Chapter 386: Taut

The Corridor is long.

Jiang Yuan has never thought the Investigation Bureau headquarters' Corridor was this long.

The fluorescent tubes buzz overhead, that fine, continuous hum of electricity which he used to ignore, now feels like someone is rubbing sandpaper back and forth in his ears.

His boots strike the floor tiles, each step carrying an unnatural stiffness. Left foot lands, right foot follows, the spacing precise to near exactness—not a trained steadiness, but his whole musculature taut so tight that walking has become a deliberately controlled act.

There is someone in the Corridor.

A researcher in a Doctor's Lab Coat emerges from a side door, holding a coffee cup, and nods at him.

"Jiang Team, back? Tough work."

Jiang Yuan's steps stalled for a fraction of a second.

He knows that researcher; his surname is Tao, from Data Group Two. At last year's Christmas gathering, Lao Tao got drunk and forced him to sing "Sweet Sweet," so off‑key that the whole floor came out to watch.

Now Lao Tao stands three meters away, smiling gently, the coffee cup printed with a cartoon Shiba Inu.

Jiang Yuan doesn't look at his face.

To be precise, he doesn't dare to look.

"Hmm."

One word, then he quickens his pace and walks past.

Lao Tao says something behind him, probably something like "Take care of yourself," but the voice is swallowed by the growing distance.

Jiang Yuan's back breaks into sweat—not from heat, but a cold sweat seeping from both sides of his spine, soaking the close‑fitting combat lining into a sticky mess.

As he passes the pantry, his peripheral vision catches three people chatting inside.

Laughter. A perfectly normal laugh.

He doesn't stop, nor does he turn his head.

In his mind only one image repeats: beside a campfire, Lao Zhou holding an enamel cup, grinning at him, saying "Go back and hug the maiden," with a deep crow's‑foot wrinkle at the corner of his eye.

The curve of that crow's‑foot matches exactly the one in Lao Zhou's ID photo taken when he first joined the team.

A perfect replica, even the sense of age is accounted for.

Yet beneath that face there are no features.

Jiang Yuan clenches his fist, his Nail digging into his palm, the pain suppressing a surge of nausea a little.

When he reaches the doorway of Wei Gong's office, he stands there for about five seconds.

He stares at the wood grain on the door for five seconds. Not hesitating to enter, but pondering a ridiculous thought—what if Wei Gong isn't real either, what then?

In the end, he pushes the door open and steps inside.

Wei Gong sits behind his desk, reviewing a File, the scratch of the pen tip on paper clear. The desk lamp is on, its warm yellow light making the old man's greying hair a bit glaring.

"Sit."

Wei Gong doesn't lift his head, the pen doesn't stop.

Jiang Yuan walks to the chair but doesn't sit. He stands there, pulls his right hand from his pocket, and in his palm holds something—a bead the size of an eyeball, faintly emitting a misty glow under the lamp.

After glancing at Wei Gong through it, Jiang Yuan lets out a sigh of relief.

He places the bead on the desk.

Wei Gong's pen tip pauses.

"'True Sight Eye.' Brought from the Mud Swamp Weird Domain," Jiang Yuan says, his throat a bit hoarse, "The effect is to see through all disguises and delusions, with absolute penetration against Weird cognitive‑interference."

He pauses.

"It was because of this thing that I discovered... all teammates are fake."

Wei Gong lifts his head.

Those cloudy old eyes squint under the lamp, not from the light but from assessing Jiang Yuan's condition.

Jiang Yuan's condition is poor. Not physically—he has no obvious injuries, his combat suit is dirty but intact. What's lacking is something else. His posture is too rigid, shoulders raised, jaw clenched, the whole body like a spring twisted to its limit, ready to snap or fling outward at any moment.

"Sit and speak." Wei Gong places his pen down, his tone as even as saying the weather is fine today.

Jiang Yuan sits this time, but only on a small edge of the chair, his body leaning forward.

"Six people." he begins, voice pressed low, "Lao Zhou, Zhao Zheng, Sun Rui, communications soldier Xiao Li, demolitionist A Jie, sniper He Lei. The six I rostered before entering the Weird Domain, I can recite each one's number, blood type, and years of service."

"In the Weird Domain, their performance showed no flaw. Tactical coordination, emergency response, even the way they argue is the same as before. Lao Zhou still curses the same way, opening his mouth with 'you mother‑f***er,' Zhao Zheng still squats to smoke after a battle, Xiao Li still stutters when nervous."

Jiang Yuan props his hand on his knee, applying force until his joints emit a faint crack.

"After flattening the Weird Domain, I found the True Sight Eye in the Core area, and after returning to camp, I scanned the camp's direction."

He closes his eyes briefly.

"The campfire is green. The people aren't people."

The office is quiet for a few seconds.

Wei Gong picks up the True Sight Eye, flips it in his palm. The eye‑like bead looks slightly small in his hand.

"What do you think, the real teammates?"

"I don't know." Jiang Yuan shakes his head, "I'm not even sure whether they were swapped before entering the Weird Domain or inside it. Even less sure......"

He swallows.

"Even less certain whether this team ever had a real person from start to finish."

Wei Gong offers no comfort.

The old man puts the True Sight Eye back on the desk, pulls a packet of tea leaves and two cups from a drawer. His movements are unhurried, like hosting a visiting junior in his own living room.

The kettle's boiling sound gurgles in the room.

"On your way back," Wei Gong asks while unwrapping the tea leaves, "did you see anyone in the Corridor?"

Jiang Yuan's spine tightens again.

"No. Don't dare to look."

"Why?"

"Because......"

Jiang Yuan raised his head and met Lord Wei's gaze. In his eyes there was something very complex, not fear, something more painful than fear.

"Because I'm afraid the passive effect of the True Sight Eye is still active. I'm afraid if I look, the entire Corridor will be abnormal."

The tea leaves were tossed into the cup, making a fine rustling sound.

Lord Wei lifted the kettle, poured in boiling water, and the tea fragrance drifted out.

"Your worry is justified."

The old man's voice was very light, light enough to seem like he was talking to himself. Yet the words that followed each carried a weight that could crush the ceiling.

"Not long ago, the census data changed. The Federation's registered population is 10.3 billion."

Jiang Yuan's expression did not change.

Not because he wasn't shocked, but because his brain hadn't processed it yet.

"With the global birth rate dropping that much, logically this number should go down," Lord Wei lifted his tea cup, blew the steam, "but it went up. The excess isn't due to any country's statistical variance; it's evenly distributed across every corner of the world. The sampling anomaly rate is twenty‑four percent."

He took a sip of tea.

"That report has already been destroyed by my own hand; very few people in the world know about it, and you are one of them."

Jiang Yuan's lips moved, but no sound came out.

"When you were desperately flattening Weird Domains and building Blockade Lines on the front line," Lord Wei set the cup down, the bottom of the cup lightly clinking against the table, "nearly a quarter of the population behind you has already ceased to be human."

The air in the room changed.

Not in a rhetorical sense, but Jiang Yuan could truly feel his breathing become shallow, his heartbeat grow heavy, even the warm glow of the desk lamp seemed covered with a layer of ash.

Ten point three billion.

Starting from seventy‑plus billion, each extra one is a Fake Person.

The neighbor next door, the breakfast‑shop owner, the commuter sitting beside you on the bus, the teacher who teaches your child math at school—anyone, any face, any acquaintance you thought you'd known for years.

Could all be non‑human.

And you will never know, because your brain will automatically categorize them as "people you know," your memory will fill in a past that never existed, and you may even feel affection toward them.

Just like Lao Zhou and his fish‑tail scar.

"So," Jiang Yuan began, his voice dry as if scraped by sandpaper, "the Blockade Lines we built, the front‑line positions we held......"

"are useful." Lord Wei took over, using a term completely at odds with his status, his tone cold to the bone, "but the enemy now lies not outside, but inside our guts. Human civilization today is a hollow shell, its organs eaten by parasites, held together only by a skin."

He stood up, walked around the desk, and went to the window.

Outside the window was the inner courtyard of the Investigation Bureau headquarters; people were moving, people were talking, everything orderly.

"To secure the interior, one must first pacify the exterior." Lord Wei, back to Jiang Yuan, spoke softly, "Before dealing with those six S-Class Anomaly Domains outside, I need to clean my own house first."

He turned, his gaze falling on the True Sight Eye on the desk.

"What you brought back is currently the only means to pierce the cognitive interference of Fake Persons. I need you to use it to screen every person inside the Investigation Bureau."

Jiang Yuan did not answer immediately.

His eyes moved from Lord Wei's face to the courtyard outside. A young man in uniform carried a stack of Files, rushed past, nearly colliding with a flowerbed, staggered two steps to steady himself, then turned and made a goofy face at his companion.

A very everyday scene.

So mundane it made his stomach turn sour.

"Lord Wei," Jiang Yuan's voice was slow, each word forced out, "I have a question."

"Speak."

Jiang Yuan lifted his head; the blood vessels in his eyes were clearly visible.

"When I use it to see through a Fake Person's disguise, that Fake Person also perceives at the same instant that it is being stared at. This perception bypasses the five senses; it is a rule‑level bidirectional feedback, with no delay, no error."

His Adam's apple rolled.

"On the front‑line wilderness, I have the Shadow Legion as backup; even if Fake Persons go berserk, I can deal with them one by one. But inside the Investigation Bureau——"

He lifted his chin toward the window.

"How many people are here? Two thousand? Three thousand? If one‑twentieth are Fake Persons, that's hundreds. Every time I expose one, that one instantly knows it's exposed. What will it do? Self‑destruct on the spot? Take a nearby real person hostage? Or signal its kind, and they all flip the table together?"

Jiang Yuan's fingers tapped his knee twice unconsciously.

"In a sealed building, detonating hundreds of Fake Persons simultaneously......"

He didn't finish the sentence.

No need to finish; the conclusion was already there.

Screening equals ignition. The Investigation Bureau headquarters will become a sealed powder keg.

Lord Wei's expression did not change. He stared at Jiang Yuan for a long time.

Then the old man walked back from the window, pushed the chair aside, and did not sit down.

"Come with me."