Huang Jinchen almost automatically hid himself in the shade of a plant, his movements agile, noiseless, like a shadow sticking to the wall. Kou Tong took no notice of him. His attention was entirely concentrated on all the light and shadow in the coffee shop. 

This place was very particular. On the one hand, it was extremely dark, a special place for Yao Shuo. On the other hand, this quiet and secretive darkness had now all of a sudden been broken by these two bizarre intruders. The dazzling strong light from outside mixed with the darkness in the room, developing into an extremely peculiar phenomenon—the coffee shop was now bright, now dark, the alternation in time rather than in space. 

Kou Tong closed his eyes slightly and gave his head a toss. He was a little dizzy from the alternating light and dark. No one would be very tranquil in strange surroundings like this. He felt a kind of sharpened anxiety. 

This was the master of the space wavering. Because his mental condition was unstable, the projection space he created would also be comparatively chaotic. 

Just then…

There was a gunshot. Without warning, the robber walking in front fell face upward with an obvious bullet hole in his forehead. Only then did the blood slowly start to trickle down. 

To shoot someone dead in confused circumstances like these without a sound… Kou Tong couldn’t help pressing his temples, thinking that Huang Jinchen could be a real shit-stirrer. 

But before he could act, the coffee shop’s lights, flashing like a haunted house’s, suddenly stopped flashing. All the light was held back outside the front door. The people inside, like unprofessional movie extras, were only interested in watching and forgot their lines. After a long time, they finally realized that someone had died and started to scream in the dark and dash around like headless flies. 

Yao Shuo, who had been lying low, pounced without warning, nimbly removing the other robber’s weapon, kneeing the backs of his knees and twisting his shoulders. A good sword remains sharp with age—in one smooth movement, he brought the unlucky stupid thief to the ground, holding his neck. 

Then someone turned on the lights in the coffee shop. Warm, rather suggestive lamplight radiated out. At the same time, police sirens sounded outside the door. 

When things were settled, Lao Yao withdrew and gave Huang Jinchen an unusually cold look. “Did you shoot?” 

Before Huang Jinchen could speak, Kou Tong took a step to stand between the two of them. He stepped up from Lao Yao’s left side, blocking Huang Jinchen with half his body. The movement was very natural; it seemed that he wanted to separate the two of them, but it also didn’t seem especially deliberate. 

Kou Tong lowered his voice. “Mr. Yao, I’ve already notified our system testers outside. They’ll adjust the equipment as soon as possible and let us out. Set your mind at ease, sir.” 

He spoke slower and slower and quieter and quieter, finally biting the last words off unusually crisply. Then he glanced at Huang Jinchen and waved a hand slightly. He turned and invited Yao Shuo to go on ahead. “It’s a mess here. It looks like there’s more space that way. Let’s go there.” 

Yao Shuo looked at him in dissatisfaction, but he didn’t say anything too unpleasant. He only looked at Huang Jinchen again from a distance and said with strong objection, “In my opinion, the existence of privileged classes is the beginning of corruption. Your department has always lacked oversight, and anyone at all can be recruited to it. It’s completely lawless.” 

Kou Tong pushed up his glasses and didn’t comment on his words. Anyway it was General Zhong who would be upset to hear this. 

Huang Jinchen looked outside and rolled his eyes, silently putting the gun on his back and following far behind them. For some reason, as soon as he saw that old fart Yao Shuo, his hand rather itched; he imagined what it would be like to hold the old thing down and wring his neck, all this and that…that kind of hardcore scene of bloody violence. 

He was so deeply absorbed in his daydream that he even put a foot wrong and stepped on Kou Tong’s heel, nearly tripping both of them at the same time. 

Huang Jinchen stuck out his tongue, having a premonition that the wet blanket Yao would have something else to say. Sure enough, the wet blanket Yao frowned disapprovingly and cleared his throat. “Look at the state of yourselves. You can’t stand properly or sit properly. Haven’t you received military training? What is this? You two…” 

But Kou Tong ignored his feudal head of household chatter and went right around him. They had unconsciously come to the coffee shop’s back door. There was an ancient “Staff Only” sign. Kou Tong pulled down the sign and opened the narrow door. 

In that moment, Huang Jinchen, following behind Yao Shuo, acutely noticed that the muscles on Yao Shuo’s shoulders twitched unconsciously, as if he wanted to stop Kou Tong, but when he thought about it, he didn’t understand why, so he could only remain in this awkward posture, standing blankly where he was. 

Huang Jinchen craned his neck and saw that, unexpectedly, there was a mountain behind the door. It was as if it had connected to another world when Kou Tong had opened it. 

The mountain was extremely high, with a wide ridge, but squeezed into an enclosing wall. Whatever monsters were being suppressed under the mountain, the enclosing wall less than two meters high actually had the whole mountain trapped inside it. 

The light from the front door was like midday, but at the backdoor it was dim twilight. The sun was gone, and the light in the sky had darkened. There were only the mountain’s craggy stones and the withered branches hanging down from high up, unbudging in the windless night, like the body of some monster. 

Just then, the ground beneath their feet began to shake violently. Kou Tong and Huang Jinchen simultaneously heard a mechanical male voice say into their ears: “Warning, warning, space unstable, space unstable, collapse within half a minute—”

A loud sound. A huge stone rolled down from the mountaintop, hurtling directly towards the coffee shop’s open back door. Huang Jinchen jumped. He grabbed Kou Tong’s collar and pulled him back several steps as though lifting a rabbit, crying out, “Get down!” 

The big stone crashed into the small back door. Grit and rock fragments flew everywhere, hitting them like bullets. The ground shook more and more violently. They lay on the ground hardly daring to move. In hardly any time, they were buried. 

As Huang Jinchen was feeling more and more like a bulb of garlic planted in the earth, the familiar feeling of being squeezed came back. Then he plopped down onto the ground. The two spaces that had just been overlapping hadn’t left each other the least memento, not even a piece of grit. 

Huang Jinchen extended a hand towards the one-legged Dr. Kou, planning to pull him up, when Yao Shuo suddenly burst into hysterical howling: “Is that the result of your research? What the hell is this thing of yours good for? Each year, the country gives you funding, squeezes so much money out of the taxpayers to support you people each year, just so you can make this completely senseless, completely pointless scenery simulator?” 

General Zhong, hearing this, quickly opened the door and came in. “Lao Yao, if you have something to say, say it to me, or if there’s something you’re unsatisfied with, you can…” 

Yao Shuo snorted angrily. “Vermin feeding on government money.” Without so much as a look at General Zhong, he strode out. 

“What’s going on?” General Zhong turned and asked Kou Tong when he was gone. 

Kou Tong’s double-layered face deflected Lao Yao’s mental attack firmly away from his true skin. He carelessly stood up, leaning on his crutch, and sat formlessly in a hardwood chair, holding up his leg in its cast. He raised his eyelids and glanced at General Zhong. “You’re asking me what’s going on? I haven’t asked you yet.” 

General Zhong sighed and looked up at Huang Jinchen, who had stood back and was fiddling with his gun as though watching the show. He pulled up a chair and sat across from Kou Tong, softening his tone. “First tell me what you saw.” 

Kou Tong pulled up the big boiler Projector’s monitoring record and put the microchip into a little folder he carried on him. “For the concrete circumstances, I can perform an analysis, then write you a report. Looking on the surface, it’s likely that this old friend of yours frequently feels unbearable anxiety because his psychological stress is too great. He’s very keen on saving face. Even though he normally seems smooth and slick, in reality, he’s not very good at communicating with others. When too much stress amasses in his heart, he has nowhere to release it, so he only gets more and more anxious. When his internal conflict becomes unbalanced to a certain degree, it makes him unable to control himself, the way he is now. So he instinctively uses negative words to deliberately wound others as a way of releasing stress.” 

General Zhong was silent for a moment, but Huang Jinchen, listening in, nodded very thoughtfully, feeling that this really did seem to be the case. 

After a while, General Zhong somewhat irritably lit a cigarette. “So what do you think the source of his stress is?” 

Kou Tong blinked. He leaned back and rubbed the leg in the cast. “Instructor, you’ve actually always thought of me as Doraemon’s all-purpose machine, haven’t you? You think I know everything?” 

General Zhong gave him a deep and bitter look. Even Huang Jinchen in the corner felt this “sexy ray” and was instantly shaken, breaking out in gooseflesh. 

“The source of his stress.” Put under pressure, Kou Tong had to start speaking properly. “Do you know what a source of stress is? It can be anything. For example, you fart, and I can’t walk easily, so I can’t get away at once and have to smell it and feel very unhappy. That’s also a source of stress.” 

Huang Jinchen said: “Pffft.” 

Kou Tong waved a hand. “That’s all right, Master Huang, I was just bringing up an example. There’s no need for you to demonstrate.” 

Then he continued: “Many things can constitute a source of stress, but they won’t necessarily cause a person stress. Different people will have different reactions to different sources of stress…” 

Huang Jinchen, putting his studies into practice, picked up: “For example, I can walk easily, so if I hear a fart, I’ll immediately hold my breath and walk out, so it doesn’t constitute stress.” 

General Zhong turned his head and looked at Huang Jinchen, who was showing a sudden great interest in psychology and looking pleased as punch. He regretted his own arrangements so much that his guts hurt. He only remorsefully said, “He really was only bringing up an example.” 

Kou Tong laughed and pulled up the last image from the projection’s monitoring record. The room’s curtains closed automatically, and the screen froze on the mountain trapped by the enclosing wall. The picture was a little blurred. Kou Tong said, “It was here. The coffee shop was very dark, extremely dark, reflecting a powerful desire for self-protection. His self-protection has gone overboard. It’s nearly aggressive. There was an acute conflict midway, but he suppressed it. It was also that unconscious precaution of his that trapped us in this place, unable to go in or out. So when his feelings were slightly relaxed, I gave him the hint of ‘going to a more spacious place.’ So he unconsciously took us to this door.” 

General Zhong stared closely at the picture as though unwilling to relax in the least. 

Kou Tong said, “But I was overhasty today. As soon as he saw what was behind that door, though he doesn’t know what the Projector is, he must have faintly realized something. The things behind the door strongly provoked him, so the space collapsed at once—now I need to understand something of this guest’s…” 

“I remember this.” General Zhong suddenly pointed at the wall enclosing the mountain in the picture. “The courtyard walls of his house are like this.” 

“Oh…” Kou Tong withdrew his hand and propped his chin on his long, slender fingers. “The provocation comes from his family?” 

“I’ll have someone look into it.” 

“Yeah… Hey, listen, instructor.” Kou Tong suddenly raised a hand and closed the image. He leaned forward and cleared his throat but lowered his voice. “Instructor, don’t keep me in the dark. What do you suspect Yao Shuo of having done that made you come ask me to perform a psychological assessment on him?” 

General Zhong’s expression froze. 

Kou Tong shook his head. “Forget it. Since when have you been able to keep me in the dark? Even if you put two black eyes on him, Yao Shuo wouldn’t become a national treasure. There’s not enough to make you privately use the base’s equipment to give him an assessment, is there?” 

General Zhong was silent for a long moment. He stood up and lay a hand on Kou Tong’s shoulder. “I can’t say.” 

Kou Tong shrugged, showing that he wasn’t surprised at all. General Zhong looked at him and sighed. “I’ll supplement his family materials as soon as possible.” 

“If possible, I’d like to see his family members,” Kou Tong added. 

General Zhong agreed and left, closing the door. 

Kou Tong stood up, leaning on his crutch. When he looked up, he found that Huang Jinchen was sitting cross-legged on the floor, hugging his precious gun, looking his way with a curious expression. 

Kou Tong said, “What?” 

Huang Jinchen said, “Is Zhong Shiliang an old flame of yours?”