Chapter 33
Chapter 33
Fang Lin’an followed Yun Jianyue’s gaze to the ground. Suddenly remembering something, he checked Zhou Benxin’s shadow as well.
Once he confirmed that Zhou Benxin did indeed have a shadow, the weight finally lifted from his heart. “Next time you need to use the bathroom, tell me. I’ll go in with you. You’ve obviously never died before, so you have no idea how dangerous that Doppelganger is!”
Zhou Benxin found that amusing and headed inside. “Wouldn’t it be even scarier if I had died before?”
Fang Lin’an followed him in with an irritated look. Yun Jianyue walked behind them, her gaze falling on Zhou Benxin’s tanned neck. Her eyes abruptly narrowed.
His neck was bare. He wasn’t wearing the wooden plaque Daoist Chu had given him that morning!
Without saying a word, Yun Jianyue followed them into the room and stopped in the doorway, blocking the only way in or out.
“Bring me my bag, Fang Lin’an.” Seeing how close Fang Lin’an was standing to Zhou Benxin, Yun Jianyue sent him away to fetch it.
Suspecting nothing, Fang Lin’an walked over to the bed and tossed her bag to her.
Yun Jianyue held the bag in one hand and slipped the other inside, closing her fingers around the chainsaw’s handle.
“I’m getting hungry. When are they bringing us food?” Zhou Benxin looked at the two of them standing some distance away, his expression turning strange. “Why are you both so far away from me? Aren’t you supposed to be protecting me?”
There was something odd about that question, and Fang Lin’an sensed that something was wrong as well.
Just then, footsteps sounded behind Yun Jianyue.
They drew closer and closer.
When the approaching figure was only a meter away, Yun Jianyue spun around, yanked out the chainsaw, and swung it at him.
Zhou Benxin clutched his head and screamed in terror, “What are you doing, Senior? Are you trying to murder your own junior?!”
The chainsaw stopped less than five centimeters from Zhou Benxin’s neck. He froze like a frightened quail, terrified that the slightest movement would make Yun Jianyue injure him by accident.
Fang Lin’an was dumbfounded.
He looked at the Zhou Benxin sitting inside the room, then at the Zhou Benxin in the doorway with Yun Jianyue’s chainsaw pressed to his neck. His eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.
“Why are there two Zhou Benxins?”
At Fang Lin’an’s words, the Zhou Benxin in the doorway looked into the room. He stumbled back two steps in fright, then his knees buckled and he dropped to the ground, grabbing Yun Jianyue’s leg in the process.
“Senior! G-G-Ghost… Save me!”
That familiar sensation of someone clinging to her leg, that familiar penchant for making a spectacle of himself… The corner of Yun Jianyue’s mouth twitched as she pressed the chainsaw down another fraction. “Trying to drag my leg into the grave with you again?”
Zhou Benxin timidly released her, looking like a long-suffering young wife.
But coming from a burly man strong enough to lift a massive cauldron, the pose looked painfully out of place.
The sight made Fang Lin’an want to throw up, and he duly braced himself against the doorframe and began dry-heaving. “Ugh. With a face like yours, making that expression is just…”
Halfway through his sentence, his gaze fell to the ground.
His expression instantly sharpened, and he shouted at Yun Jianyue, “Get away from him! He’s the fake! He doesn’t have a shadow!”
Yun Jianyue looked down and saw that the man beneath her truly had no shadow. She kicked him, sending him flying three meters away.
Fang Lin’an stared at her in disbelief. “He must weigh about two hundred pounds! You sent him that far with one kick?”
“Standard stuff. No need to applaud.” Yun Jianyue walked over to Fang Lin’an.
The two of them now stood in the doorway. The Zhou Benxin with a shadow was inside the room, while the shadowless Zhou Benxin was out in the courtyard. Both Zhou Benxins maintained a safe distance of roughly five meters from them.
Fang Lin’an tested them with his ritual implement, but it wavered indecisively between the two, completely unable to determine which was real and which was fake.
Inside the room, Zhou Benxin glared at the Zhou Benxin in the courtyard, his expression grim. “Senior, is he the Doppelganger? He wants to kill me! Hurry and protect me!”
Zhou Benxin in the courtyard stared in terror at Zhou Benxin inside the house. He pointed at the other man, then at himself, before finally lowering his incredulous gaze to the spotless ground beneath him. A mournful wail tore from his throat. “Where’s my shadow?! All I did was go to the bathroom! Where the hell is my shadow?!”
To be fair, the two of them had wildly different levels of dramatic flair. Even Fang Lin’an couldn’t help taking a few extra looks at the Zhou Benxin in the courtyard.
No matter how he looked at it, this one seemed much more like the real Zhou Benxin.
The problem was, the more convincing one didn’t have a shadow! What normal person didn’t have a shadow?
Yun Jianyue repeatedly scrutinized both Zhou Benxins and discovered that both of their necks were bare.
“Where are your wooden plaques?” Yun Jianyue’s heart sank.
The best-case scenario was that one of them was a Doppelganger and the other was the real Zhou Benxin.
The worst-case scenario was that they were both impostors and the real Zhou Benxin was in danger!
The Zhou Benxin in the courtyard instinctively reached for his chest, only to find nothing there. “What the hell? Where’s my magic artifact?”
The Zhou Benxin inside the house immediately explained, “When I was in the bathroom, the wooden plaque suddenly turned to ash. I got scared, so I hurried back.”
“Then why didn’t you mention it when you returned?” Fang Lin’an immediately caught the suspicious detail.
The Zhou Benxin inside replied, “I felt safe as soon as I saw you guys. I was going to sit down and explain it slowly, but then this impostor showed up!”
“You’re the impostor! Your whole family’s made up of impostors!” The Zhou Benxin in the courtyard flew into such a rage that he momentarily forgot his fear and began arguing with the Zhou Benxin inside from thirty feet away.
“No kidding I have a whole family! I’m the real one! You’re a fake, so where would you even get a family?” The Zhou Benxin inside slammed the table and roared.
The Zhou Benxin in the courtyard bristled with fury. “I’m the real one! Jianyue, don’t tell me you can’t recognize your own junior after spending two years with me!”
The Zhou Benxin inside also shouted at Yun Jianyue, “Back in my hometown, I smashed the altar to save you! We’ve been through life and death together! Don’t tell me you can’t recognize me!”
“When I joined the club as a freshman, you’re the one I got the application form from!”
“When I started debating as a freshman, you led me through my very first match!”
“I pursued your roommate, got rejected, and cried to you for three whole days!”
“…”
Each Zhou Benxin insisted he was the real one, bellowing evidence of his identity at Yun Jianyue at the top of his lungs.
Yun Jianyue miserably scratched at her ears.
They were so itchy she could practically feel the earwax forming.
Fang Lin’an was dumbfounded too. He stared blankly at Yun Jianyue and asked, “Which one of them is telling the truth?”
“Both of them.” Yun Jianyue glanced at Fang Lin’an while the two men continued frantically trying to prove their innocence.
Finally, Yun Jianyue bellowed, “Both of you, shut up!”
The two Zhou Benxins fell silent at the exact same moment, then turned to look at Yun Jianyue with equally sheepish expressions.
Fang Lin’an was speechless.
Damn it. Even their expressions were identical now. How were they supposed to tell which one was real?
Yun Jianyue took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. “I have a way to prove which of you is real and which is fake.”
“How?” asked the Zhou Benxin inside the house.
Yun Jianyue said, “The fake Zhou Benxin is made of wood, so he won’t bleed. I’ll chop each of you once. Whoever doesn’t bleed is the fake.”
The Zhou Benxin in the courtyard hesitated. “Chop us? Where?”
Yun Jianyue flashed an innocent, harmless smile, her gleaming white teeth almost dazzling. “How about a hand? My knife work is excellent, so it’ll be a clean cut. If we rush you to the hospital, they should have no trouble reattaching it.”