Chapter 138: Hallucinations Appear

Page 1 of 3

“Nothing useful to do all day, so you sit around making wild guesses.” Katerina sent a voice message, her face dark with displeasure.

“He’s not my boyfriend. I just want you to help me investigate him.”

“Hey, I thought the old tree had finally blossomed.” Zhen Youcai sounded somewhat embarrassed. “I’ll look into him right away.”

“I want to know everything that’s happened to him recently. Be quick,” Katerina instructed.

“Got it, got it...” Zhen Youcai gave her a perfunctory reply, and then fell silent.

Having the boy hold the sparkler had been Katerina’s deliberate test.

The sparkler had shown no reaction whatsoever. That meant the boy was neither possessed by a calamity nor had he come into contact with one.

Otherwise, there would certainly have been traces of calamity aura remaining on him.

This discovery overturned her earlier theory.

“How can you be so certain there’s something wrong with him?” Shi Chengjin asked Katerina, having watched everything unfold.

“Because he wasn’t nervous at all while speaking to me,” Katerina replied calmly.

“What’s wrong with that?” Shi Chengjin asked, puzzled. “I’m not nervous when I talk to you either.”

“You’re different from him.” Katerina smoothed the strands of hair across her forehead.

“A timid boy like him would normally be trembling under my fierce presence, unable even to speak coherently.”

“That is the reaction and attitude one would expect from an inexperienced boy. When speaking to a beauty of my caliber, feeling nervous is the normal response.”

Katerina was not boasting.

When a woman became outstanding enough, everyone who approached her would feel ashamed of themselves.

Not to mention an inexperienced boy like him—even many adults who had already entered society would feel at least somewhat nervous the first time they met her and spoke with her.

“Hmm... You do have a point.” Surprisingly, Shi Chengjin did not argue with her. He merely frowned and fell into thought.

“How about we stop guessing and just let me bring him over for questioning? Wouldn’t that solve everything?”

Seeing Katerina’s gaze grow increasingly hostile, Shi Chengjin hurriedly explained, “Not in the way you’re imagining. We work for a legitimate organization, after all. We can’t do anything illegal.”

When Katerina’s expression shifted from mild to severe, Shi Chengjin continued, “I only planned to stuff my slipper in his face and smother him with it for two minutes. I refuse to believe he still wouldn’t tell the truth.”

“I know assault is illegal, but this doesn’t count. After all, no law specifically says... that suffocating someone with an odor is illegal.”

Katerina stared at Shi Chengjin for a long while before finally refusing. “Forget it. We can’t alert the enemy.”

“Damn, what a bore!” Shi Chengjin looked deeply disappointed, as though he had just missed out on several hundred million.

He really did seem rather eager to try it.

After receiving a negative answer, Shi Chengjin wore an expression of profound disappointment.

After that, Katerina led everyone through the entire school, searching every corner, yet they found nothing unusual.

The object resembling a sparkler had not reacted at all. This proved that the most suspicious place in the school was the outdoor boys’ restroom.

“Looks like we can only stop for now,” Katerina announced. “Continuing to search like this would just be a waste of effort. We’ll have to place our hopes on Zhen Youcai’s progress.”

By then, the sun had already begun to slant westward. After all their searching and commotion, it was now afternoon.

“Hopefully we can finish everything before Yangyang gets out of school,” Katerina murmured. “Otherwise, no one will be there to pick him up.”

Chang Yu regained consciousness in a dark and damp place. The surroundings were pitch-black and gloomy, rather like a haunted house at an amusement park—an oppressive world without daylight.

“Where is this?” Staring into the impenetrable darkness before him, Chang Yu began to question his own reality.

He instinctively tried to stand, only to stagger and nearly fall.

He felt restraints around his arms and thighs. The icy sensation told him that he had been bound.

In the darkness, Chang Yu lowered his head and strained to make out the object restraining him.

It was an extremely thick iron chain, roughly the width of three of his fingers.

Chains this thick were generally used at construction sites to haul building materials. They had an exceptional load-bearing capacity and could easily lift several tons of materials.

Now, this heavy-duty chain was wrapped firmly around both his hands and feet, leaving him unable to move.

Page 1 of 3

Page 2 of 3

Chang Yu struggled several times before realizing that he had been chained to an iron pillar.

Was this... some kind of bondage-and-punishment play?

Good grief. Were people these days really this adventurous?

“Is anyone there?” he shouted.

His voice echoed through the empty surroundings, but no one answered.

It seemed that at this moment, his only companions were solitude and... endless darkness.

“Hey! Is anyone there or not?” Chang Yu shouted again, unwilling to give up, as though trying to drive away the unease in his heart.

“If someone’s here, make a sound! If no one’s here, make a sound too!”

A long time passed, yet no one replied. Only then did Chang Yu finally abandon all hope of calling for help.

He had awakened abruptly in a completely unfamiliar place and been bound with iron chains.

Unable to move freely, he was like a prisoner locked in a cell, forced to await his fate and the judgment of his enemies.

Anyone trapped in such surroundings would feel fear and anxiety.

Chang Yu was no saint. He was not capable of remaining perfectly calm in the face of danger.

He had emotions and desires like anyone else; faced with such peril, he naturally felt uneasy and afraid.

But he forced himself to calm down, refusing to let those negative emotions consume him and rob him of his reason.

No matter the circumstances, a person should remain clear-headed—even when trapped in a place like this.

Gradually, his eyes began to adapt to the darkness. The surroundings were no longer an indistinguishable void.

The place appeared to be some sort of cellar. The ceiling and the walls on both sides were built from thick concrete.

Perhaps because it was old, the red paint brushed over the concrete had begun to peel.

Flakes of red paint that had fallen from the walls and ceiling were scattered across the floor, giving it a mottled appearance.

The space here was quite large. Chang Yu could even feel air moving through it.

He knew that this cellar must be connected to various passageways; otherwise, there would be no wind.

That was good news, because wind meant there had to be another exit.

If he could break free of the chains around him, he could follow the direction from which the wind came and find the exit, saving himself.

At that moment, he suddenly noticed that he was not the only person trapped there.

Iron pillars identical to the one behind him stood scattered in the distance, and four people were bound to them.

Perhaps he had not yet adjusted to the darkness, which was why he had failed to notice them earlier.

Narrowing his eyes, he strained to see their faces.

Thanks to the improved vision brought about by the growth of his soul power, Chang Yu soon made out their features.

The four people were arranged in an arc. The first two were wearing school uniforms and were clearly students from the school.

The other two wore ordinary casual clothing. Judging from their height and builds, they were obviously adults.

Without exception, every one of them had dark circles around their eyes, sunken cheeks, and an extremely haggard appearance.

The two students in particular were thin as skeletons, as though they had suffered from prolonged malnutrition. Their bodies were desiccated, without the slightest hint of vitality.

Their condition was almost comparable to that of the con man named Hu whom Chang Yu had encountered last time.

But Hu had become that way only after the calamity possessing the armor drained away a tremendous amount of his vital essence.

What had caused these four people to become like this?

Chang Yu was not foolish enough to believe that they had simply grown thin from enduring prolonged hunger.

Setting aside the two students in school uniforms, Chang Yu already had a vague idea of the identities of the other two.

They were probably his colleagues—the two investigators who had disappeared early that morning.

Even if they had been brought here and bound since morning, starving them for a single day would not have made them this emaciated.

Clearly, there had to be another reason.

He vaguely remembered what had happened before he lost consciousness. At the time, he had been walking behind Katerina.

Page 2 of 3

Page 3 of 3

As he walked, he had felt an itch on his neck. His mind had suddenly become dizzy, and all his ability to think had seemed to vanish into a blank.

He had discovered that there were no other paths around him. The open ground on both sides had turned into steep cliffs, leaving only a narrow mountain trail before him.

At the time, he had been able to do nothing but follow Katerina along that trail on instinct.

Since he had been incapable of thought, it had never occurred to him how strange the situation was.

But now that he thought about it, he had clearly been at the school. Apart from the boys’ restroom, there had only been the athletic field nearby.

How could there possibly have been cliffs on both sides? This was a city, not a mountain wilderness.

Unless he had been hallucinating?

The situation was remarkably similar to a story Grandpa Dean had told him when he was a child.

Children were never to approach strangers. If a stranger tried to give them candy or food, they must never eat it.

And if a stranger tried to touch a child’s head or pat the child’s shoulder, the child must not let him.

Because such people might be roving child snatchers.

These child snatchers were vicious human traffickers who specialized in drugging children who were unguarded around outsiders.

They usually smeared drugs on their hands. As long as their hands touched a child’s body, the child would be drugged into submission.

Once drugged, the child’s mind and body would be brought under control, leaving him no choice but to obediently follow the trafficker away.

Those who were luckier might be sold to childless families and raised as someone’s son or daughter.

Those with bad luck would end up with all four limbs crippled and be forced to beg along the streets.

Every day, such children had to hand over a sufficient amount of begging money. Otherwise, they would be beaten with sticks and abused day and night.

Chang Yu suspected that he had fallen victim to precisely such a trick. His condition at the time had matched the methods of those child snatchers Grandpa Dean had described.

At that thought, Chang Yu could not help asking himself:

Who had brought him here? Why could he remember nothing?

Although he, Chang, was merely a minor D-rank member of the Calamity Investigation Bureau, he was not someone others could bully with impunity.

At the very least, he was the direct heir of an orthodox sect, personally taught by a powerful master.

He had cultivated an orthodox technique that cleansed and tempered his marrow, and had entered the ranks of Qi Condensation cultivators at a young age.

With a single punch, he could exceed the limits of human strength. Even Tyson’s world-class punches could not compare with a casual strike from him.

If someone had truly ambushed him, he refused to believe that he could have been knocked unconscious and carried here without even the slightest chance to resist.

Well... even if he really had been outmatched, they should at least have given him enough time to call for help.

How had he ended up being brought here in such a muddled fashion?

Chang Yu carefully went over everything that had happened before he lost consciousness.

He vaguely remembered a mosquito landing on his neck.

He had swatted it away, but afterward the mosquito had flown back and landed on his shoulder.

At the time, he had even wondered why there were so many mosquitoes in the boys’ restroom.

“Could it be that I started hallucinating only after being bitten by that mosquito?” At that moment, Chang Yu’s inner Sherlock Holmes possessed him once more.

The one thing that had distinguished Chang Yu from Katerina and the others was that he had been harassed by that mosquito.

“Could this mosquito not only drink blood, but also secrete saliva capable of causing hallucinations?”

“I hallucinated at the time and kept seeing Katerina moving back and forth before me.”

“Because my mind was so muddled, I instinctively followed behind her.”

“But the person I actually saw wasn’t Katerina. If she had really been leading me, she would never have brought me to a place like this.”

“So I must have been lured in another direction and separated from my companions.”

Chang Yu found it difficult to believe his own deduction, but the facts before him left him no choice.

Just as he was puzzling over the matter, Chang Yu soon learned why the bodies of these people had become so shriveled.

End of Chapter

m.Read Books — Fastest updates. Dear readers, remember to bookmark us!

Page 3 of 3