Chapter 19: I Had an Immobilizing Spell

Chapter 19: I Had an Immobilizing Spell

When I returned to my seat and separated the two green jade tokens, everything quickly returned to normal.

Liu Biao looked at me, confused. “Where were we?”

I answered immediately. “We were talking about Xuanhong. He looks too much like me, so naturally I was curious. You understand that, right? But you took him, so I asked around and went to the district where the disabled gathered. After that, you brought me here. You owe me an explanation.”

After I helped him recall, Liu Biao seemed to remember everything. Only he never mentioned the green jade tokens again. Whether he was deliberately avoiding it or the green jade tokens had some self-protection mechanism, I couldn’t say. Either way, things simply continued along the thread of the interrogation.

Liu Biao still seemed to feel something was off. “No. You’re still hiding secrets. We have solid evidence you used abilities beyond normal human capacity, so you need to think carefully—confess on your own, or we use our methods.”

“Of course I want to confess, but you have to tell me what to confess. You ask, I’ll answer. I promise complete honesty. Fair?”

As I answered, I quietly pocketed the green jade tokens.

These two green jade tokens were now my greatest treasure. They could stop time. That was basically the same as giving me Sun Wukong’s immobilizing spell.

When I used to read Journey to the West, I always thought Sun Wukong was awfully straightforward. Kind of naive, really. If he had an immobilizing spell, why bother fighting monsters back and forth at all? Immobilize the monster, bash it with the staff, and still have time to pick peaches.

Liu Biao had the officers sitting in on the interrogation escort me back to my dormitory. He had an important call to take.

Back in my quarters, I badly wanted to examine the green jade tokens more closely, but I worried about surveillance. So I just lay on the bed thinking.

With these tokens, I could escape anytime. No one could stop me now. So what next—rescue Xuanhong, or just run?

Xuanhong was a strange presence in my life. He’d said he was my backup, and I’d never understood. Now I understood a little.

Because just now, the instant the two tokens joined, a powerful surge of information flooded my brain and rewrote many of my memories.

Like installing new software on a computer. New default associations appeared, triggering a reset. Xuanhong’s entire life—his experiences, reflections, memories, emotions—all of it copied wholesale into my head.

In other words, he was me now, and I was him.

So who created Xuanhong’s body? Or for that matter, was I really born to my parents? Why have I never seen them?

Did they really die in the war?

I actually started doubting whether I was human.

Terrifying thought.

Am I human?

Could I be synthetic, replicated, cloned, modified? Otherwise why am I different from everyone else?

I pinched myself hard. It hurt. The skin turned red.

As I recalled my own life, fragments of Xuanhong’s kept surfacing too. Like watching two films, one mine and one his. Now edited into one.

In this film, I have love and hate, joy and bitterness, pain and sorrow. I have friends, teachers, family, vivid childhood stories. How could I not be human?

Ridiculous. You’re the one who’s not human.

I firmly rejected the thought. Even the Sweepers examined me repeatedly and never said I wasn’t human. Why should I doubt myself?

I still couldn’t explain the Xuanhong phenomenon, but I believed the truth would surface eventually.

I decided to rescue Xuanhong first, escape together, then ask him face to face.

Now I had an immobilizing spell.

Who should I be afraid of?

Suddenly my door slammed open and Liu Biao rushed in, grabbed me, yanked me up. Pulling me along, he said, “Come with me. Something happened.”

What happened? What’s it got to do with me?

Unwilling but helpless, I was dragged along at a run. The direction—exactly where Xuanhong was being held.

We reached the special detention area.

Guards had gathered all prisoners in the center of the yard. One room in the detention area was still giving off wisps of greenish smoke.

There’d been a fire.

Liu Biao dragged me to the room, pointed inside. “What is this?”

I bent down and looked. Through the lingering smoke, I saw a charred figure sitting cross-legged, still smoking. Beside it, several guards with fire extinguishers.

Clearly ten steps too late.

Had Xuanhong self-immolated?

I recognized him instantly, my shock no less than Liu Biao’s. I started to rush in but Liu Biao grabbed me.

“What are you doing?”

“Saving him!” I roared.

Liu Biao held me down. He went in himself, circled the charred body, pulled out some detector I couldn’t identify, and scanned.

I was frantic, no idea what had happened.

The black-clad men who had come with us took over restraining me. I could only use my sensing power to pick up information from Liu Biao and those around us.

So that’s what happened.

Just now, while Liu Biao was interrogating me—precisely the instant he joined the two tokens—Xuanhong suddenly combusted.

Listening to the murmurs and looking at Xuanhong’s charred body, I felt a wave of anguish. Did joining the tokens also mean merging body and soul?

Xuanhong’s thoughts boiled in my mind, as if his soul had witnessed its own body burning.

My head spun. I collapsed.

I was probably carried back to my quarters.

I don’t really remember.

Xuanhong’s death hit me hard.

I found Liu Biao and demanded to see Xuanhong’s file. He said I lacked authority. Furious, I joined the tokens and went to find it myself.

In the Sweeper files, Xuanhong was apparently only ten years old.

Meaning he’d appeared suddenly on Pingdu University’s campus. Before that, no history. Or rather, born already grown.

Ten years old—the result of carbon-14 and bone-age testing on Xuanhong.

The Xuanhong in my head also began at Pingdu University. He had no memories before that.

After graduation, he’d joined Du Group in Silicon Valley, career path from coder to designer to architect. He entered monastic life at Tansong Temple two years ago, and the real reason—avoiding marriage.

Speechless.

A child not even ten, chased into monkhood by women.

Apparently being handsome is a crime.

Unforgivable, even.

After absorbing Xuanhong’s memories and cross-referencing the Sweeper records, I finally discovered Xuanhong had powers too. Partly from artificial intelligence, partly from innate same-frequency sensing.

Same-frequency sensing—the Sweepers’ term for Xuanhong’s ability. Also why he was arrested and heavily confined.

According to the biological theory in the file, neurotransmitter signals rely on micro-electrical waves. Brain activity generates the strongest waves; they direct movement, memory, emotion. In Xuanhong’s mind existed a mechanism for directionally sensing brainwaves at matching frequencies, resonating with and feeding back others’ brainwaves.

Reading that, everything clicked.

My sensing power was clearly same-frequency sensing too. And the Sweepers had already studied it. My ability wasn’t mysterious to them. Only they currently couldn’t detect it in me or analyze how it worked.

Seeing this, I realized I was in danger.

The Sweepers wouldn’t give up researching me.

The first time I actively used the joined tokens, I discovered another serious problem: the immobilizing spell had a time limit.

While secretly reading Sweeper files, after eight minutes passed, frozen time suddenly resumed on its own. I hadn’t finished, so terrified, I hurriedly joined them again. In total, I had to use the joined tokens three times to complete the file search.

Those three time pauses caused information lag across the Sweepers’ entire surveillance system.

That immediately triggered a system-wide alert, and Liu Biao was urgently summoned by superiors. The next few days, they were busy investigating.

This taught me that unless absolutely necessary, I couldn’t use the immobilizing spell lightly. If they discovered joining the tokens produced this effect, I’d be in trouble.

I definitely wouldn’t be able to keep the green jade tokens.

Fortunately, Liu Biao and the others knew from the start I had a green jade token. Besides, the thing was barely an inch long, inspected multiple times without drawing attention.

At first I thought I should just run.

Too dangerous.

But then I reconsidered. Escaping wasn’t the best choice. The token secret would definitely be exposed. And the Sweepers were the world’s most powerful organization, almost everywhere. Escaping meant living as a fugitive under perpetual pursuit.

Not worth it.

Not like I couldn’t see through their thoughts anyway.

If truly in danger, I could use the immobilizing spell anytime.

So in the following days, I behaved like an obedient child, often helping out in the Cultural Intelligence Department. Sending and receiving documents, moving and calibrating equipment, training recruits—treated myself like one of them.

In spare time, I even did face readings for the black-clad men.

Face reading for Sweepers was absolutely my forte. With same-frequency sensing, I could accurately state private things in their minds: names, family situations, even personal secrets. As long as something stirred in their thoughts, I could use sensing to mystify it and tell them back.

This caught the ordinary Sweepers’ interest.

Not every Sweeper knew about same-frequency sensing. That was top-secret. Hard to say whether even Liu Biao knew.

Before long, using same-frequency sensing, I had many Sweepers practically worshiping me.

As for Liu Biao and the other managers, they seemed happy to let me continue. Maybe the perfect opportunity to observe and study me.

I understood that.

So I deliberately performed for them, almost regardless of occasion. Anyway, for Sweeper leadership, this had long stopped being secret.

Ordinary Sweeper employees all came from ordinary people. More precisely, AI-modified ordinary people.

Through face readings, I also discovered a major secret—one even Liu Biao and the others might not have anticipated.

First, I gathered enormous amounts of information about the Sweepers. Everyone carries informational traces. One person’s traces mean little, but together they become a vast information vault.

Second, I discovered Wisdom Capsules also have brainwaves. Because essentially, a Wisdom Capsule is an AI micro-bio brain–computer interface.

And I could replicate it.