After everyone was released, aside from mourning the young researcher who had died, the rest were relieved. Some even felt a bit of sympathy for the hijackers.
"They weren't simply trying to rob people of time. They were doing it for this city's future," someone said.
"Yeah, it's all the management's fault. They insisted on pushing everyone so hard, and now it's finally caused a problem."
"Actually, this only happened because the security measures weren't good enough. If we had Intelligent Computer management, there definitely wouldn't have been such a loophole."
"Then we should hurry up and learn from the outside world."
Amid such restless discussion, everyone spent the next three days.
Three days later, Wenren Sheng ran into the supposedly dead young researcher again at a gathering meant to calm everyone down. It turned out the researcher himself had not died. Only his clone had.
Wenren Sheng suddenly understood a terrifying truth—the people attending that banquet had all been clones.
Only he and Lu Tong—no, more accurately, only Lu Tong, whom he had brought with him—had appeared in person.
Because Wenren Sheng himself had also been replaced by a Puppet Man.
Heh heh...
But another question arose. Why had the management yielded just because a group of clones had been taken hostage? The answer was simple. Madam Hans, who had held him hostage, had said something at the time: he had just arrived and had not yet become tainted by the city's original sin...
What she had really implied was that he was the only one at the entire banquet without a clone, the only genuine hostage.
That was why the management had agreed to the demands of those clone hijackers and granted them official status.
So after all that circling around, the Clown had turned out to be