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But drawing from his extensive experiences with hypnosis, Joel carefully pondered his past series of experiences, reflecting on every sensory detail. He found nothing out of the ordinary and remained clueless as to when the hypnosis was induced.

Even now, he still couldn’t precisely determine whether the little girl in a white dress he saw on the real-time surveillance feed and the advertisement he had heard just now existed in reality or were purely illusions.

If he was under the influence, perceiving illusions, he was confident he could discern them.

But according to his method, neither the image he saw nor the sound he heard seemed like illusions.

Joel stood for a while longer, the large screen in the mall was looply displaying videos. The advert for Ping An Life Insurance did not appear again, and there was nothing unique about the other commercials, full English advert slogans did not appear anymore either.

He hesitated for a bit. He neither tried to verify the source of the video on the screen nor looked into the direction pointed out by the woman who had spoken the script in English—there was a travel agency there. The feeling he got while watching the commercial was that this woman was asking him to check out that travel agency.

Joel decided to first leave the area. The sensory interference in the busy city district was too much. He needed to find a quiet place to ponder and collect himself.

But he hadn’t walked more than a few steps before a furious voice suddenly aired by: “Peng City?! I’m not in Peng city! I’m not in Peng City…”

Startled, he looked back only to see a man, who had just passed him by, impatiently saying to his phone, “You must have got it wrong, my surname is Wu, but I’m not in Peng City and I’ve never been there! Buy a house or what?? Buy your mother! Fuck!” He then angrily hung up the phone, grumbling as he walked away, seemingly harassed by a real estate advertisement call.

Joel furrowed his brow and pondered. The stranger was just an ordinary person and the words he spoke should not have been directed towards him. But why did he have a feeling that those words held some hidden meaning?

Upon learning that Pengcheng City was the location of John’s phase transitions, Joel had been thinking about when to visit the city. Even just now, he thought about directly going to Peng City disregarding what would happen to John here, disregarding the “Help J” etching, disregarding the little girl in a white dress from the surveillance footage. If he could locate John, all his doubts would naturally be answered.

The passerby’s words seemed to be responding to his thoughts, and he couldn’t help but pay attention.

Joel pondered for a second, didn’t let his thoughts wander farther, and continued walking.

Almost instinctively, he reserved a part of his attention for the surrounding advertisements, passersby conversations, various movements, and scenes.

Then, two minutes later, he suddenly noticed a line of text passing by on an oblong-shaped advertising screen not far in front:

“Are you looking for a place to relax? Wushu Mountain may be your answer.”

Joel paused for a moment. He had the impression that the sentence was directed at him. He glanced at the shop next to the billboard, it was a travel agency.

He hesitated briefly in front of the travel agency but didn’t go inside to inquire.

He had this feeling as he hurriedly walked past and all sorts of sounds echoed around him, that a force was guiding him, dissuading him from going to Peng City and instead go to Wushu Mountain. It felt like the answers and John could only be found in Wushu Mountain.

But when he actually paid attention to those “noises,” he discovered that either it seemed like he heard wrong, saw wrong, or those were just ordinary sounds or images.

He forcibly controlled himself not to get influenced by those “noises,” found a quiet corner in a small park, and sat down.

In here, far away from the hustle and bustle of the city center and the busy shopping streets, a lot of those “noises” had disappeared, his tightly strung nerves finally relaxed a bit, and he could breathe.

He was even more positive now that he has been hypnotized. Some sort of psychological suggestion has been projected onto him. So whenever he heard some equivocal sounds or saw some suggestive scenes, he felt as if they were affecting him and expressing a specific meaning.

That influencing moment, according to his guess, should have started when he saw the little girl in the white dress in the real-time surveillance feed.

Only he didn’t understand how his opponent projected a psychological suggestion on him. Moreover, why did they want him to go to Wushu Mountain? What’s there?

With these thoughts in mind, he took out his mobile phone, ready to look up how far Wushu Mountain was from his current location—the phone was from the lady who gave him a lift, all the cards in it were Chinese, so were the apps. Although the phone he carried, to begin with, was not unusable, after contrasting the two, the one given to him by the lady was indeed more convenient to use.

However, this time, as soon as he opened the map app, an advertisement popped up:

Across a splendid mountain and river landscape, the five elegant ink-styled characters stood out prominently—”Come to Wushu Mountain!”

After a 3-second advert, the map’s interface opened up, surprisingly it automatically located Wushu Mountain for him.

Joel paused for a second. He shakes his head instinctively, only to see that when he opened his eyes again, the position marked on his phone was back to Liucheng where he was currently.

What happened?

Was that moment reality or an illusion?

Joel’s grip on the phone unconsciously tightened, inadvertently bending the metallic cover and destroying the screen.

He initially thought that distancing himself from the restaurant and avoiding the varied and multitude clamors of the bustling streets would lessen the influence on him. However, it seemed utterly pointless now as the hypnotic suggestions were deeply rooted in his subconscious.

Upon reflection, the hypnosis might not have commenced from the moment he started watching the surveillance footage at the restaurant but from the moment he saw the “Help J” etchings.

Joel then pulled out the damaged restaurant receipt and glanced at it as if he was weary that it might cause some problems.

All night long, Joel received various hints suggesting that he shouldn’t go to Peng City, rather, he should go to Wushu Mountain. But the more it happened, the more alert and hesitant he became.

Eventually, at three o’clock in the morning, he made up his mind, hypnotized a young man running Didi (a ride-hailing service), and had him drive to Peng City.

The more that “suggestion” discouraged him from one place, the more he wanted to go; the more it directed him somewhere, the less he wanted to go there.

During the journey, the car’s radio aired a broadcast discussing the travel experiences in Wushu Mountain, which made Joel’s nerves tighten up again.

But oddly enough, when he asked the driver, the driver heard the same content as he did. The driver frequently listened to this late-night broadcast program and was familiar with the two hosts and didn’t seem to sense anything abnormal.

After half an hour of introductions about Wushu Mountain, Joel could not help but ask the driver to change the channel. Now, it was playing music, no more information about Wushu Mountain was broadcasted again.

Just when Joel let out a sigh of relief, there was a notification on his mobile phone—it was his own.

Picking up his phone, Joel couldn’t help but frown. He had received a new email in his private communication inbox, but this mailbox was specially used for communication with John. No one else knew about it.

He opened the new email and was astonished to see it was genuinely from John – written in English – stating he was located in an abandoned factory on the outskirts of Pengcheng City, urging “Count Joel” to find him immediately.

This email raised countless questions!

Firstly, he had contacted John numerous times before without receiving any reply, which led him on a journey to China; Secondly, he and John used a code language for their email exchanges, yet this email was crystal clear without any code; Thirdly, the tone of the email seemed to suggest the sender knew he had already arrived in China.

Had John fallen under someone’s control, using this email to lure him?

Was there something lying in ambush within that abandoned factory in Pengcheng?

Joel furrowed his brows again at the email on his phone, struggling internally. Luckily, this time he managed to control himself, not crushing his phone in his hand.

At this point, he felt as though his actions were being puppeteered by an unseen hand, controlling where he went, and monitoring his actions.

All of it was utterly bizarre.

Realizing that the car was about to leave the highway exit of Pengcheng City, and enter the urban area, Joel closed his eyes. Forcing himself to calm down, he reflected upon a series of encounters after he entered this Oriental nation, and any clues he may have discovered so far.

A suspicion gradually formed within him:

The person who sent him an email under John’s name, asking him to come to Pengcheng, and the one who used mysterious techniques to hypnotically suggest he should go to Wushu Mountain instead of to Pengcheng, might not actually be the same person.

Before John had the encounter with the girl in white clothes in Liucheng, left the “Help J” scratch mark, and underwent two stage transformations, he had lost contact with the “Red Rose”.

Perhaps… John did not willingly undergo these phase transformations, rather they were imposed upon him.

It was similar to his attitude towards Guo Tianxiang; however, he didn’t have enough “Blood Beasts” or “Blood Plants” to force Guo Tianxiang to undergo that stage transformation.

Thinking along these lines, Joel immediately became anxious. If this were the case, then Pengcheng would indeed be an extremely dangerous area. Even though he was far more powerful than John, it didn’t guarantee safety from capture and being cultivated as a “Blood Source”. After all, if one were to evaluate it thoroughly, his advantage over other “Blood Clans” was in terms of “minor tricks”, rather than brute force.

Should he be unable to set up his “minor tricks” in advance, and if the enemy were unaffected by his hypnosis or intrusion of thoughts, his violent confrontational ability might not ensure his safe return.

In this mysterious oriental country, Joel felt it was absolutely justified to consider his adversaries as more powerful than they may appear.

With his mind going in these circles, he grew irate again, so much so that he was tempted to tear the driver into shreds and take a bath in his blood!

However, he knew he could not do this now. Touching blood, even ordinary human blood, would accelerate his losing control or even complete break down, as ordinary human blood could no longer sustain his stage transformation needs.

He could only indulge in the pleasures of consuming human blood once more after he found a qualified “Blood Source” and passed through this stage transition limit.

He closed his eyes, adjusted his emotions, then continued pondering along his earlier line of thought.

He deduced that the person who made him unconsciously mindful of the psychological hints in Liucheng, continually guiding him towards Wushu Mountain, was either non-malicious towards him or was weaker than him—otherwise, if they could hypnotically suggest him without his awareness, they could have also managed to attack him using other means.

After leaving the highway, Joel instructed the driver to stop the car. He then switched cars, “persuading” the new car’s driver to take him several hundred kilometers away to Wushu Mountain.

His stage transition limit was fast approaching, he was running out of time. Hence, he chose the path that seemed to present the fewer risks.

After a journey from the evening until the next morning, then again from morning until dusk, Joel finally arrived at Wushu Mountain.

As soon as he arrived at Wushu Mountain, various forms of “clues” appeared around Joel, such as advertisements on the small LCD screens of roadside snack carts, tourist tips broadcasted repeatedly in the scenic area, and occasionally a voice would appear undeterminable sources, as if only he could hear, “guiding” his actions.

This “guidance”, however, did not take him into the Wushu Mountain Scenic Area. Instead, he spent quite a lot of time to enter another larger, less frequented area—Chongyun Mountain.

In fact, Joel was less concerned about the mountains than the city, after all, he held the title of “Lord of the Forest”, and this wasn’t just an empty claim.

Compared with cities filled with buildings, forested mountains felt more like home for him. Many of his abilities could function more efficiently there.

Hence, when deciding whether to enter Chongyun Mountain, he didn’t hesitate much.

Of course, Joel was still very cautious. After entering Chongyun Mountain, every few kilometers he would stop, spit out his mouthpiece, leaving a bit of “prosthetic tissue fluid”.

At the same time, he utilized his sense of smell and hearing to their fullest extent, meticulously searching the vicinity to see if there was any “Blood Beast” or “Blood Plant”.

Once inside Chongyun Mountain, all the hints and clues seemed to disappear. Joel was like a headless fly, directionless and relentlessly penetrating deeper and deeper, testing the ground.

Time ticked by, and by four in the morning, he still hadn’t found anything special, increasing Joel’s irritation.

He began to question whether the so-called hints and hypnosis were mere illusions, resulting from his thoughts being in turmoil due to his nearing stage transition limit.

Maybe no one ever suggested that he go to Wushu Mountain, let alone Chongyun Mountain?

Just as he was agonizing over these thoughts, the phone in his pocket suddenly lit up. He hadn’t used any lighting equipment in the dead of the night, relying on his night vision ability, making the light from his phone in his pocket especially noticeable.

Extracting his phone, he found that the device had automatically triggered its flash to take a selfie.

Joel assumed it was a malfunction and was just about to delete the photo when he saw that the flash had captured an image, not of his own face, but of John!

Joel’s breath hitched.