Chapter 1986: The Mystery of the Ghost Skull 47

: The picture froze, in deathly silence, Lin An standing alone before the TV remained motionless like a sculpture.

After a few seconds, Lin An took a deep breath, then slowly lowered his left hand, gripping it tightly.

Damn it!

Wrong! All lines of thought are wrong!

They weren't beheaded, nor were they suddenly killed; rather, their necks originally had two heads!

The answer is simple yet absurd.

What Qing Kai left behind was correct.

The Ghost Skull is on their necks.

Andre was also right; losing one's head doesn't necessarily mean death.

What he thought was also correct; a certain cognition can indeed let someone lose their head and not die!

But the mistake lies in which head falls!

All clues and information linked together, Lin An never expected the final answer to be so absurd, even beyond normal logic.

"The so-called minimum cognition is realizing that one has two heads on oneself, one a ghost, one oneself..."

"Losing one's own head means death, but losing the Ghost Skull does not! This is the way out! However, if neither head falls and one remains unaware of the Ghost Skull's existence, the system won't let us leave! Because the minimum cognition is not met!"

"And the greatest danger of the mission is that before realizing this, cognition and logic will be misled..."

Slowly closing his eyes, Lin An couldn't help but give a self‑mocking smile, his heart filled with mixed feelings.

During the process of completing the mission, most people's thoughts are limited to three lines.

1: believing that the more one completes, the more dangerous it becomes, and thinking that knowing something will summon that type of ghost. In the end, they dare not contact others, unable to complete their cognition.

2: upon seeing a headless ghost, realizing perhaps they have no head or cannot keep their own head, they die in the final scene.

3: thinking that perhaps their head is not really their own, but failing to realize the existence of a second head.

After a long while, Lin An slowly opened his eyes, forcibly accepting all of this.

But although he had found the answer, there were still several points of logic that didn't add up, making it hard for him to understand.

"If we follow this line of thought, under what circumstances would the Ghost Skull on my neck kill? Seeing its kind? Becoming aware of the existence of 'self'? Like the logic of the camera?"

"Or must we destroy it before leaving?"

Lin An silently raised his spear, aiming it at his own head. To be honest, the fact that he "feared" himself was something he felt for the first time in his life.

The ghost is on his neck; he will die at his own hand.

"Second problem: where exactly is my head?"

"According to the phantom limb logic, our heads exist together with the Ghost Skull in the substrate in an incomprehensible way, but where? Overlapping? Is the head I can now injure my own, or must certain conditions be met for the Ghost Skull to surface?"

"If it appears after completing cognition, does that not mean we must instantly realize this and then behead it before the Ghost Skull kills?"

"No.. this logic has a solution, but I have already completed my cognition and it shows no reaction."

The logic is convoluted; Lin An frowned, his spear hesitating and swaying in his hand.

If the head he can now pierce is his own, then his fate will be the same as Andre's—acting now would be suicide.

If it appears only under certain conditions, then his moment to act is a single instant, and if it is overlapping, how can he kill the Ghost Skull without killing himself?

"It can't be overlapping... if it were overlapping, there would be no solution..."

"That means it appears under conditions; our completed cognition helps us, when beheading it, firmly believe it is not our own head—like two heads growing simultaneously—then we just attack the Ghost Skull."

"Thinking this way, the difficulty becomes how to tell which head is one's own..."

"Through previous clues? Do our head and the Ghost Skull's head see different things? Distinguish by difference?"

"Could it be... the camera?"

Lin An's brow lifted, and in his mind flashed the scene of the Divine Archer's death.

Could it be...!?

Could it be that the ghost seen then was the Divine Archer himself!?

His heart jumped; Lin An suddenly lifted his head, a flash of insight crossing his mind!

"The Divine Archer saw himself!? He saw his second head, but cognition wasn't completed—no.. it was that none of us had completed our cognition back then, mistaking that face for a ghost!"

"So that head‑ghost in the studio never appeared, and I always feel someone is watching us!"

"Wait..."

"Also not right... when Qing Kai fled, there should have been a ghost behind him. But at that time, no one was standing behind us."

"Moreover, the ghost dragged the Divine Archer up to the ceiling to kill him... though this can be explained by the ghost's killing method, it's not necessarily just decapitation. But this logic still has a problem..."

His eyes flickered; Lin An exhaled lightly, feeling that although he had found the answer, some minor details of information remained unfilled.

Especially, he always felt he had overlooked something, which caused the logic to be unsmooth.

One minute later.

Lin An's face somewhat pallid as he rubbed his forehead; under heavy thought, mental overload, he even felt nauseous.

The deeper he thought, the more problems surfaced. Unable to resolve these, he could never finish the final step.

"If completing cognition is to make me firmly believe a person can have two heads, then the clues here are the most important—important enough that no other clues are needed... this is unreasonable.."

"The conditions for the Ghost Skull's appearance are also wrong; if it were always on our heads, wouldn't it kill prematurely?"

"I have already sensed its existence, so it should also sense mine... seeing a headless ghost certainly isn't the condition to activate it, nor is cognition... what is the condition? Moreover, how did Qing Kai get to that place to kill? Why can Jiang Haochen regain his strength while I cannot?"

Lin An looked somewhat lost at the empty hall; the dim seventh floor had only him.

Not only these problems, he also couldn't fathom why, after rebooting, he revived before the mission began. Moreover, after so long, he still hadn't heard the mission start sound.

He asked himself his train of thought was by no means bad; with a reset in hand, he was almost like cheating in completing the task. Yet even so, he was still one step short of finding the answer.

Such difficulty is truly too high... so high that Lin An doubts even a Seventh Stage would easily die in the mission.

(This difficulty... really...)

After a long while, Lin An forcibly suppressed the countless speculations in his mind, intending only to quickly finish searching here and then go get the camera.

The camera can see ghosts; without a doubt, it is an important Props.

But for some unknown reason, as Lin An walked toward the other rooms deep in the hall, a sudden, inexplicable surge of unease rose.

Looking at the tightly closed door before him, he instinctively felt a surge of panic, as if there was something inside that he absolutely did not want to see.