Chapter 385: Aftershock of Fear

——

Those six pallid silhouettes were faster than a bullet.

They had no notion of a starting line—one second they were sitting upright by the campfire as a "human", the next second their entire bodies exploded into surging masses of flesh, skin rupturing, camouflage shattering, and what emerged from within made Jiang Yuan's pupils contract sharply.

Tentacles. Teeth. And continuously proliferating muscle tissue.

Six lumps of grotesque biomass, each more than twice the size of an adult, were covered with irregular mouths and holes, dragging thick meat tendrils that surged forward at high speed from various directions, even splitting during the assault—a single tentacle bifurcated into two, those two into four, like ink flung into water, spreading wildly in every direction.

The broken wall shattered.

It wasn't broken by impact; it was corroded through by the black slime seeping from the foremost lump. The half‑meter‑thick concrete fragment hissed white smoke the instant it touched the liquid, as if tossed into a pool of concentrated sulfuric acid, and within three seconds collapsed into a bubbling heap of slag.

The shelter Jiang Yuan was hiding in vanished outright.

Exposed.

Frontal.

Unobstructed.

Thirty meters away, at most two seconds for these things.

But Jiang Yuan was counting on those two seconds.

"Die!"

When Jiang Yuan let out a low roar, his hands were already flung outward—he ripped the Card Bag open, and dozens of specially crafted Poker Cards, propelled by Shadow Ghost's force, shot out, forming a metallic Card Curtain.

The sound of the card blade biting flesh was as dense as a torrential rain hammering metal.

The two foremost Fake Persons bore the brunt. The Poker Cards sliced precisely into their swollen joint connections—the thinnest junctions between tentacles and flesh, where proliferating tissue was thinnest. One cut wasn't enough, so two; two weren't enough, so five. Jiang Yuan applied redundant coverage to every joint.

Snap.

The leading Fake Person's three main tentacles on the left snapped cleanly, spraying a foul black fluid that spurted far away. The unbalanced flesh mass lurched forward half a step, its speed dropping sharply.

But the four behind it kept going.

They skirted around their companion's corpse, flanking from both wings; countless mouths on their bodies emitted a composite howl of mixed high and low frequencies, warping the air visibly.

The shadow beneath Jiang Yuan detonated at that moment.

There was no buildup, no gradual coalescence— the shadow simply rose from the two‑dimensional plane as if it "stood" up.

Full roster.

The Shadow Legion was at full strength.

Black Shadow Soldiers sprang from every inch of shadow on the ground, each wielding cold weapons of varied shapes; their numbers were so great that the Fake Persons' encirclement was instantly reversed visually.

Six directions, locked simultaneously.

Leading the charge was the projection of Rain Night Butcher—its Boning Knife's black afterimage was three sizes larger than the real thing. A single horizontal slash bisected the Fake Person charging from the right wing at the waist, the upper half still writhing, the lower half already trampled by seven or eight Shadow Soldiers, the blade and axe cleaving the ground downward.

Jiang Yuan drew his sword.

The sound of the Spinal Sword leaving its sheath was faint, so faint it was completely drowned out by the battlefield's roars and flesh‑splintering. Yet the bone‑white glimmer along the blade stood out sharply in the darkness.

He transformed entirely into a lingering shadow.

It took 0.3 seconds to move from his standing position to the front of the first Fake Person. The Spinal Sword's path was a straight vertical slash from top to bottom—unadorned, uncurved, the simplest line, cleaving from the swollen flesh crown's apex down to its ground‑contacting root.

Where the blade passed, black fluid exploded into a mist.

The Fake Person was split in two from the middle; its internal structure quivered wildly in the sword's wake, the proliferating spongy tissue behaving as if poured into a microwave, boiling, swelling, and bursting from within.

Jiang Yuan did not pause.

After the slash, he sidestepped, letting the third charging Fake Person skim his shoulder and fly past. Shadow Soldiers intercepted it in mid‑air; twenty‑some blades simultaneously drove into the flesh mass, pinning it immobile in mid‑air.

Jiang Yuan turned and delivered another slash—horizontal, at waist height.

Two halves.

The Shadow Legion continued to twist.

The fourth. The fifth.

Each swing of the Spinal Sword carried Jiang Yuan's full strength amplified by Shadow Ghost's power; the sensation of the blade entering a Fake Person was strange—more like cutting a continuously expanding dough than flesh, extremely elastic and resistant, yet once speed and force surpassed a threshold, the proliferating tissue burst outward from the incision like a punctured balloon, flipping outward in whole masses.

Thirty seconds.

Perhaps even shorter.

Jiang Yuan didn't count.

When he finally stopped, the tip of the Spinal Sword rested on the ground, his back of the hand slick with black fluid.

All six Fake Persons were no longer whole.

The ground was littered with shredded tissue fragments, slowly emitting black smoke as they evaporated. The Shadow Soldiers continued the final cleanup—crushing, slashing, and grinding the pieces that tried to re‑cohere, ensuring each fragment was reduced beyond regenerative capacity.

The air was filled with a strange odor. Not the scent of blood, but something between burnt plastic and rotting seafood—pungent, foul, sour—all three sensations layered, stinging the eyes with a burning sensation.

Jiang Yuan pressed the sole of his boot onto a still‑trembling tissue clump and prodded it with the tip of his sword.

No bones.

No organs.

No normal structures belonging to carbon‑based life.

The entire wreckage consisted of a sponge‑like proliferating tissue, its surface riddled with tiny pores; cross‑sections revealed layered hexagonal, honeycomb‑like structures. These structures rapidly collapsed and shrank within the black smoke, turning into a puddle of gray‑black, sticky slag.

Yet in a fleeting moment, he seemed to glimpse a genuine human corpse.

Jiang Yuan pulled out his Communicator and switched to the highest‑level top‑secret channel.

Fingerprint unlock, iris verification, voiceprint match. After all three layers of encryption cleared, the channel connected, and the other side transmitted a quiet electrical hum.

"Report."

Jiang Yuan's voice was far steadier than he had expected, yet the hand holding the Communicator trembled.

"Agent Jiang Yuan. After flattening the Weird Domain of the mud swamp on the front line, we were ambushed by six Fake Persons at the camp and have eliminated them on site."

He paused, activated the video transmission on the Communicator, aimed the camera at the Fake Person wreckage on the ground, and slowly panned around.

Their cognitive interference field remains after death, decaying extremely slowly.

He said that, then bit down on his molar.

"The most critical point— they disguised themselves as members of my Special Forces squad. Lao Zhou, Zhao Zheng, Sun Rui, Communicator Xiao Li… six people, their names, voices, habits, memories all match. The scenes of fighting side by side in the mire Weird Domain, I now cannot tell which actually happened and which are false cognitions implanted by them."

The other side of the channel was silent for five seconds.

Wei Gong's voice came through, light, yet each word seemed squeezed out of his teeth.

"……Received. The footage has been saved. Stay put for now; further orders will be issued later."

The Communicator was hung up.

Jiang Yuan shoved the Communicator back into his waist.

The Shadow Legion, after finishing the sweep, withdrew into his Shadow, and the Spinal Sword was sheathed. The surroundings quieted again, leaving only the faint hissing of the residue evaporating.

He lifted his head.

The red moon still hung in the sky, mostly obscured by a veil of grayish clouds, leaving only a dim, iron‑rust colored halo.

That sliver of light fell, making the lingering black liquid on the ground reflect a disgusting glare.

Jiang Yuan stood motionless in the middle of this ruin littered with unspeakable things.

Wind poured in through the shattered canopy of the gas station, making the hem of his combat uniform flap with a crackle.

He had always believed humanity's defensive line lay at the border.

On the Blockade Lines of six S-Class Anomaly Domains, on the frontline positions that the Special Forces built with their lives, on the edges of the safe zone that Jiang Yuan himself carved out blade by blade with the Spinal Sword.

He thought the rear was safe.

The Investigation Bureau headquarters, regional branches, garrison cities, military bases—these places have comprehensive detection methods, strict identity verification procedures, and the world's top anti‑Weird technology teams.

Yet his squad teammates, the ones who fought life and death with him in the Weird Domain, were all fake.

All of them were fake.

Since the Fake Person incident, he had relaxed his vigilance toward Fake Persons for too long… he didn't notice any anomaly at all—and that, perhaps, is itself a form of cognitive pollution.

Jiang Yuan recalled Lao Zhou's expression when he said he would go back to hug his daughter.

That smile, that tone, that kind of weary tenderness that only surfaces briefly in a high‑pressure environment—perfect down to the flawless curve of every laugh line.

But beneath that face there were no eyes, no nose, no mouth.

Only writhing flesh buds and concentric rows of needle‑like teeth.

It was simulating a human, simulating more convincingly than a real person.

He didn't notice at all.

He spent every day eating, sleeping, and entrusting his back to the counterfeit.

If it weren't for that True‑Sight Eye, he would still be in the dark.

Jiang Yuan lowered his head, looking at his own hand.

His hand stopped trembling, but a dense layer of goose‑flesh was spreading from the back of his hand up his forearm, then crawling up his nape. The sensation was unbearable, as if thousands of invisible insects were crawling beneath his skin, each one reminding him of the same thing—

Your cognition is unreliable.

Your memory is unreliable.

Anyone around you is unreliable.

Fake Persons' cognitive interference isn't some fancy illusion; it directly rewrites the brain's interpretation of reality. You're not being deceived; you truly "believe" it to be real. That's scarier than any lie, because you can't even find a starting point for doubt.

And the most hair‑raising question is—

When did these six slip in?

Were they in the squad from the start, or were they replaced at some node within the Weird Domain? If it was a replacement, where are the real Lao Zhou and the others now?

Or perhaps… there was never any Lao Zhou at all?

Jiang Yuan clenched his fist, his nails digging into the flesh of his palm.

The lingering fear has a delay. During combat, the brain automatically blocks all useless emotions, allocating all bandwidth to judgment and reaction. But once the fight ends and the adrenaline surge fades, the suppressed things surge up all at once.

It churns the stomach into acid.

He stood still, staring at the evaporating Fake Person residue, and suddenly thought of an even more terrifying question.

What about the Investigation Bureau?

What about the colleagues he spent day and night with at headquarters?

Among the staff around Wei Gong—the staff officers, data analysts, logistics personnel—how many are genuine?

If Fake Persons could deceive Jiang Yuan, and bypass all detection methods except the True‑Sight Eye, then the difficulty of them infiltrating the Investigation Bureau… is essentially zero.

Humanity isn't surrounded outside the Blockade Line of the Weird Domain.

Humanity is immersed inside it.

From the inside out, from bone to skin, it has long been hollowed out.

That gust of cold wind poured in again, blowing the black smoke of the residue westward.