Chapter 65: The Mental State of Niuma "Are you sure? I remember Si...
Xuan Chi stood up and followed her out. The two of them left the classroom together and went to Mammon's Hell Technology R&D Department.
There was a bit of distance between the two, which was just the right time for Si Ling to explain the mission to Xuan Chi, or more precisely, to explain the target this time and why it was listed as a target: "This time it's a gang of serial killers."
Si Ling spoke straight to the point.
Xuan Chi frowned immediately: "Don't the human world have police?"
"Yes," Si Ling nodded. "But they're highly intelligent criminals, their methods are sophisticated, and..." She sighed. "Modern technology should make it impossible to hide these crimes, but unlike China, where surveillance cameras are everywhere, they can easily find suitable locations to commit crimes. Lucifer said the police suspected them three times before, and two gang members were summoned, but were ultimately released due to insufficient evidence."
"Okay." Xuan Chi nodded in understanding. The two of them were silent for a moment. As they were about to reach the Hell Technology R&D Department, he asked again, "Did they kill innocent people?"
Si Ling turned his head and glanced at him, a bit surprised, but also a bit happy to find that he shared the same ideals as himself. "If they only kill the bad guys, even though it's against the law, I won't participate in the mission for that reason."
——The laws of the human world have nothing to do with ghosts. The ghost world can accept fighting evil with evil.
In fact, if the other party only killed evil people, neither Satan nor Lucifer would bother to interfere, and this task would not be handed over to the Ghost Academy.
As they entered the R&D department, Si Ling continued to explain, "Their crimes target women. Um... they're just a bunch of psychopaths. Their victims range from eighty to five or six years old."
"Incel①?" Xuan Chi uttered a precise English word.
"Relatively speaking, incels aren't that unsuccessful. They're not the violent types at the bottom of the pile, so they're hard to deal with." Si Ling explained as he pulled out the infernal chart and opened the group chat. He showed him a photo Lucifer had sent to the group. "Another special thing is that this person in the gang is best left to Alice."
Hyun Chi took a quick look. The man in the photo had a standard Caucasian face, in his forties or fifties, slightly overweight and balding, looking quite ordinary. If it weren't for the badge on his chest from some internationally recognized tech company, it would be hard to connect him with a high-IQ criminal.
"Why?" he asked.
Si Ling put away the Hell Disk: "This is the murderer who killed Alice. Letting her kill the murderer with her own hands is the best way to dissipate her resentment. After that, she can go directly to heaven. If the murderer dies at the hands of someone else, she will have to stay in the human world for a while until the resentment slowly dissipates."
"That's right." Xuan Chi understood. He looked up at the various props on the shelf. After a moment, he said thoughtfully, "This mission is a bit difficult."
"Huh?" Si Ling was about to put the crystal ball back on the shelf when he paused and turned to look at him, "Why?"
"Evil people are different from evil people," Xuan Chi pondered. "Many people have died at the hands of the Tumba clan, but they always cloak themselves in a sacred cloak. Besides, aside from the 'older generation' like Gongbu and evil cultivators like Aji, most members of the Tumba clan have never personally killed anyone. Mind control is their primary method of committing crimes."
"And this time it's a murder gang." He paused. "If I'm not mistaken, their methods of crime should also include torture and killing—that kind of crime process is bloody and cruel, and the level of horror itself is very high."
"You mean..." Si Ling understood what he meant, and his eyes became serious. "That makes sense."
——Xuan Chi meant that these people were mentally abnormal and accustomed to bloody violence, so their ability to withstand terror would inevitably increase a lot. It would be quite difficult to make them lose their SAN by scaring them.
Two rows of shelves away from them, Mammon introduced his new invention with great emotion: "[Shadow of Satan]—I spent a lot of effort to convince Satan to authorize my image!"
"The method of use is very simple. You just need to induce guilt in the target first, then trigger the prop, and Satan's image will appear before him. It has two forms, human and true, and the size can be adjusted freely, up to thirty times the size!"
"It also carries a hint of Satan's aura. Although the effect is only a few tens of thousands of times, it's enough to shock humans. The target's guilty conscience will be rapidly amplified by this aura, and they will believe they are truly facing Satan's judgment, and the loss of SAN is inevitable."
"We conducted experiments on 60 death row prisoners. They are the undead in Hell. Their mental strength is far stronger than that of humans, but they still experienced varying degrees of SAN loss, ranging from 5% to 20%. The more serious the sin, the greater the effect."
——It can reduce the SAN of Undead prisoners by 5% to 20%. This is a very impressive data. If it is replaced with humans, this value will be doubled, which means it is possible to achieve the amazing effect of reducing SAN by 40% at one time.
Mammon couldn't hide his pride in his work. "I think this is the most suitable prop for this mission. What could be more intimidating than making these murderers face Satan directly? I sincerely suggest that you all consider it. Although it's not included in the free props... But Principal Lucifer is paying for it anyway, right? Your successful completion of the mission is what matters most, and Lucifer cares more about that."
The students who were originally thinking seriously about the props problem realized that Mammon was making careful plans to make the most of the items when they heard this, and they couldn't help laughing.
Although Si Ling and Xuan Chi were separated from them by two rows of tall shelves, they were able to hear Mammon's introduction because of his passionate speech.
Xuan Chi asked Si Ling hesitantly: "Do you want to try it?"
Si Ling frowned and thought for a moment, then looked back at him and said, "How likely is it that an incel would think they are guilty?"
Si Ling felt that the possibility was infinitely close to 0.
Some in the Tumba family might feel guilty, because those profiting from cults can brainwash others, but not themselves. But incels are different. Their crimes are driven from the outset by hatred fueled by a distorted worldview. Within this distortion, they often genuinely believe their victims deserve death and that they are upholding justice.
Will a person who claims to be righteous feel guilty when he sees a ghost knocking on the door?
Si Ling suspected that they were less likely to feel guilty than the real "good guys" because they were not normal people at all and could not be expected to have normal emotions.
.
Fengdu.
Although Xie Bian was a lazy guy who often wanted to give up, he was still reliable. After accepting Fan Wujiu's advice, he really spent a lot of his free time helping Xuan Chi investigate the truth.
But it is indeed not an easy task.
On the one hand, he received from Si Ling the new version of the time figure of "at least 20,000 years", which meant that the incident happened long before the establishment of the administrative system of the underworld. Therefore, there was doomed to be no complete record of the incident here. He could only find various clues as much as possible to piece together the complete story - even if you just think about it, you can tell how daunting the workload is; on the other hand, "at least 20,000 years" is a very vague number, and 30,000 years, 100,000 years and even longer times are all included in it, which further increases the difficulty of the work. What's more, the information that Xuan Chi himself can provide is so scarce that it is almost non-existent. It is difficult for Xie Bian to search for some information by keywords first, and he can only read one ancient document after another by himself.
Even though he'd only been busy for a few days, Xie Bian was already visibly tired. Fan Wujiu dragged him out for a drink that night, and Xie Bian, half drunk, slumped over the table and sobbed, "Five days! I've read hundreds of documents, and I haven't seen a single useful word!"
Fan Wujiu remained silent.
Although he didn't look as devastated as Xie Bian, he was actually in a similar mood because he was also busy with Xie Bian. In terms of his state, he was just as clueless as Xie Bian, doing useless work.
"I really checked everything I could... I even checked Si Ling!" Xie Bian raised his head and sniffed hard, his face full of grief and indignation. "I thought there was some kind of fate between these two 'old men', and maybe they were involved back then, but...! Forget about being involved! There's no record of Si Ling at all!"
"Although the ghosts of the same generation as Si Ling have all been reincarnated, their names and brief biographies are still recorded. But she didn't leave any information about her life at all!!!"
"I'm really seeing ghosts!!!" Xie Bian, who sees ghosts every day, roared in despair.
"There's no record of Si Ling either?" Fan Wujiu frowned. "Are you sure? I remember Si Ling wasn't her real name. Is that why we can't find it?"
"No, I traced it backwards!" Xie Bian plopped down on the table. "There weren't many people in that era. Every record can be matched with others, but there's no record of hers at all."
Fan Wujiu patiently asked, "Could it be possible that she wasn't human when she was alive? Have you checked the flora and fauna and insects?"
"...You're being ridiculous." Xie Bian complained speechlessly and mercilessly, "Are animals, plants, and insects transformed into ghosts like her? They mutated genetically when they entered the underworld, right? If you can find a Zhe La Si Ling and start a company to expand this technology, within three years, the entire underworld will belong to us."
Fan Wujiu smiled silently. He knew that this was impossible, so he dismissed this unrealistic guess.
"I have encountered the most unfortunate coincidences..." Xie Bian murmured as he lay there with empty eyes, "Could she be an alien? When she crashed to the earth, she knocked the Emperor's sword away and killed Xuan Chi by mistake? Hahahaha, I'm going crazy!!! Ah——!!!" He screamed like a groundhog.
"..."Fan Wujiu felt sorry for Xie Bian's mental state.
.
Hans country, Hohenzollernburg.
Before sunset, all the students participating in the mission were ready. As the tourists from the mortal world left Hohenzollern Castle, they also arrived at the gate leading to Lingbo City, crossed most of Lingbo City, and arrived in the Kingdom of Corruption.
By the time they entered the British capital, it was already dark. It was May, and many European cities were shrouded in fog, including Britain's once-famous capital. The tranquil night was shrouded in a translucent white filter, reducing visibility to a few meters. The warm yellow glow of the streetlights shone through the thick fog, forming fuzzy, yellow balls suspended in mid-air.
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Author's Notes:
①【Incel】"Incel" (full name involuntary celibate), originally means "involuntary celibate", and is often used in actual use to describe a group of men who hate women.
...I couldn't find a suitable equivalent word in Chinese, and writing the full "involuntary celibate" felt too uncolloquial here, so I just used this English word.
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