Interrogation

At first, the two ants were a little dazed, with no idea what had happened.

Shadow Number Two was especially confused.

She had stretched lazily inside Chen Momo's shadow and gone back to sleep. Just as she was sleeping soundly, someone had forcibly dragged her out!

Being dragged out was frightening enough, but she had never expected to be forcibly stuffed into an ant's body.

She was having a mental breakdown!

The two ants twitched their antennae, sensory organs used for smell. Ants communicated through scent, but neither woman had ever used such a bizarre method of communication, so they could not convey anything to each other.

To an onlooker, the ants' waving antennae were a sign that the two shadows were communicating. Only the two women knew that their antennae were trembling out of fear.

The next moment, Ke Meng extended a large finger overhead. Its enormous bulk sent a gust of air rushing past, making the two ants even more nervous.

"If I press this finger down, both of you might die," Ke Meng's voice rang out above them.

A demon, a demon! He's a demon!

Shadow Number Two controlled her ant, inwardly weeping as she began crawling across the surface, trying to spell out her name.

But controlling an ant was too difficult. She had originally been human and was familiar with how humans walked. Now that she had to walk on an ant's six legs, she needed time to get used to it.

"Don't try any tricks to stall for time. Nobody can save you. Even if you escape, I can catch you again."

"I'll give you five minutes to get used to your bodies. Then write out your names."

Ke Meng's voice rang out above the two ants again.

The two ants walked very strangely. Sometimes their front legs moved while their middle legs stayed still, or their back legs failed to move.

But with the threat of death hanging over their heads, both ants did everything they could to get used to their bodies.

Watching from the side as the two ants gradually went from stumbling to walking steadily, Chen Momo's little face was full of curiosity.

Of course, the fear in her heart had not diminished.

Those two strange shadows really had come alive, and they were still living on as parasites inside ants!

What a terrifying species!

Even if Brother A-Meng crushed them, they probably wouldn't die right away.

As Chen Momo's imagination ran wild, two minutes passed, and the two ants began walking in neat, straight lines across the table.

Ke Meng went to his room to fetch a sheet of white paper and a pen, ready to record the strokes they traced out.

Before long, the two ants stopped, seemingly waiting for Ke Meng's command.

"Write," Ke Meng said.

The two ants trembled slightly and began walking at the same time.

After tracing one stroke, they paused for two seconds, repositioned themselves, and then traced the next.

On the paper, the strokes joined together to form two Chinese names.

Wen Yushan.

Mi Jingyun.

Those sound like women's names, Ke Meng thought.

"Sex," Ke Meng said.

Chen Momo glanced at Brother A-Meng from the side, then went back to watching the insects write.

Honestly, after watching for a few minutes and realizing that they were completely at his mercy and did not dare resist Brother A-Meng, Chen Momo began to feel less afraid.

As long as Brother A-Meng was there, these two ants could not cause any trouble.

A few dozen seconds later, two instances of the character for "female" appeared on Ke Meng's sheet of paper.

"When did you enter the mother and daughter's bodies?"

Before long, the two ants gave their answer: "Ten days ago."

Ke Meng looked at Chen Momo and asked, "Where did you go ten days ago? Did you feel unwell at all? Did anything strange happen?"

Looking at the information the two ants had provided, Chen Momo thought back and said, "Ten days ago, Mom and I drove to Octopus City to pick up stock. At one point, I got really sleepy and fell asleep in the car. The thing is, Mom was really sleepy too, so she pulled into a temporary parking space by the road and slept for a while herself. I don't know if that counts as strange."

Octopus City neighbored Whale City and was a larger city. Most of the stock at the Chen Family Convenience Store came from Octopus City.

Incidentally, Ke Meng lived on the Koi Continent, where the more populous cities were mostly named after aquatic animals, though there were occasionally names based on nonaquatic animals as well.

"Do you know about this?" Ke Meng asked the two ants.

The two ants worked together to write their answer, one tracing the first character of "We know" and the other tracing the second.

"Did you do it?"

This time, the two ants hesitated a little, but they still wrote "Yes."

Chen Momo's eyes widened at the sight. She had never expected that the reason they had fallen asleep back then was these two strange human shadows.

"Why can you leave human bodies?" Ke Meng continued questioning them.

The more he asked, the more he vaguely sensed that this was no ordinary incident. There seemed to be others of their kind behind them.

"We don't know." This time, both ants wrote that they did not know.

"Do you really not know, or are you pretending?" After asking, Ke Meng felt that threats like this would not work. He needed to know their fatal weakness to interrogate them effectively, so he switched to another question:

"If I crush your ant bodies, can you transfer to another object and keep living? Answer yes or no."

The moment he posed that question, an extremely heavy atmosphere settled over the two ants.

Their antennae twitched, and their bodies shuddered.

They could tell what kind of person Ke Meng was from his cold tone.

He really might crush two ants without a moment's hesitation.

Even if those two ants housed the shadows of two humans, he would not show mercy.

Humans had an inexplicable fear of beings unlike themselves. Perhaps it was determined by their genes, or perhaps it was a spiritual intuition from the brain telling them that such beings could not be allowed to remain. Ke Meng was under that same influence at the moment, regarding these two shadows as something other than human, rather than purely human beings.

Under Ke Meng's threat, the two ants then wrote a single word-yes!

They did not dare write "No." If they did, Ke Meng might very well press down immediately to test whether they really died.

If they survived, he could repay their lies with torture.

His hand was so bizarre. They had been drawn onto his palm, and when they tried to escape, they had been trapped again.

Even if they switched bodies, Ke Meng could pull them out, then stuff them back into ants to keep living.

Neither woman wanted that outcome.

"You should die if you spend too long outside a body, right? Otherwise, why bother parasitizing someone else's body? Wouldn't it be better to keep living as a shadow? Wouldn't that make you immortal?" Ke Meng posed another deadly question.

"Will you die if you stay outside a body for too long? Answer yes or no," Ke Meng asked.

Please vote!