Chapter 394: It's You

Jiang Yuan did not answer Mo Shu.

He crouched in front of Mo Shu, thrust the Spinal Sword into the ground, freeing his hands to unzip the outer tactical jacket of his combat suit. The zipper teeth were tightly clenched; he pulled twice before it opened, and the metallic clank rang sharply in the quiet Corridor.

Mo Shu tilted her head and looked at him: "What are you doing?"

Jiang Yuan did not lift his eyes. He shook the jacket open and lightly wrapped it around Mo Shu's right arm.

His fingers were trembling.

All ten fingers, each involuntarily convulsing, the nail caps knocked against the jacket's metal clasp, producing a fine clacking sound.

Mo Shu lowered her head, watching his trembling back of the hand, and was stunned for two seconds.

"Jiang Yuan."

She extended her uninjured hand and gently pressed his fingers.

Five fingers covered them, and the palm's warmth passed through the thin tactical gloves.

Warm.

Jiang Yuan's Adam's apple rolled once, and his whole body froze as if a pressure point had been struck.

"It's okay now." Mo Shu's voice softened, her speech slowed, sounding like she was coaxing a child.

She had misunderstood.

She thought Jiang Yuan was feeling post‑fear.

It couldn't be said she was completely wrong—indeed it was post‑fear. Only the object of the fear differed from what she imagined.

Jiang Yuan opened his mouth, and his throat tasted of iron rust. The wound had not fully stopped bleeding yet. He swallowed a mouthful of fishy saliva and said nothing.

Mo Shu rested the back of her head against the wall, withdrew her gaze from the smoky gray‑white wreckage at the end of the Corridor, and fixed it on the side of Jiang Yuan's face.

"Are you feeling uncomfortable?"

Jiang Yuan's eyelashes twitched.

"I guess so too." Mo Shu exhaled, her tone dropping a bit, no longer the usual chirpy sweet voice, now a little hoarse, "Over three hundred... you must have known many of them, right? The logistics, the communications, the tech team, the ones we used to greet in the Cafeteria."

She tilted her head, her chestnut short hair brushing the cement dust on the wall.

"To be honest, I'm also a bit... how to say, can't catch up."

"When I was fighting earlier I felt nothing; if they needed to die, they died, after all they're Fake Persons. But now that I've stopped, my mind starts racing—Qi Hao that guy, last week he even borrowed a power bank from me, worried his phone would run out of battery in twenty‑four‑hour standby."

Jiang Yuan sat down beside her.

The cement floor of the Corridor was icy; even through his combat pants he could feel the cold seeping into his bones. His back pressed against the wall, about twenty centimeters away from Mo Shu.

Three ceiling light tubes were broken; only one lingered at the far end, flickering on and off. The light fell on their faces, one bright, one dim.

"Jiang Yuan, you said these Fake Persons... do they know they're fake?"

The question was like a blunt weapon, pressing dullly against Jiang Yuan's temple.

He clenched his fist.

"I don't know."

His voice was very soft, so soft that the crackling of shorted Electric Wires at the end of the Corridor drowned most of it.

"Hm?"

"They don't know." Jiang Yuan repeated, each word sounding as if forced out between his teeth, "The Fake Persons' cognitive distortion affects not only those around them but also themselves. Before being uncovered... they truly believe they are that person."

Mo Shu was quiet for a few seconds.

"That's rather sad."

She said it with a calm expression, even a hint of a spectator's sigh.

It was like a human evaluating another species' tragedy.

Jiang Yuan buried his forehead in his palm.

A Shadow Ghost emitted a low hum in his mind, trying to help suppress the emotions that were about to burst, but this time it couldn't hold them back.

That feeling was strange.

Like drowning. Water surrounded him from all sides; he knew the surface was just dozens of centimeters above his head, a tiptoe could let him breathe, but his legs felt filled with lead, unable to rise.

Mo Shu sensed his abnormality, turned sideways, and lightly nudged his thigh with her knee.

"Hey."

"... Hm."

"Do you still remember that time in Chicago, the two Spider Humanoid larvae that crawled out of the Sewer?"

Jiang Yuan's fingers slowly loosened a bit from his face.

"Remember."

"You were so scared your leg went weak, yet you wouldn't admit it, insisting you slipped on moss." Mo Shu's mouth corner lifted, a faint dimple appearing, "When I finished cutting for you and turned back, I saw you standing there holding a Poker Card, looking like a brand‑new intern."

"... I didn't have weak legs."

"You did."

"That was a tactical lowering of the center of gravity."

Mo Shu let out a snort of laughter.

The laugh sounded out of place in the Corridor filled with the smell of burnt plastic. It was like a flower blooming in a landfill—discordant, yet oddly beautiful.

Jiang Yuan turned his head and gave her a glance.

The light flickered, illuminating half of Mo Shu's side face. Her almond eyes curved, the corners glistening with a few tears forced out by pain, chestnut short hair pressed to her cheek, the ends dusted with a speck of gray‑white powder.

She leaned against the wall in a relaxed manner.

She was wounded, bleeding—or rather leaking that white stuff—but she didn't mind. Because she didn't know what it meant.

In her perception, she was shedding red blood, suffering a human wound, waiting for dawn together with her comrades-in‑arms.

Jiang Yuan's fist loosened, then clenched again. He repeated this three times.

Mo Shu, sis.

Huh?

...... Thanks for saving me just now.

Mo Shu rolled her eyes, that exaggerated, deliberately put-on look of disdain: "What are you talking about? Who do we think we are? We went through the Spider Humanoid army together in Chicago—do we really need to say this?"

The corridor fell quiet for a moment.

A muffled thud came from some floor far away, as if someone had dropped something. The sound waves traveled through the concrete walls, reaching their ears as a distorted, fuzzy hum.

Mo Shu turned her head, looking at the grayish-white wreckage at the end of the corridor that had gradually stopped smoking.

Jiang Yuan.

Hmm.

You say after this is over, how will the bureau handle it? Over three hundred people vanished overnight, workstations empty—there has to be an accounting.

Jiang Yuan didn't pick up that topic. He didn't want to. Because he couldn't give an answer to that question, and he didn't dare to.

Mo Shu, on the other hand, circled back: 'Forget it, the Wei Gong Association will handle this. We soldiers just need to finish the fight; politics isn't our concern.'

She stretched, tugging at her wound, and hissed again.

I'll treat you to barbecue when we get back.

Huh?

'Reward myself.' Mo Shu raised a finger, righteous and bold: 'After a big battle, shouldn't we celebrate? Last time at that place you didn't try, the grilled oysters were amazing, the garlic spread thicker than life—one bite and you'll doubt you ever ate the real thing before.'

Jiang Yuan's mouth twitched slightly.

That arc was tiny, almost invisible in the dark.

But it curved downward.

'Good.' he said.

Mo Shu didn't notice his expression. She nodded in satisfaction, rested the back of her head against the wall again, and stared at the sole lit tube on the ceiling for a while.

The tube flickered a few times, then went out.

The whole corridor plunged into darkness, leaving only the two of them breathing evenly in alternating rhythm.

In the darkness, Mo Shu's voice sounded again.

It was light, casual, carrying the relaxed ease of a mission nearing its end.

By the way, Jiang Yuan.

...... What.

'According to what you said before, there were three hundred eighty-six, and we've cleared three hundred eighty-five.'

Her tone even had a hint of glee, like counting down to the New Year's bell.

'There's still one left on the list, right?'

In the dark you couldn't see her face, but Jiang Yuan could hear her laughing.

What that smile looked like, he didn't need to see to know: her almond eyes curved like crescent moons, two shallow dimples at the corners of her mouth, her chin slightly lifted, revealing a sliver of neck.

A clean, pure, unguarded smile.

'Who's the next Fake Person?'

There was no wind in the corridor.

But Jiang Yuan felt cold.

That cold didn't seep in from the skin; it welled up from the marrow, crawling up the spine vertebra by vertebra, finally lodging in the throat as a lump of icy breath he couldn't exhale.

He didn't speak.

One second.

Three seconds.

Five seconds.

Mo Shu's smile still lingered on her face, but it began to change. The curve of her lips stayed the same, yet the light in her eyes—those doe-like almond eyes—slowly dimmed.

Not the darkness of a light going out.

It was something deep in her pupils shattering, unable to hold, causing the pupils to shrink gradually.

She saw Jiang Yuan's eyes.

At the end of the corridor, the electric wires shorted, spitting out a spark; a weak orange light illuminated half of Jiang Yuan's face for a few tenths of a second.

The expression on that face wasn't dread, wasn't fatigue, wasn't post-battle emptiness.

It was something she had never seen on Jiang Yuan's face before.

Struggle and defeat.

Utter, irredeemable struggle and defeat that not even a Shadow Ghost could suppress.

His eyeballs were bloodshot, his eye sockets swollen, the muscle lines from his nostrils to his jaw seemingly twisted into knots; fluid slid from the corner of his eye, tracing his cheekbone and dripping onto his knee.

It wasn't sweat.

Mo Shu's smile froze on her face.

Jiang Yuan?

Her voice changed tone. It wasn't the chirpy, energetic girl anymore, nor the calm, decisive elite agent in combat. It was a panic she herself didn't realize, rising from some deeper instinct.

'What's wrong with you?'

She sat up straight, reaching with her left hand for Jiang Yuan's shoulder. The moment her fingertips touched him, she felt his body shaking violently—not a finger tremor, but a shudder rising from the core of his torso, making his whole skeleton quiver.

'You scared me.' Mo Shu's Adam's apple moved, her voice pitching up half a note: 'How—'

'The last person on the list.'

Jiang Yuan spoke.

His voice was hoarse beyond recognition, as if someone had repeatedly rubbed his vocal cords with coarse sandpaper, each word edged with burrs.

Mo Shu's hand lingered on his shoulder, not withdrawing.

She waited.

The Corridor was unlit. The darkness was thick as a substance, pressing on the two of them. The only things that could sense each other's presence were the sound of breathing and the body heat transmitted through their fingertips.

Jiang Yuan slowly lifted his head.

Those eyes had no glint in the darkness, like two dried, barren wells.

He looked at Mo Shu.

He stared at that face, which even in the dark he could discern every detail of by its outline.

Then he heard his own voice drifting in from far away.

"It's you."