In the guest room of the Jiang family villa, the private physician invited by Jiang Jing was assisting Li Xiang in conducting a thorough physical examination of Shen Ge. But after working all day, there was still no sign of him waking up.
The doctor looked at the data displayed on the instruments and said, “After a comprehensive examination, I’ve determined that the patient’s body is not in any serious trouble. However, he’s currently in a very strange state. His brain is reacting very intensely, as if it’s been severely stimulated. That might be the fundamental reason he can’t wake up.”
“Is there any way to wake him up using external means? Or, if we force him awake, could it affect his brain?” Deng Yuqi asked.
To be honest, if conditions allowed, she wouldn’t mind Shen Ge taking this opportunity to get some good rest. But the Asian Conference on Weird Studies was about to start soon, and on top of that, there were issues at the United Hotel.
Cheng Shengnan and Yang Yuxin had gone missing. Judging by the opened weird sleeping bag in their room, the Yun’er who had been sent to act as Cheng Shengnan’s bodyguard was also missing.
The creepy thing was, there were no signs of an attack by any strange beings at the scene, and no weird space or weird energy reactions could be detected. It was as if they had vanished into thin air.
Besides those three women, Tu Doubi, also a team leader, was found unconscious at the door of their room. Strangely, he was just in a coma, with no visible injuries anywhere on his body.
A whole day had passed, and Tu Doubi showed no signs of waking up, nor was there any news from Cheng Shengnan and the other two. Deng Yuqi had no choice but to try waking Shen Ge to see if he had any insights.
The doctor replied, “At present, the patient’s condition seems fairly stable. The brain’s reaction looks more like it’s been hit with a huge amount of stimulating information in a short time. But I’m not sure if forcing him awake would cause problems. My personal advice is to take a more conservative approach: observe him for a while first, or transfer him to a large hospital for monitoring.”
In fact, after finishing the first examination, the doctor had already suggested moving Shen Ge to a hospital, since the equipment there would be more comprehensive. But on one hand, Shen Ge’s condition still needed to be kept ‘confidential,’ and on the other hand, the Strange Being Organization had been keeping an eye on him, so it was hard to guarantee they wouldn’t take the chance to strike.
While Deng Yuqi and the doctor were still discussing how to handle Shen Ge’s situation, Li Xiang was over to the side, scanning Shen Ge with a strangely shaped instrument. Then, he took a small box about the size of a music box from his suitcase, opened it on the bed, and took out a bottle filled with red liquid and a syringe.
“Wait a minute, Dr. Li, what exactly are you planning to do?” The doctor quickly stopped Li Xiang when he saw him preparing to inject an unknown substance into Shen Ge.
Li Xiang came from a long line of traditional Chinese medicine practitioners and had been serving the Jiang family for generations. In his own generation, he integrated Chinese and Western medicine. After becoming a chief physician at a major hospital, the Jiang family paid a large sum to bring him back.
As the saying goes, ‘One who eats the ruler’s bread must worry about the ruler’s troubles.’ From their earlier conversation, the doctor knew that Shen Ge was a ‘distinguished guest’ of the Jiang family, while Li Xiang was just a physician traveling with them. At a time like this, he certainly couldn’t let him do whatever he wanted. If something went wrong and the Jiang family blamed him, that would be a real injustice.
Deng Yuqi didn’t stop Li Xiang, but she stepped forward and asked, “Is this… that thing you mentioned from the file you showed me earlier? Has it been successfully developed now?”
Li Xiang shook his head. “Only half successful… but for now, it looks like it’s combined with some weird… ahem, everyone, there are some things we need to discuss. Would you mind waiting outside for a moment?”
The doctor looked displeased when he heard that. He was about to scoff at Li Xiang—a mere physician—for daring to speak so boldly in the Jiang family home, even asking the Jiang family members to leave?
Buddy, do you know whose villa this is?
But before the doctor could get a word of mockery out, Jiang Jing herself took the initiative to usher everyone out, leaving only Deng Yuqi, Li Xiang, and the others from the Special Strategy Department.
As the doctor left, he was still reeling from the shock. The fact that the patient was receiving such special care from the Jiang family had already made him intensely curious about the man’s identity. Now, a mere physician could even have a say in the Jiang family’s own home… These people definitely weren’t just ordinary ‘guests’!
The doctor recalled that while he and Li Xiang had been examining Shen Ge, Jiang Jing had said something about him cooperating with Li Xiang. He had thought she was just being ‘modest’ at the time, but now it seemed… she really meant it?
He was a chief specialist, wait a minute!
An image from a news broadcast flashed through the doctor’s mind—a poster of Shen Ge flickered by for a moment—and he suddenly realized who that unconscious man was!
The number one weird investigator in all of Great Tianchao!
“So that means all of those people are from the Special Strategy Department!” The doctor finally recognized Deng Yuqi and the others’ identities. In Great Tianchao these days, or more accurately, all over the world, people from counter-weird departments had a higher status. Not just on the same level—someone from a counter-weird department, even if they were technically a lower rank, still had more authority than people in other departments.
That’s just how it was, with weird disasters sweeping the world; the people who could deal with the uncanny naturally had more confidence in their words!
Remembering how he had looked down on Li Xiang a bit while talking to him earlier, the doctor wanted to ask if it was too late to apologize now…
Just then, Wang Han entered with two counter-weird warriors and stopped the doctor who was about to leave the Jiang residence. “Sir, because this matter is of great importance… I’m afraid you’ll have to stay at the Jiangs’ place for a couple of days.”
“Huh?”
The doctor was stunned. The very thing he had been most worried about had happened. With Asia’s top weird investigator in a coma, there was no way the Special Strategy Department would let him just walk away.
…
Meanwhile, Deng Yuqi and Li Xiang were still discussing the ‘Strange Being Sample’ project. This plan had been reported to Deng Yuqi shortly after Jiang Peiwen had extracted the strange being sample from Yun’er, and research had already begun.
Although they called it ‘Strange Being Sample’ research, it wasn’t really about turning ordinary people into strange beings like the Strange Being Organization did. Instead, it was more like the ‘Internal Injury Recovery Pill’—something that could promote highly efficient healing and, to a certain extent, clear the corrosive effects of weird energy from the body.
Strictly speaking, it could be considered a ‘2.0 upgrade’ of the Internal Injury Recovery Pill.
This type of agent had strong self-repair capabilities and could also prevent weird energy erosion to some degree. The reason Li Xiang thought of using this agent was twofold: first, Shen Ge had been taking weird energy agents for a long time, so his body had developed a resistance to their effects, and there might be residual weird energy in his system; second, if this agent couldn’t repair any potential brain damage Shen Ge had, it could at least help clear the effects of weird energy erosion in his body.
“But this method is far too risky. And the doctor just mentioned there are no injuries on Shen Ge at all. His brain is just stimulated, not damaged. What if this agent doesn’t work on him and instead causes a weird energy reaction? What do we do then?” Deng Yuqi asked worriedly.
Li Xiang started to say something, but then held back. He knew this had to be Shen Ge’s ‘secret,’ something he probably hadn’t even told the Minister.
The secret was that while studying Shen Ge’s cells, Li Xiang had detected reactions in his body identical to those of the original strange being cells. In other words, it was possible that Shen Ge had, through some method—or what he called his ‘System’—become the product of the original strange being cells fusing with his own body.
The so-called ‘System’ might just be a figment of Shen Ge’s imagination, a result of psychological issues arising from the fusion with the original strange being cells. Considering Shen Ge’s history of mental illness, it wouldn’t be strange for him to have such ‘fantasies.’
So, Li Xiang had been harboring a ‘big secret’ all along—that Shen Ge was likely the highest-rated strange being he had ever encountered, a high-level strange being that even their current detection devices couldn’t identify.
Once he had that thought, all sorts of previous incidents—the lost weird energy canisters in the lab, the missing weird creature corpses, and the high-level weird creature bodies that were never recovered—finally had an explanation.
As Li Xiang’s research on Shen Ge from various angles increased, and the data he gathered drew closer and closer to that of the original strange being, it only solidified his hypothesis.
He suspected that the reason Shen Ge had fallen into this ‘coma’ was most likely because the strange being cells inside him were fighting for control of his body. In plain terms, Shen Ge’s transformation into a strange being was becoming more and more severe.
After thinking it over, Li Xiang decided to try a rather extreme method: using the strange being cells extracted from Yun’er to suppress Shen Ge’s own strange being cells.
If this method succeeded, it would effectively curb Shen Ge’s progression toward becoming a strange being. If it failed, it would at least help clear some of the uncontrolled weird energy from his system.
Deng Yuqi was hesitant, but there were no better options at the moment. She finally nodded in agreement with Li Xiang’s plan.
After Li Xiang injected Shen Ge with the strange being sample, he began monitoring his condition. Every reading on the detector started spiking.
A weird energy reaction?
According to Li Xiang’s hypothesis, after injecting this new type of agent into Shen Ge, one of two things would happen: either the strange being cells would be successfully suppressed, or the agent would be consumed by the strange being cells, essentially recharging Shen Ge.
But now, a third scenario was appearing. The suppression agent wasn’t being immediately devoured by the strange being cells; instead, the two had entered an intense competition.
This was something Li Xiang had never encountered in thousands of experiments and hundreds of thousands of data simulations. It just went to show that Shen Ge’s condition was far more complex than he had imagined.
“Little Seven, how’s he doing right now?” Li Xiang asked.
Little Seven immediately equipped Shen Ge with a full-body Red Mist Battle Suit, then initiated emergency mode for repairs while conducting a thorough examination.
Li Xiang and Deng Yuqi watched Shen Ge’s trembling body, their hearts full of anxiety. But there was nothing they could do to help at this point; they could only pin their hopes on Little Seven.
Just as Li Xiang, in his desperation, reached out to examine Shen Ge, his hand was suddenly grabbed firmly by Shen Ge’s hand, which had been resting on the bed.
“Old Li, who taught you to inject an unconscious patient with stimulants?” As Shen Ge spoke, the Red Mist Battle Suit slowly receded from his body, revealing his teasing, half-smiling face.
Seeing Shen Ge awake, Deng Yuqi was overjoyed and asked excitedly, “Shen Ge, are you okay? Do you feel any discomfort anywhere else?”
“Except for having more energy than I know what to do with, I haven’t found anything uncomfortable yet,” Shen Ge replied with a helpless smile. And his comment about Li Xiang injecting him with stimulants wasn’t a joke.
This new suppression agent was developed from the strange being cells extracted from Yun’er. The original idea was to combine it with the agent that suppressed Yun’er’s strange being cells. But Yun’er’s strange being cells were originally derived from the original strange being cells themselves. In other words, this was essentially injecting Shen Ge with original strange being cells.
Additionally, the ‘suppression’ effect of this agent was achieved by combining it with a stronger form of weird energy, which then eroded the target’s internal weird energy.
By injecting both of these things into Shen Ge, he was essentially getting both original strange being cells and weird energy—both of which were ‘energy’ sources he needed. Wasn’t that just like a ‘stimulant’?
Most importantly, the reason Shen Ge had fallen into a coma was indeed a problem with his brain, but it wasn’t because his brain had been damaged. It was because too much information had been poured in, causing his brain to ‘crash.’
First of all, those ‘memories’ weren’t just the filling in of missing gaps from one person’s timeline. They were memories generated by countless different personalities being sent into the worlds of those ‘endings’ over and over again through ‘reincarnation.’
Secondly, these memories weren’t something Shen Ge had experienced himself. It was more like forcibly injecting ‘someone else’s’ memories into your mind, making it impossible to tell which memories were your own and which belonged to someone else.
So, Shen Ge’s ‘crash’ resulted from trying to sort through all these memories, organizing his own and storing the ones that weren’t his as mere ‘information.’
This was the reason Shen Ge had been unconscious for several days. But just as he was at his wit’s end trying to deal with this chaotic mess of memories, Li Xiang injected him with an agent that could repair cells.
In the end, Shen Ge chose to cut away the ‘dream fragments’ that had integrated into his brain. To put it simply, he decided to reject these memories and just… not have them!
It wasn’t that these memories were unimportant. It was that there were simply too many of them. It’s like playing a game. You can play through once, twice, three times, and maybe save a few files for the experience and nostalgia.
But if you have hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of save files, to the point where you can’t even tell which one is which, what’s the point?
Moreover, among these memories, the personalities sent into those dream worlds sometimes diverged simply because of a single ‘choice’ leading to a different outcome. But the overall direction of events was still the same. Those kinds of memories were meaningless.
It’s like choosing after work to get a foot soak to wash away the grime of life, or getting a massage to soothe a restless heart. The ‘outcomes’ of different choices might differ, but no matter how different they are, they’re still not Shen Ge’s own ‘experiences.’
After Shen Ge cut away these memories, he used the restorative effects of the strange being agent to consume the dream fragments. In reality, he had already been in the process of doing this for a while, but he had been unable to handle the uncontrolled weird energy. Who would’ve thought that Li Xiang, by pure accident, would solve this problem for him?
Shen Ge sat up, leaned against the headboard, and looked at Deng Yuqi. “Minister, I’m fine now. How long was I out? Has the Asian Conference on Weird Studies started? Are there any developments with the Strange Being Organization?”
Deng Yuqi replied, “From the time we found you until now, you’ve been unconscious for two days. Because of what happened at the Ping An Hotel, the Special Strategy Department is rearranging the conference venue. For now, we don’t know what the Strange Being Organization is up to, but… there was a problem at Director Cheng’s hotel. She, Captain Yang, and Yun’er have all gone missing. There were no signs of a struggle at the scene and no weird energy reactions. The only thing there was Captain Tu collapsed at their door.”
