Huang Liang was startled, and sweat poured out from every pore of his body, with large beads of sweat rolling down his forehead.
This is terrifying. He was hypnotized into a dream without even realizing it. He'd only ever felt this way when facing Qingmu. But since then, he was confident that his Mental Power had improved significantly, and he wouldn't feel as embarrassed and desperate as he had when he met Qingmu again.
However, right here, he encountered an old woman who rendered him utterly powerless. He didn't know how she did it, or even when she had started hypnotizing him.
He carefully recalled his itinerary: he came out of Amsterdam Central Station, encountered a homeless man, then arrived at this red-light district, and when he couldn't find the Sea Cucumber Street, the old lady appeared.
Hmm, that was too careless. This is the darkest corner of Amsterdam's largest red-light district; people here are either prostitutes or their clients. How did an old lady end up here?
But why is she waiting here to hypnotize herself? Is it some kind of test that everyone who comes to the event has to go through?
Huang Liang wasn't quite sure of the other person's identity. Logically, the person waiting here should be someone from within the organization, and many of the scenes and words he saw and heard in his dream were things he couldn't possibly retrieve and reconstruct from his memory; they must have been intentionally constructed for him in his dream. For example, the filthy scene in the basement, and the " Elite Breeding Project " the woman mentioned.
But why did she lead him into such a dream? Was she trying to tell him something, or was she testing him?
Of course, there is another possibility: the old lady is not a member of the organization, but a hidden spiritual master in the human world, just like Qingmu.
Regardless, he had to be careful. He carefully recalled everything that happened in the dream, trying to see if he had given himself away. He didn't want the organization to know about his relationship with Qingmu, and he certainly didn't want to be treated as the first traitor.
He went over it in his mind, and there were probably two clues that gave him away during the whole process. One was his scalpel, which was imbued with powerful Mental Power, but that didn't prove anything. This was a mental countermeasure he had developed himself, which Qingmu later enhanced. Qingmu said that this method was unique, very deceptive, and covert. As long as he didn't dream of Qingmu, no one else could know anything about it.
Secondly, before entering No. 07, Lane 13, he checked his phone and put the location information into the Ghost folder. This was a very small action, and the other party probably wouldn't have noticed, because nobody knows what the Ghost folder is, not even himself. It seems he simply located the address on his phone after finding it.
"Who are you?" he asked.
The old woman's skin was loose, and her bulky coat wrapped around her short frame. No matter how you looked at her, she didn't look like a master. Only her gaze towards Huang Liang was very sharp.
"You don't need to know who I am; it won't do you any good," she said, then turned up the collar of her coat. "Oh, it's so cold today!"
A gust of wind blew by, Huang Liang's sweat instantly turned icy cold.
"Are you one of Howard's men?" the old lady asked.
"Yes." Huang Liang knew he couldn't hide it, so he answered honestly.
"Hmm—" The old lady nodded, seemingly pondering something. " Howard couldn't have taught you these skills. Tell me, who taught you?"
Huang Liang asked, "Which aspect are you referring to?"
The old woman said, "Your Mental Power is very strong, beyond my expectations."
"Nobody taught me," Huang Liang said. "I figured it out myself."
"Really?" The old lady seemed somewhat skeptical.
Huang Liang decided to take a gamble and said, "With your abilities, it's easy to verify whether what I'm saying is true or false. You can hypnotize me now and let my subconscious answer you."
This was a gamble. He felt the old woman wouldn't hypnotize him again, otherwise she wouldn't have bothered with all that nonsense. If she wanted to know something, she could just ask in the dream. He was glad he hadn't given himself away too much in the dream and had woken up so quickly.
Just as he expected, the old lady said:
"Oh no, now that you've come out on your own, I won't hypnotize you anymore. Your scalpel is very sharp; you're a doctor, aren't you?"
Huang Liang replied, "Yes, I used to be a surgeon."
The old lady said, "It's remarkable that you can concentrate your Mental Power to that level. However, you seemed to be deliberately hiding it, so you didn't resist at all when I hypnotized you. With the scalpel I saw later, it probably wouldn't be easy for me to hypnotize you without you knowing anything."
Yes, in this world, hiding is the right thing to do, but hiding doesn't mean turning a tiger into Tiger. It means using your surroundings to blend your mental state with your environment. If you turn into a rabbit, you'll likely be killed by hunting dogs before you can turn back into Tiger.
Huang Liang was also puzzled as to why he was so easily hypnotized. He thought the old lady in front of him was unfathomable and might be even more powerful than Qingmu. Now, after listening to her words, he realized that his problem was not that he was not making much progress, but that his method was wrong.
He knew the old lady's words were almost a suggestion, so he quickly thanked her and asked, "May I ask who you are...?"
"I told you not to ask who I am!" The old woman's face hardened, and she glared at me, saying, "You don't need to thank me; this is your own skill and good fortune. I should go now; it's too cold and damp in here, an old woman like me can't stand it, unlike you young people..."
Huang Liang wanted to say something, but the old lady had already brushed past her and walked towards the main street Pink House in the distance.
He heard her muttering, "Incompetent leaders are capable, incompetent commanders are competent—how can such an organization work? An Elite Breeding Project, huh? I bet it'll just produce a bunch of useless trash..."
Huang Liang watched silently as the old woman's figure disappeared at the street corner in the distance, still deeply shocked. He still couldn't determine whether the old woman was a member of the organization. If so, her rank must be very high—how high? Huang Liang didn't know.
He only knew that the old lady seemed dissatisfied with the organization. However, this organizational structure was determined by the leader, and everything here was approved by the leader. Moreover, Howard's rank in the organization was not low; even if he couldn't report directly to the leader, he was at most one level below him. In an organization that had infiltrated the upper echelons of almost every country in the world and controlled the vast majority of human resources, being only one level below the leader was already quite remarkable. The reason Huang Liang was under Howard's command was because he had joined early and received a special mission.
Questioning an organization's operating model and the capabilities of its core members—how is that any different from questioning the leader? And who exactly is this old lady?
Lost in thought, Huang Liang wandered aimlessly through the alley.
A heavily made-up woman in the corner called out "Hey!" to him, beckoned him with the middle finger, and winked at him.
Huang Liang snapped out of his thoughts and realized he had walked quite a distance. He suddenly noticed that the doors here had house numbers.
He walked quickly forward, looking for each house number one by one, and soon found number 1307.
He stopped, took a deep breath, and looked up at the sky. The sky after the snow was very blue, with a few white clouds floating gently high and far away.
He took out his phone, saved the location information to the Ghost folder, and then knocked on the door.
After a while, the door creaked open, and Howard, with his gray hair, appeared in the doorway.
"Zhao, oh no, Huang, you've finally arrived!" Howard warmly welcomed him inside.
As you pass through the outer room, the light dims, and a pink lamp on the wall casts a faint glow.
Howard opened a door, pointed to the basement entrance behind it, and said mysteriously and excitedly, "Huang, welcome to the Elite Breeding Project!"
Huang Liang's eyelids twitched slightly as he looked into the dark, deep tunnel. He seemed to smell a foul odor of bodily fluids mixed with alcohol, and he could vaguely hear lewd and obscene sounds.