Chapter 162: Wang Zijin
Chen Xiaolin realized that Zheng Yu’s fate was not purely seeking his own death; a large part of his madness was due to others’ inducement. The person who sent that email to Zheng Yu must have had ulterior motives from the start.
“Who exactly sent the email?” Chen Xiaolin asked in a deep voice. “You knew about Jinma Mountain because the organization stored a large number of books related to forbidden knowledge, but how did Zheng Yu so simply judge from a poem that Jinma Mountain was the location mentioned in the poem and painting?”
“That’s right. Zheng Yu and the owner of that mysterious email address continued to communicate frequently via email afterward. Zheng Yu learned the location of Jinma Mountain from the other party.” Yu Lianyun looked at Chen Xiaolin with approval. The other party’s attention to probing the truth had always been very focused and had not been distracted by the bizarre parts in the story she told.
Yu Lianyun frowned tightly, looking at the clear blue sky outside the window, yet feeling the omen of an impending storm. “I had people track down the origin of that mysterious email address, but it’s not easy because I discovered that the other party’s IP address changes every time they send an email, and it frequently changes within the New York region. This inevitably makes us suspect that this incident may also involve foreign forces.”
“Is it the Inverted Sanctuary?” Chen Xiaolin remembered Li Duojin’s guess.
“Possible.” Yu Lianyun nodded. “But I think they are likely just one of the participants.”
“One of them?” Chen Xiaolin was puzzled.
“Don’t you find it strange?” Yu Lianyun stood up, walked to the window, and looked down at the people moving in the back garden. “In recent years, anomaly events in the Shenzhou Region have been far too frequent, and the probability of city-level and above danger grade anomaly events occurring here is terrifyingly high compared to other regions.”
Chen Xiaolin fell into deep thought. As a media person, she came into contact with news-related information much more frequently than others. She had actually had such doubts about what Yu Lianyun said, until Yu Lianyun basically confirmed her own guesses, and she finally believed her intuition.
“These are all premeditated. Starting two years ago, our Mysterious Group realized that there is a gang secretly controlling the development direction of the Shenzhou Region, continuously plundering various resources from the Shenzhou Region, such as natural resources, human resources, and so on. They consciously spread the gospel of abnormal gods through various means to expand the scale of abnormal god believers…”
“Are those guys even human? What benefits do they get from doing this?” Chen Xiaolin listened in shock and couldn’t help shouting loudly.
“Yeah, we’re also wondering how exactly they profit from abnormal gods and what their ultimate purpose is.” Yu Lianyun shook her head. “House of Cards, Yellow Sand Truth School, Inverted Sanctuary, and another organization hidden extremely deeply, the Eye of Kuthuen—these four organizations seem independent from each other, but our Mysterious Group has discovered that there is a subtle connection between them.
Although they belong to different organizations and believe in different abnormal gods, they have almost no conflicts. You should know that abnormal god faith can produce irreversible transformation effects on the human brain, making people extremely cherish and revere the abnormal god they believe in, eventually becoming as loyally protective as fanatic fans of certain celebrities.
As such, these believers who believe in different abnormal gods should easily fight each other, but surprisingly they don’t. And interestingly, they even have secret intersections with each other, with believers having relatively ‘ambiguous’ close interactions. This sounds utterly inconceivable to everyone, but they have managed to do it.
Chen Xiaolin silently noted down the existence of those four organizations. After pondering for a moment, she asked Yu Lianyun: “Why tell me all this? You don’t actually need to explain it to me, right?”
Yu Lianyun smiled and replied: “I don’t like hiding these things, and I think even if I didn’t tell you, Miss Chen would probably take action afterward anyway. These investigations are quite dangerous. Rather than letting you fall into peril for information that’s easily obtainable for me, it’s better to explain it to you directly.”
“But aren’t you afraid I’ll report it?” Chen Xiaolin countered. “You know, I’m a reporter.”
Yu Lianyun: “I did have that concern, but I’ve read the news you’ve reported. I can tell you’re a media person who knows her limits. You should be well aware that some things are simply not suitable for public disclosure.”
Chen Xiaolin fell slightly silent, sighed, and said: “I indeed don’t plan to report these things, but no matter what massive web is behind Zheng Yu’s madness, I will uncover the truth.”
“So why not temporarily join my team?” Yu Lianyun invited with a smile, extending her fair, slender hand toward Chen Xiaolin.
Chen Xiaolin was stunned. “I’m just an ordinary person.”
“Surviving such an event already makes you no longer ordinary.” A strange gleam shone in Yu Lianyun’s eyes.
Locking eyes with Yu Lianyun, Chen Xiaolin felt as if the other had seen through her, and her heart skipped a beat.
……
On the bustling street of the Magic City Bund, a hunchbacked tall figure weaved through the crowd. She gripped the strap of her shoulder bag tightly with one hand and carefully protected the bag with the other, as if something important existed inside the bag.
Just as she made her way step by step to the center of the Bund’s crowd, with the river on one side and the Magic City Pearl Tower farther in the distance as the city’s landmark building, she stopped. Silently, she took out a headphone case from her shoulder bag, put the headphones on her ears, and then, with her head lowered, she suddenly revealed an eerie smile.
She picked up her mobile phone, looking at the “Open” and “Close” buttons on the phone screen. Her eyes showed strong pious reverence toward some unknown being, and she murmured something under her breath in a strange tone, as if communicating with some invisible thing.
Just as she was about to press the “Open” button displayed on the phone screen, suddenly a push from behind hit her, followed by a numb stinging pain in her hand. Her hand shook, and she dropped the mobile phone.
At the same time, similar phenomena to the girl’s occurred on the people around her, and a portion of the Bund area saw people’s portable electronics short-circuiting and suddenly becoming unusable.
“This isn’t so good, is it, classmate Wang Zijin?”
Wang Zijin heard the voice and turned her head back in horror, shocked to see Li Duojin who had somehow appeared behind her. He was wearing hospital clothes and holding a strange metal rod in his hand.
“What did you do?” Wang Zijin asked darkly.
“Nothing much, borrowed some black technology from a friend to play with. Seems like EMP, right?” Li Duojin smiled faintly, then boldly stepped forward, yanked open Wang Zijin’s collar, and instantly buttons flew off. A bizarre symbol identical to the one the madman Zheng Yu had carved on his own forehead appeared on the area below her collarbone.
