He Is Mentally Ill

Of course, Gu Jianlin's profiling revealed far more than just that.

For example, after completing an initial profile and looking at that woman again, he could actually see a fiery, sexy pole dancer, the dazzling lights of a nightclub, the excited, cheering crowd below the stage, and even hear the intense, pounding music.

Countless threads of clues formed phantoms of the past.

Like a ghostly spectator, he silently slipped into someone's past and peered into her life.

It seemed illusory, yet it was so real.

This was the woman's truest self.

Twenty-four years old, a pole dancer.

She had married well.

His father had once said that as long as someone existed, they would inevitably leave traces behind.

When those traces were pieced together, they became another face of that person—their truest form, as though they stood naked before you.

If Gu Jianlin kept observing, he could construct an even more complete profile.

Unfortunately, he had no way to explain the scene he was seeing to anyone else.

—Because it was a scenario he had pieced together from tiny clues and a powerful sixth sense. It would be easy for people to mistake it for a hallucination.

No one would believe him if he said it aloud. They would only take him for a lunatic.

"Little Gu, are you hallucinating again?"

Zhou Ze's words interrupted the boy's thoughts.

Gu Jianlin finally came back to his senses. The wind and rain fell upon him again, carrying a faint chill.

The dazzling nightclub vanished. The pole and the woman onstage, the audience below—all of it disappeared without a trace.

The woman before the grave was still crying. She was really putting her all into it—her acting was first-rate.

"No, I was just saying whatever came to mind."

Gu Jianlin smiled silently.

Unlike that hypocritical woman, the three investigators in his eyes were genuinely grieving, their faces showing sorrow and regret.

Though they thought something was wrong with his head, they were all dedicated, reliable public servants. They were usually busy with work, yet they had taken time to pay their respects. That was truly thoughtful of them.

"Really not a hallucination?"

Zhou Ze looked at him suspiciously for a few moments and reminded him, "Listen to the doctor and take your medicine on time. Post-traumatic stress disorder isn't something to take lightly... especially when the college entrance exam is only two months away."

"Don't worry, Uncle Zhou. I'm much better now."

Gu Jianlin did not know how to explain, so he took out a wet wipe and began wiping the gravestone, changing the subject.

Sometimes, the gap between people was even greater than the gap between people and pigs.

They were both human. His father's profiling was considered authoritative, an important reference in solving cases.

But his own profiling was considered post-traumatic stress, and people would only advise him to see a doctor.

His father had majored in psychology. He was an honorary professor at Fengcheng University and a profiler specially hired by the police department. The thing he had probably been proudest of in his life was his accomplishments in that specialized field.

Back then, the man had made his name through profiling. Fresh out of university, he had helped the police department crack several major cases in succession. It was said that even at crime scenes that had been deliberately concealed, he could reconstruct events on his own and simulate the killer's behavioral logic. Sometimes, without help from a forensic examiner, he only needed one look at a corpse to identify the cause of death and the victim's recent experiences.

The most outrageous rumor was that his father could speak with corpses, imagine himself as the victim, and thus draw close to the killer.

Gu Jianlin had thought that was incredibly cool as a child and had pestered his father to teach him. But perhaps he really was too stupid. Even after his father died, he had never learned how to profile.

Yet ever since the car accident four months ago, he had suddenly become able to do it.

From then on, the real world stood before his eyes in the finest detail.

At first, Gu Jianlin believed that he had injured his brain in the crash, and that by some fluke, it had stimulated his brain's evolution. But when he voiced that thought, all the adults suggested that he visit the psychiatric department to have his head checked.

Gu Jianlin did not know whether his father experienced those immersive, hallucination-like visions when he profiled people.

He had always felt that the car accident had caused some sort of mutation in his brain.

And along with it, strengthened his profiling ability.

—He did not know how to explain it to others, much less what to call this ability, so for the moment, he simply called it profiling.

"All right, I still have a case to deal with, so I need to go."

After a moment of silence, Zhou Ze said, "Try not to dwell on your father's case. I know you already did your best. But people have to learn to move forward. The case will be closed tomorrow. Remember to come by the police department and sign the paperwork."

Gu Jianlin paused while wiping the gravestone, then scrubbed even harder. "Got it, Uncle Zhou."

Zhou Ze was somewhat surprised that the boy had agreed so readily this time. He asked, "Want me to drive you home?"

"No, thank you."

Gu Jianlin forced a smile. "Home isn't far. I'll just walk back and clear my head."

The polished gravestone reflected the boy's pale, helpless profile.

The black Mercedes-Benz drove down a road shrouded in thick fog.

"That kid hasn't had it easy."

The young investigator drove as he sighed softly. "I felt like he was about to collapse, like a paper cutout... Is it really okay for him to go back alone like that?"

"Don't worry, Xiao Zhang. That kid isn't as fragile as you think," another investigator said. "When he had just been discharged from the hospital, he kept coming to our police department every other day. His teachers said he even climbed over the school wall to get out. That wall is a full three and a half meters high. Even I have trouble climbing it."

Xiao Zhang shrugged and muttered, "How is that the same? Back then, he still had some fight left in him. But today, his mental state did seem much steadier than before."

Zhou Ze sat in the back seat with his eyes closed, resting. He sighed.

"That kid's parents divorced when he was very young. He grew up with Professor Gu. Who could have expected something like this to happen? Still, after such a severe car accident, it was fortunate that he survived."

He took a tablet from his briefcase and opened an image.

It was the accident scene on the highway. A large truck had collided with a sedan, which had been nearly crushed flat and was billowing smoke.

After thinking for a moment, he opened a video as well.

It showed a hospital bed. The pale boy sat there like a ghost, his eyes utterly blank.

An investigator sat before him and asked gently, "Do you remember what happened that day?"

"My dad came back from an overseas business trip that day. He said he was taking me back to our hometown for the New Year."

"And then? What else do you remember?"

"Mm... Dad was in a hurry that day. It seemed like something had happened. I remember we got onto the highway."

"Then you collided with that truck and got into an accident."

"No, that wasn't an accident."

"Why do you say it wasn't an accident?"

"Because I saw the killer."

"But the surveillance footage shows no one else. The truck driver also died at the scene."

"No, there really was someone. I definitely saw him. Please believe me, there really was another person."

"But..."

"Please believe me! I can profile! I can draw that person's face!"

The final frame of the video froze on the instant the boy suddenly growled, like an enraged little beast.

Zhou Ze had always thought of the boy as polite, gentle, and calm.

He had never seen him lose control like that.

Perhaps when people lost what mattered most to them, everyone became unlike themselves.

"Since he is willing to come to the police department and sign the confirmation, he should have accepted reality by now, right? The doctor said that he imagined a killer because he refused to believe his father was dead," Xiao Zhang said casually as he drove.

"But I'm a little curious. What exactly did he profile back then? What if it was real?" the other investigator said.

Xiao Zhang curled his lip. "Are you questioning the surveillance footage? Or our intelligence?"

Zhou Ze took a yellowed sheet of paper from his pocket and silently unfolded it. "Do you think this thing could be the so-called killer?"

On the yellowed paper was a twisted, grotesque figure drawn in colored pencils.

It was not even human, but a monstrous bird with nine heads. Each bird head bore a ferocious human face.

Zhou Ze had looked it up afterward. It came from the Classic of Mountains and Seas, where it was called Ghost Cart, Ghost Bird, or Nine-Headed Bird.

Of course, in proper mythological tales, Ghost Cart did not have human faces growing on its bird heads.

Considering that, he could only conclude that the boy truly had post-traumatic stress disorder.

Gu Jianlin actually disliked places like cemeteries, because there were too many people here whose outward appearances did not match what lay beneath.

He held an umbrella and dragged his suitcase, brushing past countless people.

The cemetery disappeared, replaced by all kinds of scenes: programmers dozing over computer desks, musicians weeping bitterly before pianos, and young caregivers grinning beside the beds of elderly patients.

Some people wore sorrowful expressions while secretly rejoicing, while others looked calm even as they had long since broken down and cried inside.

Profiling was useful, but seeing through things too clearly was not necessarily a good thing.

The woman who had been crying her heart out before the gravestone emerged from the public restroom. At some point, she had already touched up her makeup. Holding her phone, she said cheerfully, "Honey, I just attended that dead old man's funeral. Once I get my share of the inheritance, we'll have money."

Gu Jianlin glanced at her, then withdrew his gaze.

Ever since learning how to profile, he had not been wrong even once. Yet no one believed him.

When he woke up after the accident, two months had already passed. The investigation was nearly over, and his father's funeral had fucking already been held, yet he had known nothing about any of it.

During this time, he had been running around for his father's case. He could accept that someone had died, but he needed to know why.

So he ignored the doctors' and his mother's objections and went to the police department again and again, all to prove that he was right.

When Gu Jianlin recalled the accident, he only remembered the torrential rain that day, the freight truck crashing head-on toward them, and his final memory of his father unbuckling his seat belt and shielding him in his arms.

With one thunderous crash, his life shattered into pieces.

Even now, recalling that moment was terrifying enough to make him tremble.

But whenever he remembered the sense of safety he had felt while his father held him close, he felt much calmer.

It was only that, in the instant before losing consciousness, he truly had seen someone standing in front of him.

Later, Gu Jianlin profiled that person's face.

A horrifying, monstrous face.

Yet the irrefutable evidence was that the surveillance footage from the scene had not captured the existence of a fourth person.

There had only been the truck driver, his father, and himself.

In the end, the incident was classified as an accidental car crash and closed for good.

Gu Jianlin's judgment as a newly minted profiler was buried alongside his unlucky father.

By now, after recovering somewhat from the grief of losing his closest family member and regaining a measure of rationality, Gu Jianlin had begun to wonder whether his profiling had been wrong. After all, he had indeed been severely injured at the time.

Under those circumstances, what he saw really could have been a hallucination.

At first, everyone had thought Professor Gu's son might truly have some talent for profiling, but the result had left them dumbfounded.

Recently, people at the police department had been saying, both openly and behind his back: What a joke!

Even Gu Jianlin himself felt like a joke.

What rotten luck.

Of course, that was not even the worst part.

Because he still had to go home in a while—to someone else's home.

Though his parents had divorced when he was very young, his mother still loved him dearly.

Gu Jianlin was still a few months away from adulthood. Now that his father was gone, his mother naturally became his new guardian and brought him to live in her new home.

But the problem was that his mother had already built a new family five years ago, and she was living a happy, fulfilled life.

Gu Jianlin had not wanted to disrupt his mother's new life because of himself, but he could not win against the woman's stubbornness. In the end, he moved into the new house carrying bags upon bags of belongings, forced to accept a new family.

The new house was in the south of the city. Though it was in the old district, it was prime seaside property. Housing prices had risen to more than sixty thousand per square meter. A fifty-meter walk would bring him to the shoreline, where he could embrace the sea breeze and sunlight.

Worth mentioning was that his mother's new home was on the first floor and had a courtyard.

There were two trees in the courtyard.

One was a jujube tree, and the other was also a jujube tree.

Even more worth mentioning was that his mother now had two additional daughters.

One was not her biological daughter.

The other was not either.

At that moment, Gu Jianlin's phone vibrated softly. Another WeChat message had arrived.

Su Youzhu: "Come home early after paying respects to Uncle Gu. Don't wander around everywhere. Mom asked me to make you breakfast. It's in the microwave. Heat it for two minutes and remember to eat. I have something to do, so I'm heading out."

Gu Jianlin fell silent for a second. He had not expected the girl to call her Mom so naturally.

She was his mother's nominal daughter. The older one was already working, while the younger one attended the same high school as him.

The one who had sent the message was the younger one.

Gu Jianlin had been in poor health since childhood. Combined with his recent accident and the loss of the father he had depended on, in his mother's eyes, it was as if he had returned to infancy. Her whole new family treated him like a baby and looked after him carefully.

He was grateful for it, but also unaccustomed to it.

Suddenly, a call came through on his phone. The caller ID showed Old Zhang.

He was an employee at the courier station downstairs from his home.

Not the new home, but the apartment he had rented with his father before.

"Hello."

Gu Jianlin answered the call.

"Hello, hello, is that Little Gu?"

Old Zhang shouted in his booming voice, "Do you still want your family's package or not?"

Gu Jianlin was taken aback. "What package?"

Old Zhang replied, "Your dad's package! It's been sitting here for months. This time, I'm charging you for storage!"

Gu Jianlin frowned. As far as he knew, his father had never shopped online.

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