CHAPTER 26

She extended her knife and pulled out the object.

It was a huge stuffed bear with a pair of beautiful black plastic button eyes. It was heavy and rigid, with a bl*ody, stinky smell emanating from the spot where the knife had pierced it.

She threw the stuffed bear on the ground and looked at her shoes, then back at the bear.

She couldn't solve the case or figure out what had happened. She silently gave up on the idea of sleeping.

The stuffed bear lay there, continuously b|eeding.

"Mental value 76, mental value 76..."

After a while, "Mental value 75, mental value 75..."

Xiang Chenxi found it unbelievable. How could this stuffed bear cause her mental value to drop so much just by looking at it? What was so novel about it?

She stood on the ground and pulled her shoes out from the bear's embrace. She flipped it over, struggling with the zipper on its back because the spine and zipper seemed fused together. Opening the zipper was like splitting a person's spine in half. Then she gave up, stabbing the furry skin on its arm, revealing a grayish-blue human arm, and she cut open the legs, exposing two feet.

Such cases were common, where people's bodies were stuffed in all sorts of unimaginable places. And this bear was barefoot, with He Ran taking away her other shoes, so the bear found her shoes.

Although this deduction was rough, it usually matched about 80% of the cases.

There might have been an employee in the outpost who was k!lled and stuffed inside the bear, or maybe they wanted to escape, so they wore shoes, or perhaps they had a liking for shoes... She didn't want to dwell on it.

There was another possibility: this room had more than one pollutant. The one under the bed was the victim, and the perpetrator, wearing shoes, couldn't be seen, approaching the victim. The victim cowered inside the teddy bear out of fear.

But none of that mattered! Xiang Chenxi looked at her shoes, held them close to her chest, pressed her wristwatch, and after a while, pressed it again to confirm that her mental value hadn't been affected by the shoes. She put them on.

In addition to the mental value, the wristwatch also displayed a pollution level of 10%, which puzzled her.

Both were 10%, but why did some 10% silently bring down her mental value?

She had been too careless, shouldn't have taken this nap.

Standing up, she suddenly thought that she should warn He Ran. Come to think of it, sleeping anywhere wasn't the right thing to do. She should take this opportunity to go downstairs and have coffee and chat with He Ran. No, no, she shouldn't drink coffee. She couldn't consume unfamiliar food sources. What was she thinking? Her mind was filled with indecisive thoughts, imbued with a strong sense of ordinary life. She was a soldier!

Taking off shoes, turning off the lights, and sleeping without any vigilance. Feeling tired, she thought about going downstairs to have coffee—no, no, no.

Xiang Chenxi felt that she had probably been driving for too long that day. Even when she shook her head, she could hear the sound of dripping water—tick tock.

Tick tock, the sound of dripping water? She focused and listened carefully. The sound seemed to be coming from the ceiling and also from the walls.

She opened the door and decided to go sit on the lit first floor.

But as soon as she opened the door, she realized something was wrong.

At the other end of the corridor, the door next to He Ran's room was open. In the light in front of the door, there was a long shadow. The shadow was being stepped on by a man of average build. He held a wet, dripping book in his left hand, bl*od dripping from it, and a screwdriver in his right hand.

She looked at the man and instinctively turned back, opening the door and slipping inside. In the instant she turned around to close the door, a loud bang—

The man collided with her door.

Xiang Chenxi's speed was already quite astonishing, but how did the man manage to cross from one end of the corridor to the other in an instant?

Her military instincts prevented her from turning her back, as who knew if the man had a weapon that could pierce through the door in an instant?

She immediately took a few steps back, dragged a chair, went around the bear's body on the floor, used the chair to block the door, and drew her gun.

Then, she reached back into the drawer and pulled out a vest, slowly dragging the chair backward.

Whether it was the wind or someone pushing, the door slowly opened a crack.

Xiang Chenxi threw the vest, and in the moment when the vest covered the other person's vision, she was about to shoot.

But the man didn't move, allowing the vest to fall on his head and then slowly slide down.

The man was dressed in a deep blue work uniform, not looking like a researcher. Bl*od was dripping from his hand, which seemed to be soaked in the bl*od-soaked work log. The bl*od was flowing from a deep hole in his wrist, which, at a quick glance, appeared to be pierced by a screwdriver from another hand.

She couldn't casually shoot within the polluted area, as it could easily disturb other things. She had just been anxious about that.

After all, she had expected this to be a peaceful and harmless outpost. After entering, her mental value dropped below the safety value she had set for herself, and she still hadn't figured out the reason. Xiang Chenxi, who was usually confident, was a bit panicked.

Before she had a chance to say anything, the man stared at her with wide eyes and greeted her with a forced smile, "Hello, I'm the mechanic Zhao Xinyan."

"Hello." At this moment, she needed to gather more information by following the other person's logic.

"I need to fix the clock... Can you give it to me?"

The man named "Zhao Xinyan" squeezed out a seemingly friendly smile and pointed to his own hand. "I'm busy... Can you do me a favor?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You know where the clock is," the man frowned, appearing worried about something. "It's already twelve o'clock, and we need to check the time. If the watch keeps showing twelve o'clock, we'll all go crazy."

Xiang Chenxi remembered the clock on the first floor, and it wasn't difficult to calculate. After all, there was only He Ran on the first floor.

Zhao Xinyan seemed to know her doubts and gently raised his left hand with the bl*odied hole, bl*od flowing down his arm to his elbow, staining his work uniform black. "Only I can help you. If you don't help me, I'll tell He Ran that you're here."

Alarm bells rang in Xiang Chenxi's mind.

What did he mean? Tell He Ran?

She couldn't possibly entertain the possibility that He Ran was polluted, but as she calmed down a bit, she finally brought back the possibility that had been excluded.

But He Ran appeared normal, while the person in front of her clearly did not.

It must be the manipulative type of pollution, usually encountered during team operations. They would impersonate your teammates or simply plant seeds of doubt about your teammates in your mind using some evidence.

"He Ran knows I'm here." she said.

Zhao Xinyan stared at her as if he had heard something strange, his eyes widening. "How is that possible? Weren't you afraid of her? Why would you tell her where you are?"

Who did this Zhao Xinyan mistake himself for? Who was afraid of He Ran?

In other words, there was someone who was once very afraid of He Ran, hiding away, and Zhao Xinyan used that fear to manipulate them, including finding this clock—compared to Zhao Xinyan's dignified appearance, was He Ran even scarier?

She decided to play along. "I'll help you find the clock, but don't tell her."

A smile appeared on Zhao Xinyan's face. "Come to my room to find me."

She tried to discern some perverse or ambiguous undertones from Zhao Xinyan's face, but there were none. Zhao Xinyan seemed to straightforwardly ask her to come to his room, without any hidden intentions.

When she heard the words "come to my room," she easily thought of pollution caused by s*xual ass*ult. However, her intuition told her that while Zhao Xinyan was somewhat creepy, there was no such implication on his face.

What was it then?

Zhao Xinyan still stared at her intensely, and to avoid any accidents, she stared back at him, maintaining eye contact.

Without taking her eyes off him, she stepped back, creating distance between them.

She continued to back away, reaching the staircase landing, turning the corner, and Zhao Xinyan disappeared from her sight. She cautiously turned around, and he hadn't followed her.

Twelve o'clock, this time point made her somewhat concerned. The clock on the first floor pointed to twelve o'clock. What did it mean? Was He Ran really a pollutant?

She pressed her wristwatch. The pollution level remained steady at 10%, mental value at 74, and the time was midnight.

The lights on the first floor went out, and it seemed that He Ran wasn't present. Perhaps she had gone back to rest.

Xiang Chenxi felt regretful. When she entered the outpost, she inexplicably lowered her guard and ended up sleeping soundly, unaware of any activity outside.

She turned on her flashlight and, with a flicker, it landed on the wall clock. The long and short hands overlapped at 12. She stood on the changing bench, tiptoeing to reach it.

Just as she was about to go and get a stool, there suddenly came a very slow footstep behind her.

The footsteps were very light. When she first came in, she should have observed He Ran's gait directly, but she neglected it, and now she couldn't discern whether the footsteps in the darkness came from that woman.

Now Xiang Chenxi realized that since she entered the outpost, her vigilance had inexplicably disappeared. Her habits had been unconsciously twisted into the most relaxed mode, just like a tired person who always missed some important details. It made her brain quite sluggish, as if this place was just a normal outpost.

She was startled. This outpost had imposed a concept on her invisibly — everything here, even if somewhat polluted, was normal.

He Ran had a problem.

In the darkness, she didn't want to come face to face with anything, let alone collide with the seemingly harmless He Ran. Who knew if she would inexplicably lose almost twenty points of mental value after a few words.

She swiftly moved, pressing her body against the wall, and suddenly saw that the door to the men's changing room was open.

He Ran should be a woman based on appearance and voice, so she shouldn't enter the men's changing room.

While contemplating the next course of action, she opened the door and slipped inside.

As soon as she entered, she saw a rectangular mirror, with the upper half shattered right in the middle, forming a spiderweb-like crack, while the lower half remained intact.

It was never a good sign to have mirrors in polluted areas. She noticed a quilt on the bed and immediately grabbed it to cover the mirror.

In that instant, footsteps sounded behind her, just outside the door.

She swiftly moved and crawled under the bed.

Once inside, she realized that this so-called bed was nothing more than a slightly wider bench, extremely narrow inside.

And there was one more person.

Her dagger was already pressed against the person's mouth, and they tightly covered their mouth with both hands, whispering in an extremely soft voice, "Don't make a sound..."

Thud, someone opened the door.

The voice from under the bed was barely audible, "Be careful of He Ran, she's gone mad."

The door opened, and two pairs of indoor shoes walked in, one on the left and one on the right. Xiang Chenxi saw the white socks and the size of the feet, confirming it: it was He Ran who entered.

Why wasn't He Ran turning on the lights and entering the men's changing room?

The two pairs of feet paused for a moment, didn't even come close to the bench, and turned around to leave.

The person under the bed breathed a sigh of relief. "Quick, escape. Everyone else is dead, only the three of us are left, and she will kill us all."

"Three of you?" A phrase that, as a precaution against pollutants, could easily be categorized.

"He Ran will kill us, you have to run."

The person under the bed was a girl with two braids, looking perfectly normal. She grabbed Xiang Chenxi's arm and forcefully pushed her towards the exit.

A faint broadcast in her ears reminded her: Mental value 73.

The person in front of her... was still okay? Xiang Chenxi continued to hold the dagger against the person, their words not reaching the level of mentally devastating murmurs. She decided to listen.

It was dark outside, and she couldn't leave the outpost. In the outpost, even if polluted and her mental value dropped to 20, there was still a chance of recovery. But in the wilderness, she might directly turn into monster excrement.

She decided to trust the information from the previous supply officer: there was only one person left in this outpost. Whether He Ran was a pollutant remained a question mark, but the person in front of her certainly was.

Apart from Zhao Xinyan, she hadn't felt any strong aggression from anyone in this outpost, including the plush bear. It seemed to be curled up under the bed, sadly enclosing itself within the stuffed toy.

What seemed to be causing her mental value to decline was something else in the darkness.

This girl in front of her posed relatively little threat.

After all, her mental value was still stable. If possible, Xiang Chenxi wanted to endure here for a little longer, until dawn, and then leave immediately. With her professional training, it would be difficult for her to be easily assimilated by the other party before her mental value dropped below 10.

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