No sooner had he finished speaking than he woke up in excruciating pain and was rushed to the hospital that very night.
"It's said that the damage was so severe that it can't be stitched up anymore," Pei Xiangjin shared the gossip with a straight face. "That's good, it saves us the trouble of confiscating the tools of the crime."
It wasn't until recently that Lao Qin woke up from his coma. Apparently, the little boy in the next bed was watching "Shaun the Sheep" when a sheep bleated and almost made him faint again.
"Then he immediately called the company and urgently halted the project," Pei Xiangjin said. "When others asked him, he wouldn't say anything, only giving a vague and evasive answer."
He said it was the will of the sheep god, and they had to obey.
Author's Note:
Mei Zong: The light of righteousness!
Chapter 103, number 103
Yi Heye had maintained his aloof demeanor until he heard the story of the Little Sheep God pulling three cucumbers out of the river, at which point he finally couldn't hold back anymore.
Seeing his facial expressions twitching uncontrollably, Xia Tian thought something was wrong and quickly asked, "What's wrong, brother? Are you feeling unwell?"
Yi Heye cleared his throat and said seriously, "It's nothing, I just unplugged the power cord and I have a bit of a headache."
Xia Tian nodded, fooled by his explanation, and then began to envy the newcomers: "Oh, they're so lucky, they've avoided so much hardship..."
Yi Heye breathed a sigh of relief that they had escaped a disaster, but it was clear that these freshmen did not have the freedom to come and go as they pleased—they avoided the terrible live broadcast, but they could not avoid the exploitative terms and conditions. After hastily signing the agreement, they had already completely sold themselves to this devilish company.
The subsequent meditation sessions and masterclasses were mostly the same content in different forms. Before leaving, Jian Yunxian probably implanted some kind of program in his brain-computer interface to actively block external access devices.
With the help of this program, as soon as Yi Heye connected to the brain-computer interface, his mind would automatically play "Shaun the Sheep," "The Sheep and the Big Bad Wolf," and sheep-themed episodes from Animal World, which helped him get through the long and boring hours of sitting still.
After a few classes, he could barely hear anything anyone was saying; his head was buzzing with the bleating of sheep. At that moment, he probably understood why Old Qin had become allergic to sheep as soon as he woke up.
A full day of training at the company was both fulfilling and boring, but relatively speaking, the living conditions here were indeed quite good. Yi Heye simply treated it as a paid slack-off while watching cartoons.
While others listened attentively to lectures, Yi Heye watched cartoons in his mind; while others were diligently studying how to advance smoothly, Yi Heye went to the company's internal supermarket to buy milk powder; while others voluntarily went to the meditation room for extra practice, Yi Heye leisurely strolled around the leisure area, eating and drinking, having a great time.
He was living such a carefree life that even Pei Xiangjin couldn't stand it anymore and gave him a verbal warning: "Stop slacking off! Why don't you think about what will happen if you can't debut?"
"That just means I'm not good enough," Yi Heye said, munching on potato chips. "You're not really going to make me compete with them in meditation, are you?"
Come to think of it, everyone's training goals and directions now seem to have nothing to do with the final debut or the popularity of the live broadcast room. We can't really ask Yi Heye to undergo brainwashing.
However, Pei Xiangjin was furious at his current hedonistic attitude.
After a day of intense washing and cleaning classes, everyone seemed exhausted. Yi Heye followed the crowd back to the dormitory to rest and was surprised to find that Tang Ruoqi was also in the same dormitory as them.
Xia Tian had a natural aversion to this so-called "top student," but Yi Heye wanted to get more information out of him, so he pretended to be nonchalant and started chatting with him.
After he spoke, he realized that Tang Ruoqi was not as annoying as she seemed; on the contrary, she was a very warm-hearted and simple person.
“I arrived more than a month earlier than you, so I have a basic understanding of the situation here. You can ask me any questions you have,” Tang Ruoqi said with a smile. “Although we will eventually become rivals, I still prefer a healthy competitive relationship.”
Tang Ruoqi explained the assessment and class mechanism here to them in detail—in addition to the necessary daily meditation class, they also need to do all kinds of "performance exercises".
“We have eye contact training, posture exercises, pronunciation training, and so on every week,” Tang Ruoqi said. “Because the company has achieved comprehensive high intelligence, each of us can be assigned a one-on-one AI teacher who can provide fully automated and high-precision feedback on our performance and help us correct our mistakes. When we have free time in the evening, we either do meditation or some related training.”
Tang Ruoqi spoke like an enthusiastic salesperson who had taken the company's money: "What I've always been most satisfied with is the teaching equipment here. Our school didn't have such intelligent tutoring before. I can only say that a big company is indeed a big company."
Yi Heye didn't know what he meant by these training exercises, but he had a vague feeling that something was wrong.
Urged on by Pei Xiangjin through the earpiece, Yi Heye reluctantly asked, "Are you still going to training tonight? I'd like to do some previewing beforehand to prepare for the upcoming assessment. Could you please take me with you?"
"Of course!" Tang Ruoqi laughed. "It's been a long time since I've seen such an ambitious newcomer like you. You're not only good-looking, but you also take the initiative to learn, which makes me feel quite pressured."
Yi Heye was helpless against such misunderstandings. In fact, he didn't want to do these things at all—he had just made a cup of milk and hadn't even drunk it yet. Now that he was back in the dormitory, the chair hadn't even warmed up, and he was already going back to watch "Shaun the Sheep."
He originally wanted to take Xia Tian with him, but after the girl came back, she became depressed and started crying in bed again.
“It’s normal to feel like this when you first arrive,” Tang Ruoqi comforted her. “Sometimes I also feel inexplicably sad now, but I will take the initiative to meditate to regulate and relax myself—just like the instructor said in class, when you have distracting thoughts, you have to learn to calm them down. The best way is to quiet yourself down and not think about anything.”
Yi Heye thought about it more and more and felt that what this guy said was too creepy, but he didn't have time to care too much about Xia Tian. He could only quickly pull Tang Ruoqi away to prevent him from giving Xia Tian any unnecessary inspiration.
A moment later, Tang Ruoqi led him to an integrated training classroom. There were about forty machines in the classroom, arranged neatly like desks and chairs in a classroom.
These machines look more like transparent incubation chambers, none of them are very large, just big enough to hold one person.
Yi Heye didn't dare take the risk, so he could only let the veteran player Tang Ruoqi take the lead: "Can you give me a demonstration first?"
The enthusiastic senior student, Tang Ruoqi, smiled and said, "Sure."
"You should understand after watching it once," Tang Ruoqi said as she opened the hatch in front of her. "It's very easy to operate; one machine can meet all your needs."
Perhaps to facilitate external intervention, the outermost ring of these training instruments is made of transparent glass. Even if Yi Heye stands outside and does nothing, he can clearly see the internal structure, operating procedures, and the trainees' reactions.
Tang Ruoqi walked into the training cabin with ease, first connecting the brain-computer interface, and then demonstrating the eye training process.
"First, select the eye training mode on the panel." Tang Ruoqi said as she pressed the button, and then a black, VR-like device appeared on the training screen in front of her.
Tang Ruoqi reached out and took off her glasses: "After you put on the glasses, you will see some images. Just stare at the moving black dots in the images. The system will automatically collect parameters and make your eyes brighter by forcing them to repeatedly focus. I won't demonstrate the specifics to you. You can try it yourself in a bit."
Yi Heye frowned, and then Tang Ruoqi immediately began introducing him to voice exercises—
“A good voice is essential for anyone who debuts here, whether they want to be an actor, singer, broadcaster, or host.” Tang Ruoqi switched the mode to voice training. This time, a microphone extended from the machine, and a voice training script began to play on the screen in front of her.
“Voice training is actually quite fun,” Tang Ruoqi said. “You can choose recitation mode, singing mode, daily conversation, or even dubbing lines from your favorite movies. It will correct your content based on your pronunciation, tone quality, and pitch. In short, anything that allows you to speak is considered training.”
The remaining physical training, specific facial condition assessments, etc., follow a similar pattern.
Yi Heye watched from the side and felt increasingly uneasy, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what was wrong.
Fortunately, Tang Ruoqi was addicted to learning. After briefly teaching Yi Heye how to learn, he began his own training.
Yi Heye randomly picked a training machine that was relatively far away from him.
He stood outside the window, looking at the control panel in front of him. His absolute intuition for danger began to pound fiercely again—he could sense that this kind of training wouldn't kill him, and judging from Tang Ruoqi's state, it didn't seem like a high-intensity meditation, but his intuition told him not to do it.
Pei Xiangjin tried everything to persuade him, but to no avail. In the end, the two sides reached a compromise: Yi Heye would enter the cabin to carry out the mission, but he would absolutely not connect to the brain-computer interface.
After entering the cabin, Yi Heye first took a set of photos and sent them back. Then, as requested by Pei Xiangjin, he took photos and tested the glasses, microphone, and monitoring equipment inside the cabin.
At this moment, a large group of experts were gathered in Pei Xiangjin's office, heads down, observing and analyzing the information and photos sent by Yi Heye.
The appearance of these devices has been disguised and distorted to some extent, which has increased the difficulty of their analysis.
At this moment, in search of inspiration, the television in the office was still on, leaving only a flickering background without making a sound.
The long hours of engrossed research had taken their toll on Pei Xiangjin, leaving him somewhat fatigued. The moment he looked up, he happened to see an advertisement on television—
This is an advertisement for a brand's new ice cream. The spokesperson for the advertisement is probably an unknown artist from that company. In any case, Pei Xiangjin finds the person both familiar and unfamiliar.
Familiar yet unfamiliar.
When those five words popped into his mind, Pei Xiangjin frowned again. He pressed the pause button and began to carefully observe this person—
This is a handsome young man with a beautiful and refined appearance that conforms to popular aesthetics. He has light brown eyes, a high nose bridge, and lips with distinct cupid's bow.
Pei Xiangjin was certain she had never seen this young man before, but she had a very strange sense of familiarity with him—
The eyes are familiar, the nose is familiar, the mouth is familiar... but when put together, there's no sense of familiarity.
Just as he was being troubled by this strange feeling, he received a call for help from Gu Wenwen.
"Hello... Officer Pei?" Gu Wenwen's voice was anxious, clearly something had happened. "I don't know, have you seen the latest commercial for Mengyu Ice Cream...?"
Pei Xiangjin looked up—and it was the very same one he had been watching.
“I’ve seen it,” Pei Xiangjin said.
“That person…that person’s eyes are Ke Yu’s eyes…” Gu Wenwen said, her voice trembling with tears, “I can’t be mistaken, those are my husband’s eyes…”
Chapter 104, number 104
Gu Wenwen's words caused everyone in the office to gasp in shock.
The male celebrity in front of you has Ke Yu's eyes, but he has a nose, eyebrows, and mouth that don't belong to him... What does this mean?
"Did you mistake me for someone else...?" a police officer whispered, but Gu Wenwen noticed it immediately.
"Impossible! Ke Yu's eyes are exactly like that!" Gu Wenwen was quite agitated, her words laced with sarcasm. "Anyone who says that must have never been in a relationship. I can mistake anything, but I could never mistake my lover's eyes!"
The young police officer, who had never been in a relationship, suffered a severe psychological blow. Meanwhile, on the other side, Yi Heye, who had nothing to do, overheard the entire incident.
Gu Wenwen recognized Ke Yu's eyes at a glance, which reminded him of himself—yesterday, Jian Yunxian also stared at Liu Cheng's face as he appeared in front of him, and he, like Gu Wenwen, recognized the other's eyes almost instantly.
So he believed Gu Wenwen's words, but deep down he didn't want to admit that it had anything to do with dating—blame it on Jian Yunxian's eyes being so special that he believed anyone could recognize them.
At this moment, Pei Xiangjin on the other end of the earpiece became cautious. After learning about the situation from Gu Wenwen in detail, he contacted the cyber security department and began to urgently analyze the advertisement in front of him.
He first checked the details of the advertisement through the backend system, and sure enough, it was the work of ISSAC.
The entire process of filming and casting for this advertisement was provided by ISSAC Entertainment Agency. The young artist who starred in the advertisement was named Zhao Yufeng. As expected, the information he provided about his place of origin and residence was in Zone A.
Pei Xiangjin tried calling his agent to get more details about the artist, but the reply was that the artist was currently very busy and the procedures for entering and leaving Area A were difficult to complete, so a face-to-face meeting was temporarily declined, but a video call could be arranged when time permits.
Pei Xiangjin had been a police officer for over ten years, and this was the first time he had ever been "politely refused." If the other person were a normal person, Pei Xiangjin would have already taken "forced action" with knives, guns, and clubs, but the other person happened to be from District A.
He is an extraordinary person from Area A, a proud person from Area A, a noble outlaw from Area A who directly stands above the entire Security Department.
Pei Xiangjin had previously kept to himself and his associates, but now he realized just how disgusting the so-called "powerful class" truly was.
Everyone around could see that he was about to explode with anger; the crunching sound of his teeth making a cracking noise even caused ripples in the coffee on the table.
After enduring humiliation for a long time, Pei Xiangjin gritted his teeth and sneered, "Heh, if you're unwilling to meet face-to-face, then there's a problem."
He stared coldly at the scene before him, and after a long while, he frowned, as if he had some inspiration.
“Take a screenshot, and then break down all the parts as meticulously as possible, such as the eyes, nose, facial features, etc. I need separate files for each part,” Pei Xiangjin said. “After we have the results, we will do a simple data comparison and then contact the families of the missing persons to match and identify them.”
The photo comparison process was very rapid; the technical team quickly extracted Zhao Yufeng's facial data.
"Based on a rough comparison, Zhao Yufeng's eyes are more than 80% similar to Ke Yu's, his nose is highly similar to Qian Zhen's, and his mouth is a close match to Sun Yiran's..."
The photos were laid out before me, and all the names mentioned were on the list of recently missing persons.
After contacting the family members, it was basically confirmed that Zhao Yufeng was "pieced together" from countless missing persons.
Upon hearing this, the new police officer couldn't contain himself any longer: "Holy crap... what does this mean? Are they going to dismember a living person and then sew them back together...?"
Pei Xiangjin was already furious when she heard this and couldn't help but yell at him, "What the hell are you daydreaming about? Go sew one up and show me!"
Even with today's unprecedented level of technology and cosmetic medicine, it is impossible to dissect a person into such tiny modules and then reassemble them while still alive, leaving no trace on their face.