In a crossover anime, do you believe that a machine spirit can defeat a fake human?

"As for progress, there hasn't been any substantial breakthrough. I just called you over to see if you have any remaining issues."

Is this the kind of attitude you're putting on when there's no progress?

"No progress, but there is one hypothesis." Dr. Futaba shifted her posture.

"Have you ever heard of gargoyles or scarecrows, Mr. Chen?"

"...Are the Boiling Ones also a type that cannot be easily eliminated?"

Chen Yi's expression hardened.

He remembered that he hadn't eaten any chili pepper lozenges or experienced any boiling sensations since returning from Izu...

"Although I don't know how you did it, if the crystal you brought can represent the Boiling One, it's probably completely dead, irreversibly so," Dr. Futaba said, shaking his head.

So there's no need to worry.

Dr. Futaba has a very high degree of authority to speak on whether the Boiling Ones are still alive.

No matter how it was tested, the crystal left behind by the Boiling One was just a crystal of some kind of compound, without even any impurities. If Chen Yi wasn't someone who wouldn't joke or play pranks, Dr. Futaba would at most have thought that the crystal was some kind of undiscovered new compound.

Well, it's not exactly a new compound, since metallic gemstones are common on Earth.

"That......"

"Dr. Futaba is here mainly to verify the hypothesis about the parasitic mechanism of the Boilers."

Dr. Maruki explained in detail.

"Since Boiling Man controls patients through parasitism, it overturns a long-held view in the field of psychology. However, there is still some controversy regarding whether it takes the form of physical contact or cognitive interference."

Although the symptoms of patients with the boiling phenomenon suggest that physical parasitism is more likely, it is impossible to completely rule out cognitive interference or mental pollution.

"So you called me here to see what the mechanism of the boiling phenomenon is, right?"

Chen Yi understood.

"Then let's get started as soon as possible." Dr. Maruki stood up and pushed open the door to the room behind.

......

"Is it over?" Dr. Futaba asked casually as Chen Yi and Dr. Maruki came out of the treatment room.

"It seems like there's been no progress at all."

"It's not that there's no progress at all... but we'll have to wait for the blood test results." Dr. Maru sat down, thought for a moment, then stood up and took two cans of cold drinks from the refrigerator, handing one to Chen Yi.

"Let me digress a bit first, about Mr. Chen's trip to Izu."

Under deep hypnosis, Dr. Maruki obtained deeper information that he had not been able to obtain in previous treatments.

"First, there's the issue of the radio fake person, which Mr. Chen encountered twice when he went to the Izu Hotel."

"Its true form... I won't jump to conclusions for now, let's just assume that a highly intelligent pseudo-human is controlling the broadcast in the broadcasting room."

"When we first met, Chen Jun mentioned that he was changed rooms because of that fake man and then encountered the mattress fake man. However, the rooms were assigned by the hotel system, so the possibility of it being a trap is unlikely. Let's just consider it a coincidence for now."

"The second time, Chen Jun was preparing to return to the abandoned Izu Hotel when he was again exposed to a broadcast that applied to all the fake people in the hotel, and it ignored Chen Yi and the others' identities as 'humans'."

As we all know, the hostility of pseudo-humans towards humans originates from the underlying code and cannot be changed.

"So, what you mean is?"

Chen Yi seemed to have thought of something.

Were those fake people really alive?

Dr. Maruki asked quietly, but his words revealed a deep certainty.

"Carrion eaters." Chen Yi immediately thought of a type of incredibly ugly pseudo-human variant he had encountered before.

"The so-called resurrection of their kind by the carrion eaters is not a true resurrection, but rather the ability to manipulate other pseudo-human corpses by piecing together their own cells."

Those fake people were dead to begin with; the living dead cannot replace the living, whether human or fake.

Moreover, they can usually only use the abilities of beast-type pseudo-humans, and cannot perfectly reproduce internal abilities such as cognitive infection.

“Excellent. If we approach it from this angle, we might be able to uncover the truth behind the rules of the Pseudo-Human Hotel,” Dr. Maruki said.

"So, besides the Boiling Ones, there must be something else in that hotel."

"Perhaps it's one of the abilities of the Boiling Ones, after all, we weren't there in person, so we don't know exactly what happened," Dr. Futaba casually made up.

"If it's the ability of the Boiling One, then that would be the best outcome."

After all, dealing with one is much better than dealing with two. If there's only one, the Boiling One is already dead and poses no threat. If the broadcast is actually controlled by another pseudo-human with high intelligence... it's possible that when Chen Yi went to the Izu Hotel for the second time, that pseudo-human was already targeting him.

Do we have to be on fire and theft prevention again...? Hehe, I need to survive.

"Dr. Maruki, the blood test results are in."

"Okay, you can go now." Dr. Maruki took the report and carefully reviewed it.

"How so?" Dr. Futaba asked, tidying up the documents she had brought that she didn't need for the time being and putting them back into her briefcase.

"The abnormal decrease in inorganic matter levels caused by the boiling phenomenon means that the metabolic system is indeed working hard... But I want to ask, Mr. Chen, how much sleep have you had in total these past few days?"

Dr. Maruki first raised an eyebrow, then frowned, as if he had seen a patient who did not follow medical advice, looking helpless but at a loss.

"Your blood routine, liver function, blood sugar, and coagulation function all showed abnormal indicators... Considering the faint dark circles under your eyes, it's probably due to your sleep schedule, right?"

"Let me count... I slept for about sixteen hours in four days, that's about right."

These next few days we need to drastically modify the 'Messenger' and 'Humanoid'. Otherwise, the designs for the Centaurus and Otrus will remain on paper, and we won't know what the problems are. It would be too late to start developing prototypes once the production line is up and running. So Chen Yi thought that to improve efficiency, he should just work overtime.

Sleeping only four hours a day on average... what kind of iron man is that?

"Xiao Chen, you really need to get some rest. After all, you still have to take care of my daughter. You can't let your health collapse first," Dr. Futaba reminded him jokingly from the other side.

......

"Oh, by the way, have you finished that case of Pampers at home? If you have, I'll send you another case."

As he was leaving Dr. Maruki's clinic, Dr. Futaba called out to him at the door.

"What do you mean, 'helping Bao Shi'?" Chen Yi asked, puzzled.

"You've never used it before? Rio, that kid..." Dr. Futaba was taken aback.

“Commander, we do have this at home. It was brought back by Ms. Futaba and then hidden away.”

"..." Why didn't you say this sooner?

Revisiting Izu: Chapter 243 Ubiquitous

Chapter 243

"What's the test report for the goats?" Miao Mu glanced at the incoming phone number and immediately understood that the expert team had news.

"The goat's gene sequencing was normal, and no analogues were found in its body fluids and metabolism that were significantly different from those of ordinary goats."

"That's what the biologist replied."

"So you mean... goats are normal, right?"

“Herbivores are more likely to kill their own kind than carnivores. Given the enclosed environment, I believe the goat's killing of its companion is a coincidence.”

In animal behavior, carnivores have evolved an intrinsic inhibitory mechanism that herbivores do not possess, due to their deadly weapons.

Herbivores lack this mechanism, and in enclosed environments, the inability to escape often leads to the death of one of them.

This is Lorenz's 'weapon-suppression' paradox.

"Understood, thank you." Miao Mu hung up the phone, sighed, and rummaged through the table, stuffing the reports and analyses about cannibalism among goats into a drawer.

"This lead seems to have gone cold..."

He looked at the seemingly most normal clue, about the number of monkeys.

"Could the nighttime changes in monkey numbers be related to the fake humans?"

......

How do monkey troop sizes change?

The surveillance observers have been checking for several days, watching frame by frame, but still haven't found any decent clues.

The strangest phenomenon is that the monkey troop suddenly changed in number at a certain moment, but when the monitors locked onto that moment, they found that the monkeys had been there all along in earlier video footage.

“The timing of the change is different every hour…” The monitor stared intently, his eyes bloodshot.

No matter how hard he tried to grasp the key moments of the monkey troop's appearance and disappearance, he came up empty-handed. Even when he found seemingly changing moments or times, they would vanish again when he tried to push them back to see them more clearly.

"Wait, has the number of monkeys really changed?"

In a daze, such a thought flashed through the mind of the monitoring observer.

He zoomed back to the daytime period, noted the location of each monkey, and then randomly jumped to a frame from the nighttime period.

“Not a single one is missing…” The monitoring observer quickly recreated all the details, a knowing smile appearing on his lips.

"The number of monkeys never decreased, and the monkeys were not active; they just stayed in their respective locations. This is one clue."

The monitoring observer had to report to his superiors immediately.

"The second clue... is that videos can transmit cognitive interference."

......

Videos can...spread cognitive interference?

“I’ve never heard of such a thing.” Miao Mu shook his head.

"But the information he discovered was that the monkey troop had not actually changed in number... Before that, all the observers in the monitoring center saw was the result of 'the monkey troop size has changed'."

"If videos can spread cognitive pollution..."

Miao Mu's expression turned serious.

"This also means that we are within their attack range."

"Let the Ironbloods go in and gather information."

Miao Mu sighed and began to think about how much budget he had to cover the remaining six months of hiring costs.

All operations other than annihilation require additional funding.

......

Is this you?

"..."

Mai Sakurajima leaned closer to Chen Yi and pointed at the computer screen, asking a question.

The first episode of the premiere begins with the male protagonist's enrollment in school, where he introduces himself in a rather composed manner.

It looks like the plot of some mysterious, old-fashioned novel about the return of the Dragon King, and it doesn't have the vitality that an ordinary high school student should have.

"..."

"It probably wasn't me." Chen Yi's eyes darted around uncertainly.

The experience of adapting a manga into a comic is still quite novel... However, the animation production team clearly misunderstood the character design, resulting in the male protagonist appearing unusually pretentious.

Putting aside the original work, the animation style is completely different! Does the male protagonist even seem to be from the same world as the people next to him?

Yes, it's been determined to be inferior to the original.

Chen Yi recalled his experiences after transmigrating. Compared to the male protagonist in the animation who was so carefree, he really had to use every trick in the book to survive back then.

"However, the element of being isolated by the whole class is portrayed very well," Futaba added.

"..."

Even after changing to a new class, the others have their own social circles and naturally won't interfere with others'.

Of course, compared to when school first started, Chen Yi can no longer be considered isolated...

But it seems that I really don't have any same-sex friends, and most of my opposite-sex friends also maintain a rather unhealthy social distance.

Is it really unhealthy? I don't think so.

After hearing Chen Yi's inner thoughts, Kroos glanced at him subtly.

The commander's emotions are like a wasteland; even if someone's emotions blow in like the wind, they can only carry away the sand and never change the landscape.