A few steps away in the dim corridor, Eight-Heads De slowly dragged a chair over and climbed onto it. In his eyes, the corridor was empty, with only the sound of his own breathing. His gaze swept around and finally settled on the ground in front of the chair.
What he didn't know was that, mere steps away in a subspace, Lin Sanjiu, Dreadlocks, and the captured Hagrid were all watching the exact same spot.
"I told him that even though I knew where the item was set, because I was trapped inside, I couldn't mark the location for him. So when he saw the chair, he absolutely couldn't step forward even half a step more. Any further, and he'd step into this space too."
Lin Sanjiu's tone was conversational, like chatting with a friend over tea. If someone closed their eyes, they'd almost believe she was holding a cup of tea in her hands.
"When I shone my flashlight out just now, I realized this space intercepted our voices but not the light," she said with a slight smile. "It had to be that way. If light were blocked, distorted, or altered, it would create visual inconsistencies. Anyone would hesitate to step forward if things looked off. So I used a Special Item to distort the external light, making you walk right into the trap."
It sounded easy, but when she used [How to Render] to adjust the light distortion, she broke into a sweat. She knew she had mere seconds to refract Eight-Heads De's light projection a few steps away. If the corridor hadn't been so dimly lit, Hagrid might not have been fooled so easily.
Hagrid, held firmly in her grip, moved his lips slightly, then pressed them tightly shut.
Since stumbling into the trap and being caught by Lin Sanjiu, he had barely spoken. Aside from a single, "What Zhong Qing? I have nothing to do with him," he hadn't uttered a sound, not even a grunt.
Lin Sanjiu glanced at his expression. "You see, whether you deny it or stay silent doesn't matter much. Just like setting up this trap, I only took the next step once I was confident in my suspicion."
Her hand clamped tightly around the back of Hagrid's neck, pressing against his carotid arteries. His face turned red with pain, but his struggles were minimal, his feet occasionally twitching on the ground. This technique, taught by Puppeteer through Bohemia's teary recounting, wasn't meant to torture Hagrid, just to disable him.
Yet, even now, Hagrid still felt like a regular human in her grasp.
"Dreadlocks," she said without turning, "search him."
The term "search" inherently implied claiming possession. Dreadlocks, who probably never had such an opportunity before, hesitated for a few seconds, torn between fear and excitement. Carefully, he lifted Hagrid's outer garment.
"Why didn't you use your ability?" Lin Sanjiu asked while Dreadlocks searched. "That ability or item that makes people believe whatever you say is true. It must have serious limitations, right?"
Hagrid's eyes flicked toward Dreadlocks; he clearly realized where he had slipped up.
"No matter how well you disguise yourself as an ordinary person, it's hard to maintain a seamless illusion," Lin Sanjiu continued. "As one of the masterminds, you must know what signs appear in people about to mutate. So when that middle-aged woman patted her arm to prove she wasn't a mutant... I can't imagine what was going through your mind. It was too coincidental, too ironic, wasn't it?"
She paused, recalling the middle-aged woman's faintly smiling face. The woman likely hadn't known she was about to mutate; after all, who would willingly become a splatter of limbs?
"You couldn't help but glance at her arm multiple times, and I noticed. It struck me as odd; her arm was perfectly normal, so what were you looking at? Then I realized she started mutating from her arm... You knew it was coming." Lin Sanjiu sighed softly. "But that's human nature. I might've looked too, if I were you."
1
Even though Hagrid clenched his teeth, his facial expression betrayed him. His skin quivered slightly under his eyes. Lin Sanjiu pressed on.
"Also, even though you used some item to fake not being evolved... your combat skills and reflexes are still there. No matter how hard you tried to disguise them by walking heavily, in unguarded moments, you didn't move like an ordinary person." ŗἁＮоβÊs̩
Dreadlocks had just yanked off Hagrid's belt and was shaking it out on the ground. Hearing Lin Sanjiu, he turned around in confusion. "Huh? Really?"
"When we jumped off the suspension bridge and headed downhill," Lin Sanjiu explained, "neither you nor Eight-Heads De noticed the movement in the corridor ahead. I was the only one who caught it. If he were really an ordinary person, how could two posthumans miss it?"
Dreadlocks thought for a moment and then nodded, realization dawning on him. "That's true... If he were an ordinary person, you wouldn't have needed to step in to sense it."
Lin Sanjiu gave Hagrid a little shake. "So, after everything I've said, you still won't confess and call Zhong Qing to save you?"
"I—I did... cause the ordinary people to mutate," Hagrid rasped at last. "You guessed right... But I have nothing to do with Zhong Qing..."
Lin Sanjiu's eyes widened slightly in surprise. Hagrid admitting his guilt wasn't shocking; what was shocking was that he was trying to shoulder all the blame, completely cutting Zhong Qing out of it.
Tonight, only Zhong Qing could have known she was searching for Dreadlocks and set the trap ahead of time. The fact that Zhong Qing stuck close to Eight-Heads De for such a modest reward was suspicious in itself. But in the world of doomsday, it was hard to imagine a posthuman sacrificing themselves for someone else. Could she really have been wrong?
1
"How's the search going?" she asked Dreadlocks, glancing over.
Around Eight-Heads De, ordinary communication devices couldn't guarantee secrecy. If Hagrid and Zhong Qing were indeed connected, they must have used some specialized communication tool. If they could find that, they might trace it back to confirm if Zhong Qing was truly involved.
Dreadlocks wasn't fast, but he was thorough. Hagrid must have seemed like a human Christmas tree to him; every piece of clothing and accessory that could hide something was stripped and inspected. A velvet pouch, several boxes of food and medicine, and a bundle of thin metal strips, possibly weapons, now lay scattered on the ground.
"This bag must be his storage tool," Dreadlocks held up the pouch for Lin Sanjiu to see. "But I can't open it... It looks like he's locked it somehow."
Lin Sanjiu lifted her head, about to question Hagrid further, when she froze.
The subspace isolated sound, airflow, and vibrations from the real world. If her gaze hadn't swept over by chance, she wouldn't have noticed the figure who had silently appeared in the corridor shadows. He now stood beside the unconscious Eight-Heads De, looking down at his injuries.
The figure took a few steps forward, crouched down, and ran his hand between the floor tiles, pulling out a small, blue-tinged object from the gap. Without even glancing at the subspace, he deactivated it with a flick of his wrist.
He wasn't worried about being struck down on the spot?
"Lin Sanjiu," Zhong Qing muttered, still half-bowed, his collar revealing a sliver of his neck. His tone had shifted, caught between a bitter smile and a sigh. "I just don't understand you. You've always hated senseless killing and cruelty. I laid out all of Eight-Heads De's suspicious behavior for you, yet you still refused to leave him. And here you are, ruining my plans again."
Lin Sanjiu's entire body tensed. She was certain she hadn't known Zhong Qing before. Which meant...
"After all these years, and with this mask, you didn't recognize me."