There is one thing that Naoto Inoue may or may not know.

It is true that Inoue Renta has never hypnotized himself, but almost everyone who has participated in human experiments has been hypnotized to varying degrees.

However, this kind of collective hypnosis is not what he did, according to the information that Xu Shengxing secretly revealed to me, the whole incident seems to have the intervention of another force, and collective hypnosis is the intervention method of this force.

The term "collective hypnosis" sounds quite far-fetched, but it is actually somewhat convincing.

Because Inoue himself may have a motive to start human experimentation, but his subordinates may not. Even if there were, it was not necessarily strong enough to "continue even if you participated in the experiment of killing." Now it is not ancient, the company's superiors and subordinates are not so loyal, if the superior does too much, the subordinate resigns and runs away, and it is really not possible to report to the relevant departments. Pure monetary interests can indeed make many people play a side ball on their bottom line, but it will never make so many researchers break the bottom line and feed their conscience to dogs at the same time, and Inoue Renta is even less powerful enough to find another group of evil researchers to serve him.

In the process of investigation, the local police also found a lot of realistic basis to support this statement: all the researchers who participated in the human experiments showed that their minds were distorted by external forces, and they participated in the inhumane experiments only with the weak motive of "disobedient will be fired from the company by Inoue Renta"; Obviously participated in the whole experiment, but could not recall the technical details of the experiment afterwards; The superiors never mentioned what they were going to do with it after the experiment was successful, and the subordinates never asked; No one thought it was strange that no one had ever left a key record in the experimental site...... And so on, and so on, and it has also been confirmed that it is not a collusion to lie, but the truth.

It seems that they have only had a dream in which they participated in human experiments, and when they wake up, they only remember that they have done it, but they cannot remember anything more specific.

*

Soon after, I had a secret meeting with Xu Shengxing in private, at night, at a café whose name I didn't look at when I entered.

Although he once said that he would "act according to the rules" after the incident was over, the current situation does not look like the incident is all over. In his words, this is just the beginning.

"So, although I don't feel happy, I do need your help." He said to me.

"If you need my help investigating, then, unfortunately, that's not my forte." I said, "But I can keep an eye on this." ”

"Yes, too." He nodded.

"Also, you have to tell me everything you know." My assistance is not free, of course.

As an eyewitness to this incident, I naturally pay close attention to its follow-up. Moreover, my original intention was to investigate the details of the experiment on the spirit transformation medicine, but the result was to come to naught. It's not something that can be said helplessly, "It's a pity", and then just forget it.

"No problem." He nodded again, "What do you want to know?" ”

I picked out the part I was most concerned about, "You said that there was a 'other force' in this incident, is there any concrete evidence for this?" ”

Hearing this, he first pondered the wording, and then replied: "First of all, Inoue Renta does not have the ability to launch large-scale hypnosis on his subordinates, so someone must be assisting him. ”

I was noncommittal and waited for his next step.

"Secondly, you told me before that the woman who pretended to be 'Adam the Tipster' had a high-level psionic contract with Inoue when she handed over her forbidden knowledge to Inoue. And Inoue Renta can neither crack it himself, nor can he find someone in his network who can crack it. "Unless that kind of person comes to him with some purpose." ”

"With all due respect, your 'first' and 'second' are a bit far-fetched." I say.

"Finally—" he continued, "do you remember the bodyguard?" ”

"The super-psionic who can manipulate the black wind?" I asked rhetorically, and at the same time, I remembered that the bodyguard didn't seem to respect Inoue as an employer. Isn't this out of arrogance, but for another reason?

Xu Shengxing took out a few tissues from the side, spread them out, overlapped them, and placed them on the table, then stretched out his fingers and slowly swiped on the surface of the stack of tissues.

The heat released from his fingers caused the surface of the tissue to quickly scorch and melt, but it did not burn, and finally formed a strange pattern with black and red edges under his deliberate stroke.

The pattern is quite simple, first draw a large vertical oval, then draw a small horizontal oval inside, and finally draw a short vertical line in the center where the two ovals overlap. After the completion of the pattern, the shape is like a strange eye.

My eyes were immediately caught in this pattern.

"During the fight with that bodyguard, I burned out his clothes." "And then on his exposed skin...... It was almost at this position on the shoulders that I saw this pattern. Do you recognize this pattern too? ”

"Yes." I said, "This is the coat of arms of the 'Church of the Earth's Centr.'" ”

"Yes, it's the notorious evil religion, the mind-busting madman organization, the terrorist group that wants to blow the planet to shreds." He sneered in disgust, "I suspect that they are the 'other forces' in this incident, I'm afraid they didn't know how they found out that Beaver Pharmaceutical was researching psionic awakening potions, and then intervened." And Inoue Renta may be out of helplessness, or maybe he thinks this is some kind of opportunity...... In short, I secretly cooperated with them. ”

"I see." I'm still staring at the coat of arms.

"The events involving the Church of the Inner Earth are not to be underestimated, not to mention that this time it also involves psionic awakening potions. Now there are combat experts from the Demon Suppression Bureau who are involved in the investigation. He continued, "The Demon Slaying Bureau is the league's top official psionics group, and it's not only good at dealing with the undead and monsters, but also good at dealing with psionic criminals, so I'd suggest you settle down a little lately. Even if it's you, you don't want to be the enemy of the 'Demon Suppression Expert', right? ”

"I know."

"Don't get me wrong, I'm not worried about your life, it's just that you're now my collaborator, no, informant...... So I don't want you to die in any corner of the year, you know? ”

"Hmm."

"Are you listening to me?"

"Hmm."

While listening, most of my attention was on the coat of arms of the Church of the Centroid as images of the past came to mind.

It's not the first time I've seen this coat of arms.

In the incident where my ex-partner "betrayed" me last year, the super-grade psyker who led people to surround me also had exactly the same coat of arms on his body.

*

In order to explain the organization of the "Church of the Earth", we must first start with the "soul" of this world.

In my home world, all religions always have to arrange a place for the soul, whether it is heaven and hell, or the six realms of reincarnation. I don't know if these places are real, and there's no chance to go back and explore them now. But at least in this world, whether it is heaven or hell, or the six realms of reincarnation, it is all a shadowless thing. After death, the soul cannot go anywhere, but can only disintegrate itself in the same place as the life disappears.

When the soul is dissolved, it will produce dead air.

The essence of death qi is the spiritual energy that remains after the disintegration of the soul.

At the same time, it is also a spiritual energy full of desperate thoughts.

Even the bravest people have a fear of death, it is not a matter of willpower, it is purely the instinct of life, especially when the inevitable death comes, and the fear will turn into despair. Even if you are very happy in life, you can't help but have pessimistic and negative thoughts before you die, and after death, this "last thought" will infect the spiritual energy and turn it into death.

Death qi is quite stubborn energy, which is easy to appear, difficult to disappear, and does not go through the love stack between heaven and earth, and increases with the increase of death.

If the density of dead air in an area reaches a certain limit, undead spirits will be generated.

And then, here's where the whole thing is going to be—

In this world, not only human beings have souls, but all life, even microorganisms, has souls, and they will all produce death after death.

Like my home world, this world has been born since billions of years ago, and has experienced multiple mass extinctions, with an astronomical number of lives being born and dying in the process. The death gas that has been increased by the history of mankind is completely insignificant compared to the death gas that has accumulated because of the history of life.

On the other hand, dead air is also bound by the gravitational pull of the planet, and it hardly radiates into space, but only increases in density within the atmosphere.

It stands to reason that under such extremely harsh conditions, not to mention human society, even the existence of human beings themselves cannot be established, and no life can be born in the overwhelming sea of dead air, and the earth should have been reduced to a netherworld.

The reason why this is not the case is because there is another property of dead air, that is, "not hindered by matter".

This means that the dead air will gravitationally sink below the earth's surface, penetrate even the earth's crust, reach the mantle and the center of the earth, and continue to accumulate in the interior of the planet. Even if hundreds of billions of undead are born from it, they will not be able to cross the thick mantle and crust to the surface, and they can only continue the unknowingly madness in the underground world almost forever. From this point of view, this world is also hellish, and even physically connected to the surface world, but it is not a place for souls.

However, after all, this planet still has too many lives to die, so that with the size of the planet, it can no longer hold so much life.