Chapter 242: Brainwashing

The room was empty of people, and Anthony was eager to greedily savor everything that had once belonged to Xie Qingcheng.

Although the brainwashing was still ongoing and He Yu was connected to many tubes, Anthony didn't dare truly do anything. But under the pretext of soothing and hypnotizing He Yu, he found himself inexplicably drawn closer, sitting down in the chair facing the unconscious He Yu.

He leaned into He Yu's embrace, and that stolen sense of ecstasy surged up again. A flash of inspiration struck him, and in that position, he pressed on He Yu's shoulders, deliberately mimicking the posture he'd once seen Xie Qingcheng take in videos.

This act of imitation made him feel as though he had already become his cousin, and his face flushed crimson with excitement.

Nothing had even happened, yet he still tilted his head back, lost in a dreamlike trance, letting out a long, self-indulgent sigh—he was far too intoxicated by the pleasure of replacing Xie Qingcheng.

Replace him... replace him! If he could replace Xie Qingcheng today, tomorrow he could replace Duan Wen too!

He had once had nothing, but from now on he would surely obtain everything he desired.

Xie Qingcheng... had once stood above this man. He experienced his brother's perspective, pondered his brother's inner thoughts, and his parched, twisted soul was deeply nourished by this false sense of fulfillment.

"Little brat... that's what my brother called you, isn't it?" Anthony moved his hand to He Yu's cheek, lifting his face, hypnotizing and soothing him with a perverse tenderness.

"See, I can call you that too. Everything you yearn for, I can give you... little by little, accept all our ideals..."

"Come to my side and you won't hurt anymore. Stop resisting and you won't hurt anymore..."

As Anthony spoke, he glanced sideways at the monitor readings. The readings were shifting in a most satisfying way. His hypnosis was working.

Anthony couldn't help but feel a surge of excitement.

It seemed he could persuade He Yu through this kind of gentle hypnosis after all. That would be ideal—no need for too much violence, and if the brainwashing was done this way, He Yu would surely become very dependent on him after waking up.

"I've bet everything on you alone. Don't you dare disappoint me... He Yu." Anthony pressed his face close to He Yu, who lay unconscious on the electric chair, whispering sinisterly by his cheek.

"You will seize everything I desire for me... and personally kill the person I hate most. Understand?"

His fingertips traced He Yu's pale cheek, then dropped to slowly circle over the young man's chest.

Anthony's eyes gleamed with a perverse intimacy and fervor: "Kill him for me, get everything for me, and then sleep with me... let me have everything he had. That's the least you can do to repay me for saving you, for soothing you."

"Your life was given by me. You should be grateful, my adorable treasure."

He was like a venomous snake, desperately wanting to coil around him, greedily draining from him everything he craved.

The medical monitoring equipment beside them kept changing its readings, red light casting over half of Anthony's twisted face like a slosh of gushing blood.

He grinned like a madman: "Hurry up and finish the transformation... wake up soon... hurry..."

His hand pressed on the blood-gu insect mechanism at He Yu's chest, applying slight force so that the mechanism sank deeper. He Yu seemed stimulated, letting out a hoarse muffled groan in his coma.

The monitor's number representing intracranial consciousness kept dropping.

Anthony's mouth stretched wider and wider: "Yes... just like that... accept all the brainwashing... all of it..."

He applied even more force. He Yu's mouth, bound beneath the black anti-bite muzzle, parted slightly, revealing stark white teeth. He convulsed violently in unconscious agony, trembling, his lips opening and closing between gasps as if murmuring something.

"What are you saying, my good child?" Anthony's eyes glittered with excitement as he pressed his face extremely close, leaning in to listen.

"...Xie..." A moment later, the delight on Anthony's face vanished completely.

His face suddenly turned extremely gloomy, one could even say ferocious.

Because he heard that under such intense brainwashing pressure, He Yu was still murmuring the name that made his teeth itch with hatred.

—"Xie Qingcheng..." He was still murmuring Xie Qingcheng's name!! Xie Qingcheng... Xie Qingcheng!!

So it was because he had mistaken him for Xie Qingcheng during the hypnosis that he had been so subconsciously cooperative...

The consciousness monitoring number had already fallen below single digits, and yet He Yu was still calling out to that person!

Why? Was that person his last bridge to this world, his final thread?! Did everything he'd just been thinking amount to nothing but his own delusions?!

Anthony abruptly straightened and stood up, looking down from above at the young man bound tightly to the electric chair.

Too humiliating... utterly humiliating!

A towering rage burned through his heart like a wildfire sweeping across dry fields. His face was completely shadowed. Then, without warning, he raised his hand and slapped He Yu viciously across the face, nearly knocking the anti-bite muzzle clean off.

"Since you won't take the toast, you can drink the penalty! You cheap bastard!"

"Listen to me carefully... from now on, there is no more Xie Qingcheng. There is only me—Xie Lishen!"

He grabbed He Yu by the lapels, jealousy and hatred dancing wildly in his eyes.

"Only me! Understand? Do you understand?! You worthless piece of trash!"

Anthony panted heavily. Gentle brainwashing... mild soothing... A waste of time... It was all just a waste of time! He gave up. He found it utterly sickening! He should have gone rough from the very start!

Burning with jealousy and rage, Anthony gritted his teeth: "You brought this on yourself... He Yu... you brought it on yourself! You can't blame me!" With that, he raised his hand and slammed it down hard on the brainwashing dial of the electric chair, instantly cranking the power to the maximum setting that would inflict unbearable agony on its recipient!

This kind of brainwashing was brutally crude, with enough power to shatter the consciousness of over a hundred people.

He Yu's entire body jolted upward, only to be yanked back down by the restraining ropes. This violent reaction repeated itself over and over in rapid succession. Electric current tore through every cell of his body, slicing through every inch of his flesh and blood.

"You brought this on yourself!!" Anthony roared at him.

Pierced by the electric current, He Yu's eyes suddenly snapped open. He convulsed ceaselessly in agony that no normal person could endure. His five viscera burned, his organs ground to pulp, and inside his mind it felt as though steel pillars were being hammered down one after another, crushing and burying the pitifully few beautiful years he had.

Those years, from childhood to now, had always, in one way or another, been tied to Xie Qingcheng.

Flipping through the entire book of his life, only that person—whether cold or gentle—had always treated him as an equal.

Only that person had always looked at him as an ordinary human being.

"Xie... ge..." His withered lips leaked out this fractured sound in a murmur.

Only that person knew his danger and still would hold him when his illness struck. "Xie... Qingcheng..."

The whole world saw him as a rare medical case, caged him like a wild beast. Only in those calm, sharp phoenix eyes—even when they were angry—what was reflected was truly, genuinely, He Yu's own face.

Only him... In this life, only him... "Xie... Doctor...!"

The power gauge reached its limit. Countless invisible steel pillars drove into his mind, whipping up a towering storm! He wailed and screamed and struggled endlessly within the waves... He wanted to stop that sky-supporting pillar of thought from crushing down upon the only warmth he had.

In his twenty-three years in this world, only one person had ever truly been kind to him! Don't... don't tear it apart... don't bury his feelings... don't!!

The monitor shrieked wildly. Anthony's face twisted grotesquely, nearly suffocating him with bone-breaking, sinew-shattering agony!

Within his own consciousness, he was like a single grain of sand in the vast sea, yet he fought against a pillar of heaven, a mayfly shaking a tree. He guarded his one and only... but he could no longer hold on. That was power enough to destroy the minds of hundreds...

How could mere flesh and blood contend with that? He trembled, he roared, and blood seeped from all seven orifices of his face.

Eyes, ears, nose, throat—all stained crimson... At last, the electric chair reached its maximum output and abruptly lost power.

He Yu's head drooped, and he collapsed motionless onto the torture chair. The intracranial consciousness monitoring value finally, as Anthony had wished, fell to a blood-red zero.

Scorched smoke dispersed. The soul was sliced away.

That steel pillar in his mind had finally been driven to the very depths. In his subconscious, he refused to let go of his Doctor Xie, and so the true He Yu was buried together with Xie Qingcheng at the deepest recesses of his consciousness, pinned down by Mandela's pillar of thought.

Like that year's Pacific storm, when he sank into the sea, plunged into the abyss.

He was greedy, wanting to be with the one he loved forever. He dared not be greedy, only wanting to be with the one he loved forever.

In the Pacific war, no one could grant him that wish.

But at least this time, within this brainwashing, within his own consciousness, he could grant it to himself.

—Xie Qingcheng, I will only disappear when you disappear... If they want to take you away, then I will protect you until the very last moment.

Thinking this, cradling all his love for Xie Qingcheng, deep within his mind he embraced Xie Qingcheng, sank into darkness, and closed his eyes...

"Beep, beep, beep..." Amid the monitor's buzzing, the young man lay collapsed on the chair in a sorry state.

The love and obsession in his mind, his tenderness and innocence, were ultimately, under this mechanical brainwashing that could torture a normal person to death, sealed away beneath a vast ocean.

All self-awareness was washed away... All emotions were cruelly stripped from him.

His final call had been Xie Qingcheng's name, spoken with what remained of his tenderness and clarity.

Blood and tears streamed down the young man's pale cheeks. He loved him, to the very last moment. To the depths of the sea.

To the end of the whale's fall. Until one second before He Yu's consciousness reading hit zero, he still refused to forget this love.

Those three characters, Xie Qingcheng, had been He Yu's final attachment to the world. .

After Duan Wen and Anthony each went their separate ways, Duan Cuizhen lay alone in the highest laboratory.

Her eyes open, she fiddled with the brainwave device she had just finished perfecting.

Youth, health, life—these were the most beautiful things in the world. Many young people didn't understand this. They lived in the prime of their years and took it for granted, and because they took it for granted, they never treasured it.

But she craved it.

Perhaps in the face of a great crisis, everyone couldn't help but look back at the past, and even Duan Cuizhen was no exception. So the woman who almost never reminisced actually found herself recalling her younger days now...

She remembered that before going to Huzhou to study, she had been a miserable cowherd and shepherdess in the Duan family village. Looking up, the sky was shrouded in dust. Looking down, the earth was furrowed with ravines. Everything she saw was gray and yellow.

It was a letter of admission from Huzhou University that let her ride the green train and see for the first time the world of dazzling lights and wine, and put on a scarlet red dress.

There, she gradually became modern in her thinking. On her birthday one year, she went to a portrait studio and begged the owner to color her photograph in the brightest shades—

"Make the dress pretty, a bright red exactly like the one I'm wearing." Her eyes sparkled as she said to the owner. "A twentieth birthday only happens once. Please print two extra copies. I want to give them away."

The owner gave a knowing smile: "Sending them home, are we?" "Home?" She smiled coyly. "No, this is my home now!"

She refused to acknowledge that impoverished village in Qingli County, those parents who had more children than they could feed. She had barely escaped—Huzhou was her home.

But she couldn't bear to keep her sweet secret bottled up inside, so she whispered mysteriously to the owner: "I'm giving it to my sweetheart, so it has to be beautiful. Uncle, please help me."

Few men could bear to refuse the coquettish plea of a fragrant, blushing young girl.

The photograph came out beautifully indeed. The owner had carefully colored it, the dress vivid as a rose, her long hair like clouds of darkness, her lips a single touch of crimson, frozen forever at twenty.

She held the photograph, overjoyed, thanking him profusely, paid, and hurried off toward the campus.

She was going to give this photograph, along with the most tender spring of her youth, to that Professor Zhou from the medical school. A brilliant young scholar returned from America—who wouldn't admire him? Everyone's eyes were full of adoration, but he only ever liked her.

Her red dress had been bought by Mr. Zhou. He took her dancing, told her stories of America, and when he saw her rosy lips part in surprise, he would laugh and say: Zhenzhen, later when I open a laboratory in America, will you come?

He asked with utter confidence, because he knew she would surely be willing.

In those days, modern young people craved harmonious unions and free love, and that was exactly what they had. Of course she knew he still had a wife at home, but that had nothing to do with love—merely a matter of parental arrangement from the old society. She didn't spare a single glance for that foot-bound first wife, just as Mr. Zhou never took seriously this relic of the old world.

She knew in her heart, they would certainly divorce!

Clutching the photograph, the young girl went to a little island in the middle of a lake on campus. The place was overgrown with weeds, untended, filled with dense reeds—it was where she and Mr. Zhou often met.

The photograph was given that night. Because Mr. Zhou's elderly mother was ill, he had to return north to his hometown. Reluctant to part, they confessed their feelings under the moon and among the flowers.

But in the end, he still had to go.

She was clever enough to leave him her most beautiful photograph. The girl in it was young and radiant, his soulmate, forever calling him back. She was certain he would return quickly.

Duan Cuizhen miscalculated.

Less than half a month after Mr. Zhou left, war erupted once more. The front lines shifted north. This land, long battered by conflict, had barely stopped bleeding its tears, its century-old wounds still tearing open. People were like weeds, lives like floating duckweed, from south to north, nowhere to find peace.

This land was being torn apart and separated. How could people escape the same fate? Mr. Zhou wrote to say he couldn't return for now.

Duan Cuizhen said, then I'll wait. She waited three years.

Mr. Zhou's letters went from several a month, to one every few months, and then silence for a long time. She grew so anxious she couldn't eat or drink, couldn't focus on her studies, her research abandoned.

Finally a short letter came. The handwriting was still elegant, but the words were those of a stranger.

"Mother has passed away. After much deliberation at home, due to my elder brother's position, there will be no peace here. Friends have urged me repeatedly, and I will move the family to Honolulu. My wife has borne me a son. I cannot bear to wrong you, Zhenzhen. There are countless things I cannot say—I can only ask you not to think of me."

His wife had borne him a son? His wife had borne him a son? When had that happened? Why had he never said a word?

At first she was utterly unwilling to accept it. She wrote letter after letter of entreaty, throwing away even her dignity for that foolish love, saying she would accept even being a concubine. She was mad with longing, mad with longing. If only he hadn't been married when she met him! Perhaps then he wouldn't have been so heartless! Every day she returned to their meeting place, waiting without leaving, praying for a miracle, praying heaven would pity her. But in the end, it was only "the beauty gone, no one knows where; peach blossoms still smile in the spring breeze!"

The letters were sent, but there was never a reply.

When a postman finally came to visit, what he handed her was a stack of dead letters—the address was empty, the family had moved across the ocean to Honolulu. At least that much wasn't a lie.

Duan Cuizhen's youth withered away, spent entirely on waiting.

But all her waiting yielded in the end was a stack of returned letters mocking her.

The war eventually ended. No one anymore lamented "the nation broken, mountains and rivers remain." The streets were filled with classmates who had changed into green army uniforms, cheering. She wandered dazedly through the crowd, wearing a red dress that clashed with everything around her. As she walked, she went from loud sobbing to loud laughter.

When she'd cried enough and laughed enough, she fell gravely ill, as though she'd died once.

Huzhou University said she had neglected her studies and advised her to withdraw.

When she recovered, she put on the green army uniform that was all the rage among the students. For a moment, everyone seemed to become the same military green, indistinguishable from one another.

There was no light in her eyes. She was very calm.

"Comrade, could you give me two more months of observation enrollment? I was immature before. Now I know I was wrong. I have nothing left—only this education. Can you give me one more chance? I... won't let you down."

The department head pushed up his thick tortoiseshell glasses and studied her: "You're really more suited to studying abroad. Maybe you should find an opportunity to go overseas. Our university isn't quite right for you."

"I don't want to go abroad." Her expression turned ice-cold in an instant, as if "abroad" meant one place and one place only—Honolulu.

"I'll stay right here. I can change. You can reform me. I'm willing to be reformed." A deep, terrifying light flickered in her eyes.

"I'll stay here. I won't waste a single second of what's left. Trust me, one day I'll do better than all those labs out there."

The department head looked at her and, for no reason he could name, felt goosebumps rise all over his skin...

Duan Cuizhen sat in the laboratory, thinking of those years now as distant as a past life.

She thought coldly, her life had only truly gotten on the right track from that day on, hadn't it?

Men, women... anything at all could be used. From then on, she devoted herself to scientific research, preserving life and youth. To gain better opportunities, she would give up anything. She wanted to climb higher, sought a stepping stone, so she married and bore a daughter her husband never loved. She arranged to have the girl sent to their hometown in Qingli County, so as not to offend the wealthy businessman's eyes.

Later her husband died—all to the good. Duan Cuizhen had complete freedom and wealth, and went further and further down this inhuman path.

To this day, she felt she had completed her evolution. Humanity—that dragging, clinging thing—was to her like a snake's shed skin: something once possessed, but now utterly absurd and useless.

What she pursued was the leading position in the Third Industrial Revolution, to be the controller of the metaverse, to be the creator god wielding life and death over countless souls.

For that, she needed a longer life, younger flesh and blood. She had already walked seventy years. She could keep walking.

Those who refused to obediently accompany her forward would all pay the price. Her foolish daughter had. Jiang Liping had... even Duan Wen would.

In a person's life, love is the hardest thing to break. To keep Duan Wen from following in his mother's footsteps, she had made his classmate die tragically before things could even begin. Where did he think the sharp object in Li Yun's room came from? Did he truly believe it was all coincidence?

After Li Yun's death, she knew Duan Wen suspected her, but it no longer mattered. To revive Li Yun, he would have to protect Mandela. Only this island's unconstrained high technology could fulfill his wish...

As long as a person had needs, they had weaknesses. They pinned their hopes on this island, and whether they revered her or hated her, they had no choice but to protect her.

"Grandmother!!" The earpiece crackled, and Anthony's voice suddenly came through.

Duan Cuizhen opened her eyes, pulling herself back from her flood of thoughts: "What is it?"

"He's awake... He Yu is awake!!" Anthony's voice was barely containing his excitement. "The blood-gu diffusion device succeeded! Just now!!"

"Turn on the video. I've brought him to the training room, and I'm sending you the test record from there!"

Duan Cuizhen immediately switched on the display screen beside her and tuned to the training room channel.

A crystal-clear recording was indeed transmitted—

He Yu was indeed awake. His face was pale with a hint of sinister pallor. He stood in the training room, a silver ornament for brain control pressed tightly against the flesh beside his left ear.

And at his chest, the rhomboid device diffusing the blood-gu's influence was glowing faintly. He Yu glanced once at the camera, his gaze completely unfocused.

That was the state of one who had been fully brainwashed. He asked Anthony: "Tell me. What do you want me to do."

Anthony's voice came trembling slightly from behind the lens: "Try giving a command—at... at those people in the distance."

The camera lifted, tracking toward the dozen or so captives restrained by guards at the far end of the training room. From the image, they could be seen to be extremely far from He Yu—far beyond the un-scoped firing distance of a sniper rifle.

He Yu looked over carelessly and asked Anthony again: "What command. Take their lives?"

Anthony did know that captives were hard to come by. Although he desperately wanted to see the most thrilling scene, he still said: "No, have them all kneel—quick, try it!"

He Yu turned his gaze to those captives. He seemed to find it far too simple, his manner utterly languid.

In the tense atmosphere that made everyone else hold their breath, He Yu merely tilted his head slightly, his lips barely parting, as if giving a command through that silver earpiece—and in an instant—

More than a dozen soldiers in the distance all collapsed, kneeling on the ground, as though an invisible giant hand had in that very moment pressed them all flat against the floor, their foreheads touching the cold brick!

The movement was as synchronized as if it had been rehearsed a thousand times. His control over each of them was simultaneous, without a single second's discrepancy, and not one of them could escape...

The recording ended.

Anthony's excited voice continued from the earpiece: "Grandmother... did you see that? The training room is too small, and these people are too few. But the numbers on the test sheet show that with the diffusion of this device, his blood-gu can control at least three hundred people at once! With a reaction time of only 0.1 seconds!"

Duan Cuizhen stared at the frozen frame on the screen and said to Anthony: "Contact Duan Wen. Send the blood-gu to the front lines."

Her gaze was neither cold nor cruel—it simply contained no humanity whatsoever. "Let the Dream Breakers slaughter one another."

"Yes! I'll arrange it right away!"

Anthony hung up, his eyes gleaming with wild excitement. In stark contrast, in the training room, He Yu's almond-shaped eyes were cold and unruffled.

The controller Mandela had installed in his chest was still continuously reinforcing the brainwashing.

His eyes had come to resemble Duan Cuizhen's—eyes that clearly remembered everything, yet were indifferent to everything.

Aside from the faith of Mandela, nothing else mattered anymore.

"Grandmother wants us to go to the front lines." Anthony said, swiftly activating the protective equipment specially designed for He Yu. It too was a newly invented special device—a portable, follow-type lightweight bulletproof shield with artillery functions. Under the audio-visual obfuscation, to normal eyes it would appear exaggerated as something like a heavy mech—utterly terrifying and imposing.

Anthony said: "Let's go." He Yu didn't move. He remained looking out the window. Anthony: "What is it?"

"I remember I still have a meeting I never attended." At these words, Anthony immediately grew wary, looking at him with guarded eyes.

He Yu stood there quietly for a moment. A faint ripple of his own thoughts passed over him, but was silently suppressed again by the forceful brainwashing of the interference device.

"It doesn't matter anymore." At last he straightened up, adjusted his cufflinks, and walked toward Anthony. "Seems like, at this point, it wasn't anything important after all."

Anthony let out a breath of relief, slowly exhaling: "...Right."

He Yu pushed open the door and stepped out, light and shadow cutting mottled patterns across his face with the open and close of the door, shining into his placid, unrippling eyes: "Let's go."

. Meanwhile, in the underground holding cell, the cloned Lu Yuzhu's eyes went wide.

Even though her emotions had been dulled, she was still shaken by what Xie Qingcheng had just said to her. "You... are you sure?"

"If you don't believe me, you can have Duan Wen verify it himself. Given his obsession with the First Emperor, he would rather be wrong than let it go, wouldn't he."

Cloned Lu Yuzhu: "..."

Xie Qingcheng raised his face, which was almost drained of color: "Have Duan Wen come see me. I will give him what he wants."