Liao Ke asked: "You are feeling sad for Ri Liu's sadness, but you are not actually sad, right?"

The stethoscope made a humming sound.

Liao Ke lowered his head and wrote: "You and Ri Liu empathize with each other."

The stethoscope asks, "What is empathy?"

"Empathy means that you two have similar experiences, or that the other person means something special to you, which leads to you being able to empathize with the other person's emotions." Liao Ke wrote in his notebook, "Heitao, do you know why you feel sad because of Riyu's sadness?"

The stethoscope answered honestly, “I don’t know.”

"You actually lack the foundation for empathy. Your experiences are so limited that you are completely unable to imagine how another person would feel in that situation based on your own experiences."

Liao Ke explained: "Most empathy is based on mutual understanding, but this does not apply to you and Ri Liu. You don't understand Ri Liu, or in other words, you don't understand anyone. You don't even understand the mechanism of human emotion."

"So it's very strange that you have empathy." Liao Ke raised his eyes, "Based on my understanding of you, I think the only explanation is——"

"You are instinctively sensing Riyu's emotions."

"But correspondingly, although you feel it, you can't handle such complicated emotions." Liao Ke smiled, "To use an analogy, if Ri Liu's emotions are some special data, and you are a computer, and you don't have the ability to process this special data, the influx of this data will cause you to have a very strange reaction."

The stethoscope asks, "What's the response?"

"In order to process this special data, you will also keep producing special data to respond to the other party." Liao Ke smiled gently, "Sometimes people will fall in love with those who love them, and hate those who hate them. This is a kind of human emotional feedback. You can feel the other person's emotions, and correspondingly, you will also generate emotions to deal with the other person's emotions."

"Riyu is feeling sorry for you, so you will feel sorry for Riyu too."

Liao Ke continued: "But we need to find the source of this empathy together. That is, among so many people around you, Heitao, why did you instinctively, or subconsciously, choose Riyu instead of others to feel their emotions?"

The stethoscope seemed to be thinking, and it drooped slightly: "Riyu... is different from others."

"How is it different from others?" Liao Ke's voice was very soft. "This question may be difficult to answer for Spades. Let's use the progressive relationship around you, Spades, to explore why Riliu is different."

"For example, the strangers in the pool, what is the difference between them and Riyu to you? Why don't you choose to empathize with them?"

The stethoscope was silent for a long time: "These people are afraid of me."

Liao Ke nodded as if he understood something, saying, "Because these people are afraid of you, there is a natural barrier of empathy between you. They have ill intentions towards you, so you will shield them accordingly."

"In fact, normally speaking, if Hei Tao was a human who grew up in a normal environment, his first reaction to being frightened by a large crowd would be to be infected, subconsciously fearing and hating himself, thus aligning his ideas with those of other humans, seeking a sense of spiritual identity, and avoiding being isolated by the group."

"Humans are social animals and instinctively avoid loneliness, but Spade is not like that."

Liao Ke looked at Nishen standing aside and said, "Hei Tao must have always been in an environment of high exclusion. He is used to this state, so when he is feared on a large scale, he will just think it is normal and ignore the other party, instead of seeking recognition from these people who fear him."

"I want to ask you, Nishen, do you know the environment in which Spade was born?"

Nishen silently clasped his hands together and placed them against his nose. After a pause, he spoke: "This guy Heitao... logged into the system from the single-player game in Siren Town."

"Tavier, the previous evil god, became good friends with a human. After being forced into a deep sleep and falling, he drifted to the Siren Town map in reality."

"From that time on, the new evil god punished Tavier by letting him drift between various games in a dormant state. He was beaten by players as a wandering god-level NPC, and was cut into various evil origins to create and design game copies."

"In order to find that human again, Tavel returned to the Siren Town where he first drifted into the game dungeon. While the new evil god was focusing on finding his successor, he cut his soul and flesh apart there."

"Tawil trapped his soul in the game to suffer forever, while his body transformed into a human form, sneaked in when a group of new players logged in, and finally logged into the game through the small TV of a dead player."

Liao Ke realized: "It was said before that there was an extra small TV in the rookie single-player game copy, and it was blocked so that the content inside could not be seen. Is it referring to Spade?"

Nishen hummed and said, "Spade was born from Tavel's mermaid body. When he was born, although the player and the main NPCs were already dead, the game was almost finished."

"That is to say, the residents of Siren Town have basically regained their normal consciousness and become normal humans. They know that their tragedy was caused by the mermaid who was captured in the beginning, that is, Tawil. This makes them very afraid and repulsive to the Spade born from Tawil's body."

"…The townspeople tried many ways to kill Spade, such as burning him with fire and cutting him with knives. However, Spade's resistance was too high, so these things couldn't hurt him at all, and he didn't feel any pain."

Nishen took a deep breath and said, "Heitao didn't resist from the beginning to the end. Or rather, he didn't understand what was happening at all. He just calmly let the townspeople punish him."

"But because the townspeople have not been able to kill Spade, extreme fear has driven them crazy."

"They lined up in front of Spade, their faces twisted and crazy as they shouted 'you're a monster', and then collectively slit their throats and committed suicide."

"Later, Spade searched through the bodies of these people and found the body of the dead player. He took his system coins and logged into the game covered in blood."

Liao Ke nodded in understanding, then turned to look at Hei Tao: "Hei Tao, why don't you choose your teammates as the object of empathy? Your teammates are not afraid of you."

The stethoscope lowered its head, as if thinking seriously, and then replied, "They have no special data on me."

Liao Ke responded and laughed: "You are using my previous analogy, right? Your teammates' feelings towards you are data, but your feelings towards you are not strong enough for you to produce special data in return."

"This is quite normal." Liao Ke thought thoughtfully, "Just like strangers in normal human society, there is a sense of distance, but your teammates' feelings for you, Hei Tao, should be stronger than for strangers. You should be able to feel it a little bit, and they have been with you for much longer than Ri Liu. Why can't they give back to their teammates, but can give back to Ri Liu?"

The stethoscope was silent for a moment this time: "Because... when I first met Riyu, he smiled at me."

"I felt like he wanted me to hug him."

"I felt like he didn't want me to leave and wanted to stay with me forever."

"Other people aren't like that. They're not afraid of me, but they don't want to hug me and be with me forever either."

"Only Riyu can produce this kind of special data for me."

Liao Ke and Ni Shen were silent for a moment, and then Liao Ke continued to ask: "This special data that Ri Liu gave you is different from the feeling given to you by others, such as your teammates, right?"

"Hmm." The stethoscope answered quickly.

Liao Ke continued to ask: "Can you compare the feeling brought to you by this special data produced by Riyu?"

The stethoscope paused. "When Riyu first met me, he held my wrist."

"It's warm."

Liao Ke lowered his head and continued writing on his notebook, then raised his head and looked at Nishen: "I have finished asking questions. I believe you know what the psychological problems of Heitao are without me saying anything, right?"

Nishen held his forehead with his hand and sighed helplessly: "Although I guessed it in the game, but when I really confirmed it, it was still a bit..."

Liao Ke smiled, he stood up and loosened the straps that were helping Heitao, then turned around and patted Nishen on the shoulder: "It's complicated, right? I felt the same way when my little daughter first told me about her crush."

"On the one hand, I'm glad that she has grown up and found someone she likes." Liao Ke turned and looked at Heitao with a smile in his eyes. "On the other hand, I'm worried that this idiot will fall in love with a bad person."

"But fortunately, it's easy for you to understand each other." Liao Ke suddenly reached out, grabbed Nishen's forearm, and pulled it out violently, "I think I should not only provide psychological counseling to Hei Tao, but also to you."

Nishen was caught off guard and hissed when he was pulled out. When Liao Ke pulled him out, his hands were covered with bloody whip marks.

Liao Ke raised his eyes and looked at Nishen: "You can fool Bai Yi by saying that you are not injured, but you can't fool a professional like me. What's the matter with these whip marks? Why did you bring injuries with you?"

Nishen paused, then pulled his hand back, and said with a slightly complaining smile: "What can I do? When I was about to log out of the game, that bastard Spade suddenly went crazy and whipped me with a broken whip. I was caught off guard and had no time to react, so I was injured and kicked out of the game."

Liao Ke looked at Nishen steadily: "The wounds on your body and Heitao's body are the same kind of whip marks, both with barbs. Heitao's whip doesn't look like this."

Nishen sat on the back of the sofa, lowered his head and remained silent for a long, long time.

The blood from the whip marks on his body dripped onto the floor.