83: Chapter 83 First, learn how they speak.

Jiang Ming did not move a single rootlet the entire day.

The anchor point inside the door shrank deep into the Drainage Shallow Ditch, its pulsation frequency suppressed to the absolute minimum, and the mycelial network maintained only the most basic monitoring circuits.

He was listening!

He dissected the sounds from the Outer Ring behind the door into several layers.

The outermost layer consisted of the low murmurs of a few veteran guards near the breach; their speech was clipped, with heavy guttural tones, and there were no transitions between curses and nouns. Words like "boards", "nails", "ditch", and "don't step" popped out as if squeezed from between their teeth.

The second layer was the dialogue of the Handymen beside the registration line, their speech faster and more fragmented.

"Where is the bucket?" "Where is the salt?" "Who took my shoulder pole?" These people had softer accents, often dragging out a vague tail-sound at the end of their sentences.

The third layer was the conversation between Xu Baiheng and Lin Qiu. Xu Baiheng always paused for half a beat before speaking, every word sounding as though he had proofread its grammar in his head first before letting it out;

Lin Qiu was faster and colder, her instructions spoken only once, her throat forever dry, the end of every short sentence pressing downwards, never floating upwards.

The final layer was the shouts of the errand apprentices from the Camp Administration Room—they had to relay messages back and forth between the Assembly Clearing and the Camp Administration Room, forcing them to raise their volume.

Their articulation was crisp and resounding: "Uncle Ma said not to touch that bucket", "Healer Lin wants you to come over", "Don't pick up the boards outside the door yet."

He quickly realized one thing.

What was truly useful was not completely imitating a specific person, but rather seizing upon several categories of high-frequency short phrases—guard warnings, wounded soldiers crying for help, camp administration relays, healer instructions, and errand reports.

When these sentences rang out in specific positions, the people who heard them would instinctively execute first and judge later.

The first test was chosen behind the shattered door panels of the breach.

The mass of wet flesh within the splintered wood was activated, mycelia pumped airflow into it, and a temporary chamber depressed right in the middle of the wet flesh, the blood vessels densely covering the chamber walls trembling slightly.

From the audio intercepted during the day, Jiang Ming extracted the voice of a young water-carrying apprentice—sharp, short, with the end of the sentence floating upward, accustomed to biting down heavily on the word "come"—

"Bring a bucket over."

The voice was not loud, resting right at the edge of the range where the two Handymen on duty outside the breach could hear it.

One of the Handymen was squatting on the ground binding the shattered wooden boards with hemp rope. Hearing the sound, he immediately turned his head to glance in the direction of the broken door panels, muttered "The bucket is behind the door", and only froze after he finished replying.

He pushed his companion beside him and asked if someone had just shouted to bring a bucket. The companion said no, and he stared for quite a while longer before turning his head back.

Short-distance misdirection was already viable.

For the second test, he changed the content.

He picked the voice of an injured guard—a veteran who had just been carried away from the entrance during the day, whose throat had been ruined by smoke, breathing heavily, speaking as if he held a mouthful of mud in his throat—

"Give me a hand."

The tone was one of asking for help, the ending note trailing downwards, mixed with the sound of panting.

Both guards stepped half a step inward from outside the breach simultaneously, their spear shafts sliding down from the edges of their shields. They had already prepared to charge inside.

Xu Baiheng abruptly stood up from behind the registration line, pressing one hand onto the shoulder of the guard in front of him, his voice low but extremely cold: "Didn't you hear?—The voice just now didn't have footsteps on the ground. When people speak, there is the sound of mud beneath their feet; this one had only a voice and no feet."

The two guards froze.

Xu Baiheng let go and said to the registering handyman: "Starting today, if you hear any sound at the door, look at the person first, then listen to the words. If you don't see lips moving, don't move under any circumstances."

Lin Qiu was wrapping bandages for a wounded soldier nearby, and without raising her head, she added: "If you don't see mouths, don't trust voices."

She tied a vicious knot in the bandage, making the wounded soldier bare his teeth and grimace in pain.

Jiang Ming waited until this rule was spoken out loud by them before continuing his actions.

Rules themselves were not terrifying; what was terrifying was that rules would cause the gatekeepers to add an extra beat of confirmation action after hearing a sound—precisely this pre-swing of that beat was the easiest to trick.

He changed directions, speaking simultaneously from three locations: the bottom of the ditch, the crevices of the splintered wood, and the throat of Puppet No. 3.

The bottom of the ditch emitted a short, sharp "Retreat", a drawn-out "Help" was squeezed out from the crevices of the splintered wood, and Puppet No. 3's throat recited a line in a vague errand-runner tone: "Which side should the boards be moved to?"

The three sentences overlapped, none of them high in volume, but their sound sources were split across three places.

The two outer guards simultaneously pointed their spear shafts toward the bottom of the ditch, then turned their heads to look in the direction of the splintered wood, and finally looked at each other in blank dismay upon hearing the line from the puppet's throat.

One handyman directly threw down the bucket in his hand and said, "There's more than one thing speaking at the door."

Xu Baiheng stood up from the registration line once more. This time he did not speak, simply staring in the direction of the Drainage Shallow Ditch for a very long time.

Towards evening, a reinforcement squad was transferred over from the direction of the North Ridge.

Five people in total: two were veteran soldiers who formerly guarded the logging path of the North Ridge, one was a young handyman temporarily pulled from the Central Main House, one was a logistics worker responsible for carrying spare torches, and another was a lightly wounded soldier picked out from the injured just today, his shoulder still wrapped in bandages.

They walked from the Assembly Clearing hugging the base of the wall to the side of the breach. They were not familiar with each other, and during the shift change handover, they could not even match their passwords.

One veteran asked where the registration line was, and another veteran said the old one could no longer be used, and he wasn't clear on which one the new one was either.

The young handyman squatted by the ditch wanting to fetch water, but was yanked back by the logistics worker who said that ditch couldn't be touched unless he wasn't afraid of things growing inside it.

The lightly wounded soldier stood against the wall, his bandage-wrapped shoulder leaning against the wooden fence, his eyes staring fixedly at the Red Wetland outside the breach.

Jiang Ming listened as they asked each other for passwords, cursed the routes, and assigned standing positions.

This was precisely the kind of team he wanted most.

Unfamiliar, uncoordinated, and yet to build trust among one another.

It was best suited for letting a short sentence pass from one person to another, and from that person to everyone.

He recalled the password phrases intercepted during the day from the panel's memory area, beginning to pick the first sentence truly belonging to himself for tonight.