Clown Game
Chapter 378 - -1 Once Upon a Time V

Chapter 378: Chapter -1 Once Upon a Time V

"Hehehe... such is humanity, this is you guys..." A middle-aged man, dressed in a Foundation researcher’s attire, was sitting on the ground, prattling to a guard who was also sitting on the ground. His white lab coat was covered in fresh blood, the collar torn apart, hanging carelessly over his shoulder, his hair greasy and tangled together, his face riddled with countless disturbing cuts made by small knife blades.

"Servility, laziness, betrayal, greed, envy, timidity, corruption... Look at these words. Why do you need so many different terms to distinguish yourselves, if not to deceive yourselves and others? Can’t you simplify it, for example, by just classifying it all as human nature?" His hands moved in circles beside his head, as if he was incredibly tangled up in thought: "Ah, but that’s exactly why you’re interesting... You are indeed the Creator’s most perfect work, hmm, and also the most troublesome, hehehe, because each of you has your own little stories, little schemes, thoughts you don’t want anyone to know. Watching you people every day seems a lot more interesting than wandering around blindly... Oh, right, have I been inside your head?" he asked with a grin, then pushed the guard opposite him.

The guard wobbled a few times, then fell to the ground with a clang... clearly dead for some time already.

"Hehehe, it seems I have been..." he appeared to be amused by his own joke, rolling on the ground clutching his stomach, his laughter sounding like sandpaper scraping glass, making one’s teeth hurt.

The view gradually pulled away, revealing a huge room. Around him were countless bodies heaped up; they were either smiling, terrified, their faces twisted in convulsions, like a group of lunatics who had played themselves to death. And in the corner, a surveillance monitor was recording it all.

In another room, Detective Mr. sat quietly watching everything on the screen: "Is he always like this?" he asked.

"Uh... forgive me, I don’t know what he looks like right now, I can’t listen to him, nor can I see him. His infection knows no time or place, even through the screen, it’s enough to doom me." Chubby was sitting far away from the surveillance monitors, wearing headphones that filtered out all sound from the monitor, leaving only Detective Mr.’s voice audible.

Mr. Detective hesitated for a moment: "Did you kill him...?"

"His body." Chubby immediately replied: "But I suppose you can’t be killed, because you originally have no body. Anyway, that corpse is now being preserved in a safe place, and since his death, he has become even more difficult to handle. We can only use a large number of people every day to keep him in check, otherwise he would definitely cause even greater chaos. But it seems like he’s tired of this game already, which is why we need you."

"So you will also kill me!"

"No, no, no, that’s not killing. It’s just temporarily separating you from your body. He’s like a cold virus, and you’re the medicine that needs to be taken when the cold sets in. Once the cold is over, we’ll give your body back to you. That’s easy to understand, right?"

"But... he doesn’t look that easy to cure." Mr. Detective said indifferently: "And your plan has a big flaw."

Chubby was startled, as if something had been revealed. However, Detective Mr. was facing away from him and seemed not to have noticed.

"What flaw?" he asked, trying to regain his composure, sounding very puzzled.

"The flaw is that you think I can watch him..."

"Can’t you?"

"No, even confining the mind of a host won’t work. He needs something fresh, and his need for it will only grow stronger, making him more powerful. One day, he will slip out of my control."

Chubby nodded: "We have considered this too, so we have made some plans for when he can no longer be contained: we will bring him into our organization. To be honest, we deal with almost the most interesting things in the world, and we will use these to satisfy him, to maintain a balance between you and him."

"That’s not a long-term solution," Mr. Detective broke through the pretense.

"Hmm... so we have a backup plan, and that is we’ve found an ancient method of permanently fixing a person’s soul into a body. It’s just not mature enough yet, so we need you to suppress him until we can truly imprison him completely."

"How long will it take?" Detective asked.

"I don’t know yet, but time shouldn’t be too important to you. Whatever it is, it will be a unique experience for you. Perhaps, while you’re confining ’madness,’ your experience will be even more delightful, won’t it?" Chubby said with a slight victorious smile creeping onto his face.

A moment passed.

"All right... I suppose I have no reason to refuse. So finally, have you chosen a host?"

Chubby nodded: "Of course, we’ve found some mentally ill patients, murderers, madmen, thugs. These are people whose mind patterns are similar to that guy’s. I’ll send them to him, and he will infiltrate their minds on his own."

"What about the strength of their minds?" Detective asked again.

"Mind strength? What’s that?"

"Something I’ve named myself. Roughly put, it’s the elasticity and sturdiness of a person’s thought. It’s not as simple as just cramming in a spirit like him and me. If it’s not strong enough, it will burst, it will burn." Mr. Detective explained.

Chubby seemed to go deep in thought: "Hmm... I haven’t considered that. But you’re right, there have been many volunteers who have completely collapsed upon contact with the target... However, this isn’t too hard to deal with. I’ll add a test for mental endurance to the volunteers, and in the end, I’ll select the best candidate. You can be completely assured."

"Okay..." Mr. Detective responded faintly.

No one saw, on the screen in front of him, that pathetic researcher in the white lab coat had sat up. His face was facing the monitor, as if looking through the camera to gaze back at the person on the other side.

And no one noticed, at the same time, his mouth seemed to be opening and closing slightly, as if murmuring to himself. And even if someone had seen, they wouldn’t have been likely to notice these tiny details too small to be captured by pixels.

But Mr. Detective saw it very clearly.

That guy was looking at him... his lips were moving.

He was saying...

"They’re... deceiving you!"