Tarzan Observatory
In the small space enclosed by four guns, Bai Liu's demeanor was leisurely as he looked at Liu Jiayi. "So you took the clone Tang Erda hostage and chose to meet us at Taishan Station, but decided to strike first because you weren't sure if we were monsters?"
Bai Liu leaned back in his chair, eyes lifted, and smiled softly. "Now that you have us under control, what then? How do you decide if we're monsters or your real teammates?"
Liu Jiayi's lips pressed into a thin line as she twirled the gun in her hand. The oversized gloves Bai Liu had given her now felt numb, the cold seeping to her fingertips.
"I have a way to tell you from the monster," Liu Jiayi said, her breath forming a white haze. Her grey eyes shot up at Bai Liu through the hazel goggles, fierce yet softened by his calm gaze.
She seemed unable to name the cruel solution she had used successfully twice before. Bai Liu kindly spoke for her:
"Monsters have a weakness, and you've used it to distinguish us from them. Earlier at Edmond Observatory, you used fuel and poison on [Mu Sicheng], and after confirming it was their weakness, you quickly used the same method to hold [Tang Erda] hostage."
"[Tang Erda] is a monster afraid of these things, so it was held hostage just as you intended." Bai Liu's eyes locked on hers. "But [Bai Liu]… I suppose it wasn't cunning that saved him, was it?"
He took her gun in his gloved hand, holding it against his chest, and slowly stood. Taking a few steps back, he looked down at her, almost pityingly. "Jiayi, you can't do anything to [Bai Liu]."
Liu Jiayi had no way to test Bai Liu's authenticity in this cruel manner. She let him go—though she knew there was a 99% chance the [Bai Liu] she faced was a monster. But what if he wasn't? She didn't want to kill him—or use this method.
Not to mention Mu Ke, a guy who could cut the skin off any monster with Bai Liu's face and be the first to cry.
Her lips turned blue as she tilted her head and stared at Bai Liu for ten seconds before taking a deep, dry breath. She put away her gun and drew her poison. "Yes, that's what you said last time. So—fuck it. I'm going to identify the other two."
"There's no need to test. We're both real," Bai Liu said, smiling. "I'm sure I'm the real Bai Liu, so you're the real Liu Jiayi too."
Liu Jiayi looked up in disbelief. "How did you recognize it?!"
Bai Liu patted her head. "It's a controlled experiment. We've heard the observatory version."
"What experiment?" Liu Jiayi asked, frowning.
Bai Liu explained the experiment Fang Xiaoxiao had undergone. Then he smiled with interest.
"Don't you think it's similar to what we have now? A group knows each other well. One leaves, then returns; the other stays put, waiting to be rescued. Then both sides identify each other as human—or not."
Mu Sicheng rubbed his chin, lowered his gun, and muttered thoughtfully, "…Seems like it, eh?"
Then he froze, reacting violently. "That's not right! According to this experiment, someone on our side should be real, and someone fake too!"
"No, no, no," Bai Liu said, holding down the alert Mu Sicheng, who had raised his gun toward Liu Jiayi's forehead. "This time, the experiment had one side all real, the other all fake."
Mu Sicheng blinked, confused. "Why?!"
Liu Jiayi rolled her eyes, muttering, "Idiot… are you still a college student?" as she began putting away the poison.
Mu Ke leaned back on the top bunk with a weary sigh. "If Bai Liu's right, and this is a low-reproducibility social experiment, the original experiment wouldn't be repeated. They already got results from Fang Xiaoxiao's situation. So Fang Xiaoxiao's scenario wouldn't be replicated on us—we'd play a different experimental role."
Bai Liu held up a finger, his smile deepening. "In short, we are the control group for Fang Xiaoxiao's experiment. By extension, Mu Ke and the others who came to us must also be real. That's the conclusion."
Mu Sicheng's eyes spun. "…What the hell is all this? How can we jump to that conclusion?"
Liu Jiayi gave him a breathless look, then turned, yawned, and removed her blood-stained coat. She lifted the blanket, curled into a ball on the bunk, and shouted, "I'm going to sleep!"
Clutching Bai Liu's gloves like a cub finding its nest, she breathed evenly and soon fell asleep.
Mu Ke half-stepped in front of the bed, softening his voice. "Jiayi has been relying on poison to deal with the monster all the way here. Even with a stamina restorer, she's still mentally exhausted—like a child."
Tang Erda glanced at the blood splattered across Mu Ke's clothes and the weariness etched on his face. He understood immediately: Mu Ke had spent hours processing memories and forcing Liu Jiayi to fight her way through a pile of monsters.
"You should rest too," Tang Erda said, opening his mouth to comfort him.
Mu Ke nodded, turned haughtily, and undressed. He climbed into the top bunk, straightened the corners, and within a minute, was asleep, hands drooping off the side.
Tang Erda sighed and stepped forward to tuck Mu Ke's hands back in. "It looks like they've had a hell of a battle just to deliver our message. It must have been exhausting."
Mu Sicheng scratched his head and circled Bai Liu, pointing at the two people on the bed. His voice was low and urgent. "How on earth can you be sure these two aren't monsters?!"
They hadn't been burned. They hadn't been doused with strong acid. None of the weaknesses that normally reveal a monster had been used. Just looking at them… Bai Liu—what the hell is he hiding in that gourd of his?
Bai Liu smiled. "Curious, are you?"
Mu Sicheng nodded furiously.
Bai Liu placed a piece of paper and a pen on a small desk in the center of the cabin, then bowed down to explain. "Remember the experiment Fang Xiaoxiao told you about?"
"I remember," Mu Sicheng said, rubbing the goosebumps on his arms at the thought. "A group let a few escape the ice chasm outside Tarzan Station. Then the others turned back to rescue them and ran into fake ones, some they didn't recognize."
Bai Liu lowered his eyes. "What do you think the purpose of that experiment was?"
Mu Sicheng hesitated, then answered tentatively, "I think… it was to see how humans in the same colony distinguish monsters from humans under extreme conditions?"
He remembered Fang Xiaoxiao saying this.
"That's right. It was an experiment to see how well humans within a group can discriminate between like and unlike." Bai Liu wrote four letters on the page: [A1], [A2], [B1], and [B2].
"Suppose we are the monsters. A is the human group; A1 and A2 are two groups we forced apart. B is the monster group; B1 and B2 are the mirror-image hybrids of the scattered groups A1 and A2 simulated by the monsters."
He drew a 2x2 table. "According to the experimental design, there are four exploratory pairings: A1 meets B2, A2 meets B1. Those are the two Fang Xiaoxiao carried out."
"As human group A1 conducted the experiment, they retained memory of the identification, but human group A2 could not bear the results and died by suicide. We cannot repeat the experiment on them. We need a completely new human group that has not interacted with the others to complete the remaining two experiments."
Bai Liu looked up at Mu Sicheng. "That is, A1 meets A2 and B1 meets B2—the two control experiments. That's what we're conducting now."
"So I say, if we're real, then Mu Ke must be real."
"Of course. From what we've seen so far, we can't rule out the possibility that we're all fakes. I now suspect this group of monsters' experiments involves memory manipulation."
Despite the horrifying speculation, Bai Liu's tone remained flat. "But if both sides are fake, it doesn't matter to me what is real."
Mu Sicheng stepped back, staring at the four experiments Bai Liu had listed. A chill seeped from his bones.
It was colder than walking in fifty-five-below-zero snow—a pure, brutal sense of losing emotional perception and humanity.
He felt no different from any other creature—just bones, connective tissue, and organs wrapped in skin, at the mercy of something higher. Life was stripped of value, reduced to meaningless symbols on paper: A1, A2, B1, B2.
Mu Sicheng's lips trembled. "What if… if we're fake?"
Bai Liu looked at him flatly. "Kill the real one, of course, and take its place."