General Ape said the doctor had been poisoned and fallen into a coma.
And he had already been unconscious for quite some time.
If the doctor on the bed was the real doctor, the one I had befriended in that world, then all the doctors I had met before must have merely been his counterparts.
I felt myself growing numb.
I walked over to the bed.
The doctor's eyes were tightly shut, and his face was terribly pale. Fortunately, his breathing still sounded steady.
"How was he poisoned?" I asked.
General Ape shook his head. "I don't know. The doctor was already like this when we found him. This is a shelter he prepared for himself. He said that if we couldn't find him, then he would definitely be here. He also said that if such a day ever came, we had to watch the people from the Void Realm for someone named Jiang Xiaobai. He showed us your photo, so all of us and the mechanical beasts recognize you."
"Everyone and all the mechanical beasts know me?"
"Yes. The doctor said only you could save him. Of course, not many knew about this shelter, and even fewer knew that only you could save him—just three or four in total. Otherwise, the doctor would have been finished long ago and wouldn't have lived to see you arrive. But the doctor also said that this place connected to those parallel spacetime worlds, so he told us to identify you carefully. It had to be you. He told us not to get it wrong; if we brought one of your counterparts here, that would be a real disaster. And because of that..."
Before he could finish, I said, "That was why you didn't tell me before. Because you were also wondering whether