Love, death, and false man

Chapter 5.5. Dangerous Games
Dreamlike phantoms, signals of ecstasy and weeping, satellite base stations, cochlear canals, spirals, and brain folds, ideals, sacrifice, slaughter, light, religion, all-knowing, rushing towards despair, sinking into the river, submerging the streets.

Surveillance, isolation, division, incomprehensible prisons, tranquilizers, insulin, electrotherapy, hydrotherapy, chemotherapy, faith therapy, occupational therapy, existential therapy—these real voids, card games and sleeping pills and eye charts and amnesia, trembling with fear, babbling, vomiting, screaming, whispering, empty talk, facts and recollections and anecdotes and angry confrontations and hospitals and shock and war.

"The savior is watching you."

9/12—6:42
A thunderclap startled everyone awake.

Fang Yan suddenly woke up from the bed with a start.

Lightning flashed on the windows, which were completely sealed shut with old newspapers. Dozens, even hundreds, of rolls of synthetic fiber yellow rubber insulating tape were used to cover all the walls and ceilings tightly.

Three old-fashioned antenna radios were placed on the bedside table, on the floor, and next to the pillow, to check whether they had been attacked by nerve pulse radiation.

Cheap liquor, sewing kit, scissors, blood-stained gauze.

Although the old newspapers on the window blocked most of the light from the lightning, giving the room a brief, fleeting glimpse of black and white photographs and text, before plunging it back into darkness, the sound of the thunder still brought Fang Yan fully awake.

The nightmare was too terrifying. Sweat soaked the bedding, and the sweat seeped into the wound that Fang Yan had stitched up himself the day before, causing a stinging pain like sulfuric acid corrosion.

It brought back a series of images from last night.

Those weren't the corpses of monsters, but humans, humans whose limbs had been removed and whose heads had been severed.

Fang Yan had no way of knowing whether the body had returned to its original state after he killed the fake person, or whether he had dismembered Dong Ni in the underground parking lot while suffering from a mental breakdown.

A torrential downpour was falling outside the window.
He opened his flip phone and scrolled through his text message chat history with Dongni, trying to find evidence from the text messages that Dongni was a fake, in order to eliminate the negative emotions brought about by killing his online lover with his own hands.

However, all the threatening text messages and text message records have disappeared. It seems that after switching to the [Hunter Channel], my priority will become very high, and the Salvation Army will overwrite my file in the Soul Eater satellite through a computer virus.

[Hunter Channel]...

What a joke.

It's like something incomprehensible that only someone with the most severe schizophrenia could conceive.

In any case, Dongni is dead, and he is all alone again.

It seems that only the complex data codes in front of my retina, resembling the control panel of an aircraft, are the only evidence to corroborate the unique experience of the past ten days.

I will keep my promise, always remember her, and let her live on in another way.

Suddenly, Fang Yan felt like crying; his eyes stung. Perhaps he shouldn't have gone to class today; he should have asked for a day off.

But then he slapped himself across the face, his gaze turning vicious.

We must pull ourselves together. Too many beasts need to be eliminated, too many mind-controlled dogs need to be slaughtered. The more afraid and timid we are, the more we will fall into a vortex of mental chaos. We will find out the truth ourselves.

In order to avoid being detected by the Soul-Sucking Lord's satellite program, one must continue to lie low in the circuitous society and operate according to the framework it has set up.

I have to go to morning self-study at 7:30. Yesterday's school uniform was all torn and I threw it away. Luckily, I have a spare set to change into.

Fang Yan habitually lit a candle. He had previously removed the ceiling light and sealed it tightly with insulating tape to protect against microwave radiation attacks that seeped through the electrical wires, and he did the same to the other sockets in the room.

The bedroom is theoretically quite insulated, and the old-fashioned antenna radio is used to detect the power of the brain-controlled organization's equipment.

But it was clearly a failure; the fluctuating data before my eyes still proved that I was still under more subtle and insidious mind control.

I quickly washed my face, checked my body for any remaining blood, and changed into my school uniform.

These wounds are quite painful. The most painful one is the burning sensation on my right arm. The most serious injury is the puncture wound on my left thigh, but it's not to the point where I can't walk. I stitched it up very tightly myself and also got some high-proof liquor from my grandfather to disinfect it. It should be fine. I can endure it for a month or two and then it will pass. I can't go to the hospital.

According to Fang Yan's understanding, the Soul-Sucking Lord must have infiltrated many management agencies, which would make it easier for him to control all of humanity. Hospitals, public security bureaus, and large corporations must all have their people there, so we must be wary.

I walked to my grandfather's bedroom, gently pushed open the door, and found him still asleep, breathing evenly. He had come home later than me yesterday, so he must have stayed at the nightclub a little longer.

I closed the door and checked my backpack. The books were all piled on the individual combat table. I only brought a few back to study each day, so it wasn't very heavy.

The key is the weapon. A switchblade is portable and can be kept in a pocket. If you encounter a fake, you need to use something more lethal, so you can only carry it in your backpack.

Today is Wednesday. I bought a decent watermelon knife for 49 yuan. It's thick and durable, and heavier than a regular watermelon knife. I still have 223 yuan left in my allowance, which should last until Sunday. It's raining heavily outside, and if I don't leave early, I'll probably be late.

No. 55 Shangnan Street is an old residential area with no elevator. The highest floor is eight floors. Fang Yan's home is on the seventh floor. He took his keys and an umbrella and went out. He couldn't take the subway because he had his things with him, but that was okay. He could take the bus.

9/12—6:58
Before dawn, at the bus stop.

Fang Yan held up an umbrella.

The leaden-gray sky, like the skin of a prostitute on drugs, slowly expanded and contracted above the city.

The torrential rain shattered into pieces, and the damp chill seeped into the bone.

The asphalt road reflected the dying glow of the streetlights, like the cloudy eyes of someone suffering from jaundice reflecting a dim, yellowish light.

The pool of water imprisoned the reflections of all pedestrians. Fang Yan stared at the puddle, his face, distorted and twisted by the raindrops, reflected in the water.

Cell phone signals are worse when it rains. Rainwater absorbs and scatters signals, weakening them. Thunderstorms can also cause electromagnetic interference.

He thought so.

Its energy release exceeds 1024 joules, making it undetectable by standard base stations. If a fake human appears, it would easily become a conspicuous target.

The rank of Private First Class gave him more technical support, allowing him to generate and synchronize false language thought waves in Broca's frontal lobe in real time, thereby interfering with the observer's vision and hearing, and also deceiving the Soul-Sucker's computer program.

However, one can also choose to shut down this service, thereby proactively exposing oneself and attracting fake people to deal with oneself. The current intelligence is that when facing human units with "abnormal behavior", the Soul Master will not directly identify them as targets for elimination. Instead, he will first raise the priority of surveillance, engage them in an organized manner, observe their effectiveness, determine whether they are hostile units, and then eliminate them.

His satellite base station turned Earth into a concentration camp, with a system of prison guards evaluating prisoners. After all, the Soul Master doesn't need to kill people, but to become stronger by extracting the souls of everyone from the past and future.

I think I'm starting to understand the rules of the game.

Fang Yan scanned the rest of the people waiting at the bus stop. He could read the thoughts of most of them, but there was one person he couldn't at this moment. The message was garbled. He was a well-dressed, slick-haired adult man, probably from an insurance company or something.

That's right. Even if you can't tell whether this person is the imposter or just has been behaving strangely recently, you can still find the imposter by tracking him.

Lieutenant Sylvia Christie, her direct superior.

They will summon me soon, and after I sign some kind of agreement, I can voluntarily switch to the [hunting channel].

That is to say...

Right here, at this bus stop, while waiting for the bus, right now, at this very moment.

Once you switch to the [Hunter Channel], you can kill the man in the suit without any consequences, and no one will know about it.

The Salvation Army's neural pulses will erase the short-term memories of all witnesses.

Do not……

There are consequences; if the other party is truly a fake, you could very well be killed by them.

This is a license to kill; I can kill anyone, anytime, anywhere.

Similarly, the same applies to the other imposters.

Just as Fang Yan was thinking, the bus arrived. He put down his umbrella and got on the bus, during which a few drops of rain soaked onto the uniform of Binhai No. 6 Middle School.

If the incident in the underground parking lot of that shopping district yesterday had come to light, it would have been reported in the news today, unlike the fishing boats on the vast Pacific Ocean.

First, let's see how the mouthpiece of the Soul-Sucking Lord writes it. During lunch break after school, there might be preliminary reports or rumors. You can find them on short video apps in the same city. I'll have to borrow a classmate's smartphone.

Whether the [Hunter Channel] exists, whether the Salvation Army is real or fake, and to what extent I am currently being mind-controlled, will only be known in due time.

Whether it's the summer job offense or the parking lot incident.

It seems like they are all hells that I cannot refuse.

(End of this chapter)