Amid the screaming, Fang Xiao Xiao seemed to realize that he had lost control of his emotions. He took two steps back, leaned dizzily against the wall, and crouched down. Then he shoved two handfuls of pills into his mouth and forced himself to swallow them mechanically.

After swallowing the pills and waiting for a while, Fang Xiao Xiao finally managed to steady himself. He panted heavily, hugging his knees tight as hot tears slid unconsciously down his numb, frozen face. He muttered to himself, “They aren’t human. They really aren’t. I didn’t eat people...”

As he spoke, he could not stop trembling all over. He buried his face in his knees and sobbed, stammering out broken, chaotic apologies.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry...”

Bai Liu knelt on one knee and handed Fang Xiao Xiao a soft cloth.

Fang Xiao Xiao took it silently and wiped the tears from his face.

Bai Liu softened his voice. “What kind of monsters are they?”

“...Highly intelligent monsters,” Fang Xiao Xiao answered hoarsely. He braced himself against the wall and stood up. “When they first appeared, we were all terrified because they looked exactly like the deceased members of the observation station. We thought they were ghosts. Later, we discovered that they were illegal biochemical products from the Edmund Observation Station.”

“They actively mimic the creatures with the strongest survival ability in their environment and try to approach us so they can learn our survival skills. These monsters probably observed us for a period of time and discovered that we showed great grief and friendliness toward the dead team members, so they chose to transform into those appearances to get close to us...”

Fang Xiao Xiao took a deep breath. “They thought that if they turned into appearances we liked, we would accept them. But that frightened the sentries at the base. One sentry shot one of them dead and dragged it back to the base for research.”

“...During the research process, it underwent a second molting and became something even more human-like.”

“Its learning ability was extremely strong. Through fragments of our conversations and its own observations after entering the base, after its second molting, it perfectly imitated that deceased team member. Its speech, appearance, and habits all reached an identical level. Aside from lacking some memories, it was almost as if that dead team member had come back to life... It was truly terrifying, so we killed it a second time with a knife.”

Fang Xiao Xiao’s eyelashes trembled, and tears fell onto his hands as they gripped the cloth.

“...We discovered that no matter how we killed them, because their cells possess extremely high activity, as long as even one cell remains alive, it will autonomously differentiate into embryonic stem cells and then differentiate back into a human form.”

“...Unless we first use fire to char their epidermis and curb their tendency to differentiate, then soak them in strong acid or alkaline chemical agents to make those cells die completely. But the observation station simply didn’t have enough fuel or chemical agents to deal with them.”

“At first, we had no choice. Even knowing how dangerous they were, we lacked the resources to handle them. We could only cut them apart and freeze them in the ice crevasses so they couldn’t get out. But soon, very soon...”

Fang Xiao Xiao’s throat seemed to be squeezed by an invisible pair of hands. Even though his mouth was open, not a single sound came out. Only his tears kept falling in a rush.

Bai Liu calmly picked up the thread. “But soon you discovered that burning them with fire and then corroding them with strong acid—isn’t that exactly the process of human food preparation and digestion?”

“And it just so happened that you were short on food. Eating them would allow you to completely dissolve these monsters. It killed two birds with one stone, didn’t it?”

With his secret pierced through by Bai Liu, Fang Xiao Xiao’s eyes went hollow. His chest heaved twice, and he could not help turning away to retch. Then he fled as if escaping.

“I’m sorry. I feel a little unwell. You should rest first.”

Bai Liu watched Fang Xiao Xiao leave, then turned and entered the living quarters. Mu Shicheng and Tang Erda followed him inside.

Tang Erda locked the door behind them and pressed his ear to it, listening for a while before turning back to report to Bai Liu. “The soundproofing is fine. Footsteps can’t be heard from a short distance outside. You can say whatever you need to say.”

Mu Shicheng had just listened to the conversation between Fang Xiao Xiao and Bai Liu, and he was now a little dazed. He sat blankly on the edge of the bed, staring at Bai Liu, the back of his neck cold.

“What the hell is going on? So the people at this observation station ate the monsters?!”

“That isn’t necessarily the case.” Bai Liu leaned lazily against the bed, propping up his chin with one hand. “The possibilities for this observation station are still the same as what I said before: either the people here are human, or they are all mimetic monsters pretending to be human in order to deceive us.”

Mu Shicheng was completely confused. “No, if they’re monsters, why would they pretend like this to deceive us? What’s the point? If they wanted to kill us, they could just do it directly. You heard it just now—these things are basically immortal. They could confront us head-on!”

“Why would they voluntarily tell us their weakness?”

Tang Erda nodded at the right moment. “Just now, the weakness entry in my Monster Book lit up. What Fang Xiao Xiao said is true. Intense fire plus chemical corrosion is indeed this monster’s weakness.”

Bai Liu smiled and suddenly brought up a completely unrelated topic. “Do you two know about the Turing test?”

Mu Shicheng and Tang Erda both nodded.

Mu Shicheng was more impatient. “What does this have to do with the Turing test? Isn’t that used to test whether AI possesses human intelligence?”

“There are similarities. AI and the monsters here are both man-made species. If you compare the species here to AI, then how do you think you should test whether the species here fully possesses human intelligence?” Bai Liu slowly looked toward Mu Shicheng. “Remember that famous hypothesis in the Turing test?”

Mu Shicheng suddenly realized something. He shuddered as he said, “—If these intelligent AIs really possess human intelligence, would they use deception to pass the Turing test?”

“Assuming that the ‘people’ here are all monsters, they are trying hard to mimic humans, and their intelligence has already developed to the same level as the scientific researchers here. Then it is entirely possible for them to conduct a Turing test on themselves, to check whether their human disguise is qualified and whether they can fully integrate with us.”

Bai Liu lifted his eyes. “And we, a group of humans from the outside, are the best control subjects for verifying whether they can successfully deceive humans. What ‘Fang Xiao Xiao’ said just now was merely a scenario they simulated based on their understanding of humans—one that would convince us and make us feel that they are human.”

Tang Erda remained silent. Mu Shicheng’s fingers curled into a fist, waves of cold striking the back of his neck.

“Of course.” Bai Liu’s tone shifted again, slow and unhurried. “This is only my guess. It’s also entirely possible that the people here really are human, and all of this is just my delusion.”

Tang Erda asked steadily, “Then how do we verify your idea?”

Bai Liu spread his hands and chuckled. “Simple. Tonight, after they all fall asleep, we’ll go dig up the things in the ice crevasses and see whether the ‘people’ inside can come back to life.”

—

At midnight.

In Antarctica in February, the sun remained in the sky for a very long time. By the time daylight disappeared, it was already the early hours of the morning. Most of the personnel inside the observation station had gone to sleep. Only two sentries remained standing guard at the front door. However, bypassing these two sentries and getting out was an easy task.

The observation station followed a principle of “strict entry, loose exit.” They did not strictly manage the departures of internal personnel. After all, in Antarctica, someone would have to be suicidal to willingly run outside.

Bai Liu and the others slipped out through the back door of the second-floor kitchen, the one used for disposing of garbage. Then they circled around to the area where the helicopter was parked and took out the drilling equipment.

Thanks to Antarctica’s harsh weather, with the help of the wind, snow, and night, visibility was no more than thirty meters. Even though Bai Liu and the others took the equipment rather openly, the sentries not far away did not see them.

With Tang Erda, an old hand, leading the way, they placed the equipment—which weighed more than one hundred kilograms—onto sleds and dragged it to a spot several kilometers away, where they had previously carried out a survey.

Mu Shicheng was panting and covered in sweat. Bai Liu was still all right; Tang Erda had not really let him help, taking on most of the weight of the hundred-kilogram-plus equipment by himself.

From his face to his collarbone, Tang Erda’s skin was soaked in sweat. His taut, strained muscles gave off a firm, flesh-colored sheen. His breathing was only slightly heavy, and he panted with great restraint.

Mu Shicheng, who was panting like a donkey, stared with his eyes wide open.

Damn! Is Tang Erda the reincarnation of a sled dog?! How is he this good at pulling things?!

Tang Erda did not notice Mu Shicheng’s faintly jealous gaze. He placed the equipment on the ice and, following Bai Liu’s arrangement, began using the drilling equipment at the location where they had previously detected human figures.

Thermal pressure melted the ice layer by layer. When it had descended to a certain depth, Bai Liu made a “stop” gesture. Tang Erda held the instrument and pulled up the ice core.

Trapped inside the ice core was a small, shrunken human figure. Because his limbs were gone, he looked exceptionally petite—just the right size for Bai Liu and the others to pull up within the ice core. This was also the reason Bai Liu had chosen this spot to drill.

The “person” trapped inside the ice core, which was about two meters long and one meter in diameter, wore an expression of extreme terror, as if he had seen something frightening enough to scare him to death. The stumps of his four limbs had been cut cleanly, as if severed by a sharp tool, and had not yet rotted.

Bai Liu and the others had brought fuel. They repeatedly poured hot water over the ice core. Before long, the ice core began to melt slowly.

“It’s ice made from compacted snow,” Tang Erda concluded with certainty. “Real ice wouldn’t melt this quickly, and it wouldn’t be this clean and transparent.”

Not long after, the ice melted completely, and the limbless corpse lay motionless on the ice.

Just as Mu Shicheng was so frozen that he had wrapped his arms around himself and was about to say for the third time that he wanted to go back, weak granulation suddenly sprouted from the stumps of the limbless body. They squirmed like worms and soon joined together to form limbs.

The limbless person slowly rose and knelt before Bai Liu.

Clearly, the thing they had dug up was a monster.

With a reaction speed invisible to the naked eye, Tang Erda kicked the entity away. He jammed the muzzle of his gun into the other party’s throat, his expression cold and stern, looking as if he were ready to fire.

Bai Liu stopped him in time. He walked in front of the limbless person and had Tang Erda move the gun away. The limbless person climbed up with difficulty, and his first words startled Mu Shicheng.

“I am the real Fang Xiao Xiao.”

His voice was hoarse and strained. As soon as he said this, tears fell. He kowtowed repeatedly to Bai Liu.

“The ones buried below are all the real personnel of Taishan Observation Station. Please, save them!”

Bai Liu helped him up and gently comforted him. “We will. First, tell us what happened.”

“You’ve already seen the monsters at the observation station, right?” Fang Xiao Xiao was helped by Bai Liu onto the sled.

Mu Shicheng heated a cup of hot water for this shivering meteorology graduate student, but Fang Xiao Xiao pushed it away with a bitter smile. “Thank you, but my body no longer needs warmth. I’m only shivering because of a residual human conditioned reflex to the cold.”

Bai Liu placed the hot water on Fang Xiao Xiao’s lap. “If you still have a human reflex to cold, then you are a normal person who needs warmth. I think you really do need this cup of hot water. Take it.”

For some reason, these words touched Fang Xiao Xiao, and his tears would not stop falling.

He looked at Bai Liu through tear-blurred eyes and finally took the hot water. Choking, he said, “Thank you, comrade. Thank you for telling me that I’m still human.”

Fang Xiao Xiao drank a few sips of hot water, recovered some strength, and began to speak.

“A year and a half ago, in August, we received instructions saying that a very dangerous biochemical corpse fragment had to be stored here in Antarctica. At first, the person in charge of Taishan Station didn’t agree, because according to the Antarctic Treaty, no polluted research materials can be placed here.”

“But after multiple rounds of communication, the head of Taishan Station eventually agreed. Although we didn’t know what they discussed, the head told us with great sadness that this last pure land in Antarctica would no longer be pure.”

“In order to protect the people outside, in order to protect this world filled with desire, this last pure land was still polluted.”

Fang Xiao Xiao exhaled deeply. Bai Liu noticed that there was no warmth in his breath. It did not form white mist.

“So we prepared to receive the aircraft transporting the corpse fragments. But the aircraft had an accident while flying over the Ross Sea. In the end, it did not land near our observation station. Instead, it crashed near Archibald Station on the southern shore of Ross Island—that is Country A’s observation station.”

“Although we immediately went to search for it, three boxes were still missing, and all five escort personnel on the aircraft had died. In order to retrieve those three boxes, we continuously called Archibald Station to communicate, and we even went directly to see their person in charge that night.”

“But very soon, they stopped answering our calls and shut their doors against our visits. Our team members also saw that in the early hours of the morning, Archibald Station flew a helicopter to Edmund Station once, suspected of secretly transferring something. We suspected that it was those three boxes.”

Fang Xiao Xiao’s teeth chattered as he gripped the cup. “Edmund Station is their other observation station, located near the South Pole. It’s heavily guarded and difficult to approach, with a large amount of military equipment. After they repeatedly refused our calls, we had no choice but to communicate by fax.”

“The head of Edmund Observation Station was named Edmund Allen. He had been in Antarctica for more than thirty years and had always had a good relationship with us. He was willing to share many research results with us. He was an old fellow with a true Antarctic spirit, one who had made outstanding contributions to Antarctic meteorology and biology. That was why the observation station was named after him...”

“Professor Edmund was once moved by our persuasion and wanted to secretly return the boxes to us, then take all the responsibility himself...”

Fang Xiao Xiao could not help crying. “But Country A’s politics and military would not allow it. After discovering Edmund’s inclination to do so, they cruelly persecuted Professor Edmund. They subjected him to psychological suppression and experiments, and even used some mind-control drugs on him. They drove Teacher Edmund mad...”

He covered his face and began to wail loudly. The “Professor” he had used earlier had turned into the far more intimate “Teacher” at this moment.

“Those beasts destroyed a great man! They carried out biological experiments related to the corpse fragments on Teacher Edmund!”

“They forced Teacher onto a deviant path!”

“Teacher used those corpse fragments to begin mass-teaching and breeding these corpse creatures. He hybridized their genes with the genes of polar organisms, breeding predatory creatures better adapted to Antarctica’s climate. All the people who persecuted him eventually died at the hands of these creatures...”

Fang Xiao Xiao seemed to recall an extremely painful memory. He clutched his head and muttered to himself in a daze.

“But later, everything spiraled out of control. Those creatures began to develop human intelligence. They had been raised and educated by Edmund, and they possessed a vigorous curiosity and exploratory spirit toward scientific research and humans. They began to imitate what humans had done to them. They began to recreate those cruel experiments on humans in order to explore humanity.” 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

“And we humans stranded at the observation station were the best materials for them to practice on.”

Fang Xiao Xiao laughed through his tears. “They cut us, dismembered us, sliced us, and dyed us. They classified us by gender and region... But there wasn’t much stored food at the winter observation station, and we were about to starve to death. They didn’t want us to die so fragilely, so they began forcing us to eat seal meat, penguin meat, and their own meat.”

“Their flesh integrated into our bodies. We were like plants grafted with other species. We underwent a distorted evolution like embedded bodies, eventually becoming monsters like them—no longer fearing the severe cold, possessing stronger survival abilities, and no longer dying easily.”

A tear fell from Fang Xiao Xiao’s dazed face. “Very soon, these clever monsters finished exploring all the secrets of our physical bodies. They placed us experimental discards beneath the ice for preservation, then entered the final stage of species research—human mutual recognition, communication, and psychological resonance.”

“They needed outside humans to cooperate with them in this final stage of the experiment. But it had been a long, long time since any real humans came to Antarctica.”

“So they constantly simulated human survival situations under extreme conditions. They even realistically manufactured some conflicts, killed one another, then opened the ice layer and threw the ‘dead’ monster bodies down.”

The corner of Fang Xiao Xiao’s mouth twitched stiffly. “Of course, those monsters didn’t really die. They were only professionally playing the role of humans who had died after losing a struggle, frozen right beside us.”

After he finished speaking, everyone fell silent for a moment.

Bai Liu patted Fang Xiao Xiao on the shoulder and told him to rest well, saying that he would drill out everyone from Taishan Station. Then he turned back to the drilling site to continue working.

Tang Erda was responsible for watching Fang Xiao Xiao and did not come over.

Meanwhile, Mu Shicheng, looking as though he had suffered a tremendous shock, huddled beside Bai Liu and whispered, “Damn! It’s actually just like you said! Those monsters at the observation station really are conducting a Turing test! The real observation station members are in the ice crevasses!”

Bai Liu turned on the equipment and glanced at Mu Shicheng expressionlessly. “How can you be sure that these ‘people’ placed in the ice crevasses aren’t a further round of the Turing test arranged for us by those highly intelligent monsters after they studied human psychology?”

Mu Shicheng froze, his scalp tingling. “You mean this Fang Xiao Xiao is also a monster pretending, just to test us?!”

Bai Liu lowered his eyes. “Not necessarily. He may also be a real human.”

“Who told you that a Turing test only occurs at one single point? This kind of species-based social test is usually conducted across an entire map.”

Bai Liu swept a glance over Mu Shicheng. “To put it simply, this entire Antarctic continent may be an experimental map they created for us outsider humans. The humans at any observation station point could be real, or they could be fake. They use our recognition and judgment of real and fake humans to distinguish how we identify our own kind.”

“To use an analogy, it’s like placing an outsider monkey among a group of simulated monkeys and real monkeys, then observing the outsider monkey’s reactions to see what kind of monkey it identifies as its own kind. Then these monsters mimic those monkeys and pretend to be real monkeys, approaching that monkey to conduct further experiments.”

Bai Liu’s gaze fell on Fang Xiao Xiao behind Mu Shicheng. “For example, after cutting off a monkey’s limbs, observing whether that monkey will still seek help from other members of its own kind.”

As Mu Shicheng listened, he felt his own limbs turn cold. Silently, he took off his monkey headphones.

Bai Liu shrugged. “That is how humans research other species.”

—

Author’s Note:

A warning up front!! The drilling machine here is a fictional machine I created based on existing drilling equipment! At present, I haven’t found an ice-core drilling machine with such precise positioning feedback and such a large opening! It’s fictional! It doesn’t exist, haha! You can understand it as a unique advanced instrument inside the game.

Of course, if it’s simply that I’m poorly informed and it really does exist, that would be even better!

No-prize quiz: Which of the two Fang Xiao Xiaos is the real human?

A: The one at the observation station.

B: The one in the ice crevasse.

C: Neither of them.