Digits for a name, a cold and impersonal form of address—it was as if the other person were nothing more than an inanimate object, not a living, breathing human being.
Qi Si had anticipated this development.
He looked at the person behind the desk and spoke first. "What evidence can you provide to prove that you're Jin Yusheng?"
"I don't need to prove anything to you." Jin Yusheng pulled open a desk drawer and lowered his head to leaf through the files inside. "You're just a clone. Your opinion doesn't matter to me."
"If it doesn't matter, why meet me in person?" Qi Si countered.
"You're wearing the face of someone I know, and you call me 'Subject 9.' You must be trying to erase my existence by attacking my name and social relationships. As for constantly emphasizing that I'm a clone, I'm guessing you want to use verbal suggestion to make me lose my sense of self, then leave me lost in this Research Institute whose name I don't even know."
The more outrageous the conclusion, the more likely the other person was to refute it without thinking. And as soon as they chose to answer the challenge, they fell into the self-proof trap, making it easy to lead them right where you wanted.
Sure enough, Jin Yusheng set down the files and looked up. "I've heard that speech eight times already, and explained it from different angles eight times. Every time, you find some obscure angle to question me from. We waste an entire afternoon and get nowhere. I should've recorded the whole thing and just played it back to you..."
Listening to Jin Yusheng complain, Qi Si gleaned one piece of information: the key to this instance lay in verbal tactics. The other methods probably wouldn't work.