即使我在C++中空闲，也肯定会丢失内存

I want to create a function that, when given a struct with a pointer in it to another struct of the same type, it finds all of the pointers and frees them.
The struct would be:

typedef struct example_ {
    uint16_t something;
    bool blabla;
    struct example_ *further_in; 
} example;

我创建的释放每个指针的函数是:

bool free_examples(example p) {
    bool isCounting = true;
    int16_t count = 0;
    example firstexample = p;
    while (isCounting) // counts how many examples there are
    {
        if (p.further_in == NULL)
        {
            isCounting = false; 
        }
        else if (p.further_in != NULL)
        {
            count++;
            p = *(p.further_in);
        }       
    }
    p = firstexample;
    example *n = malloc(sizeof(example));
    for (int i = 0; i < count; i++) // frees every pointer?
    {
        n = p.further_in;
        free(p.further_in);
        p = *(n);
    }
    free(n);    
    return true;
}

First of all, I'm new to programming and C so I don't even know if my code does what I want it to do.
Secondly, my problem is that when I run this through valgrind, it returns that 16 bytes are definitely lost at this line:

example *n = malloc(sizeof(example));

如您所见，稍后我会释放"n".我不明白它怎么还在泄露.

提前感谢您的帮助！