If you asked Su Qing to describe it, then the feeling he had was numbness all over. It wasn’t that he couldn’t move. It was like the feeling of numbness in your legs after spending too long squatting over a toilet and then suddenly standing up. When this feeling spread to your whole body, it was very irksome, making a person not know whether to laugh or cry. 

Fang Xiu and Qin Luo got into the car together and showed the mysterious bracelet to Dr. Lu and Master Xu. Xu Ruchong and Lu Qingbai deliberated in whispers for a long time. Then Lu Qingbai said, “Xiao Su, how are you feeling now?” 

Su Qing, grimacing, said, “Numb, but a little better than before.” 

Hu Bugui was a little anxious. “What happened to him?” 

Lu Qingbai considered for a long time, then said, “Based on our preliminary conjectures, perhaps he was short-circuited.” 

Su Qing’s features instantly twisted. Hu Bugui at once anxiously asked, “How do you feel?” 

“No…” Su Qing struggled to look at Lu Qingbai on the little screen and forced out a fake smile. “It’s just that I heard what Dr. Lu said and felt like I got kicked in the teeth by a donkey.” 

Lu Qingbai felt that he was being insulted, but he opened his mouth, didn’t know how to respond, then deflated, feeling a little gloomy. 

After a very long time, Su Qing slowly recovered. He drank two bottles of water in one gulp. The four of them turned the site upside down and in the end didn’t find anything of value. Fang Xiu judged that the body must simply have been dumped here. 

Su Qing squatted on the ground, propping up his chin, holding an evidence bag in his hand. In the bag was the mysterious bracelet. Though Hu Bugui was strongly opposed, Su Qing still insisted on making another experiment of himself. He found that the thing had broken completely. There was no reaction this time. He asked, “Getting back to the main subject, why would a corpse be sending out such high frequency emotional waves? Rising from the dead?” 

When he had just spoken, his expression suddenly turned serious. He tilted his head, frowned, stuck up his index finger and shushed. “Wait, don’t talk. Listen, guys.” 

A breeze rustled the abundant weeds that were past their prime and beginning to yellow, raising a chilly layer of gooseflesh of people’s skin, making a sound like a sob when it passed through cracks in the rocks. Su Qing’s expression was very grave, making the scene appear increasingly haunted. Fang Xiu hopped up, anxiously watching Su Qing. Qin Luo also couldn’t resist taking a step back, away from the body. 

Hu Bugui asked, “What is it? What do you hear?” 

Then Su Qing raised his head and showed his small white teeth in a grin. “Half-time break. I was joking.” 

Fang Xiu missed a breath and nearly got a stitch in his side. Qin Luo’s face turned red. Hu Bugui looked at him in some exasperation. He wanted to say something, but seeing him in a good mood, he couldn’t bear to. After hemming and hawing for an age, he reached out to give him a smack on the head. “Stop that.” 

Afterwards, Hu Bugui couldn’t resist thinking—he knew that there was a type of mental illness in which people were addicted to stealing things. Maybe they weren’t missing anything; they just couldn’t resist wanting to steal. He thought that Su Qing’s situation was about the same as that. He must have suffered too much over the last few years and developed this glib-tongued habit. He needed to fool people now and then to be able to let off the enormous psychological stress. 

So Captain Hu felt conscience-stricken. General Xiong had warned him that he had to make Su Qing feel relaxed and safe when interacting with him. He couldn’t put too much pressure on him. Hu Bugui thought that that mild “stop that” of his just now had been a little excessively strict, so he immediately started thinking of a way to make up for it. 

He racked his brains, recalling his limited leisure time over the last few years and the even more limited recreational reading material he had consumed during it. He stiffly forced a smile onto his stern and proper face—the others found it nearly a little horrifying. Then they heard him say in a tone just as stiff, practically in deadly earnest: “Wukong, you’re up to your tricks again.” 

Su Qing: “…” 

Qin Luo: “…” 

Fang Xiu: “…”

Over the comms, even Xu Ruchong and Lu Qingbai were quiet. All of them looked in silence at Hu Bugui’s forced, slightly asymmetrical smile and thought that the end of days had come early. The GDP was faltering, and Captain Hu had lost his senses. 

Finally, with Hu Bugui apprehensive and the three others in disarray, they returned to headquarters. The medical and technical departments immediately each took over the work of studying the corpse and the mysterious bracelet. Su Qing meanwhile dropped a word and went out into the corridor. He opened a window, lit a cigarette, and put it in his mouth, lightly tapping on the window frame with one hand. 

He hadn’t been deliberately teasing everyone just now. He really had heard a voice. He could even be certain of its source. It had come out of that bracelet that had broken in half. Hu Bugui had only been a step and a half away from him then, but he seemed not to have heard any sound. Su Qing didn’t know whether he had been hallucinating. 

As soon as he closed his eyes, he could recall that voice. It belonged to a man. He was screaming himself hoarse: “Help! Help! Ahhh! Save me!” 

It hadn’t only been the voice. He had also clearly “heard” fear. 

In three years, though he had practiced meticulously, Su Qing from start to finish had been unable to clearly sense the emotions of people around him like Chen Lin had back then. Only when someone’s emotions were particular strong could he faintly perceive a trace of them. 

He had been reflecting on the four types of emotion—happiness was floating, sadness was falling, fear was shrinking, and anger was release. 

Shrinking fear was the hardest emotion for Su Qing to get a “fellow feeling” for. It was practically impossible to succeed even once. But just now, for the first time, he had very clearly felt that man’s fear. For humans, emotions were always tied to fixed events and memories. In that moment, Su Qing had suddenly recalled the scene of the first time he had come to the blue seal base and been splashed with the brain matter of the grey seal Jiang Lan had shot. 

This was a rather strange feeling, because Su Qing thought that even if Jiang Lan appeared in front of him again and shot another person before his eyes, things had changed—he wouldn’t be scared. This was a very different feeling from when his grey seal had first been activated and he had been unable to distinguish between external emotions and his own. 

So what the hell was that bracelet? 

Just then, a voice suddenly broke through his thoughts. 

“Su Qing?” 

Su Qing turned his head to look. “Uncle Cheng!” 

Cheng Weizhi was a little moved. He walked over in big strides and hugged Su Qing, slapping him twice on the back. “Good! How have you been all these years?” 

Su Qing felt his heart sting a little, but despite the stinging there, his nose didn’t begin to sting. The nerves between his expression and his emotions seemed to have rusted from not being used in too long. 

“I heard Xiaolu say you had come back, but you’ve been busy, and I haven’t found an opportunity to see you.” There were tears in Cheng Weizhi’s eyes. He carefully scrutinized Su Qing. Suddenly, all sorts of feelings welled up in his heart, and he sighed. “You’ve changed quite a lot.” 

It wasn’t his appearance that had changed, but the look in his eyes.

Su Qing smiled. He figured there was nothing for him to do now, so he pulled Cheng Weizhi aside. “How about the two of us sit down and have a chat?” 

So they went to Cheng Weizhi’s room. Cheng Ge was amusing himself fiddling with things and ignored them. Su Qing put some pieces of candy in his pocket as an apology for shamelessly eating his candy before. Then he and Cheng Weizhi began to chat back and forth, and he explained the bracelet they had brought back. 

Su Qing reached out and pressed on his own temple. “It wasn’t a hallucination. I could tell. A hallucination wouldn’t have triggered my ‘fellow feeling.’” 

Cheng Weizhi was silent for a while. “No, you can’t be so certain. Hallucinations are produced by your brain. They can appear in all kinds of forms. There’s no final conclusion. Your five senses and even the fellow feeling system of the energy crystal may all be impacted.” 

Su Qing frowned. “Do you think it was only my hallucination?” 

Cheng Weizhi picked up his teacup but only held it suspended in midair. He didn’t bring it up to his mouth. He considered carefully for a while. “Remember what I taught you. We’ll try to use reasonable logic to look at this business—you received a ‘shock’ from this unknown bracelet, but when others touched it, there was no reaction, right?” 

“Right, Fang Xiu also touched it, and he was fine.” 

Cheng Weizhi nodded and cautiously said, “As far as I’m aware, in regards to physiological structure, the greatest difference between you and Xiao Fang is the possession of a grey seal and a paired energy crystal system. We can temporarily accept this, yes?” 

“In other words, what that thing shocks isn’t people but energy crystals.” 

Cheng Weizhi hesitated, then said, “Rather, let’s say that it established some particular resonance with your energy crystal. You say that you felt your whole body go numb, but you didn’t lose control of your muscles. It’s likely because of discomfort caused by the energy crystal system temporarily going out of control. Tying in the abnormal waveband Xiao Xu spoke of…” 

Su Qing picked up: “He was already dead—I’m not a great expert, I may not be reckoning correctly—but from the look of him, I would say that he had been dead for over twenty-four hours already. So it’s likely that the abnormal waveband was emitted by the bracelet.” 

“The waves emitted were uncontrollable, but they contained enormous power. That can’t be denied,” Cheng Weizhi said. “I’m wondering whether the bracelet you’re talking about might be a sort of external energy crystal.” 

Su Qing was silent. After a long moment, he looked fixedly into Cheng Weizhi’s eyes and quietly said, “Because the energy crystal’s operative mechanism hasn’t been thoroughly researched yet, this sort of external energy crystal would produce enormous power because it couldn’t be controlled, and burst open the wearer’s head. What does that seem likely to you?” 

Cheng Weizhi stared, not catching up. But Su Qing immediately stood up. “Uncle, I’ll come talk to see you again in a while. First I have to go to the tech department.” 

Cheng Weizhi stood up along with him. “What’s wrong?” 

Su Qing gave a cold laugh. “Given those fuckers’ usual behavior, I suspect that this time they’re performing human experimentation.” 

As soon as Su Qing walked out of Cheng Weizhi’s door, he bumped into Hu Bugui coming towards him. “Captain Hu, I’ve just been talking to Uncle Cheng, and I suddenly wondered if they could be…” 

Hu Bugui hurriedly nodded and held up the folder in his hand towards him. “I know, the report from the tech department has already been sent out. I'm notifying all members to go immediately to the conference room—Xiaolu!” 

He raised his voice to bring Xue Xiaolu, who was just passing by, to a halt. “Tell Lu Qingbai that I want to have an autopsy report as soon as possible, and learn the identity of the deceased!” 

“I have it all here. We’ve already confirmed the identity of the deceased.”