To be honest, without the clone-to-clone resonance, Jiang Ye found it really hard to believe him.

First, he wasn’t sure whether the other person truly was Zhou Qiming;

second, he wasn’t sure whether Zhou Qiming was actually a clone.

But Jiang Ye didn’t voice these doubts directly.

After a short silence, Jiang Ye explained:

“I really don’t remember you, because I lost my memory.”

“But I heard the name ‘Zhou Qiming’ from Li Ku. Do you know Li Ku?”

When the youth claiming to be “Zhou Qiming” first heard the word “amnesia,” suspicion clearly flickered in his eyes.

Hearing the familiar name “Li Ku,” however, his face brightened:

“You actually know Li Ku? Then describe his appearance, tell me what your relationship with him is, and explain how you lost your memory.”

Jiang Ye thought for a moment, then met Zhou Qiming’s gaze and said, “I can tell you first, but after I finish you must tell me about yourself.”

Zhou Qiming nodded: “Okay.”

Jiang Ye weighed his words: “First, the most striking feature of Li Ku’s appearance is that he’s covered with strange slash scars.”

“Second, I met Li Ku before I lost my memory.”

“From what Li Ku revealed, it seems he encountered Guiwen during a monster revival, and then they explored the Blood Pool Elevator together.”

“After that, for unknown reasons, we entered a Doomsday Apartment instance. In that instance there were sounds of a baby laughing and crying, and then all the monsters in the instance went out of control.”

“Guiwen also lost control and lost his memory at that time.”

“As for me—or rather this Ji Zixuan—I was the product of Guiwen being killed while out of control and then reviving.”

“So I don’t have any memories from before that.”

Hearing this, Zhou Qiming’s expression shook:

“Li Ku encountered a Guiwen clone, then followed Guiwen back to the apartment... the baby’s crying and laughing caused amnesia...”

He muttered over the information, then suddenly asked Jiang Ye, “By the way, are there other clones of ours in the apartment?”

Jiang Ye shook his head: “No, just Guiwen and me.”

Because he didn’t fully trust him, he concealed the Jiang Ye clone trapped in the underground Burial Ground and the later-switched Guan Ce clone.

He added casually, “Can you see that my eyes are red? That’s a symptom of Guiwen losing control.”

“Guiwen is also inside my body now, but because he lost control, he can’t release himself.”

“It’s strange—there’s no baby laughing or crying now, but Guiwen’s symptoms haven’t faded.”

“So that laughter might be a long-lasting buff.”

After those words, much of the wariness drained from Zhou Qiming’s eyes.

There was noticeably more trust in the way he looked at Jiang Ye.

After a brief silence, he said, “Since you can name a Guiwen clone, I’m willing to believe you.”

“Now let me introduce myself—”

“Emmm, where should I start?”

“Since we both know Li Ku, let’s start from how I met Li Ku.”

“I met Li Ku at a juvenile personality reconstruction prison that was part of the Doomsday Prison setting. This guy has good eyes; somehow he noticed something special about me and latched onto me on my first day.”

“Of course, I only stayed at that school for one day, so strictly speaking, I’m not very close with Li Ku.”

“That school’s rule is that every night there’s an ‘ideological reform’ session that all students must attend.”

“According to the rules, this reform should end at zero o’clock...”

“But I feel like I got trapped in that ‘ideological reform’ and never woke up.”

When he spoke of “ideological reform” and “never waking up,” the tone in Zhou Qiming’s voice carried a despair and fear that even he seemed unaware of.

He took a deep breath and continued, “In the early stage of this ideological reform, it was like an immersive film experience. I played the role of a character in the movie.”

“From what I learned from veteran players, this film-style ideological reform isn’t difficult—just live through the movie character’s life and you’ll wake up normally.”

“But strangely, I didn’t wake up normally...”

“After my movie character died, my consciousness remained awake!”

“I was like a ghost, seeing my movie character’s corpse. I watched that corpse be taken to the crematorium, burned into cremains, then buried in a cemetery.”

“As the bone ash box was buried underground, my consciousness came to this cursed place.”

“I don’t know how long I stayed in this hell, but from time to time, clones would crawl out of those grave mounds.”

“The first clone I saw looked like my original self, but like our current situation, there was absolutely no resonance between us.”

“He looked shocked when he saw me, because he didn’t suffer amnesia; he knew Zhou Qiming was his clone.”

“But oddly, there was no clone-to-clone resonance between him and me.”

“After some probing conversation, we confirmed each other and realized we were both clones.”

He spoke in a relatively calm tone.

Jiang Ye listened, feeling an inexplicable tremor in his chest.

He didn’t understand “ideological reform” specifically, but from Zhou Qiming’s description of the “immersive film,” he could guess something.

The key point was this—Zhou Qiming’s ideological reform likely wasn’t real; it was more like a dream-like experience.

So now...

Was Jiang Ye’s Ji Zixuan clone appearing inside Zhou Qiming’s “dream”?

Or...

Had Zhou Qiming’s “dream” ended when his film character died, but then something else trapped him?

Either way, the ideological reform that trapped Zhou Qiming clearly smelled wrong.

Also, the “Jiang Ye clones” crawling out of the grave mounds that Zhou Qiming described...

From his tone, there seemed to be quite a number of them!

But right now Jiang Ye only saw Zhou Qiming alone.

Where were those clones?

Before he could ask, Zhou Qiming seemed to guess what he was thinking and continued:

“This cemetery probably has some kind of restriction that makes clones completely unable to sense each other.”

“If we can’t sense each other, then we can’t use clone skills.”

“The most crucial part is, we can’t use Clone Fusion!”

“Because there’s no Clone Fusion, I lost contact with all the Jiang Ye clones I met...”

“We two are still standing together now, but from my previous experiences meeting clones... you could disappear from my sight at any moment!”

That “disappear at any moment” matched the situations where Jiang Ye had lost contact with the main force led by Li Ku.

It also matched the warning the administrator had mentioned.

It wasn’t hard to deduce that this “disappear at any moment” or “sudden loss of contact” was a feature of this infinite grave mound area.

Zhou Qiming had been trapped here a long time, had encountered other clones, and they all lost contact because of this place’s properties.

From his tone, he had considered using Clone Fusion to resist the loss of contact.

But because clones couldn’t sense each other, the Clone Fusion skill couldn’t be used.

Jiang Ye slowly organized the information he’d gained.

Zhou Qiming then went on:

“So in a place where we may lose contact at any time, we have to swap as much information as possible as quickly as we can.”

“Now I’ve explained why I appeared in this cursed place...”

“Now you should simply explain why you’re here too.”

Jiang Ye didn’t dare to dally. He omitted the parts about exploring the Underground Palace stairs with Li Ku and obtaining the Guan Ce clone and the Guan Gong Eyes, saying only that he had been brought here by the administrator’s design using the administrator’s Carefree Dao Stone.

He also told Zhou Qiming about the administrator’s compass tool and the loss of contact with Li Ku and the others.

Zhou Qiming’s mind was sharp and he immediately realized:

“The compass in the administrator’s hand is probably a key tool!”

“And Li Ku... if the administrator wasn’t lying, and the compass reacts specially to Li Ku, then Li Ku might also be crucial!”

Jiang Ye could tell Zhou Qiming’s tone toward Li Ku wasn’t very familiar.

But his description fit: he’d been trapped in ideological reform from his first day, so naturally he and Li Ku couldn’t be close.

That made sense.

Jiang Ye thought for a moment and asked Zhou Qiming for more information: “Did the clones that lost contact ever reappear?”

“And were all the clones you encountered crawling out of grave mounds?”

“Did you ever experience being buried in a grave mound yourself?”

“And have you ever met anyone other than clones?”

Zhou Qiming considered briefly, then answered in order:

“The clones I met didn’t reappear.”

“All the creatures I encountered crawled out of grave mounds. Some were my clones, some were weird people who attacked me.”

“Those people had no eyeballs and seemed like soulless puppets.”

“Your red-eyed appearance is similar to those eyeless monsters, so at first I didn’t think you were a clone.”

“As for me, I actively dug at grave mounds but never entered one.”

He then asked in return, “When you lost contact with others, did you directly appear inside a grave mound?”

Jiang Ye nodded slightly. Before Zhou Qiming could probe further, Jiang Ye urgently fired off another question:

“I have a feeling we’re about to lose contact!”

“Now answer me one key question—”

“Do our clones share a common original body? Do you know where the original is?”

Zhou Qiming froze for a moment. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

He seemed surprised that—while most clones he met discussed how to leave this cursed place—he now had to field questions from an amnesiac clone who might be sucking up other information...

Jiang Ye’s tone was serious, and the pressure from those red eyes even leaked aggression.

Zhou Qiming was silent for a moment, then answered heavily:

“Clones should have an original, but I’m not sure. The original I assume may not be the true original...”

“Like how we can’t be sure what kind of world we actually live in.”

“But the body I temporarily identified as the original seems to be trapped in a copy called the Court of Disorder...”

As he said this, Zhou Qiming’s expression changed and he hurriedly asked, “From your tone, you and Li Ku entered a new Novice Apartment?”

“If that new Novice Apartment opens the Court of Disorder instance, then maybe you could enter it and try to find the original.”

Perhaps influenced by Jiang Ye’s earlier claim of “sensing imminent loss of contact,” Zhou Qiming’s speech rushed unconsciously.

When he finished, Jiang Ye barely gave him time to breathe and threw out another sentence:

“I just thought of a possible way to help us avoid losing contact in this cursed place!”

“Right now, hand me the hammer you’re holding!”

His tone was too quick, too serious, and carried an urgency that brooked no refusal.

Before Zhou Qiming could react, Jiang Ye skillfully took the hammer from his hand.

In the next second, the hammer came down with a loud thud and smashed into Zhou Qiming’s head...

Jiang Ye had used brute force, but it felt like swinging a hammer at empty air.

Yet with the naked eye, the hammer clearly crushed Zhou Qiming’s skull...

So the hammer didn’t hit empty air.

Zhou Qiming’s head seemed as fragile as tofu!

This hammer didn’t require great strength; it could crush him with ease!

Jiang Ye stared at the hammer in his hand with a complicated look, and he also noticed—

Zhou Qiming’s “corpse” dissolved into a cloud of gray-white mist that sank into the ground.

Accompanying this, Jiang Ye silently counted to three in his head.

For a full ten-plus seconds, Zhou Qiming’s corpse and the gray mist completely dissipated.

Jiang Ye neither saw Zhou Qiming revive nor heard the Clone Kills Clone prompt in his mind.

This result wasn’t surprising; it was even expected.

For this expected outcome, he had two hypotheses—

The first was that the moment he killed Zhou Qiming, the grave mound area’s loss-of-contact mechanism activated, and the two would lose contact.

Under that possibility, Zhou Qiming might really have died.

But Jiang Ye didn’t favor that possibility.

Because the “loss of contact premonition” he claimed was a lie.

He didn’t actually have such a premonition.

So the chance that he triggered the loss-of-contact effect the instant he killed Zhou Qiming was minuscule.

Therefore Jiang Ye leaned toward the second possibility—

This Zhou Qiming wasn’t a clone at all!

If he wasn’t a clone, then of course the Clone Kills Clone effect wouldn’t trigger!

In fact, when the two were probing each other earlier, Jiang Ye had thought of a quick way to build trust.

Have the other person kill Zhou Qiming too.

If Zhou Qiming truly was a clone...

it would trigger the Clone Kills Clone effect.

If it didn’t trigger...

then a problem arose—

If both were clones, why would Zhou Qiming killing him trigger a reviving Clone Kills Clone effect...

but him killing Zhou Qiming wouldn’t?

The first possibility that flashed through Jiang Ye’s mind was this—

The Clone Kills Clone effect had been forged by the “Zhou Qiming” act!

From the Jiang Ye clone trapped in the underground Burial Ground, the downtime delink for Ji Zixuan clones was about three seconds.

And the Time-Limited Instant Kill’s kill-and-revive effect is also three seconds!

So that item could perfectly simulate the Clone Kills Clone effect!

Of course, successful simulation requires that Jiang Ye lack clone-to-clone resonance.

Isn’t that a coincidence? He and Zhou Qiming indeed had no clone resonance!

So just based on the fact of “no clone resonance,” Jiang Ye had been highly suspicious of this Zhou Qiming from the start!