Before them, Fake Luffy hung from a crooked-necked tree. What suspended him by the neck appeared to be a woman's long hair. His neck had been stretched grotesquely long by the weight of his body, and his body swayed like a pendulum. Yet his limbs had already vanished, and the cross-sections showed that they had been forcibly bitten off by something. Even stranger, his stomach was bloated enormously, bulging like an air-filled ball, with protrusions pushing up against the skin in several places.
Furthermore, his mouth hung wide open, two rows of gleaming white teeth sharply contrasting with his pitch-black throat. A long, blood-red tongue dangled from his mouth, saliva slowly dripping from it.
There was no doubt about it—Luffy was dead. Zhu Tong and the others could not sense the slightest trace of life from him. Not only was he dead, but he had clearly died horribly. His twisted face and eyes bulging from their sockets showed that, before dying, he must have endured pain beyond imagination—pain even harder to bear.
"Th-this is impossible!" Fake Royd said in shock. "He may only be a sophomore, but the resistance and toughness granted by the Gum-Gum Fruit Ability should have allowed him to withstand any degree of physical attack. There's no way he could have died in such a short time! It only took us two seconds to get here!"
Fake Seiya darkened. "But the fact is, he's dead." As he spoke, he walked forward. He intended to investigate Fake Luffy's cause of death. At that moment, Fake Seiya's expression was grave, completely devoid of his earlier casualness. Clearly, Fake Luffy's sudden death had sounded an alarm for him as well. Even if death in this exam carried no penalty, who would willingly go and die?
Fake Seiya had only taken