Caution

After discovering that he couldn't record His name no matter what he tried, Xu Chen realized there was nothing he could do.

Grandpa Yang had also told him not to spread it.

Given that, Xu Chen thought it best to keep his lips sealed.

Someone knocked on the door.

Xu Chen went over and opened it. Captain Chu stood outside.

He looked at Xu Chen, concern on his face. "Xu Chen, are you all right? You look terrible."

Xu Chen didn't know what he meant, but he shook his head. "I'm fine. I'm perfectly normal..."

"That's good. Now that you can speak again, can you continue telling us what you know?"

Xu Chen hesitated, then thought it over and nodded. "Sure."

"All right. Go to the meeting room we used last time. I'll be there shortly."

"OK."

With that, Xu Chen left.

Captain Chu looked around the room and eventually noticed the letter paper torn into tiny scraps on the table. He sensed that something might have been written on it, so he hurried over to examine the scraps. Finding that they could be pieced together by hand, he carefully picked out those with marks on them.

Not many of the scraps he sorted out had writing on them. He looked them over and thought he might be able to piece some characters together.

After fitting the scraps together along their irregular edges, Captain Chu stared at them in confusion.

The marks on the scraps were written in an unknown script, some kind of pictographic writing with numerous sharp angles and complex curves. They were remarkably similar to what Xu Chen and Old Ge had written before, looking more like a simple doodle than writing.

Though he couldn't read it, he found some wide tape and preserved the scraps, then ordered a soldier to deliver them to the Think Tank...

Xu Chen waited a long time in the empty meeting room before Captain Chu finally arrived.

He pulled out a notebook and looked at Xu Chen. "I won't waste words. Once we're done with the questions, that'll be it. Your compensation will be transferred to you when you leave."

Xu Chen nodded.

"All right. At the last meeting, you seemed to be about to say something, and then you couldn't make a sound. We checked afterward and found that it was as if a stretch of time had been dug out of the meeting room. Do you know what happened?"

He thought about it. It was hard to be certain about this question; he was completely baffled himself. "I don't know."

Captain Chu nodded in understanding. "All right, then tell me what you were going to say."

Xu Chen looked around. Captain Chu was the only one there. He hadn't intended to say it, but with only one person present, he couldn't help considering it.

"I can answer that, but I'm afraid you won't believe me."

Captain Chu smiled. "I'm only responsible for asking questions and taking notes. Just say what you have to say."

"All right. Actually, I wasn't just going to say something. I'd already said it."

"Hm?" Captain Chu was a little surprised. "Then what did you say?"

"I said a name."

"What name?"

"Captain Chu, you must have seen and heard a lot to reach your position, right?"

Captain Chu looked at Xu Chen, unsure why he had brought it up. "I've taken part in many battles. You could say that."

"All right, then have you heard this story?"

"Go ahead. Try not to make it too long. There's no recorder here now, so I have to write it down myself."

Xu Chen glanced at Captain Chu's notebook and gave a mysterious smile. "The story goes that an American psychologist named Martin Gallard conducted an experiment.

Before a condemned prisoner was executed, a judge took him into a dark room, blindfolded him, tied him to a bed, and told him he might bleed to death. Then he had someone draw a piece of wood across the prisoner's left wrist. Next, he turned on a faucet and let water drip into a copper basin beneath the bed, making a plinking sound. The dripping slowed from fast to slow.

The prisoner became terrified. He felt a sharp pain in his wrist and thought his blood was slowly draining away. A day later, the judge returned and found the prisoner dead. Monitoring records showed that the symptoms of death were the same as those of death from blood loss, but in fact, he hadn't lost a single drop of blood."

Captain Chu wrote furiously and eventually finished recording it. He frowned as he looked it over. "What, are you trying to tell us it might have something to do with psychology?"

"No, what I'm trying to get across is, could there be a kind of harmful information that can affect the human body, even kill someone?"

Captain Chu was momentarily stunned. He thought there was no need to dwell on it. It was obviously impossible. Even Xu Chen's story was just something people passed around; it hadn't been verified.

A moment later, his expression suddenly changed.

He was still wearing an earpiece. Whenever he spoke with Xu Chen, the Think Tank on the other end provided him with all kinds of information. Just now, the people in the Think Tank had told Captain Chu that it was possible.

That was because it was true of the comatose "Taihao" patients Captain Chu was responsible for.

"And there's the rubber hand illusion... That one is real. If you hide a real hand and put a realistic rubber hand in its place within your field of vision, then use two small brushes to repeatedly stroke the real hand and the fake hand in sync, in the end, although you can clearly understand that it's a fake hand, an external object, you involuntarily and irresistibly feel as though it's your real hand and accept it as part of your body.

"You'll feel the touch of the small brush coming from the rubber hand. If you're asked to point to your real hand with your other hand, you'll mostly point to the rubber hand too.

"If the fake hand is struck with a hammer or pricked with a needle, the recorded skin conductance response and the areas of the brain activated on a functional MRI scan are the same as when the real hand is stimulated.

"All of this has to do with the information people receive."

"All right, I get it. Stop telling little stories. If I turn in these notes, they'll think I'm padding the word count."

"There's nothing wrong with a little padding." Xu Chen smiled, then looked at Captain Chu in puzzlement. "But you don't seem very surprised. You accepted my idea pretty easily. Did someone tell you about it?"

Captain Chu hesitated. "No comment. Go on."

Xu Chen frowned at Captain Chu and fell silent. The man wasn't being honest or forthcoming. He was probably wearing some kind of transmitting and listening device. If Xu Chen really let something slip, he'd be in serious trouble.

As he showed his displeasure, he was also relieved. Fortunately, he hadn't said it right away, or the people he had never met would likely have been wiped out in one fell swoop.

"I suggest you cooperate. Otherwise..."

Xu Chen looked him in the eye, completely unafraid of his threat.

"All right, to tell you the truth, I accepted the idea so easily because I know about it. You should know about it too: that typhoon wind-field map."

The moment it was mentioned, Xu Chen remembered. He thought it over carefully, and it did seem to be true.

Taihao disease had originated with the wind-field map and ended up spreading through inexplicable ramblings. If it were defined as harmful information, it would be the most outrageous kind.

And it also seemed to have something in common with his own inability to speak...

But before Xu Chen could think any further, he was still being questioned.

Xu Chen still didn't take Captain Chu at his word. He looked at him. "You're wearing an earpiece. Take it off, or I won't cooperate."

Captain Chu started to his feet, but ultimately forced down his temper and removed the earpiece.

Xu Chen still shook his head. "No, no, I'm still not reassured. Get a metal detector, then go to the room I was in just now."

"..."

Am I interrogating you, or are you interrogating me?