76: Chapter 76 "Including Myself."

Linhai Investigation Bureau.

Top floor, temporary office.

The curtains were drawn tight.

Three reports lay on the desk.

One was from High Command.

One was from the on-site surveillance at Linhai No. 2 High School.

And the third was an oral record Gu Lang had just transmitted via an encrypted channel.

Executive Jiang Xu sat behind the desk.

His long white trench coat was without a single wrinkle.

A dark gold spear stood against the wall, with an absorption pad placed beneath its tip.

He finished reading the last line, picked up a fountain pen, and wrote two characters in the top right corner of the document.

Abnormal.

Su Yao sat opposite him.

Her complexion was poor.

Not because of staying up late.

It was because she had just finished reading Gu Lang's report.

[Su Yun is deceased.]

[Subject of death: D-class Strange Tales Slit-Mouthed Woman.]

[Death record is an established fact.]

[Current individual status unknown.]

Su Yao stared at these lines, her fingers gripping the edge of the paper.

"He did indeed die."

The office fell silent for a moment.

Ye Zhiwei curled up in the corner of the sofa, the collar of her white hoodie covering half her face.

A black ribbon covered her eyes.

She was hugging a bag of potato chips.

Crunch.

The chip shattered.

Ye Zhiwei said in a low voice, "Su, Sister Su Yao, please don't say things like that suddenly, you'll scare me."

Executive Jiang Xu raised his eyes.

"Explain."

Su Yao took a deep breath.

"What Gu Lang saw was not a death in this timeline."

Executive Jiang Xu did not interrupt her.

Su Yao pointed her fingertip at the document.

"In his past life, my brother did indeed die in the Slit-Mouthed Woman incident."

"That time, no one arrived in time."

Her voice lowered.

"He died."

Ye Zhiwei hugged the potato chip bag tighter.

The temperature of the air conditioning in the office remained unchanged.

She, however, curled up even smaller.

Executive Jiang Xu turned the page.

"So, Gu Lang's Corpse Peering ability read a death record from a previous life."

Su Yao nodded.

"That is possible."

Executive Jiang Xu picked up the fountain pen and added a line on the side.

[Suspected cross-timeline death residue.]

He wrote very neatly.

The spacing was consistent.

Even the punctuation looked like it had been measured with a ruler.

Watching his absurdly calm demeanor, Su Yao suddenly felt a surge of anger.

"Executive Jiang Xu."

"Hmm."

"I requested High Command to send someone to protect my brother."

She looked up, staring at Executive Jiang Xu.

"Not so you could shove a mentally unstable Strange Talk Sequence into his class."

Crunch. Ye Zhiwei bit into another potato chip.

She added in a low voice, "And, and he used hallucinations on Chu Youwei."

Su Yao's gaze grew colder.

"Exactly."

"On his first day as a transfer student, he unleashed Strange Tales abilities on a normal student."

"And he claimed my brother was already dead."

"You call this protection?"

Executive Jiang Xu put down the fountain pen.

"I have already warned him."

Su Yao sneered.

"Are warnings useful?"

"He has Sequence 033, the Corpse-eating Dog, sealed inside him."

"The Corpse-eating Dog itself possesses a corruption tendency for scavenging, Corpse Peering, and tracking death traces."

"Sequences of this type are exposed to death information for long periods, so their mental state is inherently unstable."

"You had him get close to my brother; do you think my brother has been too safe lately and needs an increase in difficulty?"

Ye Zhiwei slowly raised her hand.

"I, I think Sister Su Yao makes sense."

Executive Jiang Xu looked at her.

Ye Zhiwei immediately pulled her hand back into her sleeve.

"But Captain Jiang also makes sense."

Su Yao: "..."

Executive Jiang Xu: "..."

Ye Zhiwei said in a low voice, "I'm afraid you'll start fighting, so I'm standing on both sides for now."

Executive Jiang Xu rubbed his brow.

He really wanted to confiscate that bag of potato chips in the office right now.

But Ye Zhiwei would cry.

That would be troublesome.

Executive Jiang Xu pushed Gu Lang's report to the center of the desk.

"Gu Lang made three judgmental errors."

Su Yao frowned.

"Which three?"

Executive Jiang Xu extended one finger.

"First, he believed the Corpse Peering result was equivalent to current fact."

"This is a common error for low-level sequences."

"A death record is merely a residue, not equivalent to the current state."

He extended a second finger.

"Second, he believed that because the Corpse-eating Dog feared Su Yun, it meant Su Yun was abnormal."

"This is also not rigorous."

"Sequence 033 belongs to the lower-tier hounds in its system; fearing high-level residues or Sanctuary tokens is perfectly normal."

Su Yao was expressionless.

"Do you mean it's afraid of everyone?"

Executive Jiang Xu corrected her.

"Not everyone."

"It just has a rather broad range of fears."

Ye Zhiwei nearly choked on a potato chip.

She coughed twice and hurriedly drank some water.

Su Yao said coldly, "And the third?"

Executive Jiang Xu extended a third finger.

"Third, he believed Su Yun suppressed his sequence aura."

Su Yao's eyes flickered.

She was very concerned about this point as well.

Executive Jiang Xu's tone was steady.

"According to the footage transmitted from the scene, Su Yun was merely holding down Gu Lang's fountain pen with an eraser at the time."

Su Yao was silent.

Ye Zhiwei was also silent.

The atmosphere in the office suddenly became a bit strange.

Executive Jiang Xu continued, "In other words, Gu Lang judged a common classroom dispute to be high-level suppression."

Su Yao: "..."

Ye Zhiwei said in a low voice, "Bu-but Captain Jiang, using an eraser to suppress a Strange Tales aura doesn't sound very common either."

Executive Jiang Xu looked at her.

Ye Zhiwei immediately lowered her head to eat potato chips.

Executive Jiang Xu said calmly, "That is why I had you check Su Yun."

Su Yao immediately looked at Ye Zhiwei.

Ye Zhiwei's movements froze.

She put down the potato chip bag and sat up a little straighter.

"I checked."

Her voice was soft, but when speaking about her abilities, her speaking speed was noticeably faster.

"Omni-dimensional Vision did not see any flow of contamination."

"No Strange Tales core."

"No psychic energy riot."

"No abyss fissure residue."

"No mental parasitism."

"No camouflage layer."

"And no illusion coverage."

She paused.

"He is just a very normal person."

Su Yao looked at her.

"Are you sure?"

Ye Zhiwei nodded.

"Sure."

"I even saw how many workbooks were in his schoolbag."

Executive Jiang Xu asked, "How many?"

Ye Zhiwei blurted out, "Seven. Three math, two physics, one foreign language, and the other one has a physics cover, but has foreign language vocabulary sheets tucked inside."

The office fell silent again.

Su Yao's expression stiffened for a moment.

Executive Jiang Xu looked at the document.

"So his foreign language is indeed poor."

Su Yao: "Is that the point?"

Executive Jiang Xu said seriously, "A stable academic weakness helps prove personality continuity."

Ye Zhiwei nodded: "Yes, when he saw the foreign language dictation, his emotional fluctuation was even more obvious than when he saw Gu Lang."

Su Yao pressed her temples.

She suddenly didn't know if she should be relieved.

Her brother really still seemed like her brother.

At least the foreign language was still that same foreign language.

Executive Jiang Xu opened another document.

"Su Yun currently possesses a relatively high level of trust in his class."

"The survivors of the Pseudo-Human Examination Room show a clear tendency to defend him."

"The Homeroom Teacher has also actively blocked investigation personnel."

"Two A-class Arbitrators from the Sanctuary are still protecting him from the perimeter."

"From a social relationship perspective, his stability is higher than Gu Lang's."

Su Yao said coldly, "And so?"

Executive Jiang Xu stamped a red seal on Gu Lang's report.

[Observation period extended.]

"Therefore, the current conclusion."

His tone was flat.

"Due to contact with a high-pressure target environment while possessing a low-level Strange Tales sequence, Gu Lang experienced cognitive bias and stress-induced hallucinations."

Ye Zhiwei added in a low voice, "Commonly known as scaring himself."

Executive Jiang Xu nodded.

"That can be written, but it isn't formal enough."

Su Yao looked at the red seal.

"And what about my brother?"

Executive Jiang Xu picked up Su Yun's file again.

He wrote four characters in the conclusion column: [No abnormalities yet.]

Su Yao frowned.

"Yet?"

Executive Jiang Xu looked up.

"Specialist Su Yao, I respect your intelligence regarding the Rebirth."

"I also respect your need to protect your family."

"But I will not completely remove anyone from the risk list."

His voice was very gentle.

"Including myself."