As soon as he had met him, Kou Tong had found that Lao Yao wasn’t especially interested in acknowledging him. He seemed to have some animosity towards everyone, including towards his self-professed old friend General Zhong, and even more towards himself. 

Why? 

Ordinarily, when initially entering someone’s consciousness projection space, as long as the people who entered behaved a little—not performing aggressive actions, unlike, for example, Master Huang, climbing tall towers, smashing people’s windows, and harassing the locals—the space itself, before the internal conflict had emerged, would be comparatively peaceful for a time, reflecting the surface level of a person’s consciousness. 

Judging from appearances, Lao Yao at any rate wasn’t a man of solitary disposition. 

A single person’s consciousness projection was different from the overlapping projection of multiple people. When multiple people overlapped, as a buffer against two parties’ consciousnesses clashing, people apart from the enterer would rarely appear. 

But a single person’s consciousness projection space was very stable, with fixed rules. It was an integrated whole. Ordinarily, the degree of activity inside could reflect the importance a person attached to interpersonal relationships. 

The well-trafficked road in front of them at least showed that Lao Yao was a person used to social engagements, inclined to be sociable. A person like this, at Lao Yao’s age, reasonably speaking ought to be very slick. Even if he really did hold animosity towards someone for some reason, that person would be unlikely to sense it, let alone be directly criticized with words. 

He must have some already uncontrollable conflict in his mind. 

As Kou Tong thought this, he subconsciously turned his head to look at Huang Jinchen. He found that Master Huang was looking with a scrutinizing gaze at the people in the street passing by them nonstop. Kou Tong’s gaze flashed behind his plain glass spectacles. More than once, he had thought that Huang Jinchen’s gaze was very cool. 

Yes—not cold, cool. 

At a glance, Huang Jinchen was a man who was good at making himself at home, rather well-spoken, capable of entertaining and fooling around and also quite capable of tact; but when there was someone sitting next to him, even if everyone was gathered together for very relaxed chat, if someone accidentally pushed their cup towards him a little, he would always unconsciously shift his own cup at the same time. 

Huang Jinchen, as a “gun” who had been undercover in a terrorist organization for a long time, was probably accustomed to this mode of living behind a telescopic sight. He could lower the frequency of his breathing to the extreme for hours at a time, lay in one place unmoving, attentively waiting for a target. 

It was very hard for others to imagine what kind of state he was in then. Sometimes Kou Tong even couldn’t help doubting whether he could tell apart the people his eyes saw and the people in his telescopic sight. 

Always called a “gun” by others, would he subconsciously objectify himself and others? 

Just then, Huang Jinchen gently poked him with his elbow. “Hey, hey, the old thing is pretending to be fashionable. He’s going into the coffee shop.” 

Then Huang Jinchen looked down and found that Kou Tong was pretending to be absorbed in fiddling with a control box he had taken out from somewhere, even convincingly holding down the music-playing Bluetooth earpiece clamped to his ear. Pretending that it was a communicator, he seriously said, “How much longer until the trial run is over? Oh…OK, fine, as fast as you can. It doesn’t matter to me, but the old chief came all this way. Don’t make him put in useless work along with us.” 

Huang Jinchen watched admiringly as, seeming to be acting in a play, he stepped into the coffee shop and rather apologetically nodded to Yao Shuo, who was already seated. “I’m sorry, I’m truly sorry.” 

Just as though it were the truth! 

The lights in the coffee shop were dim. Somehow, though outside it was noon with the sun high in the sky, as soon as you walked through the door, you seemed to be walking into night. The music was low and deep. There weren’t many people inside. All the customers were quiet, sitting scattered throughout the corners, vague and obscured, their privacy well protected. 

Huang Jinchen’s pupils quickly dilated because of the darkness. His footsteps paused slightly. Kou Tong noticed and quietly explained to him, “You must have spotted it. This is a peculiarity of the projection space. There are many things you can’t judge according to common sense.” 

Yao Shuo occupied a two-person seat, ordered a drink, and leaned back in his chair while stretching his legs out, taking up nearly all the space under the chair across from him, clearly not planning to associate with them. Kou Tong didn’t make himself obnoxious. He tactfully sat with Huang Jinchen in a small seat by the counter. 

Huang Jinchen then asked, “You can’t judge according to common sense, but there must still be a theoretical basis, right? Otherwise, wouldn’t this thing be too bizarre?” 

“There is.” Kou Tong kept an eye on Yao Shuo. His voice was low, and his speech was very slow. “He doesn’t know where he is, so from the beginning, on the basis of instinct, he led us into this place. As I said, he is this projection space’s master, so he instinctively knows where to go. For him, this coffee shop represents a conflict.” 

Huang Jinchen blinked, indicating that raising his level of professional skills was truly his top priority. 

“For example—on one hand, he’s a forceful, overbearing person, but on the other hand, he’s hiding some weakness. Adding in some external reasons—we’ll call this stimulation by sources of stress—this is currently making the contradiction in his mind erupt. He can no longer regulate it himself, and that’s what leads to abnormal behavior.” 

Huang Jinchen appeared to come to a sudden great understanding. “Oh, that makes sense.” 

Kou Tong suddenly looked at him and said with a smile that wasn’t quite a smile, “To put this kind of conflict into a concrete form, I’ll take an example. Let’s say you yourself. Though on the surface you appear very extroverted, very indifferent to trivialities, liking friends and a good time, in reality you feel very distant from others. You’ve drifted for too long outside of ordinary society. You don’t know how you ought to treat others, how to get along with others, and you’re afraid of giving yourself away… Huh? Master Huang, what is your hand feeling for?” 

Huang Jinchen’s hand was automatically reaching for the gun hanging at his waist. Hearing Kou Tong’s voice, he immediately paused and seemed to come around. His hand continued to reach downward as if nothing had happened. Finally, he put it very naturally on Kou Tong’s thigh and winked at him. “Here we are in the dark. What do you think?” 

Kou Tong was aware that he was a sesame stalk of a man with no meat on his leg. He didn’t know who was taking advantage of whom with this groping. So he didn’t even dodge, only continued: “So you see, when someone turns the subject to you, you automatically become nervous and perform an instinctive aggressive or defensive action. Then your intellect catches up to your instinct, and you use another means to change the subject.” 

As he said this, he suddenly covered the back of Huang Jinchen’s hand on his leg with his hand. His hand was a little rough, with all kinds of old scars on it, but it was very warm. This sudden warmth made Huang Jinchen’s body tense involuntarily. But before he could react with any thrill to this intimate contact in the dark, Kou Tong removed both his hand and leg and laughed. “Of course, you shouldn’t take what I just said seriously. It’s just a little technique that ordinary swindlers use to get close and trick others into trusting them.” 

For a time, Huang Jinchen couldn’t catch up. “What?” 

Kou Tong shrugged. Very relaxed and cheerful, he crossed one leg over the other, picked up his coffee from the table, drank, frowned, and said, “You don’t object, do you?” 

Before Huang Jinchen could ask what he didn’t object to, he brought over two portions of sugar and put them into his own coffee. Then, very parochially, he commented: “Doesn’t this swill taste like medicine dregs? Only idiot foreigners drink this garbage.” 

Huang Jinchen: “…”

He felt that these words were unworthy of his beast in human clothes getup. 

Kou Tong went on as though nothing were the matter: “Each person has a double nature. Over a long period of time, a person’s psychological state, existing in a balanced state, can’t have the characteristics of only one side. It’s only that normally, the majority of people can’t especially show their dual nature or psychological state to others, so they’ll always emphasize one side. So when putting on airs and hitting on someone, one of the infallible moves is to deliberately display a side with characteristics contrary to the other person’s, whether it’s true or false. At any rate, it makes them think you’re very cultured, very like a stranger who is a soulmate with a deep spiritual connection and preference towards them.” 

Huang Jinchen pondered deeply, then asked, “So are you saying you’re hitting on me?” 

“…” Kou Tong paused. “I’m explaining professional techniques to you. People in our line of work, apart from not fighting back when hit and not talking back when cursed, also have to learn how to safely avoid being struck by lightning for acting pretentious.” 

Huang Jinchen cast a deep look of worship upon his senior. But Kou Tong’s attention had turned to Yao Shuo. “He won’t let others approach, and his movement crinkling the candy wrapper looks very fretful… What do you think he’s fretting about?” 

Huang Jinchen said, “Didn’t Lao Zhong say he was in the middle of a divorce?” 

Kou Tong asked, “Can we trust what General Zhong says?” 

Huang Jinchen accordingly answered, “Certainly not, or else sows could climb trees.” 

Kou Tong laughed, thinking that this colleague really played along well. 

When he laughed, half his face was hidden in darkness. Even someone sitting across from him could only see one eye on his slightly turned face. There was only a pale yellow lamp on the table, making everything look soft and hazy. 

Huang Jinchen suddenly found that Kou Tong’s pupils were proportionally somewhat larger than other people’s, so when he looked fixedly at someone, his gaze looked very affectionate, nearly exuding tenderness, especially when his lips tilted up slightly as he looked directly at you; you could simply stick it right up on the wall as the year’s most healing smile with no problem. 

Huang Jinchen was suddenly very regretful that he hadn’t picked up his topic from before. It wouldn’t have been unacceptable to be hit on a little by a cool guy like this. 

Just then, the front door of the coffee shop was kicked open from outside. Dazzling light shone in, nearly blinding everyone. As Kou Tong instinctively raised a hand to shield his eyes, he quietly said with a bit of excitement, “Here it comes!” 

Huang Jinchen’s vision was much better at adjusting than his. He could already clearly see the people at the door. He saw two gun-toting men standing there dressed up as classic bank robbers, holding guns, faces covered in stockings, showing only their eyes. The slightly fatter one of them domineeringly fired twice at the ceiling. Amid cracking glass and screaming, he yelled, “Open the safe, take out the money, put it in the sack! Stay put, don’t touch your phones. Anyone calls the cops, I’ll kill you!” 

Huang Jinchen wasn’t familiar yet with the rules of play of the Projector’s mystical space, so he couldn’t quite work out at first whether he had transmigrated or whether these two guys had walked into the wrong room.