received total and that of the highest-scoring person.

The favored one was always fearless.

As for how much Love Value the others would enter, that depended entirely on who they wanted dead.

Mo Bai analyzed the rules for quite some time.

Eventually, she realized that the true core of the game was: Who wanted whom dead the most?

In the Phantom Butterfly's eyes, the target it most wanted dead was Mo Bai.

Mo Bai's priority was higher than Pang Mian's. Therefore, the amount of Love Value the Phantom Butterfly will give to Pang Mian would definitely be greater than the amount it will give to Mo Bai.

As for Pang Mian, his priority was likely the Phantom Butterfly over Mo Bai.

After all, Mo Bai belonged to the Observation Group, so she could be turned into a card. If she died here, it would mean losing a powerful card, which would be a terrible waste.

Therefore, Pang Mian would definitely give Mo Bai more Love Value than he gave the Phantom Butterfly.

Following this logic, as long as Mo Bai gave the Phantom Butterfly no Love Value at all, the Phantom Butterfly's death probability would become the highest.

But...

Would the Phantom Butterfly really act according to Pang Mian's expectations? Its behavior was fundamentally unpredictable.

After thinking it over, Mo Bai decided the Phantom Butterfly might choose to eliminate Pang Mian first, the disobedient and uncontrollable variable.

That way, it could have a one-on-one showdown with Mo Bai in the second round.

If so, the Phantom Butterfly's Love Value allocation might actually be: Mo Bai > Pang Mian.

At the same time, Pang Mian's allocation would also be: Mo Bai > Phantom Butterfly.

In that scenario, Mo Bai herself would become the untouchable one in the first round.

After some thought, she made what she considered the fairest decision by not giving Love Value to anyone.

The numbers in this game were impossible to predict accurately. No matter what she entered, there would be problems.

So she might as well follow her true feelings.

She loved neither of them and had no desire to give either of them Love Value.

After pressing the confirmation button, the Drop Tower activated.

Mo Bai remained exactly where she was.

Meanwhile, the Phantom Butterfly and Pang Mian shot into the sky simultaneously.

Just as she had expected, both of them wanted the other dead first.

They had each given Mo Bai a large amount of Love Value, causing the two of them to be launched upward instead.

Mo Bai guessed that both possessed methods of saving themselves.

They must have been confident they wouldn't die from either the fall or the triangular spike.

Otherwise, they would never have dared enter such numbers.

In short, as long as the other person died, that was all that mattered.

Both Pang Mian and the Phantom Butterfly rose to an altitude of roughly three hundred meters before beginning their descent.

Putting on the Prying Lenses, Mo Bai stared upward and carefully observed them. She wanted to see exactly what methods they would use to survive.

She didn't need to use violence. She only needed to eliminate their survival methods with Rule Optimization.

This time, Mo Bai intended to optimize the amusement park's rules themselves.

She would help the amusement park patch its loopholes and make sure these two rule-abusing opportunists died.

She had no intention of letting the competition proceed to a second round. She intended to decide the winner in a single game.

Mo Bai saw a brilliantly colored butterfly fly out from the Phantom Butterfly's seat, yet Lin Xiafei's figure remained sitting there.

She immediately realized that the Phantom Butterfly intended to use its mimicry ability to perform a shell-shedding escape.

On the other side, Pang Mian's seat became enveloped in a massive balloon-like barrier, which was clearly some kind of defensive card.

After identifying their methods, Mo Bai spread out her ability network and prepared to activate Rule Optimization.

She intended to add supplementary rules:

'The use of defensive items is prohibited.'

'Using a mimic or substitute in place of one's true body is prohibited.'

Just as Mo Bai completely focused on activating her ability, the heart suspended in the air suddenly underwent a strange transformation.