Forced to cooperate (typo fixed)

We looked at each other, and I tensed up.

Even though I was surrounded by a group of friends, I felt an almost naked anxiety, knowing that I was fighting alone without any support.

Just looking at the two of us standing together with our arms around each other, I'm afraid that even if someone noticed it by chance, they would just think that I was calling my deputy to tell him something in private.

At this time, my face, which was scratched by the mandrill during the day, was slightly itchy. I didn't know whether the deep bloody wound had scabbed over or was inflamed and festering. I was so tired at that time that I fell asleep without caring about it. Naturally, my deputy didn't remind me that he had evil intentions.

I suddenly felt a little sorry for myself. How could I end up like this? My career plan was to be a great man.

Then, I was stunned when I finally faced the reality after my blind spot was removed. All the doubts in my mind that I had ignored before emerged one after another, and it became like a magic trick that lost its interest after being exposed.

The deputy looked at me and narrowed his eyes sinisterly: "Why are you relaxing again?"

I sighed, totally ignoring the dagger on my neck, and grabbed the towel on my shoulders to wipe my face. I felt pain on the back of my hand as if I had been hit.

Well, you won’t even let me wipe the blood.

I couldn't stand it any longer and glared at him: "You bastard, you don't want to cooperate anymore, right? You might as well just stab me to death if you're so rude. Let's just go our separate ways!"

I had no control over my volume and anger when I said this. The deputy was startled and a little confused, but his expression changed quickly and he looked at me with some complexity.

I don’t know since when, no one cared about the scene underground anymore.

All the guys standing behind me gathered around silently at this moment, their eyes were extremely unfamiliar. San Yi, who I once thought was Zhang Tianyi in disguise, also stood beside the deputy and looked at me coldly.

Twenty-nine. I sighed in my heart and stopped counting. These twenty-nine damn people are all fake people. How can there be fake people sneaking into the team? It is obvious that I am the only one who sneaked into the fake people's nest.

My deputy had repeatedly asked me when the other special force would arrive. It turned out that he was not a dark and perverted person who wanted to laugh at me for no reason. What he actually asked was when the Zhang family would arrive.

He was testing me to see if I was still kept in the dark, just like an evil ghost quietly asking a living person whether he can see him.

Pingping’s warning was not wrong, “he is fake”, all the “he” here are fake.

When did they capture me? In my mind, I took it for granted that I was part of a large group, and I had no idea how to set out, and I had no doubts before.

Just like the first time Sanyi appeared in my memory, it was actually the moment when he walked out from the direction of the stone forest with a small group of people.

But I naturally assumed that it was the team I sent out to explore. The whole process was so smooth, and the ignorance brought by "Tian Yi" made me not have any doubts.

"——When did you find out?" The deputy was silent for a while, then asked, "Are we vulnerable?"

I calmed down, the situation was so bad that I felt like I had given up, so I took the dagger off my neck. Seeing that it was of good quality, I put it directly into my pocket.

The deputy's eyelids twitched, but he didn't stop and continued to look at me.

"I found out that you were all hiding?" I said, shaking my head and smiling bitterly. "Just now. I tricked you and you all stopped pretending."

Okay, I admit that no matter how calm I appear on the surface, I am still a little scared.

I realized something was wrong because of the painful wound on my face.

It would have been fine if the deputy had ulterior motives and ignored me, but everyone else was just sleeping soundly, and no one even handed me a bottle of Yunnan Baiyao.

Unlike me, these guys are supposedly well-trained elites. No matter how green they are, they should be without basic combat skills.

No one actually took care of their own injuries from the fight with the mandrill, and instead fell into a deep sleep, with all their willpower being on par with that of a weak and amateur like me. Aren't they afraid of contracting some deadly bacteria and developing an acute illness in the middle of the night?

As for San Yi, although he looked secretive and seemed like my real brother, he was probably a smokescreen to trick me into relaxing in the fake man's arrangement. He also unconsciously allowed my wound to worsen and seemed to not pay attention to the important matters at all.

Instead, when he saw me retching, he immediately and considerately handed me a towel. His behavior logic was completely wrong.

I suspect that these fake people don't have a very practical and real concept of what it means to be injured, which is why they can't handle such basic details well.

Besides, they were too anxious to get me into a confrontation with a mandrill.

But it was Sanyi who reminded me of the identity of the victim in the drilling rig. From the moment he called out Da Jiang and wondered what the guards were doing and why there was no warning... he had been cooperating with his deputy.

Even the stone pillars were touched by these two people first and that’s when I was reminded of them, but at that time it was all packaged as the curiosity and recklessness of a novice.

"How did you manage to include a mandrill?" I asked. "In the first aerial photo, what did you do to the mandrill squatting in the canal? Did you stage it? Did you catch one and tie it there on purpose?"

The deputy and San Yi looked at each other for a while, and San Yi said coldly: "You don't seem to know your current identity yet."

I exhaled slowly and looked him firmly in the eyes:

"You need me. My deputy saved me when I nearly fell to my death from the ladder.

I don't care if he has any hidden skills or not. The situation at that time was to save me, and the risk he took would not change. Either he can fly and is not afraid of falling to death together, or he is very kind. "

The deputy's face twitched slightly, and he knew that the two possibilities I mentioned were purely sarcastic jokes. Then the only possibility left was that he had to protect me.

Come to think of it, otherwise they would have just arrested me and threatened me. I don't think I'm that strong-willed, but I can still bend and stretch when things are impossible.

These fake people in Mi Zang worked so hard to put on a show around me, and even created a fake Zhang Tianyi to appease me, simply hoping that I would cooperate with them honestly and without reservation.

Seeing that I understood everything, the two of them looked at each other again, and this time the silence lasted even longer.

Especially the deputy, his shoulders trembled slightly, and after a long while, he raised his head and said to me solemnly:

"We want you to go down there and find a palace or an altar."

I was stunned. "Down there? What are you talking about? Down there with the accumulated water?" Then my scalp went numb and I cursed in my heart, "Damn it!" You are really a bunch of unreliable people.

"Don't tell me it's at the bottom. Where is the real base of the stone forest? How deep is that damn thing? You guys are all screwed! The mandrill is still screaming. Should I go down and be a cookie?"

Seeing me getting angry, the deputy smiled instead.

"Mandrills won't attack people. Unless they're sprayed with this."

He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a small spray. I took it and smelled it, and my face turned ugly.

It was the faint smell of "death" that I had smelled many times.

"These mandrills seem to live near underwater stone pillars and have a habit of salvaging and cleaning around water sources." The deputy asked, "Do you know water spiders?"

I was stunned when I heard that. After thinking about it, I kind of understood what he meant. Even in this awkward situation, I couldn't help but feel a little bit incredible.

Water spiders can wrap up oxygen on the ground into a ball, and then spit it out into the grass leaves in the water, forming a small nest. This nest made of oxygen balls can even automatically add some oxygen from the water into it through the pressure difference.

Do mandrills have similar dwellings among the underwater rock forests?

Wait, if a large number of corpses are piled up near water sources and buried, it may pollute the water and even cause plague.

If what the deputy said is true, the mandrills living here should be very wary and repulsive to corpses and the like.

Damn, the mandrills found the body and immediately dismembered it, trying to move the body away for harmless disposal more quickly. They are a group of spontaneous scavengers.

Therefore, it is not difficult to provoke or guide the mandrills to perform aggressive actions at a certain time.

I held the small bottle of spray that smelled of death, and the extreme absurdity made me not even angry, but just ridiculous.

All you need to do is spray a little of this extract, which is not known to be artificially synthesized or obtained from somewhere, on things or living people, and wait for the smell to spread. Mandrills will think there is a rotting corpse and will immediately appear to clean it up. It turns out that this scam is so simple.

Those broken limbs that were spit out from the deep water were probably processed by the mandrills in the early years, and they remained intact and tanned to a certain extent before being deposited.

So...

A thought crossed my mind. What were those mandrills doing as they wailed and weaved their webs?

Monkeys often compete to select the strongest monkey king to ensure the survival of the group. So, after the big mandrill dies during the day, do the mandrills have to immediately select a successor cleaner?

"I originally wanted to use the mandrill to force you into the water, but now that it's out, I'll be frank. Now is a good time, and the mandrill won't have much time to pay attention to people entering the water."

The deputy said, finally revealing his true intention: "We can't get close to that place. We have to return when we reach a certain depth. So, only you can go down."

He nodded, and those guys who were very friendly during the day all took action and brought me a bunch of equipment that had been prepared long ago.

"Diving goggles, oxygen masks, knee and wrist pads, safety ropes, gas masks, cold light flashlights, headlamps, protective clothing, and mountaineering pickaxes."

Sanyi took inventory and asked the guy to get the equipment for me to wear. He then personally changed me into a pair of water skiing fins and hung a pair of thick rain boots on the outside of my backpack.

I frowned, and as I saw my equipment becoming more and more complete, a strange sense of dislocation emerged in my heart again.

Most of these don't look like parts needed for entering the water, but rather for rock climbing.

How deep and long is the part of the stone forest buried in the strata and accumulated water?

Could it be that the part that has appeared on the surface and can be said to be reaching the sky is still only a small proportion? What is hidden at the origin of the stone pillar that would make the pseudo-hide-and-seekers plan so carefully?

Their behavior at this moment made me feel as if I were heading to the center of the earth and climbing the vertical reflection of Mount Everest under the water.

The funny thing is, unless I jump off a stone pillar several dozen meters high to end it all, there is really no way I can resist running away.

I looked down and saw that the clear water was very peaceful. Only the pits that were still spitting out white mud and broken limbs were deep. There was nothing but darkness when I looked down.

"I have another question."

I said calmly, and those fake people all frowned at me with unfriendly expressions.

The deputy sneered: "What's the problem? Do you think you have room for bargaining?"

I looked at him, and as always, he was like an idiot.

"You are right, and I know what to do... But I can't swim."

I said, surrounded by some extreme black humor, I couldn't help laughing, "Don't you know?"

Silence, silence that lasted for more than ten seconds.

The deputy was really hit hard. All his deep thoughts and schemes were blocked. He looked at me at a loss and slowly let out a cry.

"It looks like you can do it. Whether you're proficient or not is another matter, but you're better at dog paddling than I am."

I laughed and grabbed the deputy's arm hard.

I found that although this guy was a bluff, it seemed that his weak physique was not fake. "Then you come with me into the water and take me to my doorstep, as far as you can. Just the two of us."

The deputy stared at me in astonishment, his face starting to turn green.