For example, the reaction I have when facing these seven heads is what they are really examining, while the heads themselves have no significance. At this point, I suddenly felt a moment of enlightenment. Yes, that’s it. Someone who sets up such a meticulous trap and possesses this kind of strategic ability wouldn’t make such a mistake.
It must be that the choice itself is meaningless. If the question is meaningless, then what they are observing is human behavior. In other words, the process just now was the exam itself.
So, this fake Wu Xie must have known this all along, which is why he has been handling the exam in a different way, while I have been standing here like a fool.
“Time’s up, are you going to choose or not?” Miss Zhang asked.
“Do you really want to cut off my head?” I cursed, pointing at the head with its eyes open, saying, “This one.”
Zhang Longban and Miss Zhang exchanged glances and looked at the paper that the fake Wu Xie had handed her—presumably containing his answer. Then Miss Zhang sighed, pulled a dagger from her lower back, and came in front of me, telling the person next to me, “Tie him up, find a place in the yard, I want to use the knife to cut.”
I was stunned. It wasn’t until others tied me up and pushed me into the yard, pressing my head against a stone mill that I realized what was happening and said, “What the hell, did I answer wrong?”
I turned my head to see Miss Zhang walking up to me, the dagger sweeping past my face, a delicate hand pressing down on the back of my neck, pinning my artery. She said, “Don’t be afraid, I’ll start cutting from the spinal cord. You won’t feel any pain; it will be just the very first moment.”
“I really am Wu Xie, you’ve got the wrong person!” I shouted. Then I felt a chill at the back of my neck, and hot blood began to flow down. Immediately, I realized that I could no longer feel my body.
It’s over, I’m dead, I thought.
This time it was for real. I had expended so much energy, used so much luck, and faced hundreds of situations that could have killed me a thousand times without dying. Yet here I was, because I was foolish and answered the question wrong, I died so easily.
Life is indeed wonderful!
At that moment, I surprisingly didn’t feel too regretful; instead, I felt a bit of schadenfreude, thinking: when my brother comes out from the bronze door, he will surely find that I was mistakenly killed by his kin. I wonder what expression this girl and that Zhang Longban will have then.
Very few people can share the same experience as me, being in such a clear state while feeling someone cutting my neck. But Miss Zhang didn’t lie to me; I felt no pain at all, only the sensation of hot blood flowing down my shoulder. That burning feeling was not because my blood was actually hot, but because my body was too cold.
“Why do you bother pretending to be someone else?” The blade of the girl’s knife wandered around my neck as she softly spoke.
“You’ve got the wrong person.” I used all my strength to squeeze out this sentence.
Oh no, not all my strength; I probably didn’t have a body anymore. My body had likely separated from my head.
Then, I started to feel incredibly drowsy. The fake Wu Xie walked up to me, lit a cigarette, smiled at me, and made a gesture with a mocking expression that he also couldn’t help.
I increasingly felt my eyelids growing heavy, and just before losing consciousness, I heard the fake Wu Xie say to the girl, “He should be the real deal. Stop it, don’t actually scare him to death.”
Then I felt a sharp pain in my back, a very intense soreness radiating from that painful spot throughout my entire body. Gradually, I no longer felt sleepy, and my senses returned to me.
I was helped up and placed on a chair, then carried back into the room. I saw the fake Wu Xie pull out a towel from somewhere and drape it over me. Dazed, I asked, “What’s going on? Weren’t you going to cut off my head? If my head has already been cut off, then why am I still alive?”
“We’re not interested in your head,” the fake Wu Xie replied.
“We? Why do you refer to yourself as ‘we’? Aren’t you just a pathetic counterfeit like me?” I said weakly.
“I’m just pretending to be as miserable as you are. Let me reintroduce myself: my surname is Zhang, and I’m of the same clan as your friend. My name is Zhang Haike.” The fake Wu Xie sat down across from me. “I’m a member of this branch, and the girl who just cut your head is called Zhang Haixing; she’s my sister. We both belong to the overseas faction. Sorry, we went through some trouble to test whether you are really Wu Xie. You see, human skin masks were abused far too much in the last century.”
“Then how did you—my neck was just broken—”
“We only inserted a needle into the back of your neck, injected some blocking anesthetic, and then sprinkled a bit of pig’s blood on your neck,” the fake Wu Xie said, lighting a cigarette. “You just foolishly thought your neck was broken.”
I thought to myself: Damn it, these people are too cunning.
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