Last night, free from Miss Sakai weighing him down like a ghost, Gu He slept soundly on the sofa.
He woke up bright and early and took a look through his goggles. His personality integrity had recovered to 99%; he was only missing 1%.
This was his seventh day in this bizarre, dazzling world.
Throughout the day, Gu He worked his shift as a host while figuring out how to fish for information from Contact 1.
Ever since the mess was exposed, Fan Debao had been giving him the cold shoulder. Miss Ayane and Miss Sakai were nowhere to be seen all day. When night finally fell, Old Fan closed the shop early.
"I've got things to do tonight. Just go to sleep once you finish cleaning up. Sleep well and get your energy up."
Old Fan's tone was exactly like a butcher telling a piglet to fatten up, and then...
Once Old Fan headed over to Licai, Gu He was the only one left in the Fishpond.
The night rain was shut outside, but the clamor of Shuhui Street still seeped into the shop. Outside, a missionary was grabbing at a few young prostitutes and yelling at the top of his lungs, while a gang of street kids rummaging through the trash got into a screaming match with a homeless man.
Gu He was in no rush to clean the bar counter. This was obviously a good opportunity to initiate contact.
Old Fan and the others are acting sneaky. If they could detect my contact sessions, I would've been done for last time. I shouldn't need to worry about that.
He checked the wall clock. It was past eight in the evening, right around the time people finished dinner and watched TV. The other party should be free.
Judging from his last experience, his mental momentum could sustain a single contact session for about ten minutes.
Then I'll do it now...
Gu He grabbed his Thermos Cup and sat down on the sofa, ready to begin.
Psychological therapy required a strong sense of ritual. The familiarity bred by a specific setting helped relax the patient. Although the other party wasn't a sub-personality, he had definitely sensed anger and irritability from her last time.
Who or what she was remained entirely unclear. He couldn't drop his guard just because she wasn't a sub-personality.
Who knew if she could just crawl through the connection and beat him up? She was a transcendent, after all.
Gu He tightened his grip on the Thermos Cup. He had to handle this carefully.
He cleared his throat and opened the Console in his mind. His host value had increased to Tier 3 at 21%, and the database contained a page of data on
Hero of a Thousand Faces. He clicked into [Share] and tapped a few times.
"Initiate call to Contact 1?"
As soon as he pressed the "Yes" button, that feeling of neural acceleration descended. The room around him stretched into bizarre fragments of light and shadow. Everything was speeding up, yet everything simultaneously seemed to come to a standstill.
A prompt box appeared in his mind:
[Console calling. Forced connection after countdown: 59 seconds]
...
Less than 30 seconds left!
Elizabeth rushed out of the conference hall into a corridor lined with servers and security personnel.
Take the elevator to a room on another floor? No, there was no time!
As she ran, her blue eyes locked onto a cleaner's utility room at the far end. She rushed over, moving so fast she nearly sprained her ankle. "Out, out, everyone get out!"
The few cleaners inside were bewildered by her rapid-fire eviction, but they didn't dare dawdle and scurried out immediately.
"I just had a new revelation and need to digest it immediately. Leave me alone!"
Throwing those words at the assistants and security guards trailing after her, Elizabeth slammed the door shut.
As a transcendent, this excuse was perfectly sound and reasonable; sudden epiphanies were something that could and often did happen.
Only ten seconds left. Elizabeth nervously checked her cramped surroundings, wanting to appear proper and decent to show her respect to the master. But there was barely any room, so she had to stand straight against the wall beside mops, buckets, and other cleaning supplies.
[Connected]
With less than five seconds remaining, she proactively pressed the connect button. Suddenly, the lights and shadows around her shifted.
It was that feeling of complete helplessness again. In just a few moments, she felt her mind fall under someone else's control.
Because she still didn't know enough about that powerful existence, a bit of instinctive fear bred within her...
But running parallel to it was a complex mix of excitement, joy, and anticipation.
When the kaleidoscopic lights and shadows finally ground to a halt, Elizabeth once again beheld that mysterious figure shrouded in hazy mist.
He sat majestically upon the Nether Throne, holding the Scepter of Mystery in his hand.
"Master!" Elizabeth couldn't help but call out excitedly. She had been longing for this for days, and he had finally appeared.
The minor grievances she had suffered earlier suddenly meant nothing. Her efforts had not been in vain!
"You have returned," the master said. His voice was still wreathed in the mysterious, inexplicable crackling of electronic static.
"Yes, I'm back." Elizabeth nodded, her tone hinting at a desire for credit. "The investigation you asked me to conduct last time... I completed it, right?" She regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth. Was she being too eager? Would the master dislike it?
"Why don't you provide a simple report yourself?" the master said.
Elizabeth really wanted to slap her forehead. She had assumed that since the master possessed immense Divine Powers and already knew everything, there was no need for her to blabber on.
But making her recount the events was undoubtedly a kind of test.
"Actually, I can't take much credit," Elizabeth began modestly. "It was all thanks to Captain Lin and his team. I merely followed your will, Master, and requested a thorough investigation into the Muck Pond organ truck case.
"It's a pity that the shootout between the two gangs still resulted in quite a few casualties. If I had brought Captain Lin and his team in earlier, perhaps the situation would have been better..."
As she spoke, her tone shifted from mere modesty to a genuine realization of her own shortcomings.
Dozens of people had died. How was this completing the mission? This was practically the same as messing it up entirely.
"You do not need to blame yourself too much," the master said. "No one wanted this to happen. The matter is already settled; you don't need to involve yourself in it anymore."
"Thank you, Master!" Elizabeth was immediately moved. The master really was magnanimous.
Such a great powerhouse would usually be highly intolerant of mistakes, especially since this was her very first mission.
...
Good grief, I almost brought the heat down on myself. I would've been dead before I even knew what hit me.
Gu He broke out in a cold sweat, sitting on the sofa and not daring to move.
Old Dog Jackson had said that the police usually wouldn't bother with idle matters in Muck Pond. Commander Lorna and the others had just been unlucky this time... Now it seemed that this bad luck had been entirely caused by him.
Contact 1 was not an ordinary transcendent. She was someone connected to the Metropolitan Police Department.
He had casually told her to investigate the organ truck incident, and she had actually sent people down there, arriving just in time to crash right into that mess.
If she kept investigating and followed the trail all the way to Shuhui Street, she might stumble upon him, a mere wild dog. If things went south and she found out that the "master" was just a host...
Needless to say, he would be doomed. Completely doomed. His head would probably get torn apart...
She couldn't be allowed to investigate anymore. No matter who she was or what kind of person she was, she had to stop.
"Master?" the hazy female figure asked doubtfully. Today, her silhouette looked like a dress, yet simultaneously resembled a full suit of heavy armor.
Gu He stared at her in silence. She was someone with transcendent strength, influence, and ruthless methods.
Just looking at her surroundings, the objects casting those bizarre shadows looked an awful lot like torture instruments.
This was a world of transcendent powers where danger lurked everywhere. Who knew what kind of cruel tortures existed!
Before figuring out her background, he absolutely couldn't act rashly.
If he told her to "give Gu He, the host of the Shuhui Street Fish Pond, some benefits," he would basically be courting death.
At this current stage, there were a few key points to drill into his own head:
First: Absolutely, under no circumstances expose his identity. He couldn't leave her a single clue.
Second: If he wanted to get information, he had to keep bluffing her.
Third: Find a way to figure out her identity.
Gu He hadn't forgotten the original purpose of this contact either: to figure out what the Doll Profession System actually was.
His mental connection was already wavering a bit. He had to hurry.
"Draw from your own name to pick a nickname for me to address you by," Gu He said, wanting to bait a clue about her real name. Maybe he could just get her to say it outright.
"Name?" Sure enough, the female figure seemed to grow a little wary. "My nickname will be... E. Is that okay?"
Her voice was accompanied by static crackling, like a jammed cassette tape, making it hard for Gu He to hear her clearly.
'E'? Through the static, it sounded exactly like the word for 'goose'. Goose what? What goose?
"Then... Goose." He pondered, still hoping to fish for something useful. "Have you been well these past few days since you went back?"
"Not very well, but I can endure it! I'm getting older; I won't whine over a little hardship."
Getting older? Gu He was puzzled. Was she an old woman?
"Has anything special happened?" he continued to fish.
Please, just give me some everyday details! With details come clues.
However, the woman merely replied with spirited resolve, "Rest assured, Master. No amount of hardship will knock me down."
Gu He took a deep breath. He really wanted to smack her with his Thermos Cup to knock some sense into her.
Seriously, couldn't she just mention a time, a person, a place, or a specific event?
Meanwhile, his mental connection wavered further, making the lights and shadows flicker. With little time left, he had no choice but to skip to his main question:
"How much do you know about the Doll Profession System?"
The woman seemed to freeze for a moment. Her tone abruptly lost its high spirits, carrying a hint of doubt and distaste as she asked:
"The Doll Profession System? Master, what do you mean by asking this...?"
Hearing her tone, Gu He instantly knew that the Doll Profession System wasn't anything proper or good.
Besides, why would a grand master ask such a low-level question?
"Why don't you think about it yourself?" Seeing her grow suspicious, he quickly seized the initiative. "You are a mature Hero now; you must learn to comprehend things on your own. Do not ask me what I mean about everything. I dislike having to repeat myself!"
He decided that however Old Fan treated him, he would treat Goose exactly the same way.
This way, his persona wouldn't become inconsistent and expose any flaws.
"I am slow-witted... Doll? Doll...?" The figure seemed to genuinely ponder it bitterly, growing a little anxious.
Suddenly, as if struck by a moment of absolute clarity, she bowed in profound gratitude. "I have been enlightened!"
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