Trial (3)

"Take writing a character or reciting a passage. You pick up the brush and forget the character, forget how the passage begins—because the memory has been hidden away. Then I write a stroke for you to see, prompt you with the opening line, and you immediately say, 'Ah, I know!' That is me drawing out the consciousness you hid away."

"Or say something sad happened long ago. You slowly forgot it, stopped thinking about it, buried it in your heart. One day, when you are in high spirits, I suddenly mention it. You remember it, and your mood instantly changes from joyous excitement to grief and sorrow. That is how one sentence from me draws out what lies hidden in your heart. One sentence is enough to change your emotions."

"Do you understand the relationship between consciousness and the subconscious now?"

Liu Laodao was gradually becoming interested. Every word Li Yunxin said was a gate leading into a new world for him. At this point, he no longer thought about why the other man was saying these things, or how he had killed Prefect Li. He only focused on absorbing his words.

He nodded. "I understand. A little."

"Then let's talk about Li Yaosi." Li Yunxin suddenly changed the subject. He glanced at the tabletop, set down his chopsticks, and tore a drumstick from the whole roast chicken giving off an enticing fragrance. "That night, a great demon came to his house—the time, over ten days ago, when the thunderstorm brought down the main hall."

"Huh?" The old Daoist had been lost in thought, but hearing "great demon" startled him.

"I imagine you have never seen a great demon before. Perhaps you have never even seen a demon. But I am familiar with them." Li Yunxin looked at the drumstick, took a hard bite, and watched the golden chicken skin stretch beneath his teeth before tearing apart. "I saw that demon. As for how I knew about it, it could actually be inferred from many details."

He had gotten to know Aze. As someone skilled at playing with people's hearts, he had easily won Aze's trust. With a little further prompting and guidance, he learned many details about that night.

A young man's laughter on a stormy night.

There were young men in the Li Residence, but none of them would laugh so wantonly at night. It had been an outsider.

When Li Yunxin had been hunted down in the ruined temple, it had also been during a thunderstorm. He had heard a man laugh then as well.

It had been a pleasant voice.

Aze said that the next day, he had seen the ashes of a campfire in the other half of the house that had not collapsed.

On the night Li Yunxin was at the ruined temple, Ninth Young Master had also lit a campfire when he ate people, roasting them before eating them.

Constable Xing's wife and child had been eaten during a thunderstorm as well.

Following those clues, he suspected Ninth Young Master. Then he went to great lengths to hypnotize Aze, granting him many skills and instincts he had not originally possessed, and obtained more information from Li Yaosi.

In truth, this was not difficult—hypnotized Aze could not punch through an iron plate with his bare hands, either. He was still himself, except he noticed more things. For example, Prefect Li's smile, a faint wrinkle on his face, a shift in his tone—all of it would be faithfully and completely recorded, then relayed to Li Yunxin.

He believed that every time, he was merely chatting with Young Master Li. In reality... every one of those "casual chats" brought him a vast quantity of intelligence.

In the end, Li Yunxin pieced together the entire chain of events.

It really had been Ninth Young Master that night.

Ninth Young Master passed through Weicheng that night. He descended from the sky with the thunderstorm in tow. He was hungry and wanted a midnight snack. Li Yaosi happened to be in the main hall that night. Not wanting to die, and knowing that Ninth Young Master disliked him, he called over his two beautiful concubines. He offered them to Ninth Young Master, who killed them, lit a campfire, and roasted them to eat.

After Ninth Young Master left, the terror in Prefect Li's heart at encountering a man-eating demon for the first time could well be imagined. He then emptied his fortune to hire two cultivators to protect him.

"...So I used Aze's mouth to make him temporarily forget what happened when he encountered Ninth Young Master." Li Yunxin tossed the chicken bone onto the table.

He picked up a cloth from the copper basin of warm water beside the table and wiped his hands clean.

"Something so huge... how could he forget it?!" Liu Laodao cried out despite himself.

"Why could he not?" Li Yunxin smiled at him. "Some people become so busy that they even forget to eat. Cigarette butts can burn their hands, and they do not notice. Why could they not forget other things? Especially when they are being guided and prompted?"

"Take you, for instance. That waiter who brought us food earlier really was the man who had been watching near our house these past days. He was Yin Pingzhi's subordinate. He came in several times just now, and you already thought he looked familiar, didn't you? Right now, he is outside the curtain, aiming a crossbow at you—"

At that moment, a breeze swept past, and the curtain stirred.

Li Yunxin struck the tabletop hard with one finger.

There came a thud.

Liu Laodao's eyes went wide in an instant. He sprang up from his stool and stared fixedly at the wall beside the window. But two or three seconds later, he came back to himself and looked at the curtain, then Li Yunxin, in disbelief.

"Sit down. It is fine." Li Yunxin smiled and beckoned to him. "What did you see just now?"

Yet Liu Laodao still hurried over, cautiously lifted the curtain to look outside, then returned to the table. His face was filled with disbelief and immense admiration. "Brother Xin, you... ah..."

"Just now... I saw that waiter rush out from behind the curtain and fire a crossbow bolt at me! Right over there... it missed, and lodged itself beside the window!"

"Mm." Li Yunxin looked at him. "Earlier, you were wondering how I killed Li Yaosi, and your heart was full of curiosity. What I said was novel to you, and you trusted me as a person. So you listened with rapt attention and followed my consciousness completely."

"And while I was explaining, I used examples again and again—acquaintances, things I had seen, that waiter. Old Liu, that was the process of guiding and suggesting you. Through my tone, my gestures, I repeatedly deepened the impression of those things in your mind."

"Once it had gone deep enough, and after you had drunk some wine, I told you what I just said at the moment your concentration was most scattered. By then, the boundary between your consciousness and subconscious had become very blurred."

"And then came the final blow—I knocked on the table."

"That sound was the last straw. It resembled the sound of a crossbow bolt striking wood, so your mind swiftly linked together all the subconscious thoughts that had surged forth and reconstructed them into a 'reality' that did not exist—you hallucinated. You saw what you just saw. Still... you are healthy, so it did not matter."

"You see, that was how it happened. As for Li Yaosi—" Li Yunxin did not give Liu Laodao a chance to marvel, and continued, "I made him temporarily forget that night. So once the main hall had been repaired, he would still try us there."

"But although he forgot, I still spent several days, through Aze, constantly guiding and suggesting things to him. I had Aze give him Thunderstruck Wood, saying it could ward off evil. In truth, that suggested the thunderstorm from that night and deepened the fear in his subconscious. I had him feed him fish, making him think of Ninth Young Master, the demon, which also deepened that fear. Then there was talk of the Dragon King Temple, the river, clouds and rain—each one deepening his fear further."

"I made him receive my guidance and suggestion every moment of every day... all for the day he went to court."

"These past days, he was already irritable. When he came to court and saw me, I used my tone and movements, together with the pattern Aze had established over the previous days, to complete the final guidance. By then, because of anxiety and pressure, he was like you had been earlier, standing at the threshold where consciousness and subconscious mixed together."

"So, I said that sentence. Before that, I had Aze ask him while he was eating, 'Are you satisfied with the taste?' Then, in court, I told him—"

Liu Laodao unconsciously took over. "You said... you heard Escort Chief Qiao ask Miss Qiao beside the... campfire! Yes, the campfire! 'Are you satisfied with the taste?'"

"That is right." Li Yunxin smiled. "The campfire, and the taste. When that demon ate people, it was very likely that he mentioned how they tasted. That was the sentence I used to ignite him. And to be safe, I also wore this undershirt."

"Blue-gray, with a fish-scale pattern. The outer robe was white... ensuring that he remembered what happened that night."

"And then, he really did remember. The terror he had suppressed for so many days, the terror I had continuously strengthened, suddenly crashed into his consciousness. Everything came flooding in at once, and like you just now, he saw the 'reality' created by his own subconscious. Perhaps he saw dark clouds gathering in the sky again? Lightning flashing and thunder roaring? That great demon diving down at him?"

"The fear of life and death. But it was not like last time—this time, the fear was tenfold, a hundredfold stronger. So... his state of mind shattered."

"This fellow, hehe. He had high blood pressure and fatty liver. Several generations of his ancestors had died from fright—and there was hereditary heart disease in the Lineage as well. Aze had told me long ago that Li Yaosi occasionally suffered chest pains."

"So, Old Liu, you were not too frightened just now. You are healthy, so you can ignore it. But Li Yaosi... had to die."

"Even if... mm... in any era at all, they performed an autopsy, it would still show sudden heart disease. It had nothing to do with me."

"You asked how I did it. That was how." Li Yunxin smiled gently. "Understand someone well enough, and then... their life and death are in my hands."