45: Chapter 45 This isn't about deciphering secrets, it's about psychological counseling.

This time, the person brought in wasn't being helped; they were being pushed in on a mobile stretcher, strapped down by two security personnel with restraint straps.

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It was a woman, in her early thirties, wearing the same hospital gown.

Her hair was disheveled, and there were several bloody scratches on her face that she had inflicted on herself.

She didn't have Zhang Yuan's dullness; instead, she was struggling, letting out low, guttural roars from her throat, her body twisting under the restraints, creating dull thumping sounds.

"Let me go! Burn it! Burn it all!" she screamed, her voice shrill and filled with terror.

"Fire! There's fire!"

In the observation room, Professor Sun gripped his pen tightly.

Compared to Zhang Yuan's quiet breakdown, the manic behavior of this researcher, Li Hui, was far more troublesome.

"Her condition is the most severe," Qian Li's voice came over the intercom, sounding very exhausted. "Three days ago, she suddenly had an episode while organizing scan images and tried to use a lighter to set fire to all the materials. If she hadn't been discovered in time, the core data of the entire base would have been reduced to ashes."

Jiang Feng didn't speak; he just watched the woman struggling violently on the stretcher.

The system panel appeared before his eyes.

【Name: Li Hui】

【Status: Information Pollution - Severe, deeply bound to 'Fire Trauma'】

Another trauma trigger.

The security personnel secured the stretcher in the center of the room, then retreated to the corner, maintaining a defensive stance.

Li Hui's head spun wildly, scanning every corner of the room, before finally stopping on Jiang Feng.

"It's you! You have it too! Burn you!" she shrieked, struggling even harder, causing the metal frame of the fixed bed to shake.

Jiang Feng turned around, facing away from Li Hui and towards the one-way glass.

He knew the people in the observation room were watching.

"Professor Sun," Jiang Feng said, "go find a primary school textbook passage right now."

The people in the observation room were stunned.

A primary school textbook passage?

Professor Sun frowned and asked through the microphone, "What passage?"

Jiang Feng's tone was flat: " 'Wang Erxiao' ."

As soon as these three words were spoken, the entire observation room fell silent.

A group of the country's top scientists, archaeologists, and psychologists, in the nation's most classified underground base, were being asked by a "metaphysics consultant" to find a primary school hero story from decades ago.

"Consultant Jiang, this is no time for jokes!" Professor Sun's voice was filled with suppressed anger.

"I'm not joking." Jiang Feng turned his head and glanced at Li Hui, who was still shrieking. "Her mind is a sea of fire right now. Trying to talk science or reason with her is like pouring oil on a fire."

"You need to use a more powerful, more fundamental concept, one rooted in her childhood cognition, to overwrite that fire." Jiang Feng held up a finger.

"For her generation, that simple admiration for heroes and the sense of security established in primary school classrooms is the best fire extinguisher."

This theory left the people in the observation room looking at each other in confusion.

Overwriting traumatic memories with childhood memories?

It sounded like it had a hint of psychology, but the method was just too outrageous.

"If you can't find the text, find someone who can recite it by heart," Jiang Feng added. "Find a male comrade with a loud, clear voice, and have him recite this passage from beginning to end into the microphone."

"Remember, it must be emotional."

Qian Li did not hesitate.

He glanced at Li Hui, who was still having an episode, and then at Jiang Feng's back on the surveillance screen.

He hesitated no longer.

"Do as he says!" Qian Li ordered Zhou Ming, the deputy team leader beside him. "Get it done immediately! As fast as possible!"

Zhou Ming nodded, turned, and walked quickly out of the observation room.

Inside the containment room.

Li Hui's shrieking continued.

Jiang Feng just stood there with his back to her, waiting.

About two minutes later.

A male voice, slightly nervous but trying hard to remain steady, rang out through the containment room's broadcast system.

"The cattle are still grazing on the hillside, but the cowherd is nowhere to be found..."

When the voice sounded, Li Hui's struggling paused for a moment.

"If not him, then who could it be? It is Wang Erxiao, who watched me grow up..."

The recitation continued, carrying a simple strength unique to that era.

The madness on Li Hui's face slowly faded, replaced by a dazed expression.

Her bloodshot eyes reflected the cold lights on the ceiling.

Jiang Feng remained with his back to her.

His right index finger tapped lightly in the air beside him once more.

Tap. Tap-tap. Tap.

He was synchronizing with the rhythm of the recitation on the broadcast.

【Ding! Frequency synchronization complete, accessing target "Li Hui"'s subconscious information stream...】

【Parsing started...】

【Information pollution source: Sample-001 (Pre-Qin bamboo slip)】

【Pollution mode: Subconscious resonance amplification】

【Decoding abnormal frequency band...】

Immediately after, flames and a burning pain flooded into Jiang Feng's mind.

An old tenement building.

The narrow corridor was piled with clutter.

Thick smoke billowed, making it impossible to breathe.

A little girl, five or six years old, was locked inside her home, the windows sealed with security bars.

She pounded on the door in terror, crying out for "Mom," while outside were the loud bangs of firefighters breaking down the door and the screams of neighbors.

Flames licked in through the crack of the door, setting her pant leg on fire.

...

"...The enemy threw Erxiao down from the mountaintop, and our hero, Wang Erxiao, was thus cruelly murdered by the enemy."

On the broadcast, the reader finished the last word in a mournful tone.

The containment room returned to silence.

On the stretcher, Li Hui was no longer shrieking or struggling.

She lay motionless, two lines of tears sliding from the corners of her eyes, murmuring unconsciously.

"Erxiao... brother..."

Jiang Feng turned around.

He walked to the side of the stretcher, leaned down, and looked at this woman trapped by her childhood nightmare.

He reached out his hand, passing through the air, and brushed over her forehead.

"The fire is out," Jiang Feng said softly.

"You are safe."

Li Hui closed her eyes, her breathing became even, and she fell into a deep sleep.

In the observation room, no one made a sound.

Everyone looked at the surveillance screen, watching the female researcher they had considered a lunatic now sleeping quietly.

Professor Sun held onto the edge of the table, his body trembling slightly. He had spent his whole life studying tangible artifacts, believing in carbon-14 dating and geological stratification.

But everything that happened today had smashed the scientific faith he had built over decades to pieces.

This was not science.

This was theology.

【Ding! Valid divination count: 2/3】

Jiang Feng straightened up and waved his hand at the security personnel in the corner.

"Take her down."

"Find a female nurse to wipe her face and change her into clean clothes. Let her sleep; she'll be fine when she wakes up."

The two security personnel came back to their senses, hurried forward, unlocked the stretcher, and pushed it out cautiously.

The alloy door closed again.

Jiang Feng walked back to his small stool and sat down. He picked up his thermos, unscrewed the lid, and took a sip of the effervescent water that had already lost its fizz.

He looked up at the invisible glass wall.

"Consultant Qian."

"I... I'm here." Qian Li's voice came over the broadcast, trembling.

"Now, we can talk about what this thing actually is." Jiang Feng pointed to the metal box on the table, which was protected by layers of security.

He stood up and walked to the box.

"This thing is not some kind of mental virus, nor is it some supernatural power." Jiang Feng's tone was very matter-of-fact.

"It's more like a mirror."

"Or rather, a search engine."

In the observation room, everyone held their breath and pricked up their ears.

"It doesn't create anything; it only retrieves."

"It scans every human brain that approaches it, searching your memory banks for the deepest, most fragile, and most fearful parts of your memories."

"Zhang Yuan's drowning, Li Hui's fire." Jiang Feng's finger brushed lightly over the explosion-proof glass cover.

"It finds these memory fragments, then, using a technology we currently cannot understand, amplifies them and plays them directly in your subconscious in a single-track loop mode."

"So, your team members aren't crazy."

"They were just... forcibly strapped in front of a VR device, day and night, over and over again, reliving the most terrifying movie of their lives."

"Over and over again, until their minds collapsed and their motherboards burned out."

A search engine.

Single-track loop.

VR device.

Zhou Ming, the deputy team leader of psychology, slapped his thigh. "I understand! This is a form of forced psychological suggestion based on memory arousal! Its information waves might act directly on the amygdala and hippocampus of the brain!"

Professor Sun also seemed to have found a reasonable explanation.

He adjusted his glasses, picked up a pen, and wrote a title on a brand-new notebook.

【Preliminary Research Report on the Phenomenological Theory and Clinical Intervention of "Information Pollution"】

Below the title, he hesitated for a moment, then carefully wrote the words "Jiang Feng" in the "Project Consultant" column.

After writing, he looked up and asked through the microphone in a consultative tone.

"Consultant Jiang, then... what about the last one?"

"We still have one patient, Professor Liu. His symptoms are very strange; he doesn't cry or cause a scene, nor does he go crazy or scream." Professor Sun's voice was filled with pleading.

"He just... laughs."

"From the moment the episode started, he has just been sitting there laughing. No matter who talks to him, he laughs. We gave him sedatives, but he still laughs."

Jiang Feng lifted his chin.

Laughing?

"Bring him up." Jiang Feng sat back down on his small stool, his tone returning to his previous laziness.

Just as well, I haven't completed my three divinations for today yet.

"Hurry up; I'm still waiting to get off work and have lunch."