Chapter 2822: Forced Mental Treatment
After the performance, Pu Yu had gifts sent over and invited the musician to join them for lunch.
The musician seemed accustomed to such situations, his expression calm and silent as he followed the two players over.
However, Xu Huo and his companion weren't really looking for his company.
They ate at the sky restaurant, and during the meal, a guest came over to greet Pu Yu, accompanied by several strikingly handsome men and women.
The guest was eager to build a good relationship with Pu Yu, grandly offering to give her some "toys" and asking what kind she liked.
Pu Yu cut off the topic in a few words and politely suggested she didn't want to be disturbed while dining with her friend. The young master glanced at Xu Huo and tactfully left.
The sunlight outside was just right. Looking out, the bustling city was filled with vibrant colors, and further in the distance, the undulating desert was also breathtakingly beautiful...
"So cold-hearted," the usually silent musician suddenly spoke.
Xu Huo turned to look at him, but saw him immersed in his own world, saying, "Sunlight is probably the coldest thing in the world."
"Unlike rain and fog that entangle with people, it just hangs high in the sky, ignoring everything in this world."
"Ants, humans, flowers and grass—all life has nothing to do with it. It merely watches over joys and sorrows, the changes of the world, making people feel at every moment that they are no different from ants."
The two players who came with him had already changed their expressions to warn him.
Pu Yu wasn't very interested in him and paid no attention to his words, eating her own food.
But Xu Huo smiled and said, "Isn't that a good thing?"
The musician's eyes shifted to him. "You're different. You're one of the few who have transcended the realm of ordinary people. You already stand at the top of this world."
Precisely because he possessed the utmost power, he couldn't understand the helplessness of someone like him, nor could he empathize with how someone like him perceived the world.
The scorching sun was as cold as blades to him, but to someone like Xu Huo, it was merely a genuine scenery.
Once upon a time, he too had been like this...
No words could soothe the pain of a ruined family, but Pu Yu felt Xu Huo was right. "Maybe being unnoticed is the best state."
She had her players escort the musician out, then seriously observed the sunlight outside for a moment before snorting, "Who dares to say they aren't ants under the sun?"
In the afternoon, Xu Huo had an appointment with Tang Xu, and Pu Yu had her own matters to handle, so they parted ways after lunch.
Tang Xu's attitude was even better now, almost willing to bare his entire wealth to show sincerity. Xu Huo had long noticed he had a favor to ask, so he took the initiative to inquire.
"I originally planned to treat you well for a few days, make you feel indebted, so you wouldn't easily refuse when I asked for help. I never expected you to be friends with Miss Pu Yu... That makes me a bit embarrassed," Tang Xu said. "But this matter is very important to me, so I can only steel myself and speak up."
"As for compensation, anything I can offer, just name it, and I won't even frown."
"First, tell me what it is," Xu Huo said.
This time, Tang Xu didn't play any tricks and laid out the whole story.
He had a fiancée, also a B-rank player, with some talent in mental evolution. But he didn't know if her evolution had gone wrong or if she had been ambushed. After coming out of an instance last time, she fell into a coma and couldn't be awakened no matter what.
Experts were called in for examinations, but they could only detect abnormal brainwave activity and extremely active mental power. Several doctors who tried to intervene in the treatment were attacked, suffering significant aftereffects.
Tang Xu had no choice but to suspend her player status and have her hospitalized for treatment.
She had been lying in the hospital for over three months now.
"To be honest, I've almost given up hope by now, but then I met you on the train," Tang Xu looked at him sincerely. "You're different from any other mental evolver I've seen, so I thought I'd give it a try..."
Xu Huo understood his meaning. Of course, after agreeing to Pu Yu, he needed to understand the mental healing procedures in Flowing Gold City, so he proposed first looking at the previous treatment plans for Tang Xu's fiancée.
Tang Xu immediately perked up and arranged a flight to the hospital.
"Currently, there are two main modes of mental healing," the accompanying expert explained. "One is to hypnotize the patient using instruments, mainly using suggestion methods to alleviate the patient's psychological trauma."
"The other is forced intervention by a mental evolver. This is generally for patients with poor mental states whose brains have developed lesions. When they have episodes, they may seriously threaten their own safety and that of others, so forced treatment is necessary."
"Forced treatment? Surgery or mental control?" Xu Huo asked.
"Mr. Xu is joking. Unless the patient is completely given up on, the hospital won't easily perform such surgeries," the expert said. "Our research has found that mental evolvers are particularly sensitive to other evolvers. Unlike when they are interfered with by instruments and actively or passively close off their mental world, when encountering other mental powers, the primary state of an evolver is to attack, using attack as a defense to protect their own mental world."
"It is also in this state that the treating evolver can intervene in the patient's mental world."
"But this is different from a simple contest of mental worlds. Most patients' mental worlds are unstable. Instability doesn't mean their mental power is weakened; on the contrary, they tend to concentrate their mental power for their own use, and even after losing normal logical thinking, they can unleash astonishing lethality. One evolver who treated Miss Zeng was trapped in her mental world for ten days before waking up."
As the expert spoke, he displayed the mental power data of Tang Xu's fiancée, Miss Zeng.
Research on mental evolution in District 003 was quite advanced, no longer limited to the overall fluctuations in mental power values. They could also determine the current state of an evolver based on subtle changes in mental power—whether they were in a berserk state or relatively calm—and could even simulate the approximate state of a out-of-control mental world based on the evolver's original mental evolution data.
Xu Huo looked at Miss Zeng's treatment records over the past three months. Every mental world mentioned by those who had clashed with her mental power was different.
This was very abnormal. Unlike the illusion interference shown to others, under normal circumstances, a person's mental world was relatively stable from the moment it was born. Even if it evolved later, the core foundation wouldn't change. As fellow evolvers, the treating evolver shouldn't even be unable to touch the core of her mental world.
"Have you seen Miss Zeng's mental world?" Xu Huo turned back to ask Tang Xu. "Has she ever mentioned what her core materialized object is?"