Let him go

While I was wondering why the killer Chen Mu wanted to kill Chen Tianming, he had already taken a stride and arrived by my side.

He hoisted me up with one hand, then fiercely pressed my head against the transparent door that looked into the interior of the oven.

He pressed me down hard, as if he intended to squeeze me straight into the oven. My body instinctively wanted to resist, but because I was bound hand and foot, maintaining my balance was already difficult enough, let alone breaking free.

However, my mouth was still free to speak, so I said to him, "Chen Mu, stop this now. The police have already locked onto you. If you don't stop now, your crimes will pile up, and there will be no room for turning back at all. But if you let me go right now and cooperate with us in solving the case, you still have a sliver of a chance of survival."

As I spoke these words, it felt rather strange in my heart, almost like talking to myself—after all, his name was also Chen Mu, and he looked identical to me.

Yet after I finished, to my astonishment, he wasn't moved in the slightest. He suddenly grabbed a handful of my hair and violently smashed my head against the oven door. He used so much force that I felt my forehead split open. Panic instantly gripped my heart, and I was terrified that the oven door would be knocked open and my head would instantly explode from the heat, just like Chen Tianming's.

Fortunately, such a fear was not realized. He quickly pressed my face back against the glass door and said to me with a sinister, vicious grin, "Chen Mu, take a good look, watch how flesh is roasted away, because it will be your turn soon."

Hearing his words, my heart skipped a beat. It seemed that killing Chen Tianming didn't mean he wouldn't kill me; he intended to let me witness firsthand how cruel it was to be roasted alive into vapor before he began torturing me.

Just as I was gripped by tension, he suddenly let out a cold laugh. The laughter was extremely low, hoarse, and chilling, as if it came from another world.

Laughing, he said to me, "Chen Mu, do you think I'm afraid of death? Do you think I care about the sliver of a chance you spoke of? I have already died once. I am a dead man to begin with; what kind of chance of survival do I need?"

He claimed that he was already a dead man. Although I didn't believe it, a chill still ran down my spine and panic crept into my heart. Coupled with the fact that we were likely right beneath a cemetery, such words filled me with dread.

At that moment, he suddenly pressed a button in his hand, and shortly afterward, an image appeared not far away, projected onto the earthen wall. Because there was no projection screen, the image was slightly blurry, but it didn't affect normal viewing.

The image showed a person wearing prison stripes. At first, I thought it was me, but I had never been to prison, so I realized this must be the killer Chen Mu. Fang Qinghe had mentioned that they had arrested the killer Chen Mu, and this must be footage taken after his capture.

Soon, the killer Chen Mu was escorted and shackled onto a special bed. His head was held in a protruding fixture, and beside him stood a piece of machinery.

Yet looking at the apparatus, it didn't resemble a guillotine for execution; it looked more like a therapeutic device from a hospital.

Shortly after, another person appeared in the video, wearing a doctor's cap and a face mask, so I couldn't clearly see his face. But intuition told me I knew him—he looked like Professor He, the very same Professor He whose body had previously been devoured and chewed to pieces by countless ants.

Professor He stepped over, steadied the killer Chen Mu's head, and then aimed a component of that instrument directly at the killer Chen Mu.

At that time, there was no expression of panic or fear on the killer Chen Mu's face, nor was he completely calm. His expression was quite strange, even describable as eerie, resembling a curse—as if he would make whoever sentenced him to death suffer an even more tragic end.

At that exact moment, Professor He pressed the button on the instrument. Instantly, my eyes went numb as I saw a flash of intense light sweep across.

When I reacted, I saw that a dark scar had formed around the neck of the killer Chen Mu, and fresh blood was gushing out. As for his head, it had fallen off and rolled onto the floor, coming to a stop right at Professor He's feet.

Even though his head had been severed, his eyes remained wide open, retaining that same gaze—the terrifying gaze of a curse.

Then the video ended. After watching it, the shock deep within my heart could not calm down for a long time.

If this footage wasn't forged, then the killer Chen Mu had truly died; he had been decapitated. And I believed it was real, because Fang Qinghe had also told me about this matter. No wonder Fang Qinghe didn't believe for a second that the killer Chen Mu was committing crimes again, claiming instead that it was my psychotic personality playing the role of the murderer. Fang Qinghe must have seen this video too, though this official execution footage had undoubtedly omitted certain details.

So the question arose: was the killer Chen Mu really dead?

If he was dead, how could he appear before me? Was the pervert standing right in front of me truly not human?

I didn't dare to continue thinking down that path, because my mind involuntarily recalled his corpse disappearing from the underground morgue of the Chen Mu Research Center, replaced instead by the body of Jiang Haodong.

Could it be that the ghost of the killer Chen Mu was truly haunting the place, and had even stolen his own corpse?

My mind raced. Just as I was about to pee my pants from fear, Jin Ze's confident image flashed through my mind, so I began to analyze this supernatural event from Jin Ze's perspective.

There were only two possibilities. One was that the person decapitated by Professor He who looked identical to me was a body double. Even though Fang Qinghe said they verified the DNA, it didn't mean they tested it again after the decapitation. Who knows, there might have been people working for the killer Chen Mu inside the Ministry of State Security who quietly executed a switch before the execution. But this possibility had a major flaw: how could a body double look so uncannily similar?

The second possibility was that the killer Chen Mu really was dead, and the person standing before me who looked like me was just an imitation. But I felt this possibility was even less likely, because he truly looked identical to me—even more so than the decapitated figure in the video, since the video footage was somewhat blurry. Besides, the pervert right in front of me genuinely looked like a psychopath, unlike me who was merely acting out a role.

As I was thinking this, a thought suddenly popped into my head—one that even I found hard to believe.

I wondered: what if the person who died really was the killer Chen Mu, but his corpse was stolen, and then, through some unimaginable medical science, his head was reattached and he was resurrected?

Soon, I dismissed this notion as well. I felt that such medical science did not currently exist. Although foreign experts had claimed to master head-transplant technology, that was based on instantaneous live transplants, and the success rate was exceptionally low. At any rate, I had never heard of any actual successful cases. Reattaching a head that had been severed for as long as the killer Chen Mu's was simply a fairy tale.

Yet, even knowing it was impossible, I couldn't help but glance at his neck, wanting to see if there was any scar. The result was that there was none.

At that moment, he suddenly pinched my chin and said to me, "Chen Mu, time's up. You're supposed to die. After you die, you'll finally understand what I really am."

His final sentence was exceptionally eerie, as if implying that he was a ghost, and once I died, I would become a ghost just like him.

The moment he finished speaking, he pressed the button on the oven. The oven door swung open, and an instant gust of pungent, thick the stench of blood billowed out, mixed with the scorched aroma of roasted meat.

However, I no longer cared about the nausea; at that moment, I was truly terrified. I had never felt myself so close to the Grim Reaper.

So I shrank backward frantically while calling out to him, "Don't kill me, don't kill me! What on earth do you want? I'll help you, I'll listen to you about everything!"

He looked at me, the corners of his mouth lifting into a wicked smile. Grinning sinisterly, he told me, "I want your body."

Driven to desperation, I immediately blurted out, "Fine! Do whatever you want with me, just don't kill me!"

It was only after saying it that I realized his true meaning. When he said he wanted my body, he didn't mean violating me in that way—he meant replacing me!

My heart instantly clenched, and a horrifying realization dawned upon me: damn it, this monster intended to melt my entire body down with high heat so that no trace of me would ever exist in this world. But I wouldn't truly vanish; he would emerge and take my place. He would live on under my identity and even interact with Fang Qinghe, Jin Ze, and the others every day...

This was utterly terrifying, and I finally understood why he had killed Chen Tianming. This was clearly a premeditated scheme. No wonder he had said that the suffering belonged to me while the happiness belonged to him—he truly was a horrifying creature.

Overwhelmed by deep terror, I screamed at the top of my lungs, but it was all in vain as he dragged my body toward the oven to stuff me inside.

At that moment, my heart turned to ash. I felt an overwhelming sense of resentment, yet my only ultimate end was death.

Just as I despairingly closed my eyes, the sudden crack of a gunshot rang out.

A bullet struck right beside us, smashing the oven's control button to pieces.

I instinctively looked in the direction from which the gunshot had come, and there, amidst the dark shadows not far away, stood a white figure.

His silhouette was slender and lean, emerging from the pitch blackness yet acting as my light.

It was Bai Ye—the real Bai Ye. When he appeared, the night here was no longer dark.

Bai Ye did not appear frantic in the slightest. He merely stood there quietly, uttering three cold words: "Let him go."