Author: 长洱 / Chang’er
Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/
Chapter 59
Lin Chen had always known that the Chen family was trouble that followed him like a shadow, and this was something Xing Conglian had specifically reminded him of before he came to Yongchuan.
The fact was, no one liked to be constantly pestered by trouble.
After hearing Xing Conglian briefly explain the contents of the phone call to him, Lin Chen actually suspected his ears had some hearing problems. “School forum photos? They suspect I used hypnotism to induce suicide?”
“Shixiong, this was posted at the top of our school’s BBS!” Fu Hao reached into his pocket and wanted to take out his phone but found it empty.
Wang Chao reacted faster. He sat down again, took out his laptop, typed out the address, and opened the webpage. He put the laptop on top of his head and said, “Professor Fu, is this the post?”
Fu Hao pulled Lin Chen over, bent down slightly, and clicked on the post. “Yes, yes. This is it. Shixiong look.”
Lin Chen quickly scanned the photos and the replies. He was calm and simply said, “The angle of the photos is very good.”
Fu Hao got riled up, and as soon as he did, he started chattering again. “Shixiong, why do you think the Chen family keeps haunting you? How can this person who took these photos have such good timing? Were they taken by the murderer? The Chen family chose a really good time to make trouble. Could it be that they originally discussed it with the murderer? I think the Chen family is very suspicious!”
“Wang Chao, what do you think?” Lin Chen picked up the laptop from the top of the boy’s head.
Seeing his chance, Xing Conglian pulled up the little comrade from the ground and said, “Don’t sit on the ground all the time like you have nothing to do.”
“How can I type without sitting down, Captain? I’m working. Don’t you understand? I’m dedicated!” After Wang Chao finished speaking, he ignored Xing Conglian’s motion and just turned to look at the computer screen. His expression instantly stiffened. “This angle… This position…”
“How?”
“It seems to have been directly intercepted from the live broadcast!” Wang Chao said as he looked at Lin Chen in surprise.
Fu Hao was confused when he heard it. “What live broadcast?”
It was just the three people present ignored his question and continued with their own conversation.
“From the perspective, it really looks like it was taken by two surveillance cameras used for the live broadcast,” Xing Conglian said.
“Then, did the live broadcaster do this, then take these screenshots and post them to frame A’Chen?”
“Because we were about to touch the line?” Lin Chen replied.
“Line? Touch what line?” Fu Hao continued to interrupt.
But still, no one responded to him. After all, if you were chasing a drama and were one episode behind, you wouldn’t be able to keep up with the plot.
“Indeed. When the investigation hits a critical point, it will always arouse the vigilance and obstruction of the murderer behind the scenes.” Xing Conglian analyzed. “In fact, the time point at which this post appeared was well timed. It occurred after the three committed suicide, and we traced it back to the live broadcast website. First, this shows that our direction isn’t wrong. Second, it also shows that this case isn’t so simple and that there’s a deep criminal network behind it,” Xing Conglian said as he looked at Lin Chen. “But the question is, what about the Chen family? Are they using the murderer to deal with you, or was this itself their business?”
After all, within Yongchuan, a big family with deep roots like the Chen’s would inevitably have some invisible business. Similarly, only a big family like the Chen’s could support these dark businesses without being easily discovered.
Xing Conglian’s deduction was quite reasonable.
However, Lin Chen shook his head. “I’m not sure, but I suspect it isn’t the Chen family who’s doing it.”
“Why?”
“Their IQ isn’t that high, and they don’t have that kind of courage.”
Lin Chen spoke this calmly, as if he were elucidating a perfectly normal fact, but if the Chen family’s butler was present, he would probably be so angry at Lin Chen’s understatement that he would vomit blood.
“This is actually a good thing. If they’re starting to be nervous, then we will have a chance. After all, nervous people tend to be less thorough, so they’re bound to make mistakes,” Lin Chen said as he patted Xing Conglian on the arm. “Come on, let’s go meet them.”
—-
In the small conference room of the administrative building of Yongchuan University, the smoke was thick and the people were loud.
Most of the smoke came from Jiang Chao, but most of the sound wasn’t from him.
A group of people in the conference room were quarreling over the forum post. Jiang Chao took out a cigarette pack and was about to have another when the office door was pushed open.
“Is this place on fire?” Xing Conglian’s voice came from the door.
Hearing his voice, Jiang Chao suddenly turned his head and rushed to the door as if he had seen a savior, dragging the person into the room. “Lao Xing, you’re finally here!”
As he spoke, he also grabbed Lin Chen with his other hand and refused to let go. “Consultant Lin is here too!”
Unknown whether it was due to Xing Conglian’s arrival or because of what Jiang Chao had just said, but the entire office suddenly fell silent.
Lin Chen looked around the room and, unsurprisingly, saw the figure of Vice President Xu and the butler of the Chen family. In the same room, there were also three people who looked like part of the leadership of the university and about five family members of the deceased students who had red eyes and were crying.
Seeing this scene, it was definitely not easy for Jiang Chao to carry on for so long with these ten people bombarding him in here.
Facing those suspicious, angry, and mocking glances, Lin Chen walked into the room, but instead of taking a seat at the conference table, he walked to the drinking fountain and poured himself a glass of water.
“You’re Lin Chen, the one who killed my child, aren’t you?” A middle-aged woman stood up and pointed to his back as she scolded him.
The water in the water dispenser gurgled.
Without any anger or shock, Lin Chen slowly turned around and took a leisurely sip of the water in his cup, as if addressing the accusation that was just hurled was not as important as drinking water. He finished most of the cup before he finally spoke. “Oh, hypnosis? That is an idea.”
Hearing this, Jiang Chao frowned. “Is it really hypnosis, Consultant Lin?”
“Unfortunately, that’s not possible.” Lin Chen looked at the butler sitting in the main seat at the end of the conference table and raised his cup to greet him slightly.
“My child wouldn’t jump off a building for no reason. Someone must have harmed him!” Hearing this, the woman seemed to have lost all her strength. She sat down heavily and covered her face as she sobbed.
“Yes, my niece is very cheerful. She won’t commit suicide. You must have hypnotized these people. Don’t be so pretentious!” A middle-aged man replied.
“Aren’t you misunderstanding something about hypnosis?” Lin Chen put down the paper cup, walked forward, and stood in front of the middle-aged man. “Have you been watching too many TV dramas?”
“What is with your attitude!” the middle-aged man said angrily.
“If you don’t understand what I just said without emotions, you can realize what I mean. The reason you think hypnosis can kill people is that there are too many works of art that imply such things. Whether they are psychologists or psychiatrists, they are demons who can read into people’s minds and even manipulate their hearts, right?” The angrier the other party got, the calmer Lin Chen became.
“You dare say you can’t hypnotize them, then… Then what were you doing to that girl at the scene!”
“Do you mean like this?” Lin Chen spoke as he took two steps forward. He squatted down in front of the middle-aged woman, stretched out his fingers, and said to the woman, “Please follow my fingers with your eyes.”
As he spoke, he began to move the finger left, right, then up and down at a stable frequency.
At first, the middle-aged woman resisted a little, but slowly, her eyes began to move with Lin Chen’s finger.
The conference room was quiet again. After all, the psychologist was demonstrating a scene that was rarely seen with their own eyes, so everyone present watched with great curiosity.
Gradually, they discovered that the woman’s emotions calmed down at a speed visible to the naked eye.
But Butler Chen’s face became ugly.
Finally, Lin Chen retracted his hand, still with a calm demeanor, and asked, “How do you feel?”
The woman was a little dazed. “I…”
“Are you still conscious?”
“Yes… I feel…”
“It’s weird. You feel better, right?”
“This isn’t hypnosis. It’s just a desensitization technique that uses eye movement. It can reduce negative emotions and is mostly used for treating post-traumatic stress,” Lin Chen said. He patted the woman’s hand and stood up again.
The middle-aged woman clutched her chest, as if she were experiencing her emotions. Lin Chen didn’t say anything but took a few steps in the direction of Xing Conglian.
The woman suddenly raised her head and asked, “You… You… Do you have a number?”
“The therapists at the Psychology Counseling Center in Yongchuan University are more professional than me.” Lin Chen stopped, turned around and said lightly, “If you continue to have nightmares or feel daze, please seek professional help.”
Although this sentence seemed to be said to the middle-aged woman, in fact, he was directing it at all the victim’s family members that were present.
It was probably because Lin Chen’s attitude was neither humble nor overbearing that every word he spoke sounded reasonable. The victim’s family members who were throwing a fit over the suicide, stopped talking.
Some of them even looked at Lin Chen with their gaze changing from suspicion to trust.
Upon seeing this, the butler, who hadn’t spoken once, finally stood up. “Lin Chen, you’re really good at taking care of others… The question we’re obviously here to discuss is whether you hypnotized those students to commit suicide, yet you’re not performing any live psychotherapy? No matter how benevolent you act, your heart is still dirty!”
“I have already answered the question just now. That is not hypnosis.”
“Oh, a murderer would never say that he’s a murderer.”
“The truth is very simple. I can’t do this. I think the number of hypnotists that can do something like hypnotize someone to jump off a building and commit suicide can be counted on one hand. The fee for those people is more than a million U.S. dollars.”
The implication was that a hypnotist like that wouldn’t be so idle as to come to a school and hypnotize a few students.
However, when these words reached Butler Chen’s ears, he gave an intriguing look.
“In other words, you also admit that it’s possible to induce students to commit suicide through hypnosis.”
“Yes, yes. If it was a student suicide, the school would face a lawsuit with huge compensation demanded, but if it’s murder, the school’s responsibility will be much lighter,” Vice President Xu hurriedly agreed.
“Oh, don’t you remember what I said? It’s impossible.” Lin Chen sat down in the chair next to Xing Conglian. “It’s almost impossible to hypnotize others to commit a crime, let alone commit suicide.”
“I remember, Consultant Lin is a top student in the Department of Psychology, right? Is it impossible to hypnotize others to carry out criminal activities? Haven’t you heard of the Heidelberg incident?”
Hearing this, Lin Chen suddenly raised his head, and gave a smile. “You know about it? So you really made a lot of preparations in advance,” he said meaningfully. However, he didn’t give Butler Chen a chance to continue. “In the Heidelberg incident, a hypnotist did hypnotize Mrs. E and cause her to attempt to murder her husband, but if you carefully read the case file, you’ll find that Mrs. E actually behaved in a pained way during the process of committing the murder six times after being hypnotized. That is because the human subconscious will refuse to carry out things that violate moral concepts. If it’s forcibly ordered to be executed, it’s very likely to wake up the person from their hypnotic state, not to mention a life-threatening thing like suicide.”
Xu Guoqing was quite fascinated when he heard this, so he suddenly asked, “Then why did Mrs. E accept the influence and kill her husband?”
“Sorry, I can’t tell you exactly what kind of technique the hypnotist used to accomplish such a feat. I hope you can understand.” Lin Chen paused and then said, “But I can only say that the hypnotist had hypnotized her for several years as Mrs. E’s psychotherapist. I obviously don’t have such conditions or any connections with the deceased for several years, let alone the ability to complete such a complex hypnosis activity that finally induced them to commit suicide.”
Lin Chen ended his statement cleanly.
Everyone present was taken aback and left speechless. This statement was so clear and powerful that even Xu Guoqing felt there was something wrong with his hands as he couldn’t resist the urge to applaud.
“Oh!” Jiang Chao finally understood what Lin Chen meant. He thought for a while and then couldn’t help but ask, “But didn’t you say that hypnosis was an idea? What did you mean by that?”
“I said it’s not hypnosis in the traditional sense, but it is indeed an idea for solving this case.” As Lin Chen spoke, his gaze moved to the window.
Kinky Thoughts:
You can read about the Heidelberg incident here. Supposedly, a young girl named Anna Evan met “Dr. Bergen” on the train, who hypnotized her over the course of 7 years. During this time, he would ask her for money and sex for him and his friends. Later, when she married Mr. E, he tried to break up their strange relationship, resulting in Dr. Bergen trying to hypnotize her to kill her husband.
Despite poisoning and sabotaging the brakes on his motorcycle, Mr. E survived, and Dr. Bergen was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Ironically, during the course of Anna trying to kill her husband and failing, Dr. Bergen then tried to hypnotize her to induce suicide for fear she would go to the police, and that also failed. So… yeah.
<<< || Table of Contents || >>>
Kinky Translations 