Chapter 360
Chapter 360
The evidence couldn’t have been clearer.
The camera showed Brother Liu leaving the precinct with the flash drive.
Yet he kept acting. Even with proof right in front of him, he refused to admit it.
“I didn’t! I don’t remember leaving at all!”
He stared wide-eyed at the footage, then at me. “What the hell? This is really damned strange. I clearly remember going straight to the evidence room. I never left the precinct!”
I drew a breath and pointed at the screen. “Look at yourself. You’re awake. Nobody came into the room. You left the precinct with that drive while fully conscious, and you’re saying you don’t remember?”
I grabbed the mouse and rewound the precinct footage.
At one point, Brother Liu answered a call. Not long after hanging up, he removed the drive and went outside.
Obviously, he had left to meet whoever called him.
“Who did you meet?” I asked.
He still denied everything, growing increasingly agitated. “I didn’t meet anyone! If I’m lying, may I die a horrible death!”
I folded my arms and watched him coldly. I wanted to see how far he would take this performance.
Instead, he became even more worked up and shot to his feet.
“If we can’t find Liang Yi, this might be a murder case. No matter how low my standards get, I would never take dirty money over something like this.”
“Besides, who could I even give the footage to? The prime suspect is An Yutong.”
“She’s a student. How much could she possibly pay me? You think I’d risk prison for whatever little money she could offer?”
“I swear I didn’t know I left. That entire memory is missing. I have no idea what happened.”
I had strongly suspected him, but he genuinely didn’t look like he was lying.
Yet he had clearly walked out while awake. How could that be explained?
Finally, I asked him with complete seriousness, “Liang Yi is a good young woman with a promising future. We’re investigating because we want to find her. If you did something, it’s not too late to turn back. If you didn’t, swear a poisonous oath. If you’re lying, the oath will come true.”
I pulled out a Talisman to scare him. In truth, it was only an ordinary Peace Talisman.
He didn’t know that. If he was innocent, he would dare take the oath. If he had lied, he wouldn’t.
Brother Liu immediately raised a hand. “If I’ve lied to you, may my wife and I both go to hell.”
“All right.”
I took out my phone and called Seventh Master.
Assuming Brother Liu was telling the truth, there was something deeply wrong with his leaving the precinct with the drive.
He must not have been conscious of his actions.
I had never encountered anything like this, but Seventh Master was widely experienced. I needed his advice.
When he answered, I briefly explained the situation.
Seventh Master fell silent for a moment. “If Little Liu truly isn’t lying, someone probably hypnotized him.”
I was shocked. “Hypnotized?”
Could hypnosis really be that miraculous?
I had read that movies greatly exaggerated it. Real hypnosis required the subject’s cooperation. If they resisted, a hypnotist couldn’t succeed.
“Ordinary hypnosis truly isn’t that miraculous,” Seventh Master said.
“But it would be possible if the hypnotist were a practitioner of the old arts,” Seventh Master continued. “Hypnosis arose from psychology, and our country’s earliest study of psychology can be traced back to the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods. It was recorded in detail in the Benjing Yinfu.”
“Ancient folk practitioners developed hypnosis from the Benjing Yinfu. Their method was far more sophisticated than modern hypnosis, though they did not call it hypnosis at the time. They called it the Mind-Capturing Art.”
“The Mind-Capturing Art can induce hypnosis instantly. It requires no cooperation and can place someone into a hypnotic state within moments, without their ever noticing.”
“It can also implant something in the person’s mind… How should I put it? It can delay the activation of that hypnotic state. A code phrase, for example. The moment the person hears it, the hypnotic state activates.”
“A true master of the Mind-Capturing Art can even bury a memory in the subconscious so the victim forgets it, or implant a false memory instead. Modern hypnosis can actually accomplish those things as well.”
Seventh Master’s explanation taught me something new yet again.
You really did keep learning until the day you died.
“If Brother Liu was hypnotized…” The realization struck me quickly. “Could the call he received before leaving the precinct have activated his hypnotic state?”
“Possibly. It might have been the caller’s voice, or a specific code phrase the person established. Once that person spoke the words, the hypnotic state would activate. Whatever order followed, Little Liu would obey.”
A chill ran through me.
If that was true, then the cameras hadn’t failed to capture anything. They must have recorded something important!
Brother Liu had seen an anomaly in the footage. That was why someone hypnotized him, tricked him into taking out the flash drive, and erased its contents.
In that case, Liang Yi’s disappearance wasn’t supernatural at all. It wasn’t nearly as inexplicable as it appeared.
An Yutong had definitely lied!
The footage was gone now. Property Management would have another copy from that building, but unless I missed my guess, theirs had been deleted too.
“Seventh Master, is there any way to break the hypnosis?” I asked. “Can we recover the missing memory?”
“I can try. When hypnosis buries a memory in the subconscious, the memory still exists inside the person’s mind. In our terms, if he experienced it, then he saw it. No matter what method erased his conscious recollection, his soul still recorded the experience.”
Over the phone, Seventh Master and I agreed to bring Brother Liu over immediately.
He needed time to prepare. He didn’t know the Mind-Capturing Art and would have to find another way to awaken Brother Liu’s lost memory.
After hanging up, I told Brother Liu someone had probably altered his memory. The missing section had to conceal an important secret, perhaps the key to Liang Yi’s disappearance.
“Then what do I do?” Brother Liu panicked. “If my superiors find out I lost evidence, I’ll receive a major disciplinary mark at the very least.”
I told him not to panic. First, he should come with me to Seventh Master’s place and see whether the memory could be recovered.
We wasted no time. We immediately left the precinct and drove to Seventh Master’s house.