76 Let us play a game.

When I saw myself in the video actually lapping up the blood of that beautiful housewife, a chill went through me from head to toe. Was that really me?

At that moment, Professor He said to me, “Chen Mu, do you see it now? This is you. Even at the scene of a murder, your split personalities appeared many times. In the video, one of your personalities does not want to kill, while the other plays the executioner.”

Only after hearing Professor He’s words did I realize that the me in the video was not pretending to be a good person by deliberately saying those perverse things like a madman. Those words about not wanting to kill that housewife, about wanting to protect her, were in fact spoken by another personality of mine. He truly did not want to kill her.

I had always believed that in schizophrenia, the two personalities could never appear at the same time, never collide. Now it seemed I was wrong. My two personalities could appear together!

I kept watching. After the me in the video had sucked for a while, I suddenly clutched the woman’s head again, pressed my face against her wound, and before long my own face was smeared with blood, making me look ghastly.

Then I sprang up abruptly and circled the chair that had bound the housewife. As I turned, I roared, “Who? Who is meddling here? Get out! If you’ve got the guts, come at me!”

But after saying that, I suddenly appeared again beside the housewife. What happened next sent a violent shiver through me.

I took the blade, thin as a cicada’s wing yet incomparably sharp, and slashed straight down across the housewife’s chest.

Her clothes were cut open in an instant, and a huge gash was torn through her chest. I could even see the flesh within the opening, and the breastbone beyond it.

Even more horrifyingly, the blade kept slicing downward. When it reached her abdomen, my fingers suddenly thrust along that split and drove straight into her belly. At that moment, my hand was like a knife, actually ripping open a crimson wound with brutal force, extending all the way to her smooth, flat lower abdomen. Blood gushed out at once, soaking my hands and spattering my face.

By then I could not endure it any longer. My whole body began to tremble as I blurted to Professor He, “No, this isn’t me... Who is that woman in the video? Why did I kill her?”

Professor He said, “You shouldn’t ask me, because I don’t know either. You should ask yourself why you wanted to kill her.”

I shook my head and said I didn’t know, then asked, “Where did you get this video? Haven’t you already founded the Chen Mu Research Center? How could you not know why I was killing people?”

Professor He said directly, “That should be part of your mission. As for where we got this video, I’m afraid I can’t tell you for now.”

So I kept watching. After the woman in the video was slashed open by the blade, she could no longer hold on. She looked at me one last time as though I were a demon, then fainted away.

At that moment, the little girl beside her, Xia Tian, suddenly burst into tears, crying and shouting, “Mommy, Mommy.”

Then the me in the video stood up, because I knew Xia Tian had not died, so by then I was not quite as frightened.

It seemed that in the video I quickly returned to that kind-hearted personality again. I stroked Xia Tian’s head and asked her, “Xia Tian, do you miss your mother? I’ll take you to see her.”

Xia Tian did not dare look at me. Her tender little face was filled with terror; to her then, I must have been more frightening than the devil.

Soon I untied the rope binding Xia Tian, then lifted her up and carried her to the side of the housewife who had fallen unconscious.

Yet just as I brought Xia Tian over there, a sinister smile suddenly crossed my face. Then I forcefully stuffed Xia Tian’s head into her mother’s split-open belly, even trying to push her entire body inside.

As I forced her in, I said, “You want your mother, do you? Then I’ll let you stay with her. I’ll send you back where you came from!”

But at that moment, the ruthlessness on my face vanished just as quickly, and I immediately pulled Xia Tian back out of her mother’s belly. By then Xia Tian’s face was already covered in blood.

I lifted Xia Tian up once more, then left.

I knew that from then on, Xia Tian should have been raised, even trained, by me. No wonder she called me older brother. Growing up with someone like that, no wonder Xia Tian seemed so eerie.

To be honest, I was truly terrified by this video. Even after it ended, I was still shaken for a long time and could not recover my senses. Was that really me? How could that possibly have been me?

In my panic, Professor He suddenly pressed down on the crystal sphere that was still turning and asked me, “Chen Mu, what do you feel after watching it?”

Without thinking, I said, “If that was me, I would kill myself.”

Professor He said flatly, “That would be the coward’s way. If you truly want to mend your ways, you should personally see to it that people like you are brought to justice by the law.”

I nodded. “I will. I must complete this infiltration, even if it costs me my life. Professor He, tell me what I should do now. I don’t necessarily need to recover my memory. I only want to deceive Bai Ye and the others, then get the Avengers’ information to the police. I want to atone.”

Professor He smiled. “As for those evil memories, there is a considerable record of them here. You can begin imitating him now.”

With that, Professor He went out, leaving me alone in the room. He said I should first study on my own and understand what my other personality was like, because only by implanting memories through my own efforts could they be most firmly under control. If I relied on his hypnosis and other auxiliary methods, it would easily shatter my mind and worsen the split-personality disorder. By then I might truly become that demon all over again.

So I went through every document in the room by myself, and after reading them I gained a considerable understanding. The research on me here was truly comprehensive. I had no idea where they had obtained all this material.

As for the Avengers, or rather the Dawn Organization, there was not much record. It said the hierarchy was strict: every time I received a death notice from above, I would go out and kill. The Avengers, however, did not kill outsiders; they only killed members of the Dawn Organization. I still did not know what deep, irreconcilable grudge existed between those two factions.

When I had finished all the materials here, I finally understood why Bai Ye had wanted me so desperately to become my former self again. I had once saved his life during an assassination. He ranked below me, yet his strength was formidable enough to stand on equal footing with me. However, once his status rose to a certain level, he would be assigned to lead a separate team and travel to different cities to assassinate the people of Dawn. In order to keep fighting side by side with me, Bai Ye willingly remained a low-ranking guardian and continued to stand with me in battle.

Moreover, because I already suffered from split-personality disorder, with the two personalities often interweaving and appearing in turn, even Bai Ye could not be certain when I might become what. That was why I finally understood his fixation on me: at any moment, I might revert to who I had once been. And that, in truth, also gave me an opening for infiltration, because whenever I could not keep up the act, I could pretend that the non-perverse personality had surfaced.

Among all these materials, one video left the deepest impression on me. It was also a murder video of mine, and I remembered the victim as well. I had once seen his head in that cave; he was the first person killed in this murder game, not the one killed by Bai Ye.

At that time, I had scattered a room full of broken glass from shattered wine bottles, then made the man lie flat upon the fragments. I forced him to crush the glass beneath his own body, and told him that if he could flatten the shards, I would let him go.

But in the end he was still cut all over by the broken glass, not a single patch of skin remained intact, and he bled to death. I also used those bottle shards to sever his head...

Truthfully, the video was extremely bloody, but for some reason, watching the me in it, I suddenly felt that I had changed. It was different from the few murder videos I had seen before. This me seemed more familiar somehow. Though just as deranged, there was somehow a trace of helplessness in his eyes.

And the next two videos that followed gave me the same feeling. I did not know why I thought so; it just felt a little different.

In the end, after nearly an entire night of study, and by imitating every movement of his, I felt that I could already play him very well.

Afterward, Fang Qinghe also gave me some instructions and cautions, and of course, some hope. In the end, he handed me a miniature listening device, saying it could not be detected and even had its own switch, so I could control it myself.

He instructed me that, no matter what, I must see this murder game through to the end and draw out the mastermind behind it.

The next day I rested for a full day. Then, carrying the severed head of Fang Lin, which Fang Qinghe had prepared for me, and holding it in a plastic bag, I went to a deep mountain in the suburbs, because the records said that Bai Ye and I often met in that mountain.

At midnight, a cold wind blew and the shadows of the trees swayed. I waited alone for a long time, until suddenly a streak of white flashed past in the distance.

Bai Ye had truly appeared. Dressed in white as bright as snow, he carried a large woven sack in his hands and slowly walked toward me.

The corners of his mouth lifted in a faint, bewitching curve, as though he were greeting my return.

When he came beside me, he suddenly tipped the contents of that enormous sack out at my feet. After seeing them, I froze. It was a sack full of severed body parts.

He said to me directly, “A Mu, let’s play a game.”