Psychologist

Special Affairs Bureau dormitory, single room.

Hua Yin had just taken off his coat and casually draped it over the back of a chair. The exhaustion from training made his movements somewhat sluggish.

The vibration of his phone sounded especially abrupt in the quiet room.

He picked up the phone. The name "Lin Qingqiu" was displayed on the screen.

His brows furrowed slightly. Why was she calling him directly? And so late at night?

"Hello?" Hua Yin answered.

"Is... is this Hua Yin?"

On the other end, Lin Qingqiu's voice was hesitant, carrying a trace of barely perceptible nervousness and anxiety. "Sorry to bother you so late... I-I'm outside your Special Affairs Bureau right now, near the small east gate. Are you... able to come out for a moment? There's something I want to discuss with you."

Outside the Special Affairs Bureau?

Hua Yin glanced at the deep night beyond the window.

"What is it?" he asked.

"It's... not convenient to say over the phone."

Lin Qingqiu lowered her voice. "It's something very important, about... about a choice of my own. I want to hear your opinion, or rather... I need your help."

There was a rare confusion and urgency in her tone, utterly unlike the class monitor Hua Yin remembered, who had always been clear about her goals and decisive in her actions.

Hua Yin was silent for two seconds. "Wait for me."

After hanging up, he glanced at the coat draped over the chair but did not put it on, leaving the dormitory at a brisk pace.

The door closed softly.

Only a solitary desk lamp and the seemingly ordinary coat on the chair remained in the room.

After several seconds of dead silence.

The fabric around the coat pocket suddenly bulged ever so slightly, as though something inside had pushed against it.

Then, a faint white glow, almost impossible to notice, seeped through the gap at the edge of the pocket.

A soft "hiss" sounded, so faint it was like a needle piercing fabric.

A grain-sized point of light, emitting a gentle white radiance, crawled out through an almost invisible gap it had pried open in the pocket lining.

It hovered in midair, spinning around as its light flickered bright and dim, as though sensing its surroundings.

After confirming that the room was empty and that there were no obvious surveillance energy fluctuations, the light on its surface began to flow and change shape.

Its form shifted like melting wax, extending slender jointed limbs as its front swelled and rear contracted.

In the span of a single breath, the point of light became a tiny white spider no larger than a fingernail, crystalline as jade and emitting a faint glow.

The little spider clung nimbly to the coat fibers with its eight legs, swiftly crawled down the back of the chair, and landed silently on the floor.

It paused for less than a second, its head turning slightly as if receiving some invisible information.

Then it moved its threadlike legs and raced along the shadows at the base of the wall toward the gap beneath the door at an astonishing speed.

In almost the blink of an eye, the crystalline white spider slipped through the door crack and vanished into the darkness of the dormitory corridor.

As though it had never existed.

The Special Affairs Bureau's small east gate connected to a relatively quiet street.

The streetlights were dim, and tree shadows swayed.

Lin Qingqiu stood alone at the edge of the shadows beyond the reach of the streetlights, her hands tightly clasped as she kept looking up expectantly.

She wore her school uniform jacket. In the dim light, her face looked somewhat pale, while her eyes held a tangled mix of struggle, longing, and near-obsessive anxiety.

When she saw Hua Yin emerge from the gate, her eyes lit up. She hurried toward him, only to stop two or three meters away, looking somewhat uneasy.

"Thank you for coming out, Hua Yin," Lin Qingqiu said, her voice a little dry.

"What is it?"

Hua Yin looked at her and keenly sensed that something was wrong with her condition.

It was more than anxiety. It was like an extreme blend of strained mental excitement and fragility.

Lin Qingqiu took a deep breath as if making a tremendous decision. Looking directly at Hua Yin, she spoke a little quickly. "I want... I want to borrow some money from you. Not ordinary money. Spirit Stones. Three thousand Lower-Grade Spirit Stones."

Hua Yin's gaze narrowed slightly.

Three thousand Lower-Grade Spirit Stones was absolutely no small sum for a newly hired Special Affairs Bureau recruit. It was nearly several months' income for many people.

But for him, with his S-rank benefits and monthly salary of ten thousand Lower-Grade Spirit Stones, it was not beyond what he could afford.

The key was, why would Lin Qingqiu, an ordinary high school student, need so many Spirit Stones?

And why was she so urgent that she had come looking for him in the middle of the night?

"What do you need Spirit Stones for?" Hua Yin did not agree immediately, instead asking a question in return.

Lin Qingqiu's eyes flickered, and her fingers twisted together even more tightly. "I... I need them to make a choice."

"A choice that can change my current situation."

"Hua Yin, I know this is presumptuous, but I have no other way."

"My parents would never agree, and they would never give me this money."

"I've calculated it. This is the minimum startup capital... As long as I have three thousand, I can get that 'key' and open that door!"

If you can't find a book by its title, try searching for the author. It may have simply been renamed!

Her tone grew increasingly agitated. An abnormal flush appeared on her face, and her eyes filled with longing and fantasies about the world beyond "that door."

"What key? What door?"

Hua Yin vaguely guessed something. His voice sank. "Lin Qingqiu, explain yourself."

"It's... it's a way for me to gain power!"

As though she had thrown caution to the wind, Lin Qingqiu lowered her voice, but it trembled with excitement. "I know the way now!"

"As long as I have three thousand Spirit Stones, I can buy a Rapid Warrior Type I Genetic Potion set!"

"Although the success rate isn't one hundred percent and there are risks, this is my only chance!"

"I can't remain an ordinary person forever, watching you all... watching that world while being unable to touch it! I need power. I need change!"

Black-market Genetic Potions.

Hua Yin's heart sank.

Qing Wuyan's appearance at the black market that day, Lin Qingqiu's recent preoccupation... It all connected.

Looking at the class monitor before him, who had become almost unfamiliar from being consumed by desire, he was about to sternly warn her about the dangers and deceitfulness of black-market potions, then question her about the exact source of her information.

Just before he spoke—

A faint yet familiar fluctuation of spiritual power, like a breeze brushing across water, quietly appeared in the shadows behind Lin Qingqiu.

Hua Yin's pupils contracted slightly, and the words on the verge of leaving his mouth stopped.

Lin Qingqiu noticed nothing. Still immersed in her excitement, she looked at Hua Yin expectantly. "Hua Yin, you'll help me, right? This isn't difficult for you. I'll definitely pay you back later, I swear! I..."

Her words came to an abrupt halt.

A long, well-defined hand silently reached out from the darkness behind her.

A tiny pale-red light, condensed to the extreme, flickered at the tip of its index finger and precisely, gently tapped a point at the back of Lin Qingqiu's neck.

Lin Qingqiu's body suddenly stiffened. Her eyes flew open, her pupils dilated, and every expression and sound froze on her face. She became like a statue, as though even her breathing had stopped.

Bai Ye's figure emerged fully from the shadows like a ghost.

The usual carefree frivolity was gone from his face, leaving only cold focus.

Without even looking at Hua Yin, he fixed his gaze on Lin Qingqiu's rigid back.

His fingers struck again like fluttering butterflies, moving at incredible speed as they landed on several crucial points along her back and spine. With every touch, the spiritual light flickered slightly and sank into Lin Qingqiu's body.

Lin Qingqiu's body began to tremble faintly. Under her skin, tiny streams of light seemed to dart rapidly toward the top of her head.

Bai Ye's eyes sharpened. He held two fingers together like a sword, suspended three inches above Lin Qingqiu's head, and slowly lifted them—

"Come out."

At his deep command.

A writhing, struggling milky-white point of light, slightly larger than the spider that had crawled out of Hua Yin's coat earlier and far more mottled in color, was forcibly "ripped" from the Baihui point atop Lin Qingqiu's head by an invisible force!

The moment the light left her body, Lin Qingqiu let out a suppressed groan. Her body went limp, and she fell forward.

Hua Yin instinctively stepped forward and caught her. He found that she had merely fainted. Her breathing was returning to normal, but her face was pale and her brows were tightly furrowed, as though she had experienced a nightmare.

Bai Ye pinched the still-wriggling point of light, which was trying to escape, between two fingers and raised it before his eyes for a closer look.

Inside the light, there seemed to be extremely tiny, constantly shifting blurry faces and whirlpools of emotion.

He let out a scornful laugh, spiritual light flaring from his fingertips.

The point of light gave an almost inaudible shrill wail, then vanished into a wisp of green smoke with a soft pop.

"A Heartworm."

Bai Ye flicked his hand as though something filthy had gotten on it, his tone full of cold mockery.

"It feeds on negative emotions such as anxiety, desire, and obsession, amplifies them in return, gradually distorts the host's perception, and induces them to make the choice its caster wants... A vile little thing."

Only then did he raise his eyes to Hua Yin, who was supporting Lin Qingqiu. His gaze was as sharp as a blade.

"This thing has been lying dormant for a while. It's infiltrated deeply, and forcibly removing it would damage her soul. Looks like it was planted in her long ago."

Bai Ye paused, speaking one word at a time.

"To use such a precise and vicious method to set a trap for an ordinary female student... the 'Psychologist' has come to Youcheng."

The Psychologist?

Hua Yin's heart tightened.

He had never heard this codename before, but the wariness and chill in Bai Ye's tone were unmistakable.

"Then Qing Wuyan..."

Bai Ye's gaze deepened. He looked at the unconscious Lin Qingqiu, then seemed to look through the night toward some unknown corner of the city.

"Qing Wuyan?" he repeated the name, a humorless curve rising at the corner of his mouth.

"Who knows? Maybe he was never 'Qing Wuyan' to begin with."

"Or perhaps..."

The night wind blew past, carrying the chill of darkness.

"From the very beginning, the one who approached you was one of the 'Psychologist's' patients."

—Or perhaps he was the doctor himself.

Bai Ye did not say those words aloud, but Hua Yin read that even more chilling implication in his eyes.

The noisy, enthusiastic image of that young man beneath the sunlight was, at that moment, shrouded in a veil of complete unfamiliarity and terror.

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