Face-to-Face

"Who are you?"

Li Bai did not move an inch.

"Our boss wants to see you about something. Please come with us."

The man in the black suit holding the phone had clearly confirmed Li Bai's identity. He was the person they had been looking for.

Guessing, Li Bai asked, "The Yao Family?"

With their uniform attire and their ability to find his residence, they were clearly not merely uninformed netizens.

The man in the black suit holding the phone gave a sinister smile and said, "You'll know when we get there. Please."

Li Bai saw the man's eyelids droop ever so slightly and knew he had guessed correctly.

The information conveyed through microexpressions, tiny movements, and even changes in one's gaze was sometimes far richer and more detailed than what words could convey.

The saying that the body was always more honest than the mouth was not merely a cliché. At least in the field of psychology, it was supported by solid scientific evidence.

"Then let's go."

Having realized that he was at the center of the storm, Li Bai decided to settle things with the Yao Family.

Yao Bing had been driven insane, so the Yao Family would certainly react. The fact that they had only come looking for him today clearly meant they had been holding back for various reasons.

The four men in black suits surrounded Li Bai as if they were afraid he might escape, escorting him toward a black Audi A6 parked nearby.

The atmosphere inside No. 69, Zijing Villa, in the western part of the city, was extremely tense.

Xuan Jing stood guard beside her son, her eyes red as she wiped away her tears from time to time. Although the Yao Clan's current backbone consisted of four brothers, she and her second brother-in-law, Yao Donghu, had only one child—Yao Bing. He was naturally the apple of her eye and the jewel in her palm, and no amount of doting on him would have been too much. If anything happened to him, it would be tantamount to ending their family line. What meaning would the family business they had worked so hard to build have then?

"Boss, we've brought him."

Four bodyguards in black suits escorted a young man into the villa, while two of them remained by the door.

Hearing the voice, Xuan Jing froze. Clutching a tissue, she rushed out of the room on the second floor. The moment she saw Li Bai, she gnashed her teeth and roared, "It's you! You're the one who harmed Bing Bing! Someone, beat him to death!"

As she spoke, she clawed wildly and tried to lunge at Li Bai, whom the four bodyguards had brought in.

None of the Yao Family's bodyguards moved.

The lady of the house was only making an empty threat. If someone really died inside the villa, no one here would come out of it unscathed.

"Heisha, stop her. What a ridiculous scene!"

Yao Donghu had abandoned the company's affairs and remained at home. He ordered the captain of his bodyguards, Xie Heisha, to stop his wife.

He stared at Li Bai, forcibly suppressing his emotions, and said, "Doctor Li, you may already know what happened to my son. In that case, shouldn't you give me an explanation?"

"You must be Yao Bing's father, right? I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you mean, nor do I know what explanation you want."

Li Bai acted as if he had not seen Yao Donghu's gloomy expression and shrugged indifferently.

"You wrote Yao Bing's psychiatric evaluation report, didn't you? Why are you still pretending to be confused?"

Seeing Li Bai continue to play dumb, Yao Donghu finally lost control and roared.

"That's right. I did write it. But what do you want me to do—write another evaluation saying he isn't mentally ill? No problem. I can write another one."

The moment Li Bai finished speaking, Yao Donghu was about to erupt again, but for some inexplicable reason, no sound came out.

The case Yao Bing had been involved in was no minor matter. It was a serious murder case in which the culprit would pay with his life. Rewriting the evaluation to say he was not mentally ill would be pushing his own son toward the execution grounds.

"I...I..."

Yao Bing's father, Yao Donghu, had a fire trapped in his chest. His face shifted between green and purple, but he had nowhere to vent it. He glared at Li Bai as if he wanted to devour him alive.

"Let's speak frankly. Young Master Bing wasn't mentally ill to begin with. He suddenly went mad during your evaluation. Was that your doing?"

As an onlooker, Xie Heisha, the Yao Family's bodyguard captain, could see clearly that the real issue had nothing to do with the report.

He only dared say such things inside the Yao Family's villa. The moment he stepped outside, he would deny them to the death.

Although a bodyguard was not merely a thug, Xie Heisha did not mind venting his boss's anger by beating up this audacious young doctor.

This is getting boring. Li Bai sighed inwardly. He had originally planned to play a few more rounds with the Yao Family, but the black-clad bodyguard's single remark had pierced straight through the truth. Naturally, there was no longer any game to play.

Li Bai pressed the thumb and middle finger of his left hand together with his index finger. A wisp of Spiritual Power escaped from the upper dantian, the sea of consciousness, and he prepared to cast a secret technique to end this karmic entanglement.

"Are you Doctor Li from the Seventh Hospital?"

Suddenly, an old man walked down from a room upstairs.

Li Bai turned toward the voice and exclaimed in surprise, "Professor Hou!"

He silently canceled the spell. The people in the villa had no idea they had just escaped a calamity.

The other party was Professor Hou Xiaozheng, the chief physician of the Department of Mental Health at the Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine. He was highly renowned in the field of psychological specialization.

Compared to Li Bai, an ordinary outpatient doctor whose registration fee was only ten yuan, Professor Hou was an expert whose fees started at one hundred yuan. The gap between them was more than a little. Li Bai had not expected him to recognize him.

"It's nothing. I wanted to ask Doctor Li a few questions."

Professor Hou walked down the stairs, and the tense, oppressive atmosphere in the first-floor hall vanished without a trace.

Doctors were professionals who snatched lives from the hands of the King of Hell. No matter how rich or powerful someone was, they would not dare offend an expert physician of Professor Hou's standing. Yao Donghu, who had invited him over, did not dare act recklessly either. He gave Xie Heisha a look, and the latter wisely took a step back. The pressure surrounding Li Bai suddenly dissipated.

"Please ask, Professor Hou. I'll tell you everything I know."

In front of this senior, Li Bai maintained the respect he deserved.

"Did you use hypnosis on Yao Bing?"

Professor Hou felt that Yao Bing's sudden mania was abnormal, and this young colleague before him might very well be the one who could untie the knot.

Li Bai nodded and said, "That's right. I used hypnosis to temporarily suppress Yao Bing's acute, sudden-onset schizophrenia."

"During the diagnostic evaluation, Yao Bing suddenly had an episode. What exactly happened? Can you explain it?"

Regardless of whether Yao Bing was a good person or a bad one, Professor Hou held no bias against him. He only wanted to understand the onset mechanism of this psychiatric patient from a professional perspective. An additional unusual case might even benefit other patients with similar conditions.

Yao Donghu's spirits lifted. An expert revealed their skill the moment they acted. He and Xie Heisha had been focused only on threatening and intimidating Li Bai, but Professor Hou had immediately grasped the key point.

"It was merely a normal inducement observation. I'm afraid the specific cause of the illness can't be determined in a short while. The only thing we can be certain of is that a river cuts deep through stone over time."

Li Bai turned his gaze toward Yao Donghu. On the surface, he was saying, I'm not taking the blame for this. In reality, he was casually shifting the blame onto him.

Who could have imagined that Yao Bing would encounter the Demon Race's innate divine ability, Spiritual Eye Illusion? No matter how high Professor Hou's professional expertise was, he could never find the slightest clue. He could only let Li Bai lie through his teeth.

Professor Hou pondered briefly, then nodded, clearly accepting the explanation that the illness had built up over time.

After all, he had found nothing unusual in the recording documenting the entire diagnostic process. It was perfectly normal for professional inducement to trigger an episode. This method was used not only in psychiatric cases but also in diagnosing other physiological illnesses. If a disease existed, then even if it did not manifest when induced, it would eventually surface on its own.

Yao Donghu asked, "Professor Hou, so it wasn't his fault?"

"No, President Yao. Don't overthink it. Induced diagnosis is a very common method in experimental psychology."

Apart from the hypnotic sedative effect, which had already faded, Professor Hou had found no other traces of hypnosis on Yao Bing.

Although hypnosis was miraculous, its effects did not last very long. Three or four days had already passed, so any hypnosis should have worn off on its own. Yet Yao Bing remained extremely agitated. Clearly, his abnormal state had not been caused by hypnosis.

"All right. Heisha, see Doctor Li out for me. I apologize for the trouble this time."

Yao Donghu seemed to accept Professor Hou's judgment. He appeared to let Li Bai go as casually as if nothing had happened, and the earlier confrontation seemed never to have occurred.

"Yes. Doctor Li, please."

When the bodyguard captain saw his boss give him an almost imperceptible nod, he immediately understood.

Li Bai had originally thought there would be a fight in which they completely fell out, but he had not expected Yao Bing's father to let him go after all that bluster. Carrying the thick red envelope he had been given, he walked out of No. 69, the Yao Family's villa. Somewhat puzzled by the drastic change in the other party's attitude, Li Bai wondered if it had all merely been an act of intimidation.

The human heart was difficult to fathom. Even he, a master's graduate in psychology, found it difficult to grasp the Yao Family's true intentions.

"Watch out!"

As Li Bai walked along the road leading to the entrance of the Zijing Villa residential community, a fierce gust rushed in from behind on his right.