58: Chapter 58 Who Will Take the Blame?

When Puppet No. 3 was dragged into the outer shed of the Camp Administration Room!

Jiang Ming's core directive return signal jumped!

The muddy road, the material transfer point on the inside of the wooden fence, the Small Storage Shed piled high with fire oil jars, and the entrance of the Camp Administration Room hanging with a wooden sign that read "Materials can only be collected with a pass".

These fragmented images no longer came from the captive's memories, but were fed into the forest will in real time!

The edge of the Settlement transformed from an abstract map into a concrete space.

The interrogation took place in the outer shed of the Camp Administration Room.

The roof of the shed was made of old oiled cloth!

The four corners were propped up with wooden stakes, and the ground was covered with a layer of moisture-proof lime.

Puppet No. 3 was pressed down onto a section of a tree stump, the interrogator squatted in front of him, and a spear-wielding guard stood beside them.

The interrogator's charcoal pencil moved rapidly across the wooden board, his hand trembling.

What was being asked was not whether the wounded soldier could survive, but whether Shen Kui was dead or alive, whether the Outpost could still be saved, and how much fire oil and how many wooden passes had been lost.

"You said Shen Kui is in the rear, where on earth is he? Is he alive or dead?"

The interrogator flipped the wooden board over.

Puppet No. 3 answered according to the preset script:

"Alive! He told me to come back first to report on the fire oil."

Pausing for a moment, he added another sentence.

"The forest moves, and it's not just one root that can move. There are still people behind who haven't escaped! ... Almost no one survived!"

"There are still people behind? How many? Where?"

Puppet No. 3 stopped talking.

He lowered his head, pressed his fingers against his knees, and his lips moved without making a sound.

This was the ambiguity deliberately left by Jiang Ming. Answering too clearly would lead to probing questions about details, while answering intermittently would make it seem more like he was terrified.

The interrogator made a few notes.

He turned his head and said to the guard nearby:

"Go to the Camp Administration Room and call Ma Shoucai over."

When Ma Shoucai arrived, he brought an open ledger, walking while making marks on the corner of the page with a charcoal pencil.

He was fatter than Shen Kui, his belt was tied tightly, and his lapels were stained with crumbs of dry rations.

He glanced at Puppet No. 3, didn't ask about his injuries, and directly flipped to the Outpost supplies column:

"Was all the fire oil that Shen Kui took out burned? Are there any wooden passes left? How many clean water buckets were lost?"

Puppet No. 3 reported a few numbers, all of which were real data from Shen Kui's memory.

But they didn't match the numbers in Ma Shoucai's ledger.

Ma Shoucai's brows knitted together, and he drew a heavy line across the ledger with his charcoal pencil.

"Every time you field agents go out, you scatter things everywhere. You can't hold the Outpost and you blame the Camp Administration? Go back and tell Shen Kui that the batch of fire oil he drew extra last month hasn't been written off yet."

Xiao Wu, the night watchman sent from the border post, listened from the side and couldn't help interrupting:

"Almost everyone is dying, and you're writing off fire oil right now?"

"Things that are allocated must have a destination; that's the rule."

Ma Shoucai closed the ledger, didn't look at Xiao Wu, and only said to the interrogator, "Keep this person detained in the partition shed first, and release him after the outer line confirms."

The interrogation ended.

Puppet No. 3 was neither released nor killed; instead, he was carried back to the partition shed and arranged in a temporary corner on the side of the Camp Administration Room where empty barrels were stacked.

When Ma Shoucai returned to the Camp Administration Room, he took away the broken order wooden pass on Puppet No. 3's body, saying he wanted to verify the code.

He didn't know that wooden pass was a genuine item signed by Shen Kui, and verification would only lead to one conclusion:

The wooden pass was real, the wounded soldier was real, and Shen Kui's loss of contact was real.

The residual signals of the channel from the direction of the Council Shed became denser after late night.

Through the peripheral anchors and the fragments of the deputy's channel stone left in Tree Nest No. 1, Jiang Ming was able to capture several complete arguments.

Someone advocated immediately sealing off the Outer Gate, recalling all peripheral Outposts, and abandoning all outer lines in the direction of Black Tree Mouth.

Another person retorted: If the Outer Gate is sealed, where will the timber come from?

The raw materials for fire oil are still at the northern charcoal kiln, and there are still two water collection points on the clean water outer line.

If we seal the gate now, the Settlement will die of thirst first.

A third person chimed in, saying that Tieshan was still at the headquarters, so it would be better to let him lead the Heavy Slashing Team to Black Tree Mouth to cut it off with one stroke; dragging it out would sooner or later drag them to death.

The first voice sneered: If Tieshan goes, who will suppress the inner circle?

The carcass of the carrion titan from the northern line last time is still unprocessed in the warehouse.

Sealing the gate or going to battle, both paths lead to death.

Jiang Ming was not in a hurry to choose for them.

He had Puppet No. 3 deliberately exhibit "memory confusion" in the corner of the partition shed.

The next day during the guard shift change, the interrogator came to ask about the route once more. Puppet No. 3 alternately said that Shen Kui chased in the direction of the fallen log.

And then said the living forest surrounded from behind; there was an obvious logical fault between the two descriptions.

The interrogator wrote the words "suspected of incomplete memory due to fright" on the wooden board.

And hung the board on the notice hook of the Camp Administration Room.

This conclusion was extremely favorable to Jiang Ming.

Since the wounded soldier's statement "cannot be entirely believed", then "Shen Kui might still be alive" and "Shen Kui might already be dead" existed simultaneously within the Settlement's information network.

Anyone could choose the half they were willing to believe.

The camp administration line wanted to verify that the used fire oil had a reasonable destination!

They would choose to believe that Shen Kui was still alive.

The patrol line worried about continuing to fill people in, so they would tend to believe that Shen Kui was already dead.

The combat line needed to judge whether Tieshan should be dispatched, and they needed more evidence.

The three systems deduced separately in front of the same ambiguous information, and the fissure would tear larger and larger during the deduction.

Through the intermittent perception of Puppet No. 3, he saw clearly the layout of supplies around the Camp Administration Room.

The Small Storage Shed was divided into left and right rooms. The left room piled fire oil jars, with copper jars stacked three layers high, and the bottom layer cushioned with hay for moisture prevention.

The right room stored dry rations and wooden passes!

Dry rations were stacked in burlap sacks, and wooden passes were hung on the wall according to their numbers.

Entering and exiting the Small Storage Shed required presenting a material collection wooden pass to the camp administrator. After the camp administrator recorded it with a charcoal pencil, the shed was opened to retrieve goods.

During the night shift change, an extra guard stood at the entrance of the Small Storage Shed, and during the shift change gap, there was a window as short as a few breaths.

Just enough for a person to walk from the corner of the partition shed to the base of the left wall of the storage shed.

The external hunting ground did not rest either.

Jiang Ming had Puppet No. 2 walk a trip along the direction of Outpost No. 2, leaving two strings of new footprints on the soft mud of the stream channel.

One string was human footprints!

Another string was drag marks—tying a section of an old root behind the puppet's feet to drag along, making the traces blurry.

The human search team would discover these two strings of traces during the day, and then spend a long time arguing whether they were deserters or a feint.

Before dawn, the Settlement finally issued a formal directive: suspend duty across the entire line, strengthen the guard of the Small Storage Shed and peripheral patrols.

Each Outpost reported safety every half-quarter, and after gathering more outer line news, they would decide whether to launch a general attack.

The wording of the directive was very cautious, but translated into a language Jiang Ming could understand, it meant—they highlighted the things they were most afraid of being touched!!

Fire oil jars, dry ration bags, and the entry-exit wooden pass register!

And Puppet No. 3 was leaning against the pile of wooden barrels near the base of the side wall of the Small Storage Shed at this moment...