"So, you released this information to use those hunters as lab rats?" Candle Dragon looked into Nagano Souya's eyes and spoke calmly.
Nagano Souya did not deny it. After several seconds of silence, he said, "To solve a problem, you first have to discover it."
"In fact, two groups of hunters set out for the uninhabited zone in search of the treasure a month ago," Nagano Souya said.
"Wasn't the treasure map still missing my final fragment?" Sun Hang asked in confusion.
"That's what felt wrong to me just now." Nagano Souya sighed. "In fact, even with only the final fragment missing, the treasure map was already highly complete—so complete that I once thought the last fragment was insignificant... But now that I had obtained it, I found that adding it in made it seem extremely abrupt and discordant. No matter where I placed it, it looked somewhat redundant..."
Nagano Souya picked up the fragment, his mechanical prosthetic hovering above the table, and continued, "But when I removed that fragment, I found that the treasure map, which had originally seemed quite complete, looked more and more wrong the longer I examined it... more and more wrong... as if something were missing."
"Could there be a problem with these fragments?" Sun Hang asked. "After all, human memories can be distorted."
"No. These fragments were sealed deep within those hunters' memories. None of their normal brain activity would ever touch them. Only through deep hypnosis, a series of suggestions and guidance, and 'profiling' could these fragments be 'extracted' from their memories..."
"Then perhaps the problem lies with the profiling?" Sun Hang added. "Profilers vary greatly in skill. If you happened to encounter someone who wasn't very competent, wouldn't it be normal for the extracted fragments to differ from the originals?"
"That would