"Boom!"

The nearest human figure was about half an arm's length away from us, and its shape was completely invisible in the thick fog.

But as all of us moved forward cautiously, the figures around us became looming, and I realized that these things were gradually surrounding and approaching with the carriage as the center.

If all these things were blocking the door of the carriage, once they started moving, they would just have to enter our room one by one in extreme silence, even if they were torn to pieces by our counterattack. They would fill up all the space little by little like accumulated water, which would be enough to make us slowly suffocate to death in the dead silence and crowding.

"It doesn't matter. They can't hear you."

Xiao Liu spoke softly, but his voice was still vague.

As a person who has witnessed many companions losing contact and disappearing, but still dared to come out alone and took me away from the camp safely, Xiao Liu obviously has a lot to say in this regard.

The wild cat was on my right side, lowering most of its body, and quickly whispered to me that there would be no unusual movement anywhere at the beginning of the night. It was at this time that fog would gradually rise and the things in the fog would get closer and closer.

They tried, and now only the camp was safe, as if the entire pit was driving everyone back to the camp to face the vicious cycle of "mud monsters" again.

Tried? What does it mean to have tried?

I immediately asked, "Which night is this?"

Shopkeeper Yan Er sighed helplessly behind me: "You know this too?"

I angrily said, "Stop talking nonsense!" and then I felt a chill in front of me. It was Fang Ao carrying me on his back, walking past a strange human figure. The face in the mist seemed to be pale and almost touched my ear.

My hair stood on end and I held my breath immediately. I knew that the ghost thing couldn't hear me, but I still suppressed all sounds.

When I observed it closely at this time, the creepy feeling immediately reminded me that something was wrong.

It's the size.

Even children who have never been to school know that things are larger when they are closer and smaller when they are farther away.

However, all the human figures in the thick fog, inside and outside, near and far, all appeared to me to be the same size.

"Fang Ao, let me ask you a question." I calmed down and broke out in a cold sweat. "Just now I almost bumped into that humanoid figure. It was there to begin with, but the fog was too thick so you didn't see it?"

Fang Ao was a little confused. From my angle, I saw his lips move silently, and then his face changed completely.

I understand that he doesn't know, because distance has completely lost its meaning at this moment.

People can often judge whether the distance is shortened by the change in size of objects when they approach, but these things do not change. In other words, the ghost thing just now actually approached us silently, but our vision was completely unable to judge and warn at this time, and we did not realize that it was moving at all.

Until we luckily passed each other just now.

“You can’t stop, you have to keep moving forward, and when you move forward you have to leave enough room for retreat.”

I held Fang Ao's shoulders tightly through the sleeping bag. It took about ten seconds for me to let him act as a tape recorder and repeat the whole thing loudly to the whole team.

The team paused suddenly, and then I heard everyone's footsteps slightly changed, as if they were adjusting their center of gravity when moving.

"They're not moving very fast right now, and there aren't that many of them yet." Wild Cat said in a low voice, "Hurry up, hurry up, follow us, the camp isn't far away. As usual, let's go to the sentry building."

I suppressed all my questions and continued to look around quickly. Because of the restraint of the sleeping bag, my field of vision was very narrow. I wished Fang Ao would just put me down so that they could continue on their journey together.

But I still have some rationality left, and I know what I have to do now is to not fall behind and cause other accidents.

I asked Fang Ao to give me a flashlight, which I hung around my neck so I could bite it and shine it outward. As everyone moved extremely nervously and time passed, more and more figures suddenly appeared beside us, and they became clearer and clearer.

Because we couldn't observe the trajectory of those movements, they were closer to directly "refreshing" and jumping in front of us. I squinted my eyes, trying my best not to look away, and carefully stared at the blurred details on those pale and strange faces.

Suddenly there was a warning whistle, and Fang Ao and everyone around me scattered. Then someone shouted, "They're getting faster!" I couldn't tell who it was, and there was not even a scream. The last word of his voice was swallowed up in silence.

Fang Ao was sweating profusely as he led me away from all visible human figures, walking and walking.

The time that passed at that moment seemed extremely long, as if several centuries had passed, before a short and slow whistle was heard again, and the guys around slowly gathered around and came back.

I subconsciously wanted to count the number of people, but cold sweat immediately broke out.

Because I realized what this scene was all about.

In the recordings from eight years ago, I could not understand the referendums, the deathly silence and the resolute coldness of pulling the trigger. It was at this moment, that scene happened.

They didn't just randomly vote to kill a fellow soldier for self-preservation by sitting around a warm campfire.

They were in the fog at the time, surrounded by a group of these unknown things. In the extreme silence, the crowd dispersed and then reunited. Then all those who were sensitive to numbers would immediately notice that the number of people was wrong.

Although I immediately stopped myself from counting, our footsteps were the only ones heard in the thick fog. I was almost certain that there were exactly twenty-two people in my team, no more, no less.

Back to eight years ago, on the first night, the second night, and the third night, after it was clear that some of the men had been dying, the number of people in the thick fog returned to 22. What would they do at this time?

The recording gave me the answer.

In desperation and with no other choice, they calmly chose to obey the rules given by the Pit and began to vote.

During those nights and days, the number of people they recorded was based on their own impressions of the number of people who should actually have survived.

But the evil spirit had already mixed into the crowd and could not be identified at all. They could only try to separate the more trustworthy people in suspicion, exclude those who were clearly dead, and then pray that every time they voted, they would not vote out their own surviving people.

That's why they were so devastated when they found out one of their guys had been killed the next day.

Because those who will be killed during the day must be the only "people" left in the crowd.

For them, "one less" does not only mean that a companion has left, but also means that the proportion of "people" among the "twenty-two" people has once again dropped drastically, and more evil things have sneaked in.

This is the truly terrifying chain of dark suspicion that exists among this group of tough veterans.

This was the absurd nightmare I had not long ago. My subconscious anxiety comically depicted a neck in the nightmare, a neck that was gradually replaced by nails. Only when the head fell off completely did people realize the completely hollow dark red cavity.

"…Is this the third night? Or the fourth?" I seemed to calm down and asked the captain who was guarding me again, "What you told me, about the three times when the guys went out and lost contact one after another, actually happened separately every night, right?"

The unprecedented lucidity gave me a new understanding of my nightmares. "Originally, you wanted to take me away from the beginning, hide me in the car store and not get involved in these things, but I was in the camp because I was unconscious and did not participate in the vote, so it was the safest place. You two tacitly chose to keep me there, right?"

However, as the final moment arrived, I woke up from the amniotic fluid after a few days of recovery.

At this time, I might have constant interactions with the people in the camp, which might even make my "mud-ridden" state worse. So someone had to take me away.

So the team leader chose to take a risk, kidnapped myself and brought me back to the camp, trying to find a way to save me. Finally, he chose to contact Gao Liu, a group of wild cats who, in his opinion, might be full of evil spirits.

"We won't vote." I said coldly, "Let me think about it again. There's still time."

"Vote, it doesn't matter. We won't vote for you, absolutely not. We're counting on you to help us die with understanding."

Behind my back, the shopkeeper Yan Er forced a sad smile and said as casually as possible: "Ancestor, our team is all about feudal dregs. None of our six "elites" have been voted out in the past few nights, and the brothers who left are reuniting for the last time today just for us. Isn't that nice?"

My heart sank suddenly. I couldn't tell whether it was because I suddenly realized that many of my friends had died silently, or because I foresaw the tragic situation we were about to face.

I understand what Yan Er meant.

Eight years ago, on the fourth day, the only six survivors could be confirmed to be human.

Now, exactly the same scene, luckily we didn’t lose four people on at least the first day.

But at present, I can only be sure that Yan Er, Gao Liu, Wild Cat, Fang Ao, Team Leader, and Xiao Liu are the six people who are most likely trustworthy. Among the other guys, only three or four are the survivors, because I am not sure whether I am counted in the number of "twenty-two".

Even if I use the most selfish criterion of closeness or distance to make my vote, starting the day after tomorrow at the earliest, I will have to watch one of these six people die.

No, I gritted my teeth and said to myself, I won't make this choice. At worst, you can vote for me today.

"In fact, since we dare not go near the camp, we draw lots every day to have a fellow go to the camp to see how you are doing."

Yan Er added, his gloomy face was dotted with a hint of helpless amusement: "I guess your nightmares of serial puzzles were caused by our brothers who visited you in the past. They talked to you through the glass pillars every day and told you what happened. I didn't expect that you would try to figure out right and wrong in your dreams and almost died in the safest place."

Suddenly there was another whistle from the crowd, and the Fangao carrying me suddenly tensed up.

"Here they come." The team leader sneered sarcastically, "The big guy who's urging people to vote is here."

Following his voice, as if inspired by something, the thick fog dissipated a lot, and we, who had already stepped into the edge of the camp, looked up at the sky at the same time.

This was the first time since I came down to earth that I could see clearly what was in the darkness above me.

Not the sky, nor the dome of a rock cave.

It was densely packed with things that looked like Zhou Tingmao's after he had completely transformed.

They are colorful.

The tiny bits of color from torn clothing, equipment, and human bodies mixed together in a haphazard manner, appearing an almost poisonous eeriness in the gradually dissipating mist.

They united together and surged, forming an incomparably huge, brightly colored mural that looked like the wriggling inner wall of a uterus. It shook violently, and countless fishy, ​​yellow and red fluids dripped from top to bottom.

“Boom.”

Like the final push in the countdown, or like something was about to arrive, a voice knocked gently on the door inside the wriggling mural.