1652 Chapter 41

I looked at these heads and still couldn’t understand: “But they are all dead. Even if they failed, it shouldn’t have led to their deaths.”

“You know my surname is Zhang, so you should know my background. Back in the day, determining whether a disguise was successful wasn’t just about the face; it required a seamless integration from body to mind, needing to be with the person being imitated at all times. However, over time, some people develop feelings for the person they are imitating and become unwilling to fulfill their mission. Such individuals often flee overseas. The technique of disguise is actually very difficult to use in the long term because it’s hard to truly deceive someone familiar with you. Only under certain systems can many impossible things be realized.”

Zhang Longhan paused for a moment, as if sorting through his thoughts, and after a while, he said, “For a period of time, we discovered that someone was conducting a nationwide hunt for a person named Zhang Qiling. So we began to intervene and uncovered a shocking conspiracy. We observed this conspiracy and started to notice that things were becoming increasingly uncontrollable. To regain control, we had to quietly intervene in part of it and reap some dazzling individuals.”

“So are you people from Buddha Ye’s side or the real Zhang family?” I asked, though I couldn’t fully understand what he was saying.

“There are no real Zhang family members anymore. However, Buddha Ye Zhang has long since belonged to a different system,” Zhang Longhan said. “During the internal turmoil on the mainland, a system we had for international trade in Hong Kong was relatively intact.”

“So these people, did you kill them?”

“Yes, our predecessors were responsible for most of them,” Zhang Longhan replied. “If you understood the entire conspiracy your family was involved in, you would find traces of our involvement in many places. In fact, we have always been watching you.”

As he spoke, Zhang Longhan displayed a sense of arrogance and calmness that was difficult for me to describe. Later, I realized it was an inherent superiority akin to that of nobility. But it wasn’t the luxury of nobility; it was a sense of superiority born from years of insight into everything.

“I will tell you the specifics after I identify the real Wu Xie among you. Now, let’s begin!” Zhang Longhan signaled to Miss Zhang, who along with another person, brought the seven heads closer to us and said, “There is only one question—each of you should carefully look at these heads and say which one looks the most like yourself.”

I exchanged glances with the guy next to me. I thought to myself: How can we judge this? Whether it looks like oneself is completely subjective, and all these heads are my face, making me feel dizzy and unable to judge at all.

“You just need to distinguish by feeling,” Zhang Longhan said. “The power of judgment is in my hands.”

The odds of guessing correctly were only one in seven. My head felt swollen, and I could hardly look at the heads. The fake Wu Xie next to me said, “Don’t fall for it; there’s no way to distinguish them. We only have a chance of survival if we all refuse.”

“Actually, that’s not the case,” said Miss Zhang. “For us, if we really can’t tell, we’ll have no choice but to sever your tendons and keep you locked in a room until you all die of old age.”

“I don’t believe you would do something like that,” I retorted. “We have no grievances against each other, right?”

“You only have ten minutes. Otherwise, you’ll spend the rest of your lives crawling around somewhere,” Zhang Long said, seemingly indifferent to my words.

I felt a wave of anxiety wash over me. The fake Wu Xie beside me glanced at me and suddenly said, “I’ve made my choice. Give me paper and pen, and I’ll write it down.”

“You son of a…” I cursed, “Your words are as empty as farts.”

“Because I believe they would do such a thing, you’d better hurry and choose,” he replied.

My mind was buzzing as I looked at the seven heads in front of me, feeling dizzy. Which one looked more like me? Damn it, if I chose wrong, I’d become the eighth head.

I never imagined my head could become a collectible, and even a set at that. I recalled playing the big pineapple game in the past and cursed inwardly: damn it, I never thought I’d end up with this kind of headhunter treatment.

“Are you going to choose? The sooner you die, the sooner you can be reborn,” Miss Zhang urged me.

I cursed back, “If I choose wrong, it’s not your head that will end up as dried vegetables. Can’t you take some responsibility for my head?”

“Fine, then take your time thinking,” Miss Zhang said, looking at me with amusement. “But at this critical moment, you can still joke around. That’s quite manly of you. If you get it wrong, I’ll make sure you die a quick death.”

Ignoring her, I looked again at the seven heads. Which one looked like me? Which one? Damn, they all looked so unfortunate; each one looked like me in some way.

I needed clarity, I needed a direction to think. I forced myself to consider: which aspect would help me think more clearly? Was it age?

It was impossible to tell their ages; they were all dead, after all. How could I discern age from this? I recalled how my mother used to describe my appearance—it seemed like I looked less like I was born and more like I was pulled out.

Damn it, Mom, couldn’t you have offered some constructive teasing?

“Three minutes left.”

“Stop urging me! The more you urge, the more annoyed I get!” I shouted.

“Alright, alright,” Miss Zhang said as she stepped back.

I looked at the heads again, and suddenly, an idea struck me.

Annoying—I remembered a girl in college who seemed to like me. She once told me that my face was very calm and that I didn’t annoy people when they looked at me.

Which of these people didn’t look annoying? The one with the calmest, most composed face.

But then I thought again and felt something was off. The girl thought my face was calm—could it be because I was so lazy back then, like a puddle of mud?

Moreover, it was hard to tell the state these people were in when they died. The calmest and most composed might have been the most desperate at the moment of death, not necessarily the one who looked like they had lived that way.

I shook my head, realizing I was wasting time. I didn’t have time to ponder aimlessly anymore. I took a deep breath and looked at the heads one last time.

It is said that during the most stressful moments, the brain’s thinking speed can increase by several times. Although this only lasted for a few seconds, all the details of the seven heads were laid out in my mind. I immediately noticed that one of the heads did not have its eyes closed like the others; instead, it was squinting, and I could see its eyeball.

“Let me through, let me through,” I said. “I need to pry open the eyes of these heads.”

“Eyes?”

Eyeballs cannot be disguised. I thought to myself that the person who resembled me the most must have all the same details, so their eyeballs should be similar as well.

During this time, I had studied disguise techniques and read a lot of literature, some of which recorded the simplest methods to identify disguises, specifically by observing the other person’s eyeballs. The color depth of the iris, the whites of the eyes, the blood vessels in the whites, and the size of the pupils all differ from person to person.

Details of the eyeballs can only be seen up close, so if someone is not particularly close to me, they generally cannot see them. In fact, I don’t have anyone particularly close to me; I don’t even pay much attention to the details of my own eyeballs. Coincidentally, I had been reading books on this topic recently, and I had specifically looked at my own eyes, which allowed me to seize this opportunity.

Regardless of whether the others were considering this aspect, at least it was a direction to think in, preventing me from feeling completely hopeless.

They uncuffed both of us. Anyway, time was running out, and the fake Wu Xie began writing his answers on paper while I opened the eyelids of those heads to examine their eyeballs.

After observing, I realized I was an idiot because all the dead people had their eyes rolled back in their sockets, except for the one whose eyes were slightly open, looking straight ahead, indicating that they had died without closing their eyes.

The one who died with their eyes open did not have the same eyeballs as mine.

I turned to Zhang Longban and asked, “Can I damage these heads?”

“How do you want to damage them? Eat monkey brains?” he asked.

“I want to gouge out their eyeballs,” I replied.

“Give it up. The preservation treatment can’t reach the eyeballs; their eyeballs are made of resin,” Zhang Longban shook his head. “And you don’t have time. Make a decision quickly!”

“Wait a minute. Have you ever considered that because of your actions, the real Wu Xie will definitely make a wrong choice out of fear due to his personality flaws, and in the end, you might mistakenly kill me?”

“We don’t care,” Zhang Longban said without the slightest hesitation. “We are absolutely one hundred percent confident in your choices.”

“Can you not be so confident in me? I have zero confidence in myself right now.”

At that moment, the fake Wu Xie said, “Can you hurry up? If you can’t, just guess one; stop with all the nonsense.”

I looked at the fake Wu Xie’s face, thinking that guessing one or two might be okay, but the probability of guessing all seven correctly was just too low. What the hell!

Wait, guess, guess, guess.

I furrowed my brow—everything those people said echoed in my ears.

“We don’t care.”

That was Zhang Longban’s voice.

What does it mean that they don’t care? It’s impossible for them not to care. If their goal is to find Wu Xie, they would definitely consider that if I get so scared that I lose control, it could lead to a misunderstanding, and then they wouldn’t be able to find Wu Xie. They say they don’t care, but they have complete confidence in their choices.

Could it be that their focus is not on my selection of the seven heads? Is this just a pretext, and they are judging whether I am truly genuine based on other aspects?

Categories:

发表回复

您的邮箱地址不会被公开。 必填项已用 * 标注

联系客服
       
Telegram 官方频道
官方认证_防骗查询