Chapter 31
Ye Yihe stared silently at the letters etched on the inside of his forearm.
The person who engraved this sentence had a very steady hand, and the lines were smooth and graceful, with not even the slightest deviation in the turns. It was a beautiful line of handwritten text.
If it weren't for the sharp pain piercing his nerves and the slow seepage of blood, people would believe it was some kind of tattoo with special pigments.
It's hard to imagine how much unwavering patience the original owner, Fyodor, had to carve each stroke on his forearm, as if he were truly just writing on paper.
He wasn't even an adult yet.
Ye Yihe had to admit that even he himself was completely shocked.
Because Fyodor was not harming himself by doing this; his thinking was very rational and calm. Rather than a warning, threat, or demonstration, this statement was more like... confronting a truth that had been revealed through meticulous peeling back the layers.
Perhaps it was only after realizing that his own injuries prevented Ye Yihe from appearing that he turned his gun on Sartre Bernhardt.
—If Sartre Bernhardt is in danger again, Yeikh is very likely to reappear.
Based on the system's memory of rationalizing him tonight, he guessed that Ye Yihe's goal was to save the other party; and this message written with pain and scars was a greeting he deliberately left behind.
As it turned out, Fyodor's guess was entirely correct. The system urgently switched Ye Yihe's consciousness out, so that he would face a version of Ye Yihe who had already discovered the truth.
[It seems your rationalized memories can only fool ordinary people,] Ye Yihe sighed inwardly, [while Fyodor could easily crush you with his intelligence.]
Perhaps he should have taken Fyodor more seriously...
system:[…………]
Absolutely irrefutable.
[If I choose not to kill Sartre Bernhardt now, will the body immediately return to Fyodor?]
Before taking any further action, Ye Yihe asked this crucial question.
[No, this was an unexpected emergency wake-up.] If the system had a physical form, it would probably be wiping away sweat right now, having survived a close call. [The host can decide when to return it.]
[I see. ]
After roughly clarifying the situation, Ye Yihe's attention returned to the chaotic reality.
Sartre Bernhardt remained seated, too afraid to move, while his wife stood stiffly on the way to the study, clutching their still-snoring child.
Ye Yihe lowered his forearm and said softly to Mrs. Bernhardt, "Take him to bed first." After saying this, he turned to Sartre Bernhardt and said, "I had some trouble with myself tonight, I'm so sorry."
He won't be showing up for a while.
"No, oh, it's okay..."
Sartre Bernhardt, who is used to facing various meetings, interviews and cameras, stumbled over a few words for the first time.
"Well, how about we bandage your wound...?"
From his perspective, the words carved into the scars were not clearly discernible.
But this did not prevent him from seeing the other person's blood still slowly dripping down their pale fingertips, with blood pooling at their feet.
In Sartre Bernhardt's view, the scene was already shocking enough.
But the fact that the other party could stand there so nonchalantly after suffering such an injury, with such an indifferent attitude... is simply frightening.
Just then, Mrs. Bernhardt, who had taken the child back to the study to sleep, also came out with a family first-aid kit.
She still looked very nervous, but was trying to show friendliness through her actions.
She kept a distance of about half the living room before unlocking the first-aid kit and showing Ye Yihe that the small box was full of first-aid supplies such as saline solution, cotton balls, gauze, and iodine. Only after Ye Yihe nodded and said "thank you" did she slowly walk over.
This was both a way of repaying Ye Yihe for saving their lives and a way of showing goodwill, letting Ye Yihe know that they truly had no malicious intent.
Fyodor's act of trying to shoot them as soon as he entered the room was successfully reversed by Ye Yihe's words, which made it seem as if "a mastermind attacked him after they left and misled him into thinking that they were the ones who instigated him, which is why he did this."
In this way, his relationship with the Bernhardt family was preserved... or at least mostly preserved.
If you really want to be precise, he saved Sartre Bernhardt twice tonight.
After cleaning the wound with saline solution, the elegant and flowing scar text on the forearm became more prominent, occupying nearly half of the inner side of the forearm.
Mrs. Bernhardt, holding the cotton ball with tweezers, saw the words and her expression was clearly one of astonishment.
"Who did this?" she couldn't help but ask. "It must have hurt so much, and it might leave a scar after it heals."
It's unbelievable that someone would use a dagger to so cruelly carve such deep words into the skin... and the cut doesn't look like there was any struggle or trembling at all!
"It's okay, strictly speaking, I did it myself."
Ye Yihe replied casually. After carefully applying the iodine solution, he pressed it down with sterile gauze and wrapped the bandage tightly, layer by layer.
"…………!!"
The Bernhardts were so shocked that they gasped inwardly, and their gazes toward Ye Yihe changed.
...Really? You're this ruthless to yourself?!
Ye Yihe didn't care what they thought, and besides, the ins and outs of this matter were hard to explain clearly.
Now that the wound had been bandaged, he could start dealing with other matters.
The first issue is the bank robbers.
"The three robbers from the previous bank robbery are still in jail, right?"
Ye Yihe looked at Sartre Bernhardt.
According to the audio recordings, Fyodor had contacted them, which ultimately led them to decide to rob a bank in order to gain the opportunity to talk to the government.
Unfortunately, he thwarted it with a sweeping leg kick and three shots... I feel a little bad about that.
Upon hearing that Ye Yihe had brought up this matter, Sartre Bernhard nodded, "After all, they are war criminals who are still wanted and will not be released anytime soon. They will need to go to a military court for trial."
However, France is a country without the death penalty. Even if someone commits such a crime—at least on the surface—they will not be sentenced to death, but will instead spend a considerable amount of time in prison.
"I hope you can release them."
Ye Yihe pondered for a moment, then said to him, "Or rather, [they] were released."
Sartre Bernhardt, a seasoned political maneuver and a high-ranking military officer, was naturally quick to react in this regard: "You mean public pressure?"
“Doing this will also benefit you,” Ye Yihe said.
There's no need to say too much to a smart person. Besides, with his current French vocabulary, he doesn't have enough to support saying much.
In countries with this system, political influence will naturally expand as they respond to public opinion time and time again.
This method is especially suitable for cases where there is already a miscarriage of justice.
Ye Yihe could not possibly get Sartre Bernhardt to release the robbers unconditionally. Even if the other party could, the deal would only be a product of swallowing one's pride.
Such roundabout methods may not be honorable, but the result is a win-win situation.
If Sartre Bernhardt, who has already reached a high enough position, wants to go even further, he needs more of these massive media frenzy events.
Therefore, he agreed without much thought, and even took the initiative to include the part that Ye Yihe had not finished saying: "I will do my best to exonerate that wronged army that was driven out of France and to fight for government compensation."
"Thank you for your help."
Influenced by his environment over the past twenty years, Ye Yihe subconsciously smiled and thanked Sartre Bernhardt—but his reaction was to shrug his shoulders, as if he almost wanted to hide behind some cover.
Tonight, Sartre Bernhardt seems to be quite allergic to smiling.
"…………"
Ye Yihe silently withdrew his smile.
In this way, the unit was finally able to obtain the war honors that were rightfully theirs, and no longer had to be wanted as criminals by their homeland, expelled from other countries, or live a life of wandering on the commissions earned from missions.
However, Fyodor never made any promises to exonerate them; he simply saw this and used simple persuasion to make them willingly become one of the cornerstones of his plan.
Ye Yihe, knowing that Sartre Bernhardt already had this intention, then pushed for an even better outcome.
He still couldn't bear to see soldiers betrayed by their own country and forced into exile.
After finishing this matter, Ye Yihe pondered for a moment and then asked Sartre Bernhardt about another thing he had heard in the voice recording.
What is "The Secret of the Gentle Forest"?
He returned his body too quickly, not even knowing what deal Ivan had made with Verlaine on his behalf. Before going, Ivan had only instructed him to act flexibly based on what he heard, with the core objective being to let Sartre Bernhardt go.
However, judging from the records, Ivan even received help from Verlaine once, which shows that he was definitely a good negotiator in business.
It's said that Verlaine's title was "King of Assassins," making him a colleague of Oda Sakunosuke? But his title is clearly much more impressive. Perhaps they should give Oda Sakunosuke a similar title later, to help him build his reputation...
After all, what assassin always uses their real name to accept missions? They must have a nickname or code name—like the winery next door.
"...That was a document."
Even after taking a deep breath before bringing up the topic of the Assassin King, Sartre Bernhardt still gave Ye Yihe a detailed explanation: "To be precise, Verlaine's creator once wrote an instruction manual for him. 'The Secret of the Gentle Forest' is the title of the final chapter and contains the key information on how to manipulate him."
"...The operating instructions for him?" Ye Yihe, unaware of Verlaine's true identity, repeated the sentence in confusion.
Sartre Bernhardt had no choice but to recount the story of the man known as "Pan" and the "Black Twelve" he created, as well as how he was later rescued by Rimbaud, an intelligence officer from the Special Forces General Bureau (DGSS), and was eventually given the name Paul Verlaine.
After hearing the whole story, Ye Yihe's brain went blank for a moment before he calmly nodded.
This world already has the concept of superhumans, so there's no need to be surprised if an artificial superhuman appears... Yeah, that's how it is.
"So when Rimbaud submitted this operating guide to the government, the last few pages of the final chapter had already been torn out by someone, and he himself lost contact more than two years ago and is suspected to be dead."
"And Verlaine seems to be trying to find the missing six pages of the document, to have complete control over his own body... or rather, to prevent others from getting the contents."
Ye Yihe summarized briefly and then asked Sartre Bernhardt again, "Do you have any leads? This concerns your own life, so you'd better think carefully."
The deal was to save Sartre Bernhardt's life, not his.
Sensing the unspoken meaning, Sartre Bernhardt said in despair, "I really haven't seen those pages in the archives... wait,"
—At the brink of life and death, the flashing memories in his mind suddenly reminded him of a piece of intelligence he had once read: "I remember there was a line like this in the investigation report on the personal data of [Pan God]."
"During his time on the run, he had contact with a woman, who may have been a young girl, for a period of time."
"When he reappeared later, he possessed the extremely powerful [Black Twelve] - we speculated on the connection between the two, but unfortunately we couldn't investigate and verify it. Later, with the death of [Pan], this report was also sealed away."
Ye Yihe hummed in agreement. "Specifically."
"He was a genius doctor with top-notch intelligence, and also a superpowered technician who focused on military applications. He possessed unimaginable madness and audacity in science, especially in mechanics, and always wanted to try to create a bionic machine that could pass the Turing test and had a human-like appearance."
Sartre Bernhardt stroked his chin as he recalled, "The creation of bionic robots capable of independent thought and the creation of artificial superhumans capable of independent thought—these two things had something in common that brought them together. Perhaps she knows something... that's my guess."
After listening, Ye Yihe thought this was a good clue. "Could you help me ask her?"
“This is somewhat difficult for me,” Sartre Bernhardt replied with some difficulty. “It’s not convenient for me to come forward, nor is it convenient for my subordinates.”
"If you want to verify this conjecture, I may have to trouble you to help me personally... Please believe me, I will definitely pay you a satisfactory reward, I swear on my family."
Upon hearing this, Ye Yihe looked up, a bad feeling creeping into his heart. "...Hmm?"
Sartre Bernhardt: "...she is British and currently works in the government sector."
If French government officials were to go to Britain to investigate their own government personnel, they would be arrested on the spot as spies and publicly condemned internationally.
Ye Yihe: "…………"
Ye Yihe clutched his head, feeling a headache coming on.
Seriously? I have to start learning English again?
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