Where Did This Brat Come From?

Lin Yang leaned against the wallpaper, feeling the layer behind him sag slightly, softened by damp.

Eighteen people?

There had been twenty-something when they left the school, but only eighteen had come in.

He looked at the yellowed lights in the hallway, then spoke.

"Everyone, stay put. First, count everyone and check every face!"

Lin Yang turned around, his gaze sweeping over the crowd behind him.

The fat man stood at the front, with Jiang Yu'an, Shen Yue, Chen Yu, Zhao Yao, a middle-aged man, and a muscular man beside him. The last two had also been transported here from the Faceling school.

Counting Lin Yang himself, that made eight.

Liu Jialiang was nowhere to be seen. Lin Yang scanned the crowd twice, but didn't spot that familiar crew cut.

"Everyone's accounted for." The fat man counted them off on his fingers. "Nine. Liu Jialiang is missing."

"Where are Jin Xiucheng and Jin Chenghuan?" Jiang Yu'an asked.

Jin Xiucheng was the short man from Yanbian, and Jin Chenghuan was the tall one. They had called each other by those names at the school, and Jiang Yu'an had remembered them.

No one answered. No one knew whether they were in these yellow rooms or had been transported somewhere else.

"Leave them for now," Lin Yang said.

Just then, the broadcast added another sentence. "Please be aware that the friends beside you may already have been replaced by Facelings."

The fat man was startled. "Replaced by Facelings?" His gaze swept over Jiang Yu'an and the others. "You guys aren't, are you?"

Lin Yang shook his head and looked around. "Don't worry. We've known each other for a long time. If any of us were a Faceling, we could tell."

Everyone agreed. Facelings were indeed good at disguising themselves, but there were still traces to look for.

They were old comrades by now. Even if one of them had been replaced by a Faceling, they would definitely be able to find them out in short order!

But before everyone could settle down, a clamor erupted nearby.

It was human voices, shrill and cursing!

At the other end of the yellow hallway, around a corner some ten-odd meters away, stood a group of faces he had never seen before.

A fat, middle-aged woman in a floral shirt, her hair permed in tight curls, held a boy of about seven or eight in her arms.

The boy was crying, his shrill, piercing wails bouncing back and forth through the narrow hallway and making people's eardrums tingle.

The fat woman patted the boy's back as she shouted at the people around her.

"Who! Who did this! Don't you know kidnapping will land you in prison? My son works at city hall! Let us go, now! If you don't, I'll call the police!"

As she shouted, her gaze fell on Lin Yang's group.

Perhaps because there were so many of them, standing together in an orderly group, they looked organized.

The fat woman let go of the boy and stomped over, thrusting out a short, thick finger that nearly poked Jiang Yu'an in the face.

"Was it you? Huh? Were you the ones who kidnapped us? You young people should be behaving yourselves, not doing things like this!

"Let us go now! Or I'll have my son arrest every last one of you!"

Jiang Yu'an took a step back, his voice calm.

"Ma'am, we're not kidnappers. We just got here too."

"Bullshit!" The fat woman wouldn't let up, flecks of spit landing on Jiang Yu'an's outdoor jacket.

"You're not kidnappers? Then why are you here? Huh? Why are there so many of you gathered together? Running a pyramid scheme?"

The boy darted forward too.

He wiped his nose, pointed at Jiang Yu'an's face, and swore. "Fuck you, your mom's dead, your mom's dead."

A textbook meme-spouting kid!

Then he raised his foot and kicked at Jiang Yu'an's shin.

The toe of his shoe was smeared with a yellow stain he'd picked up from who knew what corner, and the angle of his kick was vicious and underhanded!