Chapter 386: Are You the Extra One?

After Number Eleven vanished beneath the water, four survivors remained, perfectly matching the small boat's capacity.

Beneath the murky surface, the corpses drifted with the current, looking exceptionally eerie.

"We don't have a choice now. We have to head right," I said. "If we run into anything else weird, we'll turn back. At worst, we'll just retreat to the hall." Du Yu and I sat at the bow, while Wang Shi and Jin Zhouzhe took up the rear.

The right passage was significantly wider than the left, but the number of submerged corpses had also increased drastically.

"How is this an air raid shelter? This is a Corpse Hiding Cave," Wang Shi said, wringing river water from his pajamas as he warily scanned our surroundings. "Black hemp ropes tied around the waist, large stones used to anchor the bodies... this matches the corpse-securing methods of a corpse salvager. Do you think Number Eleven, He Bo, dumped these bodies in the cave?"

"Why didn't you mention this earlier? He Bo is already dead. What's the point of acting so paranoid now?" Jin Zhouzhe sat right next to Wang Shi, but clearly harbored no fondness for him. "Back in the hall, I suspected you were the organizer. Number Six might have been vicious and brainless, but that exactly ruled him out. I really don't understand why you two suddenly changed your minds and voted for him."

I glanced at Du Yu. Ever since he and Wang Shi came out of that room, the two had formed an alliance. Only they knew what had happened in there.

I didn't press for details. I maintained my trust in Du Yu; this was something we had agreed upon before the livestream even began.

"Number Seven, you think I'm the organizer? Give me a break! I'm starting to suspect there isn't a twelfth person among us at all. Just like how the candies were actually non-toxic, it's merely a ploy by the organizer to drive a wedge between us."

Wang Shi made some sense, but I still felt things wouldn't be that simple. "Can you two keep quiet for a moment? There's no point arguing about this right now. Let's just work together to survive."

Sitting at the bow, my Judging Eye allowed me to clearly see what lay hidden beneath the murky surface. Corpses drifted by—some face up, some face down—their faces frozen in expressions of weeping or laughter.

"Let's hope this is the right way." We rowed a few meters forward. Various items drifted toward us on the water, mostly children's toys.

"Something's wrong. Be careful." Instinct told me something was off. I reached into my pocket and gripped the Great Divine Mantra of the Big Dipper—the most powerful of my Lesser Vehicle Talismans—in my palm.

Soon, a second fork appeared ahead. After Du Yu used his keys to carve a mark into the wall, no one could decide. "Choosing the wrong path last time caused Number Eleven to fall into the water. We have to be careful this time."

I looked at the left and right passages. Both were winding and deep; even with my Judging Eye, I couldn't see what lurked inside.

"I suggest we go right," Jin Zhouzhe said, pointing at the toys floating on the surface. "Look closely. These children's toys have all been damaged, and they're all drifting out of the left passage. There's definitely a problem on the left."

"I agree with taking the right passage."

"Then let's go right," Du Yu said. He pushed off with the oars and was just about to row into the right passage when Number One Wang Shi suddenly sprawled over the stern, leaning more than half his body out of the boat.

His movement was abrupt, and his expression turned incredibly eerie. "Did you hear that? Is someone calling 'Daddy'? No, it's calling my name."

"Number One, don't scare me. Get back inside the boat," Jin Zhouzhe said. He was sitting closest to Number One Wang Shi.

"Can none of you hear it? The voice is getting louder. It really is calling me! There's a baby calling out for its dad! But I don't have any children. My ex-wife Bai Fangfang wanted to keep her figure, so we used protection every time. Could it be..."

As if suddenly realizing something, Wang Shi shuddered and nearly tumbled into the water. "Did my second wife, Mu Xueying, have a child?"

He looked up and saw a baby basket drifting out from the left passage.

It bobbed unsteadily, river water continuously seeping inside. It looked ready to sink at any moment.

"The voice is coming from the basket! It's calling me! Turn around! Stop the boat! I need to go over there!" Wang Shi stood at the bow and shouted. He had always been calm and collected, but now he was growing erratic.

"Don't get so worked up. None of us heard anything. It might just be a hallucination. Better to be careful; this place is probably hiding some strange things."

I tried to calm Wang Shi down, but he wouldn't listen. "Turn around! Go to the left passage! I need to take a look, even just one look!"

"If you want to go, go yourself. The water isn't that deep anyway. Jump out of the boat, and we'll wait for you in the right passage." Jin Zhouzhe frowned, never having dropped his suspicion of Wang Shi. "During the confessions, we didn't hear a thing about your child. Did you kill your own child too?"

"Get lost!" Wang Shi lost control. His outburst proved he had hidden something during the lie detector test. "I only killed Bai Fangfang! Mu Xueying ran away from home on her own! I told her the one I truly loved was Bai Fangfang! You only get one true love in life, even if I strangled her with my own hands!"

The small boat drifted further and further away from the baby basket. In the end, Wang Shi didn't have the guts to jump in. He gripped the stern with both hands, his expression shifting unpredictably.

When the boat had entered halfway into the right passage, Wang Shi suddenly stood up and began muttering to himself, staring at the murky water.

"Has he gone mad?"

"Looks like he's possessed."

Just as the boat was about to pass completely into the right passage, Wang Shi leaned out over the stern. He craned his neck until his face was practically touching the surface, looking exactly as if he were bending down to drink the murky river water.

"What are you doing?" Before I could stop him, Wang Shi pitched headfirst into the water. No one knew what he saw at the very end. We only saw him getting dragged into the left passage by something, thrashing like a large fish.

"Number One didn't even fight back? Neurotoxins? Hallucinogens? This is terrifying." Jin Zhouzhe hadn't lifted a finger to stop Wang Shi from start to finish, and his eyes were now brimming with horror. "Right! That has to be it! The candy contained a slow-acting neurotoxin, and we don't have the antidote! That bastard organizer never planned on giving us the antidote! He wants us all to die here!"

As Jin Zhouzhe spoke, his pupils constricted sharply. He stared at Du Yu and me, shrinking back into the stern. "The organizer is one of you two, isn't it? Don't kill me! I'll trade everything I have for my life!"

I shook my head and ignored Jin Zhouzhe. Using a neurotoxin as a cover-up for things that defied common sense was actually a pretty reasonable excuse.

We continued forward. The passage narrowed, and more and more floating corpses gradually appeared on the water's surface.

At first, I didn't pay them much mind, but when I saw the corpse of an eight- or nine-year-old girl, I couldn't tear my eyes away for a long time.

That girl absolutely couldn't have died from an accident. Her wrists and ankles bore deep marks from being bound by leather belts over a long period. Even after soaking in the river water, those rings of indented flesh looked incredibly strange. Her clothes were torn and tattered, clearly ripped. There were no fatal wounds on her body, so she had likely been held underwater and drowned.

Upon seeing the girl's corpse, Jin Zhouzhe's eyelid twitched, but he quickly returned to normal.

His subtle reactions didn't escape my notice, but it still wasn't time to confront him.

After advancing a few meters into the right passage, the small boat suddenly seemed to snag on something, unable to move forward or backward.

"There are probably too many corpses trapped under the hull. I'll go down and clear them out."

Du Yu handed the oars to me and was just about to jump overboard when I stopped him. "It's not too many bodies under the hull. It's behind the boat."

I pointed at the stern and used the oar to part the murky water. With my Judging Eye, I could see it perfectly clearly: the girl's corpse had hooked onto the stern, a lingering spirit.

"Why has this corpse been following us this whole time? Could it recognize someone among us?" I let out a cold laugh and looked at Jin Zhouzhe. "Doctor Jin, I'm afraid your confession hid quite a lot of things as well, didn't it?"

Jin Zhouzhe's right eyelid gave a faint twitch. "This is perfectly normal. Wasn't Wang Shi exactly the same just now? Do you dare claim you haven't held anything back yourself?"

"I'm slowly starting to understand the meaning behind this game. Perhaps the organizer really just wanted you all to confess, to use your sincere repentance to dispel the grievances of these unclean things. Unfortunately, none of you cherished the opportunity." I pointed at the stern. "Don't delude yourself into thinking we'll die alongside the victims you killed. Go deal with them yourself."

"Number Twelve, you and I are still in an alliance. You're betraying me this quickly? Could it be that you really are the organizer?" Jin Zhouzhe gritted his teeth, winking repeatedly at Du Yu in an attempt to get him on his side.