Shadow 380,000 Level 17 Suspended Spirit Hurricane Arrives

Chapter 23

Guo Dong hurriedly hung up the phone, but only five minutes later he called back.

"I was dizzy just now," he said. "How did you manage to get this thing out?"

I didn't hide anything and told Guo Dong about Kou Yun's abilities.

Guo Dong had reviewed a lot of strange and unusual case files before joining the Special Affairs Department, so he had a certain capacity to accept this kind of thing. After I finished speaking, he just exclaimed twice, "So that's how it is."

I also learned about the situation on the New Hope from Guo Dong. It was even better than I had imagined.

The ship was constantly being visited, and I initially assumed the crystal ball had disappeared in full view of everyone. This would be unbelievable to the average person, but key figures within the Black Flag Group would surely have guessed that someone had used telekinesis to steal it. However, the crystal ball actually disappeared precisely when one group had finished their visit and the next group hadn't arrived. By the time the New Hope discovered the power source had been stolen, they immediately banned everyone from boarding or disembarking. Ha, things had gotten muddied.

The New Hope's round-the-world voyage was tragically ruined, forced to return to Europe powered only by oil. The financing plans suffered a devastating blow, and even those who had initially planned to invest are now likely to adopt a wait-and-see approach. The executives of the Black Flag Group must be furious.

Fifteen minutes later, a policeman knocked on my door.

Guo Dong was more thoughtful; the policeman brought a specialized electronic signal detection device. He didn't say a word, just turned the device around my room, shook his head at me, and left.

Now I was completely relieved. If the power source I had was equipped with a positioning device that constantly emitted signals, the mysterious thief would have been exposed by high technology.

Guo Dong arrived quickly, knocking on my door late at night with a suitcase. Two days later, the test results came in.

Helium-3!

Now only one question remains: how did they do it?

After learning about the limitations of this ability from Kou Yun, Guo Dong also didn't quite believe that it was possible to retrieve helium-3 ore from the moon simply by telekinesis. However, we were all certain of one thing: the final answer must be related to this ability.

For the next while, I waited for the results of the Special Affairs Bureau's investigation. It was based on the clues I got from Commander Zhang. Unexpectedly, the first call I received was from Liang Yingwu.

"One of my colleagues is under police investigation, and I heard it's related to your case?"

He hasn't contacted me since returning to Shanghai, so he must have already learned about the investigation team's attitude towards me and knows that I'm actually fine. His first question on the phone this time caught me off guard.

"Who is it? What's your colleague's name?"

"Chen Yuanze."

"I've never heard of him. How does he have anything to do with me? What does he do?"

"Research on abnormal biological abilities." Liang Yingwu uttered a research project I had never heard of before.

"Wow, it really is the X organization. They actually do this kind of research."

After exchanging a few more questions with Liang Yingwu, I finally pieced together the whole story. It turned out that the harassment of this scholar, who was conducting bizarre research at the X institution, by the police was indeed caused by me.

This all started with a piece of news that Commander Zhang told me.

During his time with the Illusionary Colors Troupe, Kou Feng displayed a personality that indicated he disliked socializing. He was fine with the members of the troupe, but he was almost never seen bringing any friends to hang out outside of the troupe. As his fame grew, Kou Feng gained a group of loyal fans, but he wasn't enthusiastic about interacting with them, at most nodding or saying hello.

However, one audience member was an exception. This audience member was named Lin Wen, and he appeared to be over fifty years old. After seeing Kou Feng perform once, Lin Wen specifically sought out Kou Feng and chatted with him for a long time in a corner backstage. Kou Feng and Lin Wen became friends, and the two often visited each other, their relationship being closer than that of their colleagues in the troupe. Therefore, this person was very likely to know where Kou Feng was.

After Kou Feng resigned, Lin Wen never appeared again. The only way to find Lin Wen was through the public security system, which was the lead I used to get the Special Affairs Department involved, through Guo Dong.

Lin Wen only has a name, no photo, and no contact information. However, he can speak Shanghainese, and his physical characteristics have been drawn by experts. The Special Affairs Department, having nothing better to do lately, mobilized all resources to search for Lin Wen, ultimately focusing on a missing person.

This Lin Wen is divorced, lives alone, has no regular job, yet is quite wealthy. He's a gambling expert, frequently visiting casinos in Macau, and winning nine out of ten times. His wealth is said to have come entirely from gambling.

After 1999, Lin Wen's neighbors never saw him again. He disappeared. Many people said that he had offended the underworld while gambling and was "taken care of".

The Special Affairs Department obtained a search warrant and entered Lin Wen's former residence, finding it had indeed been uninhabited for several years. There, they discovered some old letters, the most frequent correspondence being with Chen Yuanze. Moreover, the letters contained snippets mentioning experiments conducted with Chen Yuanze. As officers of the Special Affairs Department, their senses for unusual events were exceptionally sharp. While the letters didn't provide detailed descriptions of the experiments, they were enough to detect something amiss. Thus, the investigation turned its attention to Chen Yuanze.

Organization X has always maintained a low profile, but it is also quite exclusive and not very cooperative with the Special Affairs Department's investigation. The investigators were at a loss, but they knew about my relationship with Liang Yingwu, so they turned to Liang Yingwu as a breakthrough point, hoping that he would persuade Chen Yuanze to cooperate with the investigation.

Are you and Chen Yuanze very familiar with each other?

Liang Yingwu arranged to meet Chen Yuanze and me, and I asked him about it on the way there.

10. Thought Locking and Long Distance Experiments (2)

"We're just colleagues, really. But I'm willing to give them face."

"First, tell me who this person is, and what exactly is this 'biological abnormal ability research' thing?"

“This person wasn’t formally trained; he was originally a researcher from the public. From the late 1980s to the early 1990s, there was a period when special abilities were prevalent. I wonder if you, at your age, still remember that?” Liang Yingwu asked me.

"Ha!" I laughed angrily. "What do you mean by 'at my age, do you remember'? I think you were my classmate, right? You've been with X organization for a few years and suddenly you've become an elder?"

"I work in this field, so of course it's different."

I was speechless. This guy was really boring; all his witty banter and insults would get him no response, making him a master at making the atmosphere awkward. Of course, on rare occasions, when he was in the mood, he would reply in a nonchalant tone, often using his dark humor to completely stun you, leaving you speechless and unable to think of a retort.

"Never mind, I won't hold it against you." I wisely got back to the point: "Although I was young at the time, I was most interested in these reports, so I still remember them quite well."

Kou Yun, who was standing next to me, didn't know this and kept insisting that I tell her.

In those years, it seemed like a sudden surge of people in China claiming to have special abilities. These included things like telekinesis, shaking pills, healing with qigong, and having a third eye; some even claimed to be able to change the weather, summoning wind and rain at will. There were also reports about how to develop special abilities at a very young age. I remember one method involved hanging an apple on a thin string, staring intently at it, and imagining a pair of scissors cutting the string. You practiced this every day until the string broke and the apple fell to the ground – that was considered a success.

In reality, there aren't that many people with special abilities. The situation was chaotic, with many charlatans and few genuine experts, causing widespread unrest. Eventually, the government intervened, arresting them all without exception, and many self-proclaimed "masters" ended up in jail. Since then, virtually no one in mainland China has dared to openly claim to have special abilities. If one or two do emerge, they are quickly apprehended by anti-fraud activists and identified as fraudsters.

However, it seems that the X Organization was also established around the same time, and the importance attached to these anomalous abilities and phenomena was elevated to the level of a nation, and they began to systematically collect and study them.

Kou Yun listened with great interest, and sighed, "Alas, if I had come out of the mountains twenty years earlier, people would have to respectfully call me Master Kou when they saw me."

I nodded in agreement: "Indeed, it was an era of chaos and depravity."

Kou Yun was displeased and raised his chin, saying, "How am I a demon?"

I pressed her nose flat with my thumb and said, "You're not a little witch yet!"

Kou Yun hurriedly raised her head higher and opened her mouth to bite my finger, but luckily I knew she wasn't easy to bully, so I quickly pulled back.

Seeing the two of us bickering, Liang Yingwu couldn't help but smile slightly and said, "There's something that wasn't reported at the time: besides so many people claiming to have special abilities, many others began researching them. Chen Yuanze was one of those amateur researchers back then, and one of the most outstanding among them. He accumulated a lot of data, had a broad perspective, and possessed a certain level of scholarship, so he was quite famous in this circle. Compared to many formally trained people in the X organization who had never been exposed to supernatural events before, he had his own advantages."

"So what research is he doing now?" I asked.

"I don't know," Liang Yingwu replied calmly.

It seems I asked a bit abruptly. Apparently, even within Organization X, colleagues don't freely exchange information. Liang Yingwu probably isn't in a position to follow Chen Yuanze's research project.

As we spoke, we were walking along a path lined with large plane trees on both sides. Through the shadows of the trees, we could often see houses whose very appearance suggested a story, stubbornly bearing the mottled marks of the city for more than half a century.

Chen Yuanze lived on Gao'an Road. In the parlance of old Shanghainese, the Gao'an Road area was considered the "upper corner" of Shanghai, a former prestigious residential area. Its residents were mostly people with connections or officials of varying ranks from previous Shanghai municipal governments. It's unclear which category Chen Yuanze belonged to.

It was a Saturday morning, and the cicadas hadn't yet begun to chirp. Turning into the residential area where Chen Yuanze lived, I found myself in an old village over forty years old, filled with five-story buildings. The noise of traffic outside was abruptly cut off at the turn, which was almost unbelievable. All I could hear were the chirping of birds, some caged, some perched in the treetops.

The person who opened the door was a thin and short old man who looked very "small" and older than I had imagined.

"Teacher Chen," Liang Yingwu greeted first.

Kou Yun and I also greeted him with "Hello, Teacher Chen".

"What, Teacher Chen? Come in quickly, no need to take off your shoes." He greeted us, his voice disproportionate to his size.

The living room had many windows, so it was well-lit. The air conditioner was already on, and there were several bottles of tea drinks on the coffee table. It seemed that he had made preparations for our visit long ago.

“Teacher Chen, this is Na Duo, whom I told you about. And that is Kou Yun, Na Duo’s assistant.” Liang Yingwu gave us a formal introduction first.

"Heh, assistant." Chen Yuan smiled at me and Kou Yun.

Kou Yun nodded very seriously.

"I'm so sorry, I heard that my situation has disrupted your life." I apologized to him first.

Chen Yuanze waved his hand: "It's not a big problem, but Xiao Liang told me some interesting stories about your experiences."

I glanced at Liang Yingwu, not knowing what he said, but probably trying to pique Chen Yuanze's curiosity about me so it would be easier to talk to him when we met. After all, one of them studies paranormal phenomena, and the other often has strange experiences; they have something in common.

"It sounds interesting to others, but when you encounter it yourself, it feels really bad. Like this matter that has troubled you, it's something I couldn't control; once it's on my hands, I can't get rid of it."

I started by grumbling, and then explained the whole story to Chen Yuan. Since I needed his help, I had to be honest first.

"Oh, so you can also telekinesis?" Chen Yuanze raised an eyebrow and asked Kou Yun with great interest when I mentioned Kou Yun and her brother.

"Yes." Kou Yun grinned and "conjured" a bottle of beverage in her hand. She unscrewed the cap, tilted her head back, and gulped it down, showing absolutely no ladylike manners.

Chen Yuanze nodded and said, "It's been quite a few years since I've seen anyone with this kind of ability. Go on."

I thought to myself, "As expected of someone who does this kind of research, he didn't show the slightest surprise."

So, the story moved from Kou Feng to Lin Wen, thus explaining how the Special Affairs Bureau had come looking for trouble with him.

After he finished speaking, Chen Yuanze listened with great interest, while I, with a dry mouth, grabbed a drink and gulped it down.

"I do know Lin Wen, but we haven't been in touch for a long time. I don't know where he is now."

Chen Yuanze's very first words made me feel annoyed.

10. Thought Locking and Long Distance Experiments (3)

"I have some stories between him and me, about that experiment. If you're interested, I can tell you about them."

"We're interested, we're interested." Kou Yun and I nodded repeatedly.

“Speaking of Lin Wen, he and this little sister have something in common,” Chen Yuanze said with a smile, looking at Kou Yun.

"Something about it that I have?" Kou Yun's eyes darted around, and he shook the beverage bottle in his hand, asking, "Is it this one?"

It was infuriating that she had been drinking directly from the bottle, and once the cap was opened, she hadn't screwed it back on. As a result, a large amount of water gushed out of the bottle and landed on her skirt.

Kou Yun let out a scream and hurriedly searched for something to wipe herself. Her frantic efforts made me realize how embarrassing it was to bring this assistant along. Oh, and this dress was brand new; it was the first time she'd worn it.

After settling in, Chen Yuanze said, "You were right earlier. Lin Wen, like you, can teleport an object from one place to another without regard to distance. In that era, there were salons where people like me, who were interested in special abilities, would gather. Occasionally, you would meet people who claimed to have special abilities. Some of these people were genuine, and some were not. I met Lin Wen at one such gathering."

Chen Yuanze glanced at Liang Yingwu, sighed softly, and said, "Back then, there was no X organization. Everything was new and chaotic. I wanted to do research in this area, but I felt overwhelmed and didn't know where to start. The most crucial thing was to have some truly capable people willing to cooperate with me in conducting experiments. I shared my ideas with Lin Wen, hoping to study his abilities more deeply, not just to know how to use them, but ideally to be able to explain the underlying principles scientifically."

Hearing this, I became excited. What Chen Yuanze was about to say was likely related to how to extract helium-3 ore from the moon. Because if we could figure out the principle behind this instantaneous teleportation, it would be possible to amplify this ability using scientific methods.

“We conducted some detailed research on this ability. Of course, this detail was based on the conditions and understanding at the time, and it was much rougher than the research I'm doing now at the X Agency. First, we determined that this ability would work easily on things within sight. If the target was a common item, it wouldn't take much effort; you could just pick it up as soon as you saw it. However, getting things outside sight required a relatively higher level of skill.”

"You have to remember what that thing looks like very, very clearly," Kou Yun said.

"That's how it is. If it's something unfamiliar, with an irregular shape, then if there's a small part that you didn't see or remember clearly, you won't be able to get it. Also, if it's something common, something whose shape you know even if you haven't seen it in person, like a ping-pong ball, but the ability user has never seen this ball before, even if I tell him that there's a ping-pong ball in the next room in a certain location, he still won't be able to get the ball."

At this point, Chen Yuanze turned to Kou Yun and asked, "Is that how you are?"

Kou Yun thought for a moment, then nodded and said, "I haven't tried it, but I feel it probably won't work."

Chen Yuanze nodded: "It sounds a bit idealistic, but people with special abilities often have a pretty accurate intuition. But there's another interesting situation. If it's a pen that an ability user often uses, and they're very familiar with it, even if you put it out of sight, they can still easily retrieve it. But this familiarity is different from knowing exactly what the pen looks like. Because if you ask them to draw it, they might make a mistake in some detail. Is that right?" He asked Kou Yun.

Kou Yun nodded again: "Yeah, like when I'm at home in the morning and I'm getting water to wash my face, I don't even need to worry about the washcloth, it just comes out when I think of it. But the little fish pattern on that washcloth is something I can't draw, I've never bothered to memorize it."