Genius Detective

"Miss Gu really wants to see him. Miss Gu has helped us a lot. It\'s not a big deal to help her out for once!"

"And she has to see him?"

"Brother!"

"Okay, okay, I\'ll talk to the prison and apply for an interrogation."

Lin Dongxue told this information to Gu You who was waiting outside. Gu You was very grateful. Chen Shi suggested, "Let\'s take a look at his file first! Since it’s in the name of an interrogation, we should also find out who he is."

Lin Dongxue agreed. The three of them went to the archives room and found the files of the case.

The file was very detailed and was made up of a thick stack. The hand-written transcript was over 20 pages long. In the interrogation, Chen Fengde mentioned something: Deep dream pool. It was like this paragraph for example:

Question: Describe the murder weapon you used.

Answer: I want to correct the posed question. It’s the murder weapon used by the body. It was a serrated dagger, which was about this long (about forty centimeters).

Question: You didn’t buy this knife. How did you get it?

Answer: Picked it up.

Question: Picked it up? Where did you find a controlled knife?

Answer: The original owner of the knife was a young man. He went to the hospital for a urology operation, but was mistaken by the doctor and had a circumcision. This made him feel ashamed, so he bought a knife and prepared to threaten the doctor. However, when he went to the hospital again, he regretted his actions and hid the knife under a trash can.

Question: Do you know the original owner of the knife?

Answer: I don\'t need to know him. I saw it in the deep dream pool.

Question: I don’t understand what you mean by "Deep Dream Pool". What you mean is that a stranger hid a knife somewhere in the hospital and the day you were about to murder people, you went empty-handed and took the knife directly?

Answer: I need to correct you. It was this body. I have repeatedly emphasized that it was a person named Liu Tao who controlled my body.

Question: Excuse me, how do you know that it wasn’t you who was in your body at the time?

Answer: I saw it in the deep dream pool.

Through the words on the yellowed paper, Lin Dongxue could imagine the helplessness and mental collapse of the interrogator at that time. She said, "This person is really crazy."

Chen Shi flipped through the records. "Have you discovered that there are many unexplainable things in this case? It should be said that common sense does not make sense, but according to Chen Fengde\'s ‘fallacious theory’, he can justify himself."

Gu You said, "I’ve been in contact with some patients in a mental hospital. They have sound cognition, complete thinking, and have their own worldview. They can justify themselves no matter what you ask, which is really amazing. In the famous Sergei Ponomarenko time travelling incident, the person involved, Sergei Ponomarenko, was also treated as someone with a mental disorder at first. After many years, the incident was scrutinized heavily and became so real that it makes your hair stand on end. Due to this, I have thought more than once about so-called mental patients. Perhaps there are some people who have really been misdiagnosed."

Chen Shi smiled. "I remembered that there was someone with a mental disorder somewhere that was preaching a theory, but so many people believed it that it almost became a cult, and was finally banned by the police."

"Ah, what theory?" Lin Dongxue was curious.

"He thought there were no women in the world."

"Crazy. Then what are we?"

"He said that women on earth were projections of men\'s hypnosis. In 1972, a group of aliens removed women collectively and slowly perished mankind through isolating men and women. In fact, all children were alien babies. All obstetricians have been brainwashed by the aliens. In less than a hundred years, the entire human race will be replaced by aliens without even knowing it.” This fallacy was made so truthful that Chen Shi couldn’t help but laugh.

"Typical delusion." Gu You commented.

"By the way, what exactly is this ‘Deep Dream Pool’?" Lin Dongxue asked.

"Chen Fengde himself said that ‘Deep Dream Pool’ is a vortex of collective unconsciousness. He occasionally gets there when dreaming, but most people don’t know about it. He can visit the deep dream pool consciously through dream training. He said he can observe the world from there. You can even enter other people\'s dreams, but it’s very dangerous. If the person whose dream was intruded upon wakes up..." Gu You paused for mysterious effect.

"What would happen?"

"His consciousness would go into that person\'s body. He said that he was trapped in a pregnant woman’s body before and forcibly experienced the pain of giving birth. He was trapped for a full 20 hours before the pregnant woman fell asleep. After returning to his body through the deep dream pool, the tearing pain seemed to remain in his body."

"According to this theory, exchanging bodies means that two people enter each other\'s dreams and wake up again?" Chen Shi said.

"Yes, that\'s how he explained it."

"Who was the pregnant woman he mentioned..."

"A Czechoslovak woman."

"Damn!"

Lin Dongxue said, "Then Liu Tao, who swapped his body with him, has also been to the so-called deep dream pool? Or does he have the means to actively control dreams as well?"

"Liu Tao lives in Long\'an. You can go find him whenever you want," Gu You said.

There was a silence in the room, then Lin Dongxue and Chen Shi laughed together. Chen Shi said, "What are we doing here, deliberately trying to verify what a mental patient said?"

Gu You did not smile and seemed a little serious. "Are you afraid of a successful verification?"

Chen Shi spread his hands. "I don\'t believe in such a thing at all!"

"If you don\'t believe it, falsify it."

"Miss Gu, are you angry with me?"

"No, I just think we should take a pragmatic attitude, instead of immediately denying such things. A few weeks ago, no one in Long’an would believe that a headless person would run out from the autopsy room here to the streets, but didn’t it happen?"

"Okay then, let’s seek truth from facts." Chen Shi made a concession. He thought to himself that the anger shown by Gu You seemed to imply that she and Chen Fengde had an extraordinary relationship.

"My brother needs some time on his end. Why don’t we find Liu Tao now?" Lin Dongxue suggested.

"Wait a minute..." Chen Shi was still looking at the files. He found a suspicious detail that he wasn’t sure about. "There are three people among the deceased that are all of the same age. Is this a coincidence?"

Lin Dongxue took out her phone. "Let\'s take a picture and investigate it later."

Through the query of household registration data, they quickly found a person who was consistent with Liu Tao’s characteristics in all aspects. The three drove there together. Gu You was a little anxious on the way. Lin Dongxue asked, "Miss Gu, do you not want to verify this?"

"Let me tell you a story. I once received a patient who claimed to be from the future. Guess what I asked him?"

"’Tell me the winning numbers in the next lottery?’" Chen Shi laughed. "Generally, they will say that the future will change as long as they say it out loud."

"You’re half right. In order to deny his hypothesis, I also asked this question. He looked into my eyes and said very seriously, ‘Most people do not deliberately remember the winning numbers of a certain lottery. If I asked you about the winning numbers of a certain lottery in 2004, you wouldn’t remember either, but I guessed that I would be asked this before I crossed over, so I wrote down the winning numbers for the first lottery of 2014. I can tell you them right now.’."

"He really said it?" Lin Dongxue asked in surprise.

"He did, and I also wrote it down, but when the lottery started to sell, I didn\'t buy it and didn\'t read about the lottery information."

"Why?!"

Gu You smiled bitterly. "I\'m afraid that if it was true, I’d go crazy."