Chapter 782: Leading Questions
What has started? Everyone was somewhat puzzled.
However, since Ling Mo had spoken, they temporarily stopped.
They were in a long alley, surrounded by tall apartment buildings, with even the sunlight unable to reach in.
Should zombies appear from either end, everyone present would be able to spot them immediately, ensuring a basic level of safety.
Ye Lian and Li Yalin, taking initiative, had already moved to guard both ends.
Ling Mo approached the sungla.s.ses man and raised his hand to stop Mu Chen, who was about to make a move, “I’ll handle this.”
Mu Chen, who had shown a hint of excitement, reluctantly lowered his fist, and quietly retracted his foot that had been wound up on the ground.
“Seems like you can hardly contain yourself,” Ling Mo said to the sungla.s.ses man.
His two consecutive, context-free remarks left those around puzzled, and the sungla.s.ses man seemed unresponsive as well.
The man rolled his eyes, still acting in a seizure-like manner, “Hehe…”
“Planning to play dumb to buy time? From your perspective, it’s indeed a decent tactic. Actually, you’ve moved faster than I expected; I thought you would hold out a bit longer. It appears… the master ball has spurred you on and drained your confidence in escaping this predicament, huh? You really do succ.u.mb easily…” Ling Mo continued.
“Shameless! So shameless…”
His words were so sarcastic that even Mu Chen, who was watching, found them intolerable.
Predicament or whatever… wasn’t it brought upon by you anyway!
And yet, you seriously ponder over the sungla.s.ses man’s easy succ.u.mbing… he didn’t even die from anger!
Old Lan quietly asked, “What ball?”
“This… I know the original meaning, but I really can’t figure out its use here…” Lan Lan whispered back.
“Want to continue?” Ling Mo asked again, “You should know I’m observing you. Want to compete with me on speed? I don’t mean to discourage you, but your speed definitely can’t match mine.”
“Hehehe…” the sungla.s.ses man continued to twitch, but it was clear that his twitching had suddenly sped up, as if he had stepped on an electric switch. It was obvious that this level of convulsing could not have been deliberately faked; something was genuinely affecting him. Combined with his already rolling eyes, the sight was truly unnerving.
“Hey, why are you wasting your breath on him? Just go over and smack him!” Lan Lan, feeling a chill down her spine, yanked off her hat and prepared to rush forward, only to be grabbed by Xia Na.
“Ling-Ge is probing him,” Xia Na whispered as she pulled Lan Lan aside.
“What do you mean?” Lan Lan quickly asked. She was completely confused and was hoping someone could explain it to her.
“Leading questions, ever heard of them?” Xia Na blinked and asked.
“Uh… sort of?” Lan Lan looked bewildered.
Resting her chin in thought, Xia Na continued, “Ling-Ge has some idea about what’s going on but isn’t sure, so he’s purposefully guiding him to respond. Look at the ingrate’s expressions just now. Even though he didn’t nod in response, his face turned a bit paler, and to Ling-Ge, that counts as a reply. There’s another thing…”
At this point, Xia Na just gave a mysterious smile and stopped talking. Among everyone present, she seemed to be the only one who had caught on.
Ling Mo wasn’t just probing; he was also observing the sungla.s.ses man’s psychic activity. The combination of psychic tentacles and constant questioning acted like a highly sensitive lie detector.
The sungla.s.ses man could refuse to answer, but he couldn’t control his psychic fluctuations.
“That’s why there’s the saying, ‘Your mouth says no, but your body is honest.’ It’s actually scientific,” Xia Na said seriously.
“Sounds pretty reasonable…” Lan Lan nodded in agreement.
On the other side, Mu Chen also wisely moved Old Lan aside, leaving the center area entirely to Ling Mo and the sungla.s.ses man.
Without Mu Chen’s support, the sungla.s.ses man slumped against the wall, while Ling Mo crouched down in front of him.
“After struggling all night, it seems you’ve calmed down quite a bit. I’ve said so much, and you can still keep going. But I still want to ask, did you choose this particular time because they are ready on the other side as well?” Ling Mo suddenly curved his lips in a sly smile, lowering his voice significantly, “Come on, Big Boss.”
As soon as he finished speaking, Ling Mo abruptly thrust one of his psychic tentacles forward.
Momentarily stunned, the sungla.s.ses man was instantly hit, his entire body falling into a daze.
A few seconds later, his body stopped twitching, his eyeb.a.l.l.s rolled, and heavy breaths were drawn through his nasal pa.s.sages.
“You see, I told you, you couldn’t match my speed. But you seem quite surprised when I guessed your ident.i.ty…” Ling Mo chuckled, reaching out to remove the cloth from the man’s mouth, “You can try to call out, but at most, you’ll only attract zombies. Don’t be fooled by the short distance we’ve traveled; the path we took was definitely far enough. But I won’t stop you from trying.”
“You… ugh…” The sungla.s.ses man’s face suddenly contorted, and he let out a retching sound.
Having had his mouth blocked for so long, he felt like vomiting now that it was free.
“Do I… look like I’m going to call out?” the sungla.s.ses man said haltingly.
He tried to stiffen his neck, but his body wouldn’t cooperate, leaving him only able to weakly shake his head.
“Pretty much,” Ling Mo nodded.
The sungla.s.ses man’s lips twitched, “If it weren’t for that… thing you did… I wouldn’t be like this…”
“I actually think it worked quite well. Look, it even affects your speech,” Ling Mo said with satisfaction.
“You…” the sungla.s.ses man’s lips kept trembling, showing he still couldn’t fully control himself, “What exactly do you want?”
“Well, Big Boss, that depends on whether you cooperate,” Ling Mo replied.
“I don’t know what you mean…” the sungla.s.ses man said.
But Ling Mo interrupted him with a smile, “Still pretending? Does it mean anything? I’m not bluffing; I’m certain of it.”
The sungla.s.ses man was silent for a moment before he spoke, “What is it that you want to say?”
“In simple terms, I want you to give up resisting,” Ling Mo said directly. “If you think you still have a chance, I can give you a bit more time; you can keep trying.”
“Heh… if you want to know something, you can just torture me,” the sungla.s.ses man answered indifferently.
“That’s the last resort,” Ling Mo replied.
Torture would definitely be useless on the sungla.s.ses man. And as for devouring…
Not only is the intelligence gained from devouring incomplete, but the results from devouring the other “Big Boss” last time had already made Ling Mo quite wary.
Besides, this sungla.s.ses man had other uses; Ling Mo didn’t want to resort to that so quickly.
He also had a vague feeling that as long as this guy was alive, he could be a trump card against Niepan.
“First, tell me, how did you figure it out?” the sungla.s.ses man avoided the question and posed another one instead.
Without waiting for Ling Mo to answer, he continued, “No one has ever figured it out before. I just want to die knowing the truth.”
“Oh, come on… you were full of holes,” Ling Mo replied.
The sungla.s.ses man’s face suddenly turned even more sour. This was a fundamental denial of him!
In fact, in the eyes of Ling Mo, who was proficient in control, the Big Boss’s ability, though impressive, had its traces.
What first alerted Ling Mo to the abnormality was the familiar feel of the psychic power.
At that moment, he didn’t immediately react, but after a bit of reflection, he quickly found the source.
That Big Boss!
When he devoured that Big Boss, although he didn’t gain much memory, he did remember the characteristics of that psychic power.
Such a unique feature couldn’t possibly appear in another person.
“What really made me suspect you were your reactions after being captured,” Ling Mo said. “If you were just a member of Niepan, the most important thing for you would be to stay alive. Only the owner of Niepan would be so dedicated to dying for it.”
“And you deduced this just from that?” The sungla.s.ses man was stunned.
He suddenly felt he had been tricked. Ling Mo seemed so confident, but the basis of his conclusion was pretty unreliable!
What kind of reasoning was this?
“It was just a suspicion, but another clue was your displayed personality…” Ling Mo continued.