Yise wondered if he’d misheard.
Wasn’t it just earlier that Su Cha wanted a mansion, a personal chef, and a rose garden?
“I won’t ask for anything else,” Su Cha said, swaying slightly as if pretending to be weak. “It’s a bit windy, everyone—I’m going to lie down for a while.”
Getting a face-to-face interview was already more than they expected. The gathered reporters were tactful enough to leave with their equipment before Yise’s patience ran out. They had raced to get the scoop, and they’d need to race again to be the first to publish it.
Yise and Su Cha entered the elevator one after the other. The moment the doors closed, Yise asked, “Dream shrunk already?”
Su Cha was silent for a moment. “That part was me talking nonsense with my eyes open. Don’t take it seriously.”
He had indeed kept his eyes shut throughout the later part of the interview. As the elevator rose, Su Cha reluctantly added, “Sometimes when I speak, it comes out backward, the opposite of how I think.”
Considering the effects of the experiments, Yise said, “There was nothing abnormal in your brain scan. This situation likely won’t last long.”
Once he confirmed Su Cha was in decent shape, Yise finally got to the main point: “Do you remember anything that happened before you appeared at the ruins?”
Su Cha shook his head, speaking with some hesitation. “I just remember… it felt like I was surrounded by water… and then my consciousness was fuzzy. Oh—there was a loud bang… and when I woke up again, I was already there.”
He wasn’t lying—he chose to state the facts as they were.
At the same time, Yise’s mental power quietly enveloped him. Every microexpression, heart rate fluctuation, and spiritual wave was observed closely.
Once he confirmed Su Cha wasn’t lying, Yise’s expression subtly shifted.
After the base was eliminated, the army had thoroughly searched the surrounding area—if Su Cha had been nearby at the time, they definitely would have found him.
His appearance seemed as if he had just materialized out of nowhere.
“I want to know the truth,” Su Cha said seriously. “Can you help me?”
His naturally gentle and innocent demeanor radiated outward, with a disarming effect that was nearly absolute.
Yise simply replied, “The Empire will fulfill its responsibilities to every victim.”
He had a mountain of work waiting and couldn’t stay there indefinitely. He summoned two of his personal guards to ensure Su Cha’s safety, then left the hospital.
One of the guards was the soldier who had answered Su Cha’s greeting aboard the warship. He looked a bit more approachable than Yise, so Su Cha asked a question that had been weighing on his mind: “What is a spiritual form?”
“A spiritual form is a manifestation of concentrated mental power,” the guard explained simply. “It’s also a medium for the brain to communicate with the outside world. Most of them take the form of animals—though there are exceptions.”
While Su Cha was doing his best to learn about this planet, investigations about him were also moving full speed ahead.
There was no record of him in the information database. That afternoon, the Investigation Department sent personnel to the hospital. Their first stop was to visit Shen Ningze.
“I’ve never seen him before,” Shen Ningze said from his hospital bed, coughing softly now and then.
“Are you sure?”
“The base restricted our movements,” Shen Ningze said, pretending to think for a moment. Looking at the photo handed to him, he spoke with hesitation: “I can’t be certain… but he looks very healthy, and his smile is bright…”
“A smile like that—if I had seen it, I don’t think I would’ve forgotten.”
Though just fourteen, this child was exceptionally skilled at manipulating others. Giving a firm yes or no wouldn’t convince the investigators, so instead, he planted two keywords—“smile” and “healthy”—to subtly trigger their suspicion.
After leaving the ward, one investigator stared at the photo of Su Cha disembarking from the aircraft for several seconds. “Does this look like someone who’s suffered psychological trauma?”
Then he pulled up a video of Su Cha speaking to the media and said to his colleague, “Look here—his demeanor is completely different between getting off the aircraft and during the interview. It’s like a full 180.”
His colleague, an experienced investigator, replied calmly, “That doesn’t prove anything.”
The young man was rather unimpressed. He possessed A-level mental strength, but after three years on the job, he had yet to be promoted—largely due to his partner’s sluggish work style.
If this was truly a case involving a disguised experimental subject, then it was a major one. Cracking it would definitely catch the attention of the higher-ups.
He suggested, “We could try bluffing the kid—just tell him that a survivor claimed never to have seen him before.”
His colleague had a cigarette dangling from his mouth. As he lit it, he instinctively remembered they were in a hospital and put the lighter away. “If there were any clear red flags, General Yise would’ve already taken action.”
Without evidence and only suspicions, there wasn’t much they could do.
The young man fell silent.
The Investigation Department and the military had always been at odds. With so many suspicious points, he couldn’t help but wonder—was this all the army’s doing? Were they trying to use public opinion to push for a full investigation into the living experiments? A victim suddenly appeared, the media got a mysterious tip-off—none of it added up.
Without questioning Su Cha, the young man shifted his focus and temporarily left the hospital.
…
In the private ward, the night was unnervingly quiet. The curtains were open, and Su Cha stared at the half-moon outside. Sleepiness gradually crept in.
At midnight, the chirping of cicadas broke the silence.
This particular cicada chirped in a steady rhythm, and Su Cha, deep in sleep, was pulled into a nightmare.
“Execute him! Cut off his roots—he doomed the entire clan!”
The moisture in his stalk was drained, and thorned whips lashed against his body. The despair of dying consumed his consciousness inch by inch.
The elder of the clan stood expressionless before him and said coldly, “You exposed our location, caused so many of our people to die—you should be thrown into a vat of boiling oil!”
In the sweltering summer night, Su Cha broke into a cold sweat in his sleep. His hand unconsciously gripped the bedsheet. “It wasn’t me, it was…”
Before he could name the true culprit, the angry faces vanished—replaced by white lab coats walking back and forth. It felt like he was watching through a pane of glass, everything hazy.
The cicada continued to chirp, its sound twisting into a voice of interrogation.
“What did you see?”
“White… lab coats…”
In his sleep, Su Cha sensed someone trying to dismantle his consciousness. But when he realized there were unfamiliar scenes buried in his memory, he didn’t wake up immediately. He wanted to use this opportunity to uncover what had happened during his mental fog.
The cicada—who had flown in who knows when—seemed dissatisfied with his answer: “The lab coats are a lie, aren’t they? Think carefully—what did you see?”
It had been a long time since Su Cha dreamed of the past.
Since birth, he had been a frail flower demon. As a child, he couldn’t restrain his demonic aura and was shunned by his clan. After coming of age, he followed clan tradition and descended the mountain to train. That same year, the clan’s golden child also ventured out—but unexpectedly fell in love with a demon slayer, nearly bringing doom upon the flower demon race.
The demon slayer was deeply devoted to the golden child. When he learned that the elders had already taken action against the flower demons, in order to protect his beloved from being implicated, he told the outside world that Su Cha was her lover.
The golden child, for her part, didn’t deny it.
Su Cha had tried to speak the truth, but all he got in return was a cold “You remain unrepentant.” Before he could even be punished according to clan rules, the poisonous mist nearly rendered his throat mute.
That was when the system appeared—at the lowest point of his despair—bringing with it a sliver of hope.
The dream dragged him deeper into a darker realm, and Su Cha found himself unable to speak another word.
Just as the golden cicada pressed in step by step, the door to the hospital room was suddenly slammed open. The cicada flew toward the window but froze in place at the icy voice of a personal guard: “Typical of the Investigation Department. We’ll be handing this footage to the General himself—let’s see what he has to say.”
Footage?
The golden cicada was the spirit form of the young investigator from earlier that day. Armed with powerful spiritual energy and a unique spirit form, he had acted recklessly and without restraint.
The shrill chirping, though seemingly disruptive, actually only resounded in the target’s mind, triggering them to unconsciously reveal their deepest secrets.
It had all been a setup.
The young man realized it instantly.
In the past, the Investigation Department had stripped soldiers of honors over the tiniest infractions. But he hadn’t expected the military to outmaneuver them so completely—using a spirit form to bait the victim into revealing information. Once the truth came to light, the department’s credibility would be severely damaged.
The young man himself was now hiding behind a large tree outside the hospital, cold sweat pouring from his forehead.
“It’s over. I’m finished…”
No wonder Yise had only assigned two guards—it had been a trap from the very start. They’d lured him in to confirm Su Cha’s identity and land a heavy blow to the department at the same time.
Through the spirit connection, he could see the boy’s current state with clarity.
Startled awake by the sound of the door crashing open, Su Cha’s fingers were trembling. The pristine bedsheets were stained with blotches of blood. He didn’t have long fingernails—it was hard to imagine what kind of pain it took to tear up his palms like that.
If that footage were to be leaked, the Investigation Department would be completely at fault.
The guard also noticed the bloody wounds in Su Cha’s palm.
They always aimed for the optimal outcome. Using the department’s arrogance to assess whether Su Cha was a threat not only clarified his status but also spared him the ordeal of future investigations.
Otherwise, someone of unknown origin sent into the department’s hands would face far greater pressure.
Yet watching Su Cha drenched in sweat, gasping repeatedly, the guard furrowed his brow.
Su Cha grabbed a cup from the table and gulped down water until the dryness in his throat was washed away and he could finally catch his breath.
Unfortunately, the trauma from the past was too great. During the process of his consciousness being dismantled, he hadn’t been able to glimpse the white lab coats a second time.
Glancing at the guard’s briefly furrowed brow, Su Cha rasped, “You don’t have to worry about being punished. I’ll tell Yise that you arrived in time and saved me.”
He had mistaken the guard’s reaction as fear of being held accountable.
Which was a fair assumption—after all, Yise had personally tasked the guards with ensuring Su Cha’s safety.
The two guards exchanged glances, unsure how to respond. One of them finally turned silently to summon a nurse to tend to Su Cha’s hand.
As for the spirit form and the young investigator, they let them leave in disgrace. Given what had happened tonight, even dismissal would be a light punishment.
The nurse carefully treated his injuries, muttering, “You must’ve used some real force to mess your hand up this badly…”
Su Cha gave a tired smile. “Had a nightmare.”
His face was full of exhaustion. The nurse nor the guards wished to disturb him further, so they left a quiet environment behind.
Just before closing the door, one of the guards disabled the monitoring system. After a moment’s hesitation, he added, “Rest easy. Something like this won’t happen again.”
“Okay,” Su Cha replied, lying back down.
As soon as the door closed, he pulled the blanket over his head and cursed the culprit now lost somewhere in the universe: “That d*mn system…”
Judging by what had just happened, tonight was clearly a confrontation between two factions. But even though he had been used as a pawn, Su Cha didn’t feel the least bit angry. He knew full well that the more obedient he appeared, the more guilt he could quietly instill in the hearts of those around him.
And that guilt would eventually become leverage he could use to stand tall.
The teleportation location might have been wrong, but the people of this planet had the right traits—strong in combat and cold-hearted.
Su Cha yawned. “Looks like I’ll have to postpone settling my old scores.”
Returning to his original world was out of the question—that was a hard rule. But he wasn’t the kind of person who simply let bygones be bygones.
In past missions, when dealing with the vampire system, Su Cha had played along smoothly. After completing the task, the system promised him a new life of comfort and adoration—and under its psychological suggestion, it claimed it would send him to a highly developed planet.
With a powerful faction behind him and advanced tech, he figured it was only a matter of time before he could track down his old world and settle the score.
Who could’ve predicted things would go wrong?
But judging by the current planet’s level of technology, it might be just as advanced as Fog Star—which meant he still had a chance.
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