Cyber ​​Ghost Record

Chapter 57, Section 56: The Painted Skin (Part 6)

The name "Jiangning" indeed distorted Yang Guan's senses.

Ryoko Chiba was clearly standing in front of Yang Guan, but Yang Guan ignored her and instead talked to thin air.

But his appearance changed the course of events. "Jiangning" appeared because of him, and by a twist of fate, Chiba Ryoko became an overlooked bystander.

Suger realized this might be an opportunity. He observed the surveillance footage and found that Jiang Ning was only appearing in an illusion; there was still no trace of him in the actual room.

"You spoke with Su Ge around 1 p.m. today, right?" Yang Guan sat down, leaned back in his chair, and put a digital cigarette in his mouth. When inhaled, it sends a signal to the brain-computer interface, directly stimulating the nicotine receptors in the brain.

"Ah, yes." Jiang Ning still looked very sleepy. "Su Ge... what happened to him?"

"Sug disappeared after speaking with you. Don't you have anything to say?"

Yang Guan, with a cigarette between his fingers, looked up and sized up "Jiang Ning." His probing was direct, but he omitted the details of Su Ge's suspicions about Jiang Ning.

……

"There is a way."

Inside the missile silo, Shen snapped his fingers.

“If this investigator doesn’t come, we can only try to find ‘it’ by following the flow of surveillance information in this room. But it’s very cunning. The real surveillance only leaves the warning mechanism, and there are many users in the fake surveillance. Personal surveillance information in this kind of place will be packaged and resold countless times, so it’s impossible to find out which one is it.”

“Yang Guan lured it out,” Su Ge said, looking at the surveillance footage. “But how do we find its true form?”

"It entered the investigator's brain-computer interface and modified his sensory information," Shen Ke said. "The modification was real-time, and it can be traced through the investigator."

"How to do it?"

"Access his brain-computer interface."

Synchronizing with Chiba Ryoko had already clouded his senses; adding Yang Guan to the mix, Su Ge wasn't sure if he could remain lucid. His gaze passed through Chiba Ryoko to Yang Guan, and in his dazed state, it took him a few seconds to regain his focus.

The moment Su Ge connected to Yang Guan's brain-computer interface, he gained a peculiar perspective.

The real world that Chiba Ryoko saw overlapped with the illusory world that Yang Guan saw in his consciousness. It was as if Chiba Ryoko, Yang Guan, and Jiang Ning were all in the same room, only Chiba Ryoko was being ignored by the other two.

“Very good,” Shen Ke said. “Next, let’s find where 'it' is…”

After she finished speaking, she noticed that Suger did not react. She turned her head and saw that Suger's body was trembling slightly in the missile silo, his forehead was covered in sweat, and although his eyes were closed, his eyeballs were moving rapidly under his eyelids, as if he were in deep sleep.

His mouth opened and closed, and if you looked closely, it perfectly matched the lip movements of Yang Guan when he spoke.

Su Ge heard Shen Ke's words but couldn't respond. He received Yang Guan's sensory information and felt as if his brain had been split into three pieces; he couldn't tell where his feelings were coming from.

"Never mind." Shen Ke lowered her eyes helplessly.

The next moment, Chiba Ryoko opened her eyes and looked at Yang Guan.

The investigator was sitting in an empty house that had been uninhabited for a long time. Dust and cobwebs were everywhere, and some external influences wove the illusion that someone lived there in the desolate place.

She traced the origins of these illusions.

If this action were to be visualized, it would seem as if countless links stretched out from Yang Guan into the darkness in all directions. Shen Ke entered the darkness and came to the end of one of these links, where she met a young man in his twenties.

The man's identity information flashed quickly through her green eyes, and she shook her head. The man's identity information was real, but clearly, like "Jiang Ning," it was a fake entity existing only in the virtual world.

There were many such physical forms. She traced the connections and saw many men, women, children, and robots.

“She has many identities…” she said softly.

"How are you?" Su Ge's weak, intermittent voice came through; at this moment, even clearing his mind was a struggle for him.

“It has many forms.” Shen Ke frowned slightly. “We can’t disturb it, but we also need to find out where its true form is. It’s very time-consuming…”

She turned around and followed Chiba Ryoko's gaze to look at Yang Guan.

"But this investigator seems to be reaching his limit."

……

"That's the way it is."

After recounting some details of their conversation that afternoon, Jiang Ning sat down on the edge of the bed with a worried expression.

"Is he going to be okay?"

Yang Guan didn't answer, but instead observed Jiang Ning's reaction. Jiang Ning seemed a little uncomfortable under his intense gaze and hesitated before asking, "Investigator Yang, you're not investigating me, are you? Have I become a suspect?"

"No." Yang Guan smiled again, crossed his legs, "I just wanted to get some information from you, don't be nervous."

"I knew it." Jiang Ning breathed a sigh of relief. "He was only out of contact for half a day; it shouldn't warrant a case being filed. By the way, Investigator Yang, this is the first time I've seen you dressed so casually." It looked Yang Guan up and down. "Why aren't you wearing your investigator's uniform today?"

Jiang Ning's words made Yang Guan's smile falter for a moment, and a strong sense of crisis welled up in his heart. Compared to the safety of his fellow villagers from the same era, this guy was more concerned about his own identity.

There might really be a problem with Jiangning.

Yang Guan got goosebumps, but felt a surge of excitement deep inside.

I may be getting closer to the truth.

"It doesn't really matter what you wear. It's all just skin deep, don't you think?"

Yang Guan smiled meaningfully and met Jiang Ning's gaze.

Jiang Ning pushed up his glasses, his gaze hidden in the shadows.

"That's so true. Living is really just living as a shell." A smile appeared on its lips. "Have you ever thought about who you are after you peel away that skin?"

Yang Guanxin felt an even stronger sense of crisis, but he couldn't come up with any countermeasures.

He seemed to see that scene in the elevator again, where he, as a young boy, stood at the back of the crowd watching the demon slaughter his companions. The demon's face was covered in blood, and he looked over the broken corpses. That cold gaze seemed to overlap with Jiang Ning's at this moment.

“That’s my true self,” Jiang Ning said. “You don’t know what your true self is, do you?”

Yang Guan took a drag of his cigarette, his hand trembling slightly, but he laughed.

"You're not pretending anymore, are you?"

Jiang Ning didn't answer him, and just laughed to herself.

"You'll know once you peel it."

……

"Heh, you've got guts," Shen Ke said softly, looking at Yang Guan.

“Peeling… what does that mean?” Sog asked in a daze.

"Peel it."

Shen Ke paused for a moment, and when Jiang Ning mentioned peeling, she knew what it was.

“Strip him of all his identity information,” she said.

"Will the people who are 'skinned' become unregistered residents?" Soger asked.

“Even more undocumented than an unregistered person.” Shen Ke glanced at the various bodies in the darkness. “These days, changing your face is no harder than changing your clothes. To confirm who is who, you can only rely on identity information. Without that, you will lose all social connections, and no one will recognize you anymore.”

“This guy is cunning enough.” She looked at Jiang Ning’s position in the room. “It wants to become Yang Guan. If it succeeds, with this identity, it will never have to worry about being caught again.”

Suger felt a chill run down his spine, but was also glad he was there.

He saw through Jiang Ning's cognitive biases about the 21st century and exposed its disguise.

But if it were to disguise itself as Yang Guan, Su Ge would have no chance of recognizing it.

“How… to stop it…” he asked.

"Don't disturb it, now is a good opportunity."

The skins that were connected by ties faded and disappeared.

"Even former investigators could be implicated in the Feathered Robe Envoy, or even the Li Lou clan. The work needs to be done meticulously; it can't maintain so many false identities anymore."

Her gaze followed a barely perceptible stream of information, penetrating deep into the darkness.

"found it."

I'll add another chapter tonight to complete the Painted Skin storyline.

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(End of this chapter)