It was not that Qingmu was unwilling to question the poor doctor again; he simply felt there was no need.
The information they had obtained was enough for the police to solve the case. If there was any regret, it was that Zhao Pengcheng had not explained why he wanted to take the brain of that patient in a vegetative state. But Qingmu would not waste his mental energy playing another round of interrogating a suspect in a dream over that. After all, he was only there to help.
"Teacher Qingmu, was that hypnosis you used just now?"
As she drove, Hu Xing chatted on and off with Qingmu.
"Why was all the hypnosis I've seen so complicated? It took full cooperation between the subject and the hypnotist, nothing as effortless as what you did!"
"What I do isn't hypnosis. It's dream interpretation."
"Dream interpretation? You must be joking." Hu Xing giggled. "I'd say you're dreaming!"
"You've got it!" Qingmu said. "To interpret dreams, first learn to enter them."
"You mean you can enter other people's dreams? Like in Inception? Yeah, right!" Hu Xing put on an openly skeptical expression.
Qingmu took a pack of Paramount cigarettes from his pocket. Suddenly remembering that Hu Xing had thrown away his matches, he reached for the car's cigarette lighter.
Hu Xing slapped his hand. "What are you doing? This is my own car! Don't you know it's rude to smoke in a girl's car?"
Qingmu pursed his lips, feeling his craving for a cigarette coming on. "Then pull over. I'll get out and smoke."
Hu Xing did not want him smoking at all and made an excuse. "This is a main road. You can't just stop anywhere!"
Qingmu said, "The Wuzhong Grand Hotel is up ahead. You can park beside it."
Hu Xing said, "Absolutely not. My job is to take you home. If you get out and something happens, I can't take responsibility. Captain Shi practically wants to put you on an altar like the Buddha!"
"You really won't stop?"
"I really won't."
Hu Xing stole a glance at the man in the passenger seat. Seeing him suffering from his cigarette craving, she found it terribly funny.
"Stop laughing and watch the road!" Qingmu reminded her.
Hu Xing laughed even harder.
"So she's a silly girl!" Qingmu muttered to himself.
"What did you say?"
"Nothing. I said it's going to rain."
"Hah! Do you think I'm deaf and blind?"
Hu Xing remembered checking the weather forecast that morning. Today was supposed to be perfectly sunny.
Suddenly, a drop of water struck the windshield with a plop, followed by another.
Puzzled, Hu Xing glanced at the distant sky. It looked perfectly fine, the sun shining brightly.
But raindrops began falling one after another without stopping, pattering against the glass and the hood.
"What the hell!" Hu Xing switched on the wipers.
"Look, there's nobody on the streets. Everyone knows it's raining except you."
Hu Xing looked at both sides of the road. Sure enough, there was not a pedestrian in sight, and even cars were scarce.
"The rain will keep getting heavier," Qingmu said.
"And you know that too?"
"Of course I do."
Hu Xing was just about to say she did not believe him when she noticed the rain growing heavier.
At first, dense, large white raindrops struck the car as though a crowd were beating drums. Before long, the drops became unbroken lines, weaving together into a vast net that enclosed the world before Hu Xing's eyes.
The wipers were turned up to their highest speed, but they still could not hold back the pouring rain. Visibility ahead grew worse and worse.
"Hey, it's raining so hard. Pull over and wait a bit," Qingmu's voice came through the rain.
"No way! You just want me to stop so you can smoke, don't you?"
Hu Xing insisted on driving on.
The rain grew heavier and heavier, and the sky turned gray. The outlines of the road and the buildings on either side had blurred, and water began pooling on the road ahead. The car sent up great sheets of spray as it passed.
A crow swept past the front of the car with a caw, nearly colliding with it.
Startled, Hu Xing slammed on the brakes.
The car stopped. When Hu Xing tried to set off again, she found that the sky had gone completely dark. All around her, there was only the rushing rain and the sound of the wipers scraping against the glass.
Hu Xing felt as though her car had become a tiny boat at sea, undergoing the onslaught of a storm.
"How could it rain this hard?" Hu Xing complained. "Now all we can do is wait."
"I told you to pull over ages ago." As Qingmu spoke, he opened the door and got out.
Hu Xing jumped. Surely a cigarette craving can't drive him to this! It's not a drug addiction! If he catches a cold, Captain Shi will blame me!
"Hey! It's pouring outside!" she shouted. "Fine, I'll let you smoke one in the car!"
She found an umbrella beneath the seat, opened the door, and got out.
The instant she opened the door, the rain was still pouring down. She opened the umbrella to shield her head.
But the moment her foot touched the ground, she froze.
What rain? Apart from there indeed being fewer pedestrians and vehicles than usual, the weather was clearly beautiful, with a clear sky and not a cloud in sight.
She saw Qingmu smiling at her from the other side of the car. That bird's-nest hair looked as though he had styled it specifically to mock her.
"Did you just hypnotize me?" Hu Xing felt she had been made a fool of.
Being so easily hypnotized while driving was truly terrifying. Those car accidents...
The very thought frightened her. She hurried back into the car, closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and gently patted her chest.
She was a police officer, after all, and had studied psychology at the police academy. How could mere hypnosis scare her?
Besides, I'm a detective with the city's criminal investigation detachment. What haven't I seen?
Now I'm very angry!
And the consequences of making me angry are very serious!
Hu Xing opened her eyes and turned, about to argue with that fellow outside the car, when she suddenly discovered that the messy bird's-nest hair was right beside her.
That infuriating fellow was lounging in the passenger seat, holding a cigarette in his left hand and lightly tapping a rhythm on the window ledge with his right. He seemed to be humming some little tune.
More frightening still, Hu Xing discovered that she was sitting in the driver's seat with her seat belt securely fastened-it had never been undone. Her foot was actually on the accelerator, and the car was traveling at around fifty kilometers an hour. Outside, the road had once again become a stream of traffic.
Terrified, Hu Xing slammed on the brakes. The car stopped right outside the Wuzhong Grand Hotel, exactly where Qingmu had wanted to stop and get out for a smoke.
This was not hypnosis!
Hu Xing did some calculations. At fifty kilometers an hour, traveling from where Qingmu had first wanted to get out for a cigarette to where they had now stopped would have taken no more than a dozen or so seconds, perhaps not even ten.
Then everything she had just experienced-the torrential rain, the endlessly sweeping wipers, the open umbrella, the man across from her on the other side of the car-had all happened in barely ten seconds or so!
This was not hypnosis!
This was a dream!
But what filled Hu Xing with fear and unease from the bottom of her heart was that she still did not know when any of this had begun, or whether it had ended yet.
"Am I... awake?" Hu Xing asked cautiously.