Chapter 1022: The Detail Trap

“Did you all hear that?” Mu Chen asked, his face filled with unease.

Everyone silently nodded, then turned their wary gazes towards the door.

“Stay alert, everyone,” Ling Mo whispered as he cautiously stepped inside.

The space beyond the door wasn’t large, but it was cluttered with all sorts of miscellaneous items. To the left of the entrance was another door. Just as Ling Mo’s eyes landed on it, a faint rustling came from behind the pile of junk, accompanied by the moaning voice, “Help me…”

“Who are you?” Ling Mo asked, moving towards the pile while the others watched anxiously.

“Help me…” The person didn’t seem inclined to answer, only repeating the plea in a pitiful tone.

Hearing the voice up close, Ling Mo’s expression suddenly turned peculiar. “I feel like I’ve heard this voice somewhere before…” he muttered, quickly tossing the pile of junk aside.

Heard it before? The others were puzzled. The voice was rather hoarse, yet the more they listened, the more familiar it seemed. But try as they might, they couldn’t recall where they had heard it.

As the pile was gradually cleared, a bloodied hand suddenly reached out, grabbing Ling Mo’s pant leg. “Please… save me…”

Just as Ling Mo picked up the last wooden plank, the door leading to the adjacent room gave a soft “click.”

In that instant, everyone’s attention was drawn to the door… the handle was slowly turning. Meanwhile, Ling Mo tossed the plank aside, fully revealing the person beneath, clutching his pant leg. A rebar was gruesomely embedded in his back, pinning him to the ground.

“Save me…” he continued to mumble, though his eyes were already vacant.

At that moment, the door swung open…

“Why didn’t you save me… why did you… kill me… I’m the real one…” the person suddenly shouted, and with that, his head slumped to the side, lifeless. Yet his hand remained gripping Ling Mo’s pant leg. His final words echoed in the ears of the two figures emerging from behind the door.

All of this transpired in just a second. By the time Mu Chen and the others reacted, the door was open, and Ling Mo had already uncovered the plank…

“Xia Na?” Mu Chen exclaimed in shock, eyes wide as he looked at the two figures.

…

The two who emerged were Xia Na and Li Yalin. After scanning the group, Xia Na’s gaze instinctively shifted to Ling Mo, who had his back to them, and the corpse lying at his feet.

Ling Mo turned his head, revealing the true face of the corpse. It was Mu Chen…

No one’s expression was more peculiar than Mu Chen’s… But soon, everyone realized something even more important.

“No. It’s not like that, we didn’t kill him… He’s not the real instructor!” Skinny Monkey shivered violently, then hurriedly explained to Xia Na and the Two Girls.

“What are you talking about!” Gu Shuangshuang was startled, turning to look at Skinny Monkey.

Skinny Monkey’s facial muscles twitched continuously as he pointed shakily at “Mu Chen’s” corpse, saying, “That’s what they’ll think…”

“But that’s not the real instructor, can’t you see we’re all here…” Zhang Xincheng said, but his face suddenly turned a bit grim. He noticed that Xia Na and the Two Girls were looking at them with seemingly strange expressions. 𝑅ã𐌽Ố𝐛È𝐒

“They found other corpses,” Zhang Xincheng said briefly.

Everyone’s heart skipped a beat… If that were the case, things would become troublesome…

“So what? We’re the real ones, those corpses are fake!” Ye Kai said, “Damn it! That monster is disgusting! It can come up with such an old trick? It’s doing this just to make us turn against each other, why are you all so nervous? Acting like this makes us look guilty! And you, Skinny Monkey, if you keep shouting…”

“It’s useless, just saying this is of no use at all, because right now…” Mu Chen only said half a sentence before shutting his mouth, but everyone knew what he hadn’t finished saying…

“Because right now, we really can’t prove that we’re the real ones.”

Those dead corpses were no different from them. In such a bizarre situation with no evidence, no matter what they said, Xia Na and the others would have doubts. Even if they didn’t fight them, they certainly wouldn’t truly trust them…

In this way, the monster could exploit the gap between them to further drive a wedge…

Gu Shuangshuang looked nervously at Xia Na and Li Yalin, suddenly cupping her face with her hands, “I shouldn’t have screamed then, it’s all my fault for being the first to see the corpse, if only I…” She glanced at Ling Mo, hoping he might have a way to solve this. But she knew very well that everyone was a bit confused right now, and Ling Mo, who looked like the “murderer,” probably couldn’t come up with any convincing explanation either…

The most unsettling realization was that, upon reflection, those corpses seemed to be clad only in undergarments. At the time, everyone was too focused on the faces of the corpses to notice this crucial detail. Now it was clear that this was a deliberate setup to make them appear more suspicious. Those identical details seemed intentionally exposed.

“Since the other side can replicate even the minutest details, any secret signals or shared memories can’t prove anything… Damn, the worst fear now is that they’ll think like I do!” Gu Shuangshuang’s emotions were on the verge of collapse again. These details sounded easy to debunk, but when faced with them, they revealed themselves as insidious traps set by the Monster.

At this moment, Xia Na, who had been watching them intently, finally spoke. She looked at Ling Mo and said, “I followed Ling-Ge here…”

“What?”

After emerging from the sewer entrance, Xia Na had spotted Ling Mo’s silhouette from afar. This figure was identical to the one she had seen in the underground passage.

She and Li Yalin immediately followed and tracked this “Ling Mo” into the unfinished building. However, upon reaching the basement level, they suddenly heard screams. When they caught up, they saw Gu Shuangshuang’s corpse.

“And then we saw corpse after corpse… During this time, I heard Ling-Ge loudly asking, ‘Where have you hidden my real teammates?’ Someone even responded, claiming they were the real one…” Xia Na recounted, glancing again at Mu Chen and the others. “Then we ended up here… We followed Ling-Ge into this place. If it weren’t for hearing…” She pointed at the corpse, “we wouldn’t have known you were next door.”

Li Yalin poked her head out from behind and added, “So we were quite surprised too…”

“Another one…”

Everyone was momentarily stunned, exchanging glances before turning to look at Ling Mo.

Which one was the real him?

“Wait… That must be fake…” Mu Chen said.

Ye Kai nodded in agreement, “Exactly…”

“But are they necessarily real?” Skinny Monkey swallowed hard, saying. Seeing Xia Na and Li Yalin looking at him, he immediately retreated two steps, nervously pressing against the wall, still muttering, “I’m… I’m just speaking the truth…”

“Well said…” Mu Chen and the others remained silent, but their eyes revealed that they too harbored doubts.

They had suddenly appeared from such a place… And after assuming Ling Mo had killed them, their reaction was still so calm… That was far from a normal response.

“No, no, no… We’re starting to doubt each other now…” Mu Chen said, clearly frustrated.

“Is that all?” Ling Mo suddenly chuckled, breaking the tension.

“What do you mean, ‘is that all’?” Everyone looked at him, bewildered.

Things were already bad enough!

This situation seemed impossible to resolve!

But what surprised them even more was that after Ling Mo’s chuckle, Xia Na also smiled silently, her lips curving upwards.

Ling Mo took a couple of steps forward, pulling Xia Na with one hand and Li Yalin with the other, drawing them both into his embrace. Turning to the others, he said, “This trick is too lame.”

Under Ling Mo’s gaze, everyone felt a cascade of question marks popping up in their minds, while Skinny Monkey, who had been voicing doubts, shifted his gaze evasively.

Gu Shuangshuang watched them in shock, hearing Zhang Xincheng mutter beside her, “Could it be some kind of sixth sense…”

“It shouldn’t be something so unreliable… If he wasn’t sure they were the originals, the captain wouldn’t act this way. He’d be worried about the originals’ current situation, wouldn’t he?” Ye Kai reasoned, then turned to Gu Shuangshuang, “What do you think?”

“I… maybe…” Gu Shuangshuang snapped out of her daze and nodded.

“But how did you confirm that I am me?” Ling Mo withdrew his gaze and whispered a question in Xia Na’s ear.

Xia Na looked up and whispered back, “The scent. The one I was chasing always stayed far away, but up close, I could smell it. I was just curious…” She proceeded to recount her earlier experience in the passage to Ling Mo, then asked, “At that time, besides us, no one else should have come into contact with you…”

“No, actually, there was…” Ling Mo recalled the zombie… Even from across the horde, it had seen him. But considering Miao Zhe’s question, Ling Mo thought perhaps it wasn’t the first time it had laid eyes on him…

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