Eleven, twelve, thirteen.

At the fourteenth second, The Judge came up to him, hooked his ring finger around the gun grip, lowered the muzzle, and then put away his weapon.

He simply said, "Come with me."

His tone was cold and flat, just like his gaze.

Adam Carter just stood there waiting for him to move, but after three seconds, the man still hadn't budged.

Puzzled, he looked up, then heard The Judge's voice, even colder than before, say, "Hold out your hand."

Adam Carter obediently held out his hand.

Click.

He shivered from the cold.

A silver handcuff was fastened to his wrist, the other end held by the officer.

—And just like that, Adam Carter was led away.

Strangely, when Victor Harris was shot earlier, the people in line didn't react at all, but now that he was being taken away by The Judge, they started whispering to each other.

Adam Carter only had time to glance back at the body of Victor Harris lying sideways before he was pulled through the city gate.

Once inside the gate, he found that it wasn't a narrow passage, but a vast area divided into several spaces, each brightly lit with snow-white lights. The light reflected off the steel walls, like winter snow shining on grayish-white shale.

There were no fewer armed soldiers and heavy weapons here than outside. In the midst of the tight encirclement of soldiers and heavy weapons stood a long, snow-white table. Three officers in black uniforms, just like The Judge, sat behind the table—Adam Carter guessed these were the judges. A human sat across from them. The Judge was asking him, "How is your relationship with your wife? Did she not come with you this time when you left the city?"

From Aaron Carter's memories, Adam Carter knew that humans who had been infected not only showed changes in appearance, expression, and habits, but their minds and memories could also be affected, so interrogation was one way to identify the different species.

The man who brought him in glanced over and said, "Hurry up."

The central The Judge replied, "Yes," then looked at the person being questioned and said, "You may go."

That person looked as if he had survived a disaster, a smile breaking out on his face as he quickly walked through the city gate passage.

So Adam Carter knew that the man who brought him here was indeed The Judge, and when he said "hurry up," he wasn't urging the The Judge to speed up the interrogation, but rather indicating that he had already determined in an instant that the person being questioned was fully human.

The next person in line walked toward the long table. The distance between the line and the table was quite far, with several gate-like machines in between, and some parts of the path had turns and slopes. Adam Carter realized this was to give the The Judge as much opportunity as possible to observe the subject's movements.

But he didn't have time to see more, because the next second he was pulled around a corner and into a long corridor.

The man took out a black communication device and said, "Tribunal, Brian Clark, requesting a genetic test."

Adam Carter guessed the two characters in the middle were his name.

Immediately, a mechanical door slid open in front of them. Brian Clark walked straight in, and Adam Carter was pulled along, stumbling a bit as he followed.

It was a silvery-white room, filled with unknown mechanical devices from floor to ceiling. Six soldiers stood guard at various points in the room. At one end, behind a workbench, sat a young man with short golden hair, blue eyes, and a white lab coat.

"Colonel Clark actually came here," the man pushed up his glasses on the bridge of his nose, "Don't you usually solve everything with bullets?"

Brian Clark said, "Please cooperate, The Doctor."

The Doctor glanced at Brian Clark, stood up, and said to Adam Carter, "Come with me."

After following him over, Adam Carter was instructed to lie down on a silvery-white platform. His limbs were secured with mechanical wrist and ankle cuffs. The Doctor said, "Don't move."

Immediately after, Adam Carter felt a sharp pain in his arm. He turned his head and saw The Doctor slowly drawing a tube of bright red blood from his body.

The Doctor said, "The color of your blood is very healthy."

Adam Carter: "Thank you for the compliment."

The Doctor was amused by his response.

"The blood will be sent for genetic testing, which will take an hour. The full-body enhanced scan is expected to take forty minutes. Don't move."

As he finished speaking, blue light shimmered on the silver platform, and a low humming sound filled the air, coming from everywhere, as if every particle of air was a source of sound. The sounds from all directions reminded Adam Carter of those distant nights in the abyss, the muffled roar of waves from the far-off sea, and when the night was at its darkest, the howls of unknown creatures would come from that direction, waves of sensation sweeping across the entire rain-soaked land, impossible to describe in human language.

The current crawled and bit at him like countless ants. Forty minutes wasn't long for a mushroom. But Adam Carter felt it might be the last forty minutes of his life, so he cherished it, carefully studying the mechanical patterns on the ceiling.

He didn't know how much time had passed when he heard outside, Brian Clark say, "Andrew Carter told me your testing methods have been upgraded."