Chapter 526: Subconscious
After finishing his words, Wei Yang bent down to pick up his watering can, thrust the pitchfork firmly into the ground, then took a few steps forward and pushed Qi Xia away with his grimy hands.
"It's getting late today." Wei Yang turned his head, scanning the three of them with his sly eyes. "Do you want to stay for dinner? There's a young girl who was dismembered just yesterday. She's been sitting for a day now—the texture is pretty decent."
Hearing this, Qi Xia's expression darkened a bit more. After a moment, he finally asked, "Wei Yang, were all these things done on my orders?"
"Ha, not at all. I just have my own preferences." Wei Yang smiled as he stretched. "Back when I was running scams overseas, I often thought of an old phrase from novels: 'return to the countryside.' At the time, I wondered how pleasant it would be if I could wash my hands of that life and live a self-sufficient, pastoral existence."
Chen Junnan glanced at the scattered limbs all over the farm and furrowed his brow. "So this is your 'countryside'?"
"Yes, and no." Wei Yang shook his head. "An ordinary pastoral life only lets you plant vegetables and water them. If you're a bit more extravagant, you might raise some cattle or sheep... That's not the 'pastoral life' I dreamed of. Only here can I have it. Here, I can do whatever I want. If I want to kill, I kill. If I want to torture, I torture. I can even tear into the severed limbs of a young girl... Do you understand?"
"No, we don't." Chen Junnan and Qiao Jiajin said in unison.
"Hold on to a bit more memory, and you'll understand." Wei Yang said nonchalantly. "Here, you can do anything you wouldn't dare to do in the real world, because you might not remember it yourself, and no one else will remember it either."
"Don't lie to yourself." Qi Xia cut in coldly. "Keep those severed limbs for yourself to gnaw on. We're no longer the same kind of people."
"Hahaha..." Wei Yang, who was about to step inside, laughed again at Qi Xia's words. "Not the same kind of people? We're all 'Goats'..."
"But I'm a 'true Goat,'" Qi Xia said. "And you?"
"Interesting..." Wei Yang turned around, his voice barely a whisper. "I'm a 'true Goat' too."
Qi Xia's brow furrowed instantly, but the next second, Wei Yang turned and entered the room, slamming the door heavily behind him.
Wei Yang was indeed a true Goat.
Chen Junnan and Qiao Jiajin were both momentarily dazed. They had come to talk to Wei Yang, but the conversation between Qi Xia and Wei Yang was far too obscure for them to follow.
Qi Xia, seeing this, frowned and turned to the two of them. "Let's go. We need to get back before dark."
Seeing Qi Xia's expression, the two understood that something was up. They knew it was fine for them to be confused, as long as Qi Xia understood.
On the way back, Qi Xia suddenly turned his head and asked, "Chen Junnan, did I used to... touch my chin when I was thinking?"
"Used to...?" Chen Junnan thought carefully. "Now that you mention it... actually, no! Sure, you used to think a lot back then, but you had all kinds of poses. Touching your chin wasn't one of them."
Chen Junnan searched his distant memories, and even he couldn't recall exactly when Qi Xia had started liking to touch his chin. Was it only since this meeting, seven years later?
Listening to Chen Junnan, Qi Xia knew there were two problems to solve now.
Besides the "touching the chin" issue, there was also the matter of the "true Goat."
Through this brief encounter, Qi Xia realized that his and Wei Yang's thought processes were very similar.
In other words, since the other party had thrown out the "touching the chin" puzzle, it meant Wei Yang believed the current conditions were sufficient to deduce the correct answer.
Now, with the long road ahead, Qi Xia had plenty of time to list out all the conditions.
He had never had the habit of touching his chin before, but now he did. More than likely, this habit had been learned from Wei Yang.
From this perspective, the conclusion was already obvious.
It took Qi Xia only a few seconds to string together all the clues one by one. His expression darkened again, and even his eyes were filled with sorrow.
Indeed, every path he explored led to this very answer.
Qi Xia had even forgotten who Wei Yang was, yet he unconsciously made this gesture. That meant...
Some things engraved in the subconscious would not be forgotten after rebirth.
As soon as this conclusion emerged, countless clues in Qi Xia's mind suddenly connected, like a circuit receiving power for the first time, all snapping together in a brilliant flash.
Even Wei Yang probably didn't expect that Qi Xia had arrived at the answer within ten steps of walking away.
But how could Qi Xia bring himself to believe such a terrifying answer?
If he could control his own subconscious, that meant he had foreseen this problem long ago. That was why he kept improving himself through every experience.
Weren't all the "paths" he had laid for himself before the best proof of that?
He would engrave knowledge into his mind over and over, hoping that one day, that knowledge might save his life unconsciously.
He would fail again and again, until he finally succeeded.
As long as he didn't die completely, something in his subconscious would always remain—whether it was knowledge or habits, memories or...
That was what Wei Yang had meant.
"Something that can be left behind..."
Qi Xia's mind involuntarily conjured the image of that figure in the pure white dress.
"Yu Nian'an, are you just a lingering thought of mine... or half of my life?"
Qi Xia felt his mind buzzing. Almost everything he had held onto was about to come crashing down at this moment.
Could it be that Yu Nian'an—and those strange memories—were things that his past self had, one day, somehow engraved into his subconscious?
Even if it didn't work the first time... what about many times?
Through repeated brainwashing and hypnosis, could he fabricate a convincing memory?
"So there was no need for 'Echo' or 'magic' at all..." Qi Xia let out a bitter laugh as he looked at the sky. "I never needed those things... I could drive myself into a corner all by myself..."
"Con man... what's wrong with you?" Qiao Jiajin felt something was off. Qi Xia had been muttering to himself since just now.
"Old Qi, you alright?" Chen Junnan also asked. "Did that lunatic Wei Yang scare you senseless?"
"Scare me senseless...?" The bitter smile seemed frozen on Qi Xia's face, leaving no room for rational thought. "Qiao Jiajin, Chen Junnan... tell me, why exactly do we want to escape?"