There were only a sparse few dishes on the dining table, so of which looked like wild greens casually picked from outside, along with so plates holding sothing blackish, seemingly a piece of bread.
Tang Ye wondered if the spread on this dining table was enough to fill one person’s stomach.
Although the contents of each painting in this corridor were more or less the sa, if one were to carefully observe, one would discover that there were so changes in the details inside each seemingly identical painting.
Tang Ye turned to look at the next painting; the family of five within it showed little change in their actions. Among the three children, the eldest appeared to be around thirteen or fourteen years old, a girl. Next in age was also a girl, roughly six or seven, and the youngest might be about three years old, a boy, getting help with his food from his second eldest sister a few years his senior.
After a careful look around, Tang Ye noticed the scenery outside the window was the sa as what he’d seen in the second painting, unchanged. Yet, the eldest child seed to have noticed sothing, and the head that was bowed down due to eating had lifted slightly, gazing in Tang Ye’s direction. The author had depicted the panicked alarm in her eyes vividly, compelling Tang Ye to acknowledge the artist’s skill.
"Has soone entered their house? A zombie?"
Tang Ye thought to himself, and then looked towards the next painting. Apart from the eldest sister lifting her head a bit higher, everyone else’s expression and actions remained the sa. In the lower left corner of the painting, there appeared a dark object, and Tang Ye didn’t know what it was; it seed like his guess might be right—that sothing or soone with ill intent had entered the family’s household.
In the next painting, the dark object from before had elongated sowhat, looking like so sort of pipe-like figure.
"A steel pipe?"
Just as Tang Ye was about to examine the next painting, the woman called out to him, "Hey, stop watching, hurry and co with !"
Upon hearing the woman’s voice, Tang Ye could only give up on the idea of continuing to look and moved towards where the woman was.
"Hurry up."
The woman stood still, waiting in the sa spot for Tang Ye.
"Get down!"
"Are you going to ride on my back again?"
"The path ahead is difficult for to walk, you don’t have to carry , but it will waste too much ti."
"Alright then."
Tang Ye walked over to the woman, crouched down, and lifted her onto his back.
"Do you know why? Look at the ground."
Tang Ye looked down; he had not paid attention before, but the floor of the corridor was densely covered with shadowy figure graffiti!
"Just because of these?"
"Enough, don’t talk nonsense, keep moving forward."
Tang Ye moved forward as the woman commanded, the corridor atmospherically dim, with no lights turned on. Only the glow emitted by a few candles every several ters penetrated this darkness, but those candles hardly brought a sense of security. The flickering of the candles, in fact, made the corridor all the more sinister and terrifying.
Not long into their walk, the path ahead was no longer lit by candlelight, and Tang Ye suddenly heard the woman say, "Wait a second?"
"What’s wrong?"
"Put down."
The woman jumped down from Tang Ye’s back, picked up a candle from the side, and held it in her hand, then said to Tang Ye, "Going further, you might not be able to see clearly either. You’ll need this to light the way."
"How are you so sure that I won’t be able to see?"
"I know that you zombies have night vision capabilities, but if you go further ahead, even bats can lose their sense of direction."
Tang Ye thought of the Nightmare Zombie King’s abilities, which people referred to as the ability of "blindness." It seed to be almost the sa as what the woman had said.
"Sigh, this thing is really troubleso to wear. I don’t need it anymore, so I’ll just take it off."
The woman switched the candle to her other hand and then took off the turban wrapped around her head, and the face that was revealed made Tang Ye startle!
"You..."
Noticing Tang Ye’s expression, the woman also looked astonished and hesitantly asked, "Do you... recognize ?"
"Yes, I do."
In an instant, both were engulfed in silence, and for a long ti, neither spoke.
The sense of familiarity Tang Ye felt was not mistaken. As soon as she removed her turban, he recognized who the woman in front of him was.
She had a short haircut more typical of n, and her features were ordinary. There wasn’t anything particularly remarkable about her—just an average-looking woman.
She could definitely be considered soone Tang Ye knew, but to keep her from rampaging and causing destruction in the Royal City, she was currently confined to a certain room in the Royal Court. This woman was none other than Lu Xiaojie, who had significant abnormalities!
"Is she... doing okay outside?"
"You an the you outside?"
"You could say it’s ..." Lu Xiaojie said hesitantly, but her tone seed very uncertain.
"So, am I an idiot here while the outside turns into one?"
"The you saw outside is an idiot?" Lu Xiaojie was taken aback for a mont, but so details in her expression made Tang Ye feel sothing was strange.
Tang Ye fell silent for a mont, and after a while, he started to describe the situation of the Lu Xiaojie outside. The Lu Xiaojie inside the Royal Court was not an ordinary person at all. However, she seed no different from an ordinary person under normal circumstances. It was only under certain special circumstances that her aura would suddenly change, and Tang Ye himself did not understand what was happening.
However, right after he had finished talking about the condition of Lu Xiaojie outside, Tang Ye quickly realized sothing: when she had just asked him about her condition, the pronoun she had used was... she?
Isn’t that her own self?
Tang Ye looked at her, and the scrutinizing look in his eyes made Lu Xiaojie think that sothing had appeared behind her. She shivered, turned her head to look back, but aside from a line of obscure paintings, there was nothing there. She quickly understood and turned to Tang Ye, asking, "What are you looking at?"
"The you here and the you outside—are they two separate people?"
"This..."
Lu Xiaojie was stunned for a mont, but did not imdiately respond.
"Actually... like Dairya, I am a doppelgänger."
"You’re also a doppelgänger? What exactly is that? How co I’ve never heard of it before?" Tang Ye asked. After the apocalyptic black rain covered the globe, a large number of strange creatures and people erged due to abnormal evolution, such as Resters, Inverse Hosts, zombie controllers, and so on, but Tang Ye had never heard of anything like a doppelgänger.
When he heard the term, the first thing that ca to Tang Ye’s mind was conjoined twins. Fortunately, Lu Xiaojie quickly provided an answer.
"Being a doppelgänger is similar to being a zombie controller. There are many factors required for it to form, and I’m not clear on all of them. Anyway, I am , and the outside is also , but also not . I am also her, but we are the sa entity. It’s like if you cut off your own pair of hands; although they are no longer attached to your body, they’re still part of your body."
Tang Ye furrowed his brow. He understood, but just like before, he got it but also didn’t get it at all from another perspective!
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