553: Chapter 553: Breaking the Net (Vote for monthly ticket, big chapter) 553: Chapter 553: Breaking the Net (Vote for monthly ticket, big chapter) If anyone in this world could have pulled Jess, who had already fallen into obsession, back from the brink, it would have only been his wife, Tiny.
After his parents’ deaths, Jess once fell into a paranoid state, fixated on investigating the true cause of their demise.
It was during that state that Jess t the professor who later beca a victim, which led to the start of his research on Gene Potion.
During that ti, the Mysterious Person found Jess for the first ti and offered to fund his research.
And it was Tiny, Jess’s wife, who ultimately made him stop.
After seeing his wife’s haggard face, Jess chose to let go, to return to his family, not allowing those alive to continue being hurt.
Thereafter, he sold all his materials at a low price to the Mysterious Person and withdrew from the center of the vortex.
Although he still did not give up the investigation into the cause of his parents’ deaths, he was no longer obsessed with those indescribable, unknown mysteries.
After returning to his family, he indeed had a peaceful and happy life for a while, but such a life was soon cruelly shattered.
His wife, Tiny, died.
During a lecture, she was attacked by a ntally ill gunman and fell into a pool of blood.
After that, the Mysterious Person found Jess again, inviting him to join the Gene Potion developnt project.
Actually, from that ti on, Jess began to suspect that his wife’s death was related to the Mysterious Person.
He even thought that her death was the Mysterious Person’s way of intimidating him.
A death threat of coercion, implying that if he did not cooperate, he would die.
But he had no evidence.
Similarly, during his dealings with the Mysterious Person, Jess also realized that his parents’ deaths were related to the Mysterious Person.
Likewise, he had no evidence for this suspicion.
Still, the Mysterious Person had used words to more or less hint to Jess that the deaths of his parents and his wife were connected to him.
But these hints were actually instigations and did not cross over into tangible reality.
However, they continuously affected Jess’s mind, driving him, who was already ntally unstable, further into madness.
In those hints, deeper psychological manipulations were embedded, suggesting that the deaths of Jess’s parents and wife were all linked to the higher-ups of the Mysterious Person, with the Mysterious Person serving rely as a spokesperson.
The Mysterious Person thus created in Jess a hatred for his “higher-ups” and used this hatred to set the goal that developing the Gene Potion would lead to a confrontation with those higher-ups, compelling Jess to work for him.
Clearly, the Mysterious Person’s strategy was to cultivate a roaring fla of hatred, using it to clear the obstacles in the path of Gene Potion research.
This was dangerous, but the Mysterious Person was confident; he believed he had planted the fla himself and had complete control over it and would eventually extinguish it.
Until the fla spiraled out of control in the final mont.
Removing one’s self from the situation and looking from the perspective of an observer, the Mysterious Person’s control over Jess was actually perfect.
From the beginning, Jess never escaped his sches; those he could trust around him either died unexpectedly or were the Mysterious Person’s informants.
Looking back at the whole picture now, perhaps the mont the Mysterious Person directed Jess’s hatred towards his “higher-ups,” he had already set up the plot to kill Jess.
It was a deadly trap from the start, and from the mont Jess made contact with the Mysterious Person, a net nad Death may have already been woven.
This net was so strong that Jess did not even have the chance to struggle before the final outco arrived.
Of course, the appearance of He Ao tore through this net, breaking what seed to be a solid predicant.
But even now, the crazed whispers continued to echo in He Ao’s ears.
This was a trap hidden within Jess’s Secret dicine; without fully mastering the Talent Sequences and taking the questionable Secret dicine from the Mysterious Person, Jess’s ntal state remained teetering on the brink of insanity.
This madness was not quelled by He Ao’s advancent to C-level; instead, as he delved deeper into the Transcendent world, the insane thoughts combined with the whispers that C-levels could hear, greatly strengthening the ntal influence of the whispers.
If it weren’t for He Ao’s slight ntal resistance, he would have gone mad upon advancing to C-level.
This was also the ‘mine’ the Mysterious Person had planted in Jess’s body; with this madness present, even if Jess progressed to C-level, he would go directly insane, turning into a twisted creature.
The future the Mysterious Person had outlined for Jess was a dead end.
Of course, as He Ao advanced to C-level and managed to control the crazed whispers within him, the lethal arrangents the Mysterious Person had left behind were mostly invalidated.
And He Ao, who had completely escaped the net, was finally able to stand outside this vast web and glimpse the appearance of the person weaving it from behind the scenes.
The first key issue was whether the deaths of Jess’s parents and wife were related to the Mysterious Person?
Setting aside the fantasies Jess had in his insane state and reviewing the scenes in his mory, He Ao believed they were related to the Mysterious Person.
One very apparent piece of evidence was that many of the words the Mysterious Person had hinted to Jess precisely targeted crucial aspects.
For example, the hints about certain details of the explosion at Jess’s father’s chemical plant years ago, hints regarding the timing of Jess’s father’s visit to the chemical plant, as well as the topic of Jess’s wife’s last lecture, her condition during the lecture, and even so details about the gunman’s appearance.
Of course, all this information was conveyed through taphors and hints, the Mysterious Person never spoke of this information directly, instead, he used similar things and key words to provoke Jess.
Removing the ntal oppression elent, each piece of information revealed one thing—the Mysterious Person was very familiar with the deaths of Jess’s parents and wife, so familiar it was as if he had arranged them himself.
Either the Mysterious Person had thoroughly studied the case files of Jess’s parents and wife, gathering a great deal of related intelligence.
Or the Mysterious Person himself was one of the murderers or masterminds behind it.
He Ao was more inclined toward the second hypothesis.
The reason was simple: Jess was a genuinely good person.
After his wife’s death, it would have been easy to get him to help with the Gene Potion research by helping him investigate the causes of death of his parents and wife, by establishing a common enemy.
Jess would have gladly helped and would have been very grateful.
This approach had virtually no risk, and Jess would have been committed to the work.
Yet, the Mysterious Person abandoned this lower-risk thod and chose the more difficult and dangerous path of fostering a fire of hatred, which proved there was an irreconcilable conflict between him and Jess—a conflict so sharp that even Jess, the ultimate good-natured person, would be unable to cooperate with him upon discovering the truth.
Then the conflict would only make sense if the Mysterious Person was indeed one of the murderers of Jess’s parents and wife.
Of course, the Mysterious Person could also pretend to be a good person and deceive Jess into working for him, but judging from Jess’s interactions with him, the Mysterious Person didn’t seem like soone who liked to pretend; rather than acting the good guy and facing the risk of being exposed at any ti, he preferred to be a pure villain.
Of course, He Ao’s conjectures were not completely baseless; the information obtained from Salan, a Student working at the Wel dical Consortium, helped He Ao complete so of the puzzle.
Salan had ntioned that over six years ago, the Wel dical Consortium had once initiated a secret project related to biological genes.
This tiline coincided exactly with the point when Jess sold his Gene Potion research to the Mysterious Person.
Now He Ao was almost certain there was so connection between the Mysterious Person and the Wel dical Consortium.
So what might have happened at that ti was this: after Jess sold his research to the Mysterious Person, the Mysterious Person mobilized the resources of the Wel dical Consortium to set up a secret laboratory, hoping to develop the Gene Potion on his own.
Salan said the secret project lasted two to three years, which also corresponds to the peaceful and stable period Jess had, a ti when the Mysterious Person did not seek him out.
And the tipping point was when the secret project failed.
The Mysterious Person realized that he could not develop the Gene Potion with his own efforts, so he chose to co back and collaborate with Jess.
But from the very beginning, Jess had refused to collaborate, choosing to return to his family, so reaching out directly to Jess was out of the question.
Then, what would it take to coax Jess, who had returned to his family, back into action?
It’s simple, take away his family.
Information from Salan indirectly confird that the Mysterious Person had a strong motive for the cri.
He tried to research the Gene Potion on his own, but failed, so he desperately needed Jess’s help.
To get Jess’s assistance, he had to remove the ‘obstacles’ that kept Jess away from danger—an obligation.
That was Jess’s sole remaining concern in this world, his wife ‘Tiny’.
Indeed, after Tiny’s death, Jess, with no attachnts left, was easily ‘invited’ into the project by the Mysterious Person using certain ans.
Combining this with various hints given to Jess by the Mysterious Person during the Gene Potion research, although there was no definite clue about the murder of Jess’s parents, he almost certainly had a hand in killing Jess’s wife, Tiny.
Of course, all of this was re speculation by He Ao, but hypotheses with clear logical Chains are easily verified.
The shooter who killed Tiny was ntally ill, and the choice of a ntally ill person was simple: the actions of the ntally ill are unpredictable.
A public killing could be seen as an accident, so the incident could easily be classified as one.
In the end, the event was indeed deed an accident, and the ntally ill gunman was simply arrested.
However, according to information Jess received later, the gunman wasn’t sentenced but instead was sent to a psychiatric hospital for treatnt.
But the ntally ill aren’t typical assassins.
In a regular underground market, it’s hard to find soone who is both ntally ill and an assassin.
While most assassins may indeed be ntally ill, they typically won’t admit to it, claiming only that their thought process is slightly different from others.
Of course, it would be easy for a consortium to drive soone insane, but once that person beca ntally ill, they would be completely exposed and could no longer carry out other missions.
They would even have to be prepared for the possibility of “shooting themselves in the back eight tis”.
If this had happened in another city, the ntally ill individual could very well be a ‘professional’ fostered by the consortium.
But the incident took place in Vitland, where there exists a special class, the ‘Interdiary’.
People from the underworld trust the Interdiary more than they do the consortiums, and the consortiums themselves rarely seek direct collaboration with underworld figures.
That is to say, the ntally ill assassin likely didn’t co directly from the consortium, but through an introduction by an Interdiary.
In Vitland, there is only one Interdiary who has such extensive resources and also the trust of the Mysterious Person.
That would be Thorne, who was right in front of He Ao.
Therefore, He Ao deduced that Thorne was an informant in the murder case of Tiny, and he might even be one of the killers involved in the conspiracy against Tiny.
Of course, it didn’t matter if his guess was wrong—He Ao could still follow this lead to find other clues.
But he would never reveal any uncertainty in front of Thorne.
He watched Thorne, as if he knew all the secrets behind him, just waiting for Thorne to speak up.
‘Bluffing’ is one of the quickest ways to acquire information.
Of course, it requires a bit of acting.
At this mont, Thorne was also watching He Ao.
When He Ao ntioned Tiny, Thorne felt a jolt in his heart.
He sized up He Ao, guessing that He Ao might truly possess critical information.
Observing Thorne’s reaction, He Ao knew he had probably guessed correctly.
His expression unchanged, he calmly said, “This isn’t sothing I just found out about.
I’ve already been angry about it.
Just tell what you know.”
The implication of his words was that he knew about Tiny’s situation before their conversation.
Yet, he had just expressed his willingness to let Thorne walk away, and his offer still stood.
This was to reassure Thorne’s mind.
Thorne didn’t ntion Tiny precisely because he knew that, given Jess’s personality, if he truly ntioned Tiny’s situation, it very well might provoke Jess to harbor murderous intentions.
Even a cornered rabbit will bite, let alone Jess, who is now growing stronger.
Thorne looked at He Ao, unsure whether He Ao was being truthful or deceptive.
After hesitating for a mont, he said, “I need to leave with my subordinates.
You can’t attack us while we’re leaving.”
“I can persuade Heish not to attack you.
You can leave in batches, not all at once,”
said He Ao slowly.
Watching He Ao haggle, Thorne heaved a sigh of relief.
This at least proved that He Ao wasn’t acting on impulse but was making decisions based on interests.
Of course, this could also be a trap that He Ao had deliberately set to lower his guard.
But after thinking it over, he felt that was unlikely.
‘Jess,’ even if he were growing quickly, couldn’t possibly manage to always hide his emotions so completely.
After all, he had been plotting against ‘Jess’ for such a long ti and had a reasonably deep understanding of him.
In the end, he chose to trust his own experience and began to explain slowly, “It wasn’t my idea to kill your wife.”
“Hmm,”
He Ao put his hands behind his back, expressionless, and gestured for Thorne to continue.
The fists behind his back clenched tightly.
“I was just an interdiary,” Thorne continued, observing He Ao’s deanor, “The duty of an interdiary is to introduce a qualified executor to the client.
“That day, when that Mysterious Person ca to , I had thought he wanted your recent living information as usual, but that ti, his request was different.
He hoped I could find soone who was tight-lipped but desperately in need of money, even willing to die for it.
“Such a person is a standard ‘dead soldier’ and not easy to find, but he offered a high commission, and it took so ti to find soone who t his criteria.
“Then, through , the Mysterious Person gave that person a mission to pretend to be ntally ill and attack the speech venue, assuring him that as long as he pretended to be mad and divulged no information, he would find a way to exonerate him.
“You know the rest.
That person attacked your wife’s speech venue, killed your wife, and later, the Mysterious Person indeed helped him escape punishnt.”
He Ao glanced at Thorne, falling into a brief silence.
Thorne’s narrative significantly downplayed his own role, making it seem like the Mysterious Person directly commanded the ‘dead soldier,’ but from his words, it was still evident that the Mysterious Person had not t the ‘dead soldier’ directly; all communication had been through him.
This shows that Thorne himself was deeply involved in the matter, and he himself admitted, the Mysterious Person had offered a high commission.
Thorne watched He Ao, who remained silent, as sweat began to bead on his forehead.
“Is that ‘dead soldier’ still alive?”
After a brief silence, He Ao asked in a low voice.
At the ti, Jess didn’t know which psychiatric hospital the ‘dead soldier’ was sent to; the response given to him was to protect the ‘dead soldier’s privacy.
“He’s still alive,” Thorne replied quickly, “He’s currently detained in Wicke Psychiatric Hospital.”
“Wicke Psychiatric Hospital…”
He Ao morized the na, always feeling that the Mysterious Person wouldn’t easily let this ‘dead soldier’ continue to live.
If he was alive, there had to be a reason why he was allowed to survive.
Then He Ao looked up at Thorne, “Now let’s talk about this Mysterious Person,”
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