Those present were obviously struck by lightning. They hadn’t expected that their own faction could have such a brutal presence. Su Qing’s wooden leg had been half-dismantled. He let it hang suspended in midair, forgetting to even put it down. He couldn’t resist asking, “So…what does this deity do?” 

Director Sun shrugged. “Sorry, for their safety, all of our contacts are unidirectional. I can only request their assistance when they voluntarily contact me, and they hold the initiative to arrange the next contact time and method. Furthermore, I can’t know who they actually are or what position they hold in Utopia, unless they expose themselves. I’ve already told them about this matter. Your current most urgent task is to assemble the RZ Unit, especially the technicians and the well-matched field personnel…” 

As he said this, his phone suddenly rang. Director Sun picked up. After a moment, he smiled. “Everyone, good news. Our first expert special assistant has arrived. I’ll go get him.” 

In a moment, Director Sun came back with a young man—the newcomer was someone they all knew. It was the mysterious itinerant doctor Kou Tong, who had performed mirror image appraisals at the “ST” Training Camp. 

This Dr. Kou seemed to be in a hurry as before, sporting a head of messy hair, his overly thin body seeming to sway even without a wind. He had a little retro satchel under his arm and wore a sparkling smile. He made his appearance in front of everyone as though nothing was happening outside—as though the people in front of him were a harmonious and fine party gathered at a spring barbecue, not wanted criminals surrounding a weird corpse. 

“Good afternoon, everyone!” he said vigorously.

Apart from Su Qing’s normal response of “Hello, Dr. Kou,” the others were all astonished. 

Cheng Weizhi said, “Who is this?” 

Lu Qingbai said, “Shit, why do I feel like I’ve traveled in time?” 

Hu Bugui immediately asked Director Sun, “Isn’t Dr. Kou an external employee? How can he participate in our operations at a time like this? The danger and…” 

“You can give me a lie detector test. I’m absolutely loyal to the organization,” Dr. Kou said, still giving off spring sunshine. “Or you could interrogate me. Really, I’ll answer any question.” 

Su Qing, beaming, asked, “Please provide your bank card account number and PIN as well as your bust, waist, and hip measurements, accurate to the millimeter.” 

“My personal bank card has been canceled. I have to depend on all of you for support now. Isn’t the money General Xiong left enough?” Kou Tong winked at him. “If it isn’t enough, that’s all right. There are so many anti-government organizations in the world. Utopia aren’t the only ones with sponsors. As for the measurements…” 

He very boldly opened his arms. “Come on, you can come take a look.” 

Su Qing stood up, eager to have a go. Then Hu Bugui glared at him. Su Qing rubbed his nose, wilted, and sat back down in defeat. As though nothing were the matter, he smiled at Kou Tong. “Well, I was joking.” 

Kou Tong openly walked over and glanced at Zheng Wan’s body. Very insincerely, he said, “Oh, a dead person!” 

Then he took a stack of documents from his bag, pushed Zheng Wan’s body aside, and put the document down. He drew everyone’s gazes, then said, “These are duplicates of the results of your mirror image test appraisals from last time at the training camp. I used the mirror image results and the synthesized manifestations when you were drawn into the multidimensional space under the influence of the enforced sleep device to make these hasty assessments. I’m very sorry. According to convention, I would keep these results confidential. In principle, apart from yourselves, no one should be able to see the appraisal results. They belong to the category of strictly confidential documents. But this is a time of emergency. I hope you can understand.” 

If they didn’t understand, there was still nothing to be done. Kou Tong looked at Hu Bugui. He knew that he was the boss, so he was planning to open fire with him. “Captain Hu, first is your appraisal result.” 

Hu Bugui paused. Understandingly, he didn’t protest and very conscientiously picked up the appraisal result. He opened it up and spread it out in front of everyone. “When I was little, I lived in a village. In order to make a living, my parents normally didn’t pay much attention to me. Later I went to school in the city. I didn’t actually know how to speak very well at school. I was always rather solitary. But at home, my parents would still always brag about me. There were many things I couldn’t ask for their help with. Their education level wasn’t high. Sometimes if I said something, they wouldn’t understand, so I would bear it on my own. Dr. Kou says I have a slightly perfectionist personality. Though it’s very restrained, not on the level of a personality disorder, still…sometimes when I encounter a thing, I may be excessively autocratic. Sometimes I think a lot of things, but I’m not used to saying them aloud. My communication ability isn’t very up to standard. Though I know it’s bad, I’ve always thought highly of myself. Even when I know I’m going to offend someone, if I can’t think of another way to express myself, I’ll still say it.

“My hang-up is that impassable forest I went through with Su Qing.” Hu Bugui looked at Su Qing and found that he was also looking at him. His speech stopped for a moment. His throat tightened a little. Hu Bugui cleared his throat. “Dr. Kou is right. I’ve always wished that what happened in the grey house had never happened. I wished to go back to that time, and if I couldn’t go back, I even wished that it would happen again. 

“The danger level of that forest we were in was all related to that idea of mine, even the thistles at the end. All of it was my subconsciousness imitating the collapsed walls in the grey house that day.” At this point, Hu Bugui paused. Then he shook his head. “But I found that there was no going back.” 

It seemed that he had never made such a lengthy speech, slicing himself open entirely, revealing his thoughts wholly unguarded, revealing his own heart that even he didn’t dare to face directly. 

“I remembered you countless times before. I thought that everything that had happened to you was my fault. I wanted to make up for it. I thought that if only I could make it up to you, then that feeling like having a fishbone caught in my throat would disappear, and then I could continue doing this job without any ill feeling, pretend that I was still the best. I would have the right to love you. I could be with you.” Hu Bugui was facing Su Qing. Everyone listened silently as he spoke. No one made a sound. “But I found that I couldn’t make up for it. Because three years later, you didn’t need me anymore.” 

Su Qing remembered how in the impassable forest, his energy system had suddenly gone out of control, how he had even had trouble walking—it turned out that this had been Hu Bugui’s subconscious wish. 

“I’m finished.” Hu Bugui kept looking directly at him for a while. Then, as if suddenly letting out a sigh of relief, he looked at Kou Tong. 

Kou Tong didn’t comment. There was no need for a psychologist to comment. A psychologist didn’t even need to know anything. He only needed to evaluate what a person knew. If the person understood himself, that was enough. 

Once you had named the cage in your own heart, it could no longer hold you. 

“Su Qing,” Kou Tong prompted softly. 

But Su Qing’s reaction wasn’t nearly as forthright as Hu Bugui’s. He automatically brought his hand down on the assessment. He stared at the document’s white cover page. After a long time, he said, “What you gave me was incomplete.” 

Kou Tong didn’t deny it. “Time was short then. I couldn’t perform a deeper assessment of you. Your…experiences have given you very powerful concealment skills. The mirror image instrument’s frequency was even influenced by you—or, from a certain point of view, you’re very steady, harder to influence than anyone else.” 

“Because I don’t trust in emotion, I only trust in logic.” Su Qing smiled and looked back at Cheng Weizhi. The old professor was startled. He hadn’t expected him to remember these words of his. 

“I survived relying on these words. Now, the few times I’ve been able to feel others’ emotions, I’ve been able to perfectly separate external ones from my own.” Su Qing paused. “The assessment you gave me had a line about not being able to find my place, because I had lost the coordinates—” 

Kou Tong softly interrupted him: “There’s no need to talk about that. I know you’re found it now, and that’s enough.” 

Su Qing stared. Then he looked into Kou Tong’s eyes and suddenly felt that he was like an enlightened demon. He knew everything. After a moment, Su Qing smiled, nodded, and removed his hand from the file of his unopened assessment. Kou Tong didn’t follow up, amounting to showing consideration for a certain person’s professional peculiarities. The others didn’t have the good fortune of being able to have a close-up glimpse of what was in this professional swindler’s inner being. 

“Lu…” 

Lu Qingbai opened the file on the table and pushed it towards the people next to him. “I have nothing to say. You can read it yourselves. That’s the kind of person I am—a weakling who’s dissected more people than he’s saved. Do you think it’s possible for a person like me not to be sarcastic?” 

He laughed a little self-mockingly. “Actually, I’m pretty confused.” 

Confused about whether the work he did was right or wrong, whether it lived up to his oath to practice medicine for the benefit of the public, to aid the dying and heal the injured. Confused about the enormous psychological stress this position caused him—not daring to think about the path he was walking, afraid that he would flinch. He was scared of others, and more afraid of what he knew—that Lu Qingbai was a weak person. 

He had always secretly questioned himself, questioned the RZ Unit, especially after Xu Ruchong’s betrayal. The closest teammate to him had suddenly turned into someone he didn’t know…

Kou Tong closed the appraisal, waited half a minute for them all to raise their heads from their own stories and put their armor back on, face the world without distractions. 

Then he successively opened the appraisal files of the absent Xue Xiaolu, Qin Luo, Chang Dou, and Fang Xiu. 

“I heard Director Sun mention your circumstances and plans—Captain Hu, don’t be anxious. If this person really is one of your core personnel, then their psychological quality over all these years must have been absolutely expert. From my appraisals, you won’t be able to see their betrayal or any hint that they’re holding back,” Kou Tong said. “Now I hope to adjust your rather…dispiriting plan for a trap—Director Sun, is everything I asked for ready?” 

This man had both hands propped on the table, the clothes he was wearing seeming to sway around him; he put on his signature smile like a world full of springtime. “Let’s see who they are after all.” 

Fang Xiu, Qin Luo, Xue Xiaolu, and Chang Dou’s long-silent special communicators at last called out after being unidirectionally activated.