Chapter 370
Chapter 370
When I woke again, everything around me was dim.
I was in a small, dark room whose window had been sealed shut.
Five men stood before me. I recognized only one of them: the man who had hypnotized Brother Liu.
Naturally, I had been bound hand and foot.
“Awake?”
He watched me with a sinister smile. “You really are clever. You kept a call connected with your companion the whole time.”
He took out my phone. The screen displayed the call log from my conversation with Anning.
My greatest regret now was following Liang Yi to that place.
I had kept the call with Anning connected as a precaution, but I had never expected something like this to happen.
I had been careless.
Back then, I had only clung to one last shred of hope and prayed An Yutong was still alive. No matter what form she was in, perhaps I could still save her.
Instead, Liang Yi and these people had annihilated An Yutong’s soul and joined forces to trap me.
“All that cleverness, and I still fell into your hands.”
I stared at him coldly. “You’re the people behind Du Yunting, aren’t you? Last time in Lincheng, you targeted Seventh Master and tried to kill him. You failed, but you still left him badly injured.”
“This time, you came after me. You helped Liang Yi seize An Yutong’s body, using her as bait to capture me.”
The man chuckled and asked with interest, “How did you figure that out? Have you already uncovered my identity?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know who you are, but isn’t it obvious? I’ve already fallen into the trap you laid. You’re a group, but I haven’t made enemies with any groups except The Organization. Was that supposed to be difficult to guess?”
“With Liang Yi’s intelligence and her knowledge of the law, even if she couldn’t drive, she would have known we’d inspect An Yutong’s car. If she truly didn’t want us to discover her mistake, she would at least have damaged the car when she sent it for repairs.”
“But she didn’t. She was deliberately leading me to uncover the flaw so she could lure me into your trap.”
The man laughed again. “Unfortunately, you were one step too slow. By the time you figured it out, it was already too late.”
“Still, I admire your intelligence. Especially what you did in Lincheng. Even we wouldn’t touch a haunting that had lasted a hundred years, yet you resolved it. You made me see you in a whole new light.”
I snorted. “I have humanity. You don’t. Spare me the praise.”
“My, my. You’re already our prisoner, and you still have such a sharp tongue.” He pinched my cheeks and turned my face from side to side, examining me for some unknown reason while laughing. “Have you considered what happens to someone who falls into our hands?”
“I don’t give a damn.” I glared at him contemptuously. “You people destroyed my family. I’m all alone now, and I stopped caring about life and death long ago. At worst, you’ll kill me or annihilate my soul. What else have you got?”
He laughed. “I’ve seen plenty of tough men, but none of them last long with me.”
I suddenly remembered that he knew the Mind-Capturing Art. He could hypnotize people.
“Did Du Yunting send you after me?” I asked.
He shook his head. “You mean Lv Zhengxian, don’t you? How could he possibly be qualified to give me orders? He drew far too much attention before. In the end, he got himself killed and took quite a few of our people down with him.”
“Why do you think he’s keeping such a low profile now? If he hadn’t, how could he have become Du Yunting again?”
My heart jolted.
“Are you the leader of The Organization?”
“Careful with accusations like that.”
He grinned. “If our chief heard you, he might think I was plotting a mutiny.”
The others laughed along with him.
“You’d better stop asking so many questions and think about your own situation instead.”
He leaned close to my ear and said meaningfully, “Do you know why so many versions of Seven Deaths for Life Exchange have circulated, and why every version has been tested, yet you’re the only person to end up with Two Souls in One Life? Do you think you’re uniquely gifted?”
I was shocked again. “You know about all of that?”
He nodded, the corners of his mouth lifting. “Of course. We regularly assign people to monitor everyone revived through Seven Deaths for Life Exchange and observe their condition. When necessary, we use hypnosis to gain a deeper understanding of the changes caused by their exchange.”
“You’ve been hypnotized before, too. You just didn’t know it.”
I was stunned.
I had been watched all my life…
“Remember when you were eighteen and you and your friend offended a thug from outside your school? He brought people to block your way every day. Do you know why he suddenly stopped coming?”
The man patted his chest. “I took care of it for you. You were my surveillance target. How could I let him hurt you? So I crippled him. No need to thank me.”
My eyes widened in disbelief.
When I was eighteen, a thug from outside school really had threatened me.
But I hadn’t provoked him. Meng Yifan had. Back then, Meng Yifan liked chatting with people online and started talking to a girl. Unfortunately, she already had a boyfriend, and that boyfriend was the thug.
Naturally, the boyfriend eventually discovered their affair. He threatened to destroy Meng Yifan, while I was dragged into the mess despite being completely innocent.
Meng Yifan might have liked fighting back then, but even he did not dare provoke thugs from outside school. We were so frightened that we nearly called the police. Then, one day, the thug simply stopped coming after us.
So the man before me had crippled him!
“Why are you monitoring people revived through Seven Deaths for Life Exchange?”
I frowned. “What exactly are you trying to do?”
“You want to know? Sure. Look at this.”
He took out a pendant. I knew its shape all too well: the Evil Buddha.
Holding it by its cord, the man swung it back and forth before my eyes. “You should be very familiar with this. That’s right. It’s the totem of The Organization. Every answer you want is inside it.”
His voice suddenly sank, taking on an almost magical quality that made my mind begin to relax.
The pendant was glowing. I could not tear my gaze away, and my eyelids grew heavier on their own.
He was hypnotizing me.
This was what he used to hypnotize people.
I could not hold out much longer…
The pendant’s arc gradually narrowed until it finally stopped moving.
The man spoke again. “Do you know who you are?”
“Yes…”
“Tell me. Who are you?”
“Probably your father…”
His face darkened at once, and his confidence visibly faltered.
The others stared wide-eyed, seemingly unable to understand why I had not been hypnotized.
“Why weren’t you hypnotized?”
“You want to know?”
I looked at him disdainfully. “Call me Dad, and your father will tell you.”