In the mysterious phenomena section on the intranet, monsters were essentially the most commonly discussed topic, of which spirits and ghosts were the most frequently encountered mysterious phenomenon. ‘Beasts’ had the least occurrences, given that most of the information relating to them was considered ‘secret’, and very little information regarding ‘beasts’ was made public.
However, amongst the different types of monsters, ‘demons’ were the ones that the nation focused their research on.
Located next to the Tianjing Third Underground Research Institute was the Tianjing Western Suburb Prison, which specially detained Extraordinaire criminals from the northern region of Xuan Nation.
“Ahhhh—”
A large man with a flat top in an electric chair screamed his lungs out in agony. His eyes were bloodshot, his entire body was trembling, and he was unable to control his bladder and bowels. However, when Li Wenxin, who was both a therapist and researcher, stopped the electric torture, the man immediately spat at her.
The spittle was imposing, just like a sharp arrow would be, and it instantly froze into ice. Although there was a transparent reinforced glass panel between Li Wenxin and the man, she was still briefly taken aback.
With a ‘ding’ sound, the spittle, which had turned into an ice arrow, was embedded into the glass, although the reinforced glass panel remained intact. Clearly, the energy possessed by the ice arrow before impact was very close to that of a small-caliber bullet.
“If you don’t kill me today, I will be the one killing you in future—” the large man mocked as he chortled. The resentment in his words was sufficient to terrify ordinary people. He continued, “I will make sure you die like a torn and tattered piece of cloth ripped apart into fragments!”
However, Li Wenxin had been working there for a very long time and was used to hearing such threats. She merely sighed and looked at the file of the large man in front of her:
Robbery, murder, XXX, abuse, causing intentional harm to others…
Li Wenxin penned down the results of the experiment: [Experiment 721, Subject No. 1841 still did not return to a normal state of mind and did not yield due to his experienced predicament. Conclusion: Enhanced demonization.]
Concluding the experiment, Li Wenxin left the experiment laboratory and returned to the office. As soon as she walked through the door, she asked, “Is the Reiki suppression system not working?”
“What happened?” A colleague asked.
“No. 1841 could even spit at me, and it gave me a shock. I still need to get someone to check the bulletproof glass, how troublesome,” Li Wenxin replied. She sat down and keyed in the results of the previous experiment on the computer.
Her colleague said helplessly, “He burns his own Reiki breathing current directly to attack. It would not have any effect on him whether or not the Reiki suppression system is activated. Well, demon-humans are just so powerful. The stronger their demon nature, the stronger their ability to draw on the powers of Reiki. Burning his own breathing current is child’s play to him, you should be more careful next time.”
“How was the experiment anyway? Are there any changes in the three subjects you’re in charge of?”
Li Wenxin exclaimed in desperation, “I wish!”
“Nothing changed except that they became stronger and more uncontrollable. I’m actually bewildered, even after both electric torture and water torture. How do they still have the cheek to threaten me saying, ‘If you don’t kill me today, I will be the one killing you in future’? Do they think that we’re filming a drama series here? Would ordinary people be so vicious?”
Her colleague comforted her, saying, “Relax, if this job were so easy, we won’t be the ones doing it. If those demon-humans were so easily scared, they would have been released to serve in the military a long time ago. Our job is to find out what their weaknesses are.”
The main research focus of the Tianjing Third Underground Research Institute was ‘demon-humans’. The experimental subjects were all transferred from the prison next door, and they were criminals who already developed demon nature.
‘Demon nature’ was a psychological term used to describe ‘criminals who commit crimes without fear and psychological emotions’, and essentially referred to people with ‘antisocial personality’.
However, those with a typical antisocial personality remained sane and could continue to contribute to society. As long as the power of the authorities and the law was sufficiently strong, those with antisocial personality would not actively violate the law after weighing the risks and benefits and would be a law-abiding citizen.
On the other hand, although Extraordinaires who developed demon nature still maintained certain rationality, they acted mostly based on their own desires, much like No. 1841 whom Li Wenxin had just dealt with—I want to kill you, and I will make my intentions known right now; I will even show you how I can do it now!
That was precisely the barrier that the Tianjing Third Underground Research Institute always wanted to break through.
Those who were fearless and had no beliefs were true ‘useless waste’ in society. The means they used were pure atrocities, and all of their actions served to fuel their inner happiness and anger.
The value of a person is based on the sum of his relationships with other people in society. For example, a person stranded on an uninhabited island would be meaningless to the society of humans, regardless of what the person found on the island or wrote there. Unless the person met a man on a Friday and was eventually rescued from the uninhabited island, he would be equivalent to a ‘dead man’ in human society.
Similarly, demon-humans in human society were equivalent to such a person stranded on an uninhabited island.
Demon-humans did not need others to give them anything, nor did they want to give anything to others. Whatever demon-humans wanted, they would simply snatch it away from others. Furthermore, it would not be possible to control or influence them—even if they were shocked with electricity such that their bladder control was lost, they would not yield even slightly. Who would dare to release them into the world in that case?
“It’s already been a few months and this problem still can’t be solved. There’s no point to even think about the final problem…” Li Wenxin sighed.
Her colleague laughed and said, “There are more than ten research institutes across the nation that are researching the final problem, when would we ever be lucky enough to work on that?”
The small research team Li Wenxin was in took charge of finding out the weaknesses of demon-humans. There were five teams like theirs within the research institute, all of which had the same goal: to find a way to turn demon-humans back into humans.
The nation had put in a lot of funds and given much authority to research demon-humans, as seen from how the research institute was allowed to use prisoners who were demon-humans directly. Although the research institute would certainly not kill people, they still had to perform the necessary experiments which were harmful to the experiment subjects.
However, Li Wenxin knew that it was not only Xuan Nation who was doing so; the Federation, Europe and other nations were also trying their best to research demon-humans. Information about demon-humans could hardly be seen in newspapers, and no human rights organization would want to find trouble for themselves either. Many international consortia were even actively donating funds to accelerate the progress of research into demon-humans.
With regard to the reason why various powerful organizations were so involved in the research, researchers like Li Wenxin knew exactly why: an Awakened son of a certain wealthy family must have turned into a demon-human and was locked underground, unable to see daylight; an Awakened relative of a certain president must have turned into a demon-human and caused a widely-impacting and gravely undesirable event, which led to the president falling from power…
Any Awakener had the possibility of being demonized.
The demonic madness was not merely a hidden time bomb in an Awakener but also a shackle: even those who knew about demonic madness would be unable to stop themselves from losing their sense of self when they start harming others and committing crimes. They would still turn into cold, heartless monsters who killed people.
At present, there was only one way to avoid spiraling into demonic madness, and it was only theoretical: to completely believe from the bottom of one’s heart that one’s actions were all virtuous and unclouded, not done to benefit oneself but for justice. Simply put, if one possessed belief and responsibility that was more than that for one’s own benefit, one would not spiral into demonic madness, even if one harmed or killed others.
At present, the Awakened Practitioners in the Countermeasure System, as well as the Practitioner soldiers of the Yellow River and Changjiang Forces, showed no signs of demonization. That fact could be regarded as supporting evidence for the theory.
However, research on the treatment and prevention of demonization still had great practical significance. Given that a demonized person’s combat ability was far more powerful than that of normal humans of the same level, undesirable events could be prevented if corresponding psychological observation mechanisms could be established. The earlier any signs of demonization were discovered, the earlier treatment could be administered and the earlier the person could be questioned.
For example, Li Wenxin once saw the powerful man who sat in the Room of Reiki Dispersal. She did not dare to imagine what would happen if that man was demonized…
When Li Wenxin logged on to the intranet, five posts were automatically recommended to her. As a Level 3 Researcher, Li Wenxin could set the topics of discussion she was interested in, and she would automatically receive push notifications of the latest and most popular related discussions when she logged on to the intranet.
The first recommended post did not offer any refreshing ideas. The person who posted it had consolidated the areas where more demons had appeared in, and eventually the discussion thread turned into a ‘warzone’ where discriminatory remarks were being hurled.
The second recommended post was “Eating Garbage Saved A Demon-Human”—Li Wenxin wondered if the author of the post had a grudge against demon-humans.
However, after reading the post carefully, she fell into deep thought.
She retrieved the file of Subject No. 1841 and asked her colleague, “Has an emotional test been administered to No. 1841 before?”
Her colleague flipped through the files and replied, “Yes, his elderly father has come down once. There was no effect on him.”
“Is there any information about his childhood?” Li Wenxin probed.
“Why do you ask?” her colleague questioned.
Li Wenxin said, “Well, I just saw a post saying that ‘People live their entire lives seeking what they hoped for when they were a child, and fear what they feared in their childhood.’ I think that it would be somewhat useful to know what his childhood was like.”
“That sounds logical,” her colleague replied. After a few minutes of searching through the files, her colleague said, “I sent you the testimony given by No. 1841’s neighbor.”
“Thank you,” Li Wenxin said.
After spending half an hour carefully reading through the files, Li Wenxin pondered for a moment and asked suddenly, “Do you have gay movies on your computer? The kind with a ‘stronger’ giver and ‘weaker’ receiver.”
Her colleague was momentarily stunned. She immediately replied,” No, why? Are you interested? Aren’t you attracted to girls instead?”
“I have a use for it, just download one now. If it’s possible, find a way to photoshop the face of No. 1841 as the receiver,” Li Wenxin replied.
Her colleague asked, “What are you going to do with it?”
Li Wenxin explained, “No. 1841’s information shows that he was very strong when he was a child, and he liked to bully other people, especially girls. When he was in junior high school, he made a girl undergo an abortion.”
“As such, I doubt he would ever have imagined that he would be ‘bullied’ by other men, and would never have watched such a movie. It will probably be a completely different experience for him this time.”
Her colleague felt that it was slightly strange, but did not object. Her colleague said, “Would it really be useful? I am not skilled enough to photoshop his face, so I will have to hand it over to the technical department to do that. If it turns out to be ineffective, the technical department would probably berate you—those in the technical department are all men.”
Li Wenxin said, “I’ll just give it a try and fight fire with fire, eh. Demon-humans are not afraid of anything because their demon natures are deeply-rooted within their personalities, not in their bodies or in their memories. What we have to target are their personalities.”
“Those who are tough and strong-headed would be made to feel like a young girl; those who are clean and neat would be made dirty; those who like to stand to pee would be made to pee while lying on their stomach; those who hate communal living would be made to live together with dozens of other people; those who like to sleep would be made to wake up every 45 minutes…”
“In the past, we kept focusing on physical stimulation and verbal persuasion. We were on the wrong track. Demon-humans do not dwell on their past and are not afraid of physical harm. The only thing that remains in them is their ‘habits’ when they were still human. We should be destroying their habits to awaken the human nature in them, and to make them cry and say ‘I want to be human again!'”
In the mysterious phenomena section on the intranet, monsters were essentially the most commonly discussed topic, of which spirits and ghosts were the most frequently encountered mysterious phenomenon. ‘Beasts’ had the least occurrences, given that most of the information relating to them was considered ‘secret’, and very little information regarding ‘beasts’ was made public.
However, amongst the different types of monsters, ‘demons’ were the ones that the nation focused their research on.
Located next to the Tianjing Third Underground Research Institute was the Tianjing Western Suburb Prison, which specially detained Extraordinaire criminals from the northern region of Xuan Nation.
“Ahhhh—”
A large man with a flat top in an electric chair screamed his lungs out in agony. His eyes were bloodshot, his entire body was trembling, and he was unable to control his bladder and bowels. However, when Li Wenxin, who was both a therapist and researcher, stopped the electric torture, the man immediately spat at her.
The spittle was imposing, just like a sharp arrow would be, and it instantly froze into ice. Although there was a transparent reinforced glass panel between Li Wenxin and the man, she was still briefly taken aback.
With a ‘ding’ sound, the spittle, which had turned into an ice arrow, was embedded into the glass, although the reinforced glass panel remained intact. Clearly, the energy possessed by the ice arrow before impact was very close to that of a small-caliber bullet.
“If you don’t kill me today, I will be the one killing you in future—” the large man mocked as he chortled. The resentment in his words was sufficient to terrify ordinary people. He continued, “I will make sure you die like a torn and tattered piece of cloth ripped apart into fragments!”
However, Li Wenxin had been working there for a very long time and was used to hearing such threats. She merely sighed and looked at the file of the large man in front of her:
Robbery, murder, XXX, abuse, causing intentional harm to others…
Li Wenxin penned down the results of the experiment: [Experiment 721, Subject No. 1841 still did not return to a normal state of mind and did not yield due to his experienced predicament. Conclusion: Enhanced demonization.]
Concluding the experiment, Li Wenxin left the experiment laboratory and returned to the office. As soon as she walked through the door, she asked, “Is the Reiki suppression system not working?”
“What happened?” A colleague asked.
“No. 1841 could even spit at me, and it gave me a shock. I still need to get someone to check the bulletproof glass, how troublesome,” Li Wenxin replied. She sat down and keyed in the results of the previous experiment on the computer.
Her colleague said helplessly, “He burns his own Reiki breathing current directly to attack. It would not have any effect on him whether or not the Reiki suppression system is activated. Well, demon-humans are just so powerful. The stronger their demon nature, the stronger their ability to draw on the powers of Reiki. Burning his own breathing current is child’s play to him, you should be more careful next time.”
“How was the experiment anyway? Are there any changes in the three subjects you’re in charge of?”
Li Wenxin exclaimed in desperation, “I wish!”
“Nothing changed except that they became stronger and more uncontrollable. I’m actually bewildered, even after both electric torture and water torture. How do they still have the cheek to threaten me saying, ‘If you don’t kill me today, I will be the one killing you in future’? Do they think that we’re filming a drama series here? Would ordinary people be so vicious?”
Her colleague comforted her, saying, “Relax, if this job were so easy, we won’t be the ones doing it. If those demon-humans were so easily scared, they would have been released to serve in the military a long time ago. Our job is to find out what their weaknesses are.”
The main research focus of the Tianjing Third Underground Research Institute was ‘demon-humans’. The experimental subjects were all transferred from the prison next door, and they were criminals who already developed demon nature.
‘Demon nature’ was a psychological term used to describe ‘criminals who commit crimes without fear and psychological emotions’, and essentially referred to people with ‘antisocial personality’.
However, those with a typical antisocial personality remained sane and could continue to contribute to society. As long as the power of the authorities and the law was sufficiently strong, those with antisocial personality would not actively violate the law after weighing the risks and benefits and would be a law-abiding citizen.
On the other hand, although Extraordinaires who developed demon nature still maintained certain rationality, they acted mostly based on their own desires, much like No. 1841 whom Li Wenxin had just dealt with—I want to kill you, and I will make my intentions known right now; I will even show you how I can do it now!
That was precisely the barrier that the Tianjing Third Underground Research Institute always wanted to break through.
Those who were fearless and had no beliefs were true ‘useless waste’ in society. The means they used were pure atrocities, and all of their actions served to fuel their inner happiness and anger.
The value of a person is based on the sum of his relationships with other people in society. For example, a person stranded on an uninhabited island would be meaningless to the society of humans, regardless of what the person found on the island or wrote there. Unless the person met a man on a Friday and was eventually rescued from the uninhabited island, he would be equivalent to a ‘dead man’ in human society.
Similarly, demon-humans in human society were equivalent to such a person stranded on an uninhabited island.
Demon-humans did not need others to give them anything, nor did they want to give anything to others. Whatever demon-humans wanted, they would simply snatch it away from others. Furthermore, it would not be possible to control or influence them—even if they were shocked with electricity such that their bladder control was lost, they would not yield even slightly. Who would dare to release them into the world in that case?
“It’s already been a few months and this problem still can’t be solved. There’s no point to even think about the final problem…” Li Wenxin sighed.
Her colleague laughed and said, “There are more than ten research institutes across the nation that are researching the final problem, when would we ever be lucky enough to work on that?”
The small research team Li Wenxin was in took charge of finding out the weaknesses of demon-humans. There were five teams like theirs within the research institute, all of which had the same goal: to find a way to turn demon-humans back into humans.
The nation had put in a lot of funds and given much authority to research demon-humans, as seen from how the research institute was allowed to use prisoners who were demon-humans directly. Although the research institute would certainly not kill people, they still had to perform the necessary experiments which were harmful to the experiment subjects.
However, Li Wenxin knew that it was not only Xuan Nation who was doing so; the Federation, Europe and other nations were also trying their best to research demon-humans. Information about demon-humans could hardly be seen in newspapers, and no human rights organization would want to find trouble for themselves either. Many international consortia were even actively donating funds to accelerate the progress of research into demon-humans.
With regard to the reason why various powerful organizations were so involved in the research, researchers like Li Wenxin knew exactly why: an Awakened son of a certain wealthy family must have turned into a demon-human and was locked underground, unable to see daylight; an Awakened relative of a certain president must have turned into a demon-human and caused a widely-impacting and gravely undesirable event, which led to the president falling from power…
Any Awakener had the possibility of being demonized.
The demonic madness was not merely a hidden time bomb in an Awakener but also a shackle: even those who knew about demonic madness would be unable to stop themselves from losing their sense of self when they start harming others and committing crimes. They would still turn into cold, heartless monsters who killed people.
At present, there was only one way to avoid spiraling into demonic madness, and it was only theoretical: to completely believe from the bottom of one’s heart that one’s actions were all virtuous and unclouded, not done to benefit oneself but for justice. Simply put, if one possessed belief and responsibility that was more than that for one’s own benefit, one would not spiral into demonic madness, even if one harmed or killed others.
At present, the Awakened Practitioners in the Countermeasure System, as well as the Practitioner soldiers of the Yellow River and Changjiang Forces, showed no signs of demonization. That fact could be regarded as supporting evidence for the theory.
However, research on the treatment and prevention of demonization still had great practical significance. Given that a demonized person’s combat ability was far more powerful than that of normal humans of the same level, undesirable events could be prevented if corresponding psychological observation mechanisms could be established. The earlier any signs of demonization were discovered, the earlier treatment could be administered and the earlier the person could be questioned.
For example, Li Wenxin once saw the powerful man who sat in the Room of Reiki Dispersal. She did not dare to imagine what would happen if that man was demonized…
When Li Wenxin logged on to the intranet, five posts were automatically recommended to her. As a Level 3 Researcher, Li Wenxin could set the topics of discussion she was interested in, and she would automatically receive push notifications of the latest and most popular related discussions when she logged on to the intranet.
The first recommended post did not offer any refreshing ideas. The person who posted it had consolidated the areas where more demons had appeared in, and eventually the discussion thread turned into a ‘warzone’ where discriminatory remarks were being hurled.
The second recommended post was “Eating Garbage Saved A Demon-Human”—Li Wenxin wondered if the author of the post had a grudge against demon-humans.
However, after reading the post carefully, she fell into deep thought.
She retrieved the file of Subject No. 1841 and asked her colleague, “Has an emotional test been administered to No. 1841 before?”
Her colleague flipped through the files and replied, “Yes, his elderly father has come down once. There was no effect on him.”
“Is there any information about his childhood?” Li Wenxin probed.
“Why do you ask?” her colleague questioned.
Li Wenxin said, “Well, I just saw a post saying that ‘People live their entire lives seeking what they hoped for when they were a child, and fear what they feared in their childhood.’ I think that it would be somewhat useful to know what his childhood was like.”
“That sounds logical,” her colleague replied. After a few minutes of searching through the files, her colleague said, “I sent you the testimony given by No. 1841’s neighbor.”
“Thank you,” Li Wenxin said.
After spending half an hour carefully reading through the files, Li Wenxin pondered for a moment and asked suddenly, “Do you have gay movies on your computer? The kind with a ‘stronger’ giver and ‘weaker’ receiver.”
Her colleague was momentarily stunned. She immediately replied,” No, why? Are you interested? Aren’t you attracted to girls instead?”
“I have a use for it, just download one now. If it’s possible, find a way to photoshop the face of No. 1841 as the receiver,” Li Wenxin replied.
Her colleague asked, “What are you going to do with it?”
Li Wenxin explained, “No. 1841’s information shows that he was very strong when he was a child, and he liked to bully other people, especially girls. When he was in junior high school, he made a girl undergo an abortion.”
“As such, I doubt he would ever have imagined that he would be ‘bullied’ by other men, and would never have watched such a movie. It will probably be a completely different experience for him this time.”
Her colleague felt that it was slightly strange, but did not object. Her colleague said, “Would it really be useful? I am not skilled enough to photoshop his face, so I will have to hand it over to the technical department to do that. If it turns out to be ineffective, the technical department would probably berate you—those in the technical department are all men.”
Li Wenxin said, “I’ll just give it a try and fight fire with fire, eh. Demon-humans are not afraid of anything because their demon natures are deeply-rooted within their personalities, not in their bodies or in their memories. What we have to target are their personalities.”
“Those who are tough and strong-headed would be made to feel like a young girl; those who are clean and neat would be made dirty; those who like to stand to pee would be made to pee while lying on their stomach; those who hate communal living would be made to live together with dozens of other people; those who like to sleep would be made to wake up every 45 minutes…”
“In the past, we kept focusing on physical stimulation and verbal persuasion. We were on the wrong track. Demon-humans do not dwell on their past and are not afraid of physical harm. The only thing that remains in them is their ‘habits’ when they were still human. We should be destroying their habits to awaken the human nature in them, and to make them cry and say ‘I want to be human again!'”
