Academic Inventor

Tangze pinched the memory card he had picked out of the fabric and turned it over for inspection.

The square memory card had inward-pointing triangular arrows at the top, bottom, and right side of its front.

His memories told Tangze that this was a mark his father had liked to use while in graduate school to distinguish his experimental materials. It represented the initial "K" of Tangze's Romanized name. The habit had been retained ever since, making it easy to recognize.

The feature was far too distinctive; if it was exposed, it would be discovered. Tangze decided to stuff it into his inventory later. He would not feel safe hiding it anywhere else.

After loading the memory card onto the computer, Tangze carefully opened its contents.

The moment the folder's name entered his sight, Tangze was hit with a shocking revelation.

"Cognitive Science?!"

Tangze stared fixedly at the characters on the screen and could not help reading them aloud in a low voice.

As a psychological concept, "cognition" referred to the process by which humans acquired, processed, and expressed information through the brain—in other words, the basic mental function of "processing information to reach conclusions."

In the Persona worldview, however, it was an exceptionally important and unique concept. There was an Otherworld formed from human hearts—the cognitive space—and all manner of supernatural abilities arising around it. The discipline that studied how it operated, the underlying logic of cognition, and how cognition in turn influenced reality was called Cognitive Science.

In P5, Sakura Futaba's mother, Isshiki Wakaba, had been a scholar researching related theories. Maruki Takuto, the enhanced version's final boss, was as well, though his research leaned more toward practical application.

Unfortunately, just as the Black Organization had now set its sights on the Tang Ze couple's research, Isshiki Wakaba had also been targeted by villainous forces. Her research had been seized, and she herself had been killed.

From that perspective, it really was a high-risk research field. After all, a common man was guilty merely for possessing a treasure. Theories capable of fundamentally controlling the world and manipulating society could hardly fail to stir the greed of criminal forces.

"This is seriously awful," Tangze muttered. "What's even worse is that I really do possess this kind of ability."

At that thought, Tangze's expression turned grave.

He was not entirely sure whether the one with Persona abilities was him, the transmigrator, or "Tang Ze Zhao," or whether there might be an even more absurd possibility—like the fact that he had actually transmigrated long ago, only failing to awaken his past-life memories before the plot began...

But regardless, objectively speaking, the fact was this: "Tang Ze Zhao, son of Cognitive Science scholars Tang Ze Yichuan and Tang Ze Leona, possessed the ability to alter cognition through certain methods."

"That bastard Lavenza! He must have done it on purpose!" At the thought, Tangze wanted nothing more than to lie down and enter the Velvet Room so he could beat up his trashy assistant.

The moment they met, Lavenza had told him, "In this world, reality and the Cognitive World have long since merged," then airily added that it was not a big problem, nothing major.

It was a huge problem! Many experiments that could never have produced results in the real world could now have their results observed directly. There was no need to enter the Otherworld at all!

Even "Tang Ze Zhao's" abilities might have been modified or induced by his parents' academic research!

No wonder the Organization had been tormenting a high school student to death. Even Tangze felt that, with this sort of character setup, he would sooner or later have to accompany Conan to Teitan Elementary School.

And besides...

Taking a deep breath, Tangze adjusted his mood and opened the folder to browse through its contents.

He had only finished reading the index when his temples began throbbing. The worst-case scenario had indeed happened.

The merging of the Cognitive World was akin to information on the spiritual level flowing into reality. Thus, changing a person's psychological cognition could directly produce real-world effects, meaning techniques involving psychology—such as hypnosis and brainwashing—would receive an epic-level enhancement.

Tangze's parents had discovered these risks in Cognitive Science early on, but what they researched was no longer something they could decide for themselves.

"Brainwashing devices, lie detectors, interrogation drugs... So these were the patents they held? That sounds extremely jail-worthy..." Tangze's hands trembled slightly after he finished going through the list.

The Organization now possessed even more outrageous black technology in these fields than it had in the original work. Although it apparently still had not stopped undercover agents from running rampant, it sounded far more brutal.

How should he put it? Tangze had only one thought right now.

Furuya Rei, Shuichi Akai, you're in danger.

Further down were multiple experimental reports and papers. Judging by the signatures, they were all theoretical knowledge independently researched by his parents.

Without time to read those long articles closely, Tangze briefly looked over each abstract and discovered, with alarm—

They had already touched upon the existence of the Cognitive World.

Drawing upon treatment samples from multiple psychiatric patients, the Tang Ze couple had gradually described an abstract world composed of cognitive concepts over more than a decade of research. They believed humanity's collective unconscious had boundaries that could be touched and explored, and that it could be used to exert effects upon reality itself in return.

The subsequent practical results, such as devices for modifying memories, had all grown from this solid theoretical foundation.

Put plainly, if they had not lacked the officially sanctioned cheat known as the Otherworld Navigator, preventing them from accessing the true cognitive space, they would have already sorted out the setting of P5's world.

Fortunately, most people understood their theory as treating that abstract world as a metaphor rather than truly believing an Otherworld existed. Tangze was still safe for now.

This complete core theory was his parents' most important life's work, and also the information the Organization wanted from him.

With such a guiding theory, who knew what huge schemes the Organization might come up with.

No, he had to stir up some trouble.

Tangze touched the memory card plugged into the computer, recalled his disguise plan, and smiled maliciously.

First, he copied all the data onto the computer, then reopened the papers on the memory card.

As a hardcore gamer, Tangze had played the Persona series and watched plenty of bizarre soft science fiction that did not exist in this world. His head was filled with countless strange amateur scientific concepts.

Academic inventor Tangze was about to begin.

"First, stitch together all the concepts from Persona 3, Persona 4, and P5. If you've got the guts, try shooting yourself in the temple," Tangze said as his fingers danced across the keyboard, rewriting a theoretical index. "Then add some weird stuff... Let me think. 'Formative Field' would fit perfectly. It sounds like a natural match. The concept of 'cure' is also good—if anyone asks, it's quantum mechanics... Might as well stitch in some cyberpunk stuff too. Artificial eyes and dream detectives sound like a good angle. Kotaro Uchikoshi, my superhero..."

Muttering to himself, Tangze pulled out psychological concepts from all sorts of works and quickly stitched together a deranged masterpiece of soft science fiction.

The white light from the screen faintly illuminated Tangze's wicked grin.

"I'm actually kind of curious what they'll create by practicing this incomplete manual in reverse." He flipped through the nonsense he had written with satisfaction. "You'd better not manage to research anything from it. After all—

"Everything above is purely fictional. Any resemblance is just bad luck."

Bonus chapter today~