The male supporting character was actually myself.

"He has good potential. Let's put him in the security team for training."

……

In my memory, the first time I met him was in a rather sultry September, during the first large lecture after the freshmen had registered for university.

A flood of memories rushed in, and Jiang Chen rubbed his temples before asking, "Are you Li Chengze?"

Chapter Ten: Reunion with Feng Yuan

It seemed he hadn't lost his memory, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

"Let's arrange for the doctors to do a check-up for you first..." Li Chengze was interrupted as soon as he started to speak. Jiang Chen glanced at the people in the room, some familiar and some unfamiliar, and frowned slightly, saying, "I'm fine, I don't need a check-up."

We need to talk alone.

The senior members of the security team knew that this special big shot was aloof and rarely talked to others except when researching unknown objects, so they all understood that geniuses always have some eccentricities.

Li Chengze politely saw the leaders off and persuaded several excited old professors who wanted to study the medical miracle to leave. When he returned to the ward, he found Jiang Chen looking in the mirror in the bathroom.

"You weren't feeling well before, are you sure you don't need to get checked?"

"No need." Jiang Chen stared at his face in the mirror, which was both familiar and unfamiliar. Various different appearances kept flashing through his mind. The only thing they had in common was that a fluffy white cat was perched on their shoulders.

“I’m having some memory problems.” He looked down at his hands, feeling a sense of unfamiliarity with his body. “It seems like… I’ve told you about the virtual world before, haven’t I?”

Those memories are somewhat mixed up with my own real memories; I can't quite distinguish which are true and which are false.

"What should we do then?" Li Chengze was also a bit confused. Other things would be easier to handle, but memory issues were too complicated. "Should we try hypnosis with a psychologist?"

A psychologist?

Jiang Chen was slightly taken aback, and a jumble of sounds uncontrollably popped into his mind.

"I want to study psychology and become a psychologist in the future..."

"Child, you have no reincarnation."

There is no past life, no future life, and even your soul is broken.

Only by finding the other fragments of your soul can you become your true self.

Perhaps only then will you have a future.

"This world is inherently a mixture of truth and falsehood."

"The edge of the world is clearly there, but we can't seem to get out."

"Life is like a dream, but do you know where you begin to dream?"

…………

"Jiang Chen?! Jiang Chen!" Seeing that he was in a daze, Li Chengze called out twice but did not respond, so he went up and shook his arm.

He tried to block out the mixed, indistinct sounds, stared blankly at the other person for a few seconds before remembering to ask, "How long have I been unconscious? Have all the invading Soul Eaters been hunted down?"

"You killed them all, don't you remember?" Li Chengze felt that he had become different after waking up.

Although Jiang Chen used to be quiet and didn't interact with others, she exuded a gentle aura and rarely refused requests for help or advice.

But now Jiang Chen seems to be full of sharp edges, and occasionally there is a suffocating sense of oppression. I don't even dare to make jokes anymore.

He thought for a moment and shook his head. "I don't remember."

"You were unconscious for three days and two nights, and your condition fluctuated. However, the Spider-Man Unknown Entity did not appear while you were unconscious. According to the security team's search report, the circumstances of this Soul Eater invasion are somewhat strange; all the Unknown Entities disappeared after their invasion."

No unknown entity has been discovered to date.

"It's normal for the Soul Eaters to disappear from our surveillance range after they invade. This has happened before, but it's never happened before that Soul Eaters haven't reappeared three days after being hunted down."

Li Chengze carefully reported the situation, constantly observing the other party's reaction.

However, Jiang Chen remained expressionless throughout. After listening, he remained silent for a moment and then said, "Send all the paper data on the unknown entities to my home. We need to reclassify them."

Send people to collect information on patients across the country who are currently in a coma due to various accidents, and verify one by one whether any unknown entities have appeared around them, recording the details.

Also, is there any news about Qin Rufeng's heart and brain that were taken from him?

"The police are searching everywhere, but the perpetrator is an unknown entity, so the situation is not ideal, and there is no direction to follow. However, I sent people to investigate his interpersonal relationships and whereabouts over the past year, and found something unusual."

"The documents are all in my bag. Do you want to see them now?"

Jiang Chen glanced at the hospital gown she was wearing with disdain, then casually took it off and tossed it aside. "I'll look at it when I get back to my place. I need to go back and take a shower and change my clothes."

Li Chengze hurriedly handed him the clothes he had worn when he was brought to the hospital, which were in the closet.

"Don't you get tired of wearing a suit every day?" Jiang Chen asked while changing his clothes. "Since you officially joined the security team, I don't think I've ever seen you wear anything else. Is the suit your true form?"

"Hehe..." Li Chengze grinned, but his smile was fake. "It's not funny at all! I wear a suit because of work. I have to play various roles at any time, and a suit is obviously the most suitable one."

Besides, only a suit can have its inner pockets custom-made to fit my needs, to hold all those documents I need to use frequently.

As he spoke, he lifted his dark green striped suit jacket, revealing a row of various identification documents in the inner pockets.

Jiang Chen glanced at it and saw a complete set of credentials from various industries and positions, including the Ministry of State Security, the military, the police, traffic police, hospitals, banks, and insurance companies.

"It's almost as common as making fake documents."

“I’m telling the truth!” Li Chengze straightened his suit and handed him the car keys. “If you’re sure you’re not feeling unwell, I suggest you go to Huadu first.”

We received news two days ago that Feng Yuan has woken up.

I think you might want to see it for yourself.

Sitting in the helicopter, flying over the city, Jiang Chen looked down through the glass window. From Angu City to Huadu, they had almost crossed half a country, but he hadn't spotted a single unknown entity by the time they landed at the airport.

This invasion was merely a fierce battle for Angu City, and it was quickly quelled.

Why did the unknown entities in other places also disappear?

Normally, when walking down the street, he would occasionally encounter one or two harmless No. 3 Unknown Entities floating around, but now, as he looked around, he began to wonder if he had lost the ability to see Unknown Entities.

This situation is highly abnormal!

Something unusual must be going on. Is something big brewing?

Huadu First Hospital

After waking up, Feng Yuan recovered quickly and was transferred from the intensive care unit to a regular ward.

"Hello, we are health recovery assessors from the hospital." Pushing open the door to the room, Li Chengze, wearing a white coat, tucked his identification into his jacket pocket and struck a very professional pose, saying earnestly, "Now we need to conduct a brief interview with the injured person to assess his recovery."

The family members had been notified beforehand and had heard about the precautions. Upon seeing this, they exchanged a few polite words and left the ward.

Jiang Chen carefully examined Feng Yuan, who was lying on the hospital bed with his head bandaged but in good spirits, and confirmed that he looked completely different from how he appeared during the assessment competition.

Feng Yuan himself is tall and thin. Perhaps due to his injury and hospitalization, his cheeks are thin and his cheekbones are slightly protruding, making him look somewhat shy.

"How are you feeling now? Are you dizzy?" Li Chengze asked, pretending to write something with a pen and notebook. "Are there any gaps in your memory or things you can't remember?"

Chapter Eleven: The Celestial Project

"My head isn't dizzy anymore, it was a little so when I first woke up." Feng Yuan's eyes were bright and his speech was clear, and his reaction speed was not affected. "Apart from the injection and IV drip hurting a little, I feel fine."

My memory wasn't affected; the police even questioned me about the whole incident beforehand.

I remember clearly that I was hit when I was passing by the far right side of dormitory building number three. I heard they are checking the fingerprints on the ashtray. The guy who threw the object from the high-rise building should go to jail...

After asking a bunch of random questions, they finally concluded that Feng Yuan, like Lu Xinnan, had no memory of anything except that some of his beliefs had been changed to make him more grounded and docile after leaving the virtual world.

Before leaving the ward, Jiang Chen, who hadn't spoken until now, suddenly asked, "Have you ever heard of the name 'Jiang Chen'?"

“Jiang Chen?” Feng Yuan was stunned. “He sounds familiar; I feel like I’ve heard of him somewhere before.”

After a moment, he waved his hand and denied it, saying, "I probably remembered it wrong, or maybe I had a classmate with a similar name before."

As the two left the ward, Li Chengze stuffed the pen and notebook he had been pretending to carry into his pocket. "Our colleagues at the branch office have pulled up the ward's surveillance footage. Let's take a look."

The intensive care unit is equipped with high-definition surveillance cameras, and security personnel have already edited out any problematic parts.

Judging from the time, it was about an hour before Feng Yuan woke up, and another unknown "Spider-Man" appeared beside his hospital bed.

But it only lasted less than two minutes from its appearance to its departure.

"It seems to have a lot of tentacles. Is it checking its body condition?" Li Chengze zoomed in on the surveillance video and paused it. In the faint gray shadow, he could vaguely see many thin, tentacle-like lines protruding from the "hands".

The tentacles were attached to Feng Yuan's head, and a little over a minute later, the unknown "Spider-Man" shakily left and never reappeared.

“Lu Xinnan’s home does not have surveillance cameras installed, but there are cameras in the building’s hallways and elevators. Although the footage is very blurry, our staff found this video recording.”

Li Chengze opened the video materials he had just received on his laptop and showed them to Jiang Chen.

The surveillance footage in the hallway was of very poor quality, flickering intermittently and filled with bright spots. It could only be vaguely seen that around 4 a.m. on May 8th, an unknown "Spider-Man" figure staggered into the room and left about two minutes later.

"Among the three people who woke up, all of them were of the same type of unknown entity." Jiang Chen closed his eyes and slowly rubbed his forehead, vaguely recalling two names, "Meng Xiucheng? And Yao Tianyu. I'm not sure which three characters they are. Have someone look them up by transliteration. They should be the real names of the hosts I encountered in the assessment competition."

Li Chengze quickly made the arrangements, speculating, "With these three cases, can we determine the role of the unknown 'Spider-Man' entity?"

Has Li Zixuan shown up?

"No, we found surveillance cameras in the second-floor corridor of her bar, but no unknown entities were detected approaching."

"Temporarily classified as harmless, its function... might control and guide the soul?" Jiang Chen thought for a moment and then denied it, "The function is yet to be determined. We'll talk about it after we find two other hosts and check the situation."

The two carefully reviewed the clues they had and found that there weren't many that they could continue investigating.

The emails Lu Xinnan received traced back to their source, and only a few netizens who found the video amusing were found to be curious and had no malicious intent. The original source, however, was found online and could not be found anywhere.

The number of people who downloaded and spread the video was not large. Besides Lu Xinnan, a 15-year-old middle school student died suddenly the day after watching it. Given that the student had congenital heart disease and was in poor health, and that his family had no objection to the cause of death and had cremated and buried the body, the clues were completely lost.

"The fact that all traces of it have completely disappeared online is suspicious enough." As he left the hospital building and noticed the overcast sky, Li Chengze muttered under his breath, dissatisfied. "The video is definitely rigged. I wonder who did it; they really seem to thrive on chaos!"

Jiang Chen got into the car and glanced at the busy crowd to make sure there were no unknown entities mixed in before casually replying, "There's always a reason for everything. This lead has gone cold, but we can't let our guard down."

"If we get the relevant departments to cooperate in a cleanup campaign, we might be able to find some ulterior motives hidden among the various messy and irrelevant information online."

"I'll send a message to apply." Li Chengze handed over the briefcase. "It contains Qin Rufeng's information. You can take a look and get a feel for the situation while we're waiting for the helicopter to take off."

Through extensive interviews and investigations, the security team discovered that Qin Rufeng had joined an underground religious-like organization a year prior.

They called it the Celestial Project.

"I feel like I've seen a similar organization somewhere before." Jiang Chen flipped through the documents and the more he looked, the more familiar it seemed.

The so-called "Celestial Project" is a shady fraud organization that uses the guise of "pursuing the doctrine of freedom and the Way of Heaven" to amass wealth.