Chen Huijie laid out his astonishing origins as concisely and precisely as he could.
By the time he was done, even Chen Huijie in the observation room had forgotten to be angry.
But the moment Hoshiguma set down her pen and stopped taking notes, he understood.
Not a word of it had gone in.
"This really does go a bit beyond the worldview of an ordinary person," Chen Huijie said, leaning back calmly in his chair.
"I'm also aware that if this testimony makes it into the official file, then I'll either be treated as a mental patient with voyeuristic stalking tendencies, or as some lunatic who wrote himself crazy from too much fiction. Either way, I'll probably end up in a psychiatric ward."
He paused, then fixed Hoshiguma with a direct, serious look.
"But that's not important."
"What matters is…"
He stared straight into her eyes.
"You. Do you believe me?"
"…"
Hoshiguma didn't answer.
She only smiled.
"All right. I understand."
Seeing that reaction, Chen Huijie knew his explanation had been a complete waste of breath.
At that moment Hoshiguma seemed to listen briefly through the earpiece connected to the observation room. Then she asked curiously:
"If you say you and Old Chen are the same person, why don't you have the racial traits you should have?"
"If I told you…"
Even Chen Huijie himself nearly couldn't keep a straight face saying it.
"…that it's because I contracted Oripathy, and because of that my dragon horns and tail fell off on their own?"
On top of that, after those parts fell away, his Oripathy had actually healed.
Though the process had been agonizing beyond words.
Every day he had coughed up mouthful after mouthful of blood. At times it felt as though his organs and bones were being coughed out with it.
The instant they heard this, both Chen Huijie and Hoshiguma burst out laughing.
Across Terra, there existed an energy-laden crystalline mineral known as Originium.
Exposure to Originium carried the risk of infection, resulting in Oripathy.
Once someone contracted the disease, active Originium would gradually invade and replace healthy tissue, causing irreversible systemic degeneration. The body's functions would steadily fail until, eventually, the infected person died from acute complications or organ failure.
No verified case of a complete cure had ever been confirmed on Terra.
Which made Oripathy, for all practical purposes, another name for death.
Patients could only rely on suppressants to buy themselves more time.
On the way back to headquarters, the officers had already used a simple blood detector on Chen Huijie. It hadn't triggered. There were no crystal lesions visible on his skin either. In other words, he was almost certainly not infected.
And besides—
If he had been sick enough to lose racial characteristics, how could he possibly still be walking around like this?
While they laughed, however, Chen Huijie was quietly thinking.
After a moment, he said:
"Bring me my phone. Check the memos on it. There are records of all kinds of cases in there. If I remember correctly, some of them are recent ones. You can compare them."
In those brief few moments, Chen Huijie had already weighed the pros and cons of exposing the memo function.
In the end, he decided it was still better to reveal it.
If he could prove the memos were real, then many future actions would become far easier.
On the other side, the mention of cases immediately sobered Hoshiguma, Swire, and Chen Huijie alike.
Several unsolved cases had occurred recently.
Whatever this man was—insane or not—if he could solve crimes, then he was a useful sort of crazy.
Lungmen had been a disaster lately. Gangs, outside forces, all tangled together. Just thinking about it made one's head ache. More than ever, the Guard Department needed to demonstrate competence in order to keep those people in line.
"Here. Your phone."
After hurrying in, Swire and Chen Huijie handed it to him.
Chen Huijie deftly opened the Memo app and held the screen up in front of them.
"Look. These are the recent cases… What's with that look?"
He noticed the expression in Chen Huijie's eyes.
It was the look of someone thinking, How ridiculous. Getting angry with a lunatic. I'm the truly laughable one here.
That made him frown.
But then he caught the reflection in her pupils.
On her side, his phone screen was completely blank.
He immediately shifted the phone to catch the reflection in the glass.
In the reflection, he was indeed holding nothing but a white-lit screen.
Only I can see it?
Chen Huijie's expression darkened as he closed the phone.
He instinctively wanted to simply state the details of several cases as proof.
But then what?
How would he explain knowing them?
If they decided he was an accomplice, how would he prove otherwise?
And if he kept trying to prove, explain, prove, explain…
It would only waste time.
Time that could be better spent just going out and capturing the culprit himself.
Forget it.
This was enough.
He had already achieved what he needed from this line of thought.
Now it was time to get out and handle real business.
As for these three—whether they believed him or not, it was not worth pouring more effort into them.
Wanting these familiar strangers to immediately trust him had been unfair to everyone involved.
And at the end of the day, he was only an outsider here.
A drifting duckweed floating without roots.
Fortunately, I'm sturdy duckweed.
At the same time, Hoshiguma and the others gradually fell silent.
Looking at the man before them, they suddenly felt as though the distance between them had expanded infinitely.
He was right there in front of them.
And yet it seemed as though he had already been cast into immeasurable darkness.
Lonely. Solitary.
But still upright—like someone supporting an entire world alone.
"Sorry. That was just a joke to lighten the mood. Let's start over."
Putting away his phone, Chen Huijie said in a calm tone:
"First question was name, right? My name is Yuanyan."
Yuanyan.
The name from Chen Huijie's first life.
Also the alias he had used during his travels.
"Ah? Oh. Right. I'll write it down."
Hoshiguma hurriedly flipped to a fresh page and began recording.
At that moment, Chen Huijie extended his hand.
"Give me paper and pen too. I'm writing something."
"Here."
Swire passed them over from behind.
"Thank you. Please continue. The next question should be sex."
"Ah, right. Sex."
"Sex: male. Race: Durin, with genetic mutation. Residence: none for now…"
The basic Guard Department interrogation template was something Chen Huijie already knew by heart.
He answered fluently while writing at speed, and Hoshiguma could only hurry to keep up.
"…I have no prior record. This is my first offense. My motive for impersonating a Superintendent was that it looked cool. I admit that impersonating a Superintendent was wrong."
He paused, then went on:
"But I recall Governor Wei once said that demonstrable meritorious service can offset certain minor crimes. I believe rescuing Officer A Shui and preserving both his life and the intelligence in his head should count as meritorious service. If that still isn't enough, then take a look at this."
Chen Huijie set down the pen and handed the notebook to Swire.
"These are my recommendations for improving the Guard Department's emergency response structure, breach training, and weapons handling techniques. Governor Wei explicitly classifies this as a major meritorious contribution. Take a look. Archive it. I'm leaving now."
-------
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