A warm afternoon, if someone had stumbled into this place, they might have mistaken it for a cordial and affectionate chat between a mother and son.
"I seem to have discovered something I shouldn't have," Ping'an said, looking at his mother. "Mr. Ke, whom I've been investigating relentlessly, and Ou Erjian, whom I'm currently looking into, both seem to be pointing fingers at you and Anshi International."
"So, are you going to discuss with your stepfather and have me taken to the police station for a good interrogation?" An Wei replied.
"No, no, it's not that far yet. I just hope you can tell me something I don't know," Ping'an said. "For instance, why don't I know that there was a guy named Ou Erjian who learned archery from my father? How did my father really die? What's the connection between our family and Mr. Ke?"
Facing his mother, Ping'an was still a bit nervous. Although his tone was assertive, An Wei's unhurried demeanor, as she continued to mark her book with a pen, made it clear that their mother wasn't bothered by him.
"Wan Rou, I found it. Listen to this—'Nineteen Lang decisively pulled the trigger, stabbing the general manager, with whom he had no connection, to death. He then climbed into the adjacent room through the hotel balcony. While the financial director was taking a shower, he strangled him with the hairdryer cord... After all this, Nineteen Lang sat on the sofa, panting to rest... The door suddenly opened, and with an intimate 'Darling,' Nineteen Lang's wife, a woman who had been cheating, appeared in the room with a flush of desire... Before she could speak, Nineteen Lang lunged at her like a leopard, gripping her neck until she slowly stopped breathing... That's right, that's right. Nineteen Lang left the hotel content, anticipating the headline in tomorrow's newspaper: 'Mysterious Investor Dies in Huacheng—Who Stepped on Whose Interests?'" An Wei read vividly.
Ping'an was, of course, familiar with the content, as it was from a series of detective novels he had written ten years ago titled "The Nineteen Lang Chronicles." At this moment, he couldn't understand why his mother would read this passage.
"Wan Rou, what do you think?" An Wei closed the book, looking at Wan Rou with some anticipation.
"I think it's excellent," Wan Rou replied obediently.
"That's right. I remember a president once said that he planned to send a troop to slaughter ten people and a cat. Everyone in the world asked why the cat was being killed, and no one cared why the ten people were being slaughtered!" An Wei said, like a mischievous little girl. "Nineteen Lang is very clever. With many people already knowing his wife's infidelity, he killed the general manager who was on a business trip and the financial supervisor. Haha, this makes it troublesome; it becomes a 'high-stakes game' of competing interests! Right?"
"Yes, that's precisely the idea," Wan Rou said.
"Then do you know what to do?" An Wei asked.
"Yes, I do. Tomorrow, I will announce that Anshi already controlled a substantial number of shares in Ou Shi a year ago and has officially merged with Ou Shi. Ou Erjian's personal actions were purely for revenge against Anshi and the people of Hechuan..." Wan Rou said.
"Alright, once this matter is settled, you can resign. An Jing probably won't like your methods. After that, you'll go to Europe and take over Ou Shi," An Wei said, as if she had just solved the simple problem of what to eat for dinner, and then arranged for Wan Rou to leave.
Only An Wei and Ping'an were left in the room.
"Impressive, that move of yours is truly remarkable," Ping'an said, clapping his hands with a hint of self-mockery. "I never imagined my novels could be used like this."
"Yes, you never thought of it, did you!" An Wei said with a satisfied smile. "So, over the years, I've used your stories, your crimes, your ideas, to make Anshi grow stronger day by day."
"Alright, you know that I've found out. In fact, I should have found out two years ago. It wasn't that I couldn't bring myself to act against Anshi, but rather, facing the colossal Anshi, I was powerless," Ping'an said seriously. "I've always suspected that in Hechuan City, who could truly suppress information about the disappearances of young girls, even preventing it from reaching my ears. Now, Han Shi couldn't, Ou Erjian couldn't, only you, my mother, the Anshi Empire!"
"Fine, I'll be honest too. I didn't know Ou Erjian would use such methods to find test subjects. Later..." An Wei stopped speaking abruptly at this point.
"Later? You discovered it later, but you still didn't take it seriously, did you?" Ping'an suddenly stood up agitatedly. "Even if the person beside you now is a police officer, even if your son has been silently protecting this city, you still turn a blind eye—don't look at me with that innocent gaze. Of course, I know you'll come up with a pile of contracts to deny it, to point out from the utterly inhumane legal validity that you and your company have no relation to Ou Erjian, right?"
The door opened, and An Jing quietly walked in, putting down her bag and sitting on the sofa.
"An Jing, do you know about it too? The dealings between Ou Erjian and Anshi?" Ping'an looked at his sister with his last shred of hope.
An Jing didn't speak. Instead, she opened her handbag, took out a stack of documents, looked at them, placed them on the table, and then said coldly to her mother, "I rushed to the company early this morning to put out fires and to understand how much damage Ou Erjian could cause to Anshi. It was only when I found this pile of documents that I realized, Mom, our company has been engaged in genetic research and development with Ou Shi since its inception, right?"
Hearing An Jing's words, Ping'an picked up the documents and read them for a long time before finally understanding. It was a joint research and development contract, in which Anshi was responsible for providing technology and funding, while Ou Shi was responsible for operation and development.
And the joint research and development project was, as expected, memory replication.
"Tell me, Mom. I just arrived and heard your conversation with Brother. Now, with only the three of us in this room, I, as the company's general manager, have the right to know," An Jing said, still coldly.
"Alright, actually, this whole thing was arranged by your father..." An Wei looked at her two children and finally chose to lay it all out.
Thirty years ago, not long after Ping'an and An Wei got married, they received an overseas call from a medical scientist named Robbie. Robbie was the head of a sports neuroscience research institute in Northern Europe. At a previous international shooting competition, Ping'an had won a gold medal with an incredible performance. Robbie was fascinated by this athlete with what could be considered the best shooting technique in the world and repeatedly invited Ping'an to participate in a research project.
"Robbie's research was to digitize the sports neuroscience data of athletes and, in the form of standard parameters, replicate it onto ordinary people through physical training. He told your father at the time that if he could obtain your father's parameters, he could deduce the standard 'digits,' and then even an ordinary person could achieve your father's shooting level in a short period by 'plugging in the digits.' At the time, everyone thought Robbie was talking nonsense, but your father was intrigued. You might wonder why your father, an ordinary athlete, would be interested in such research. It's because the master of that generation, Mr. Ke, whom Ping'an has been searching for so desperately, was none other than your father."
Hearing this news, Ping'an and An Jing were so shocked they could barely breathe.
"Mr. Ke? I'll tell you more about that later. For now, let me continue telling you the story between Ping'an and Robbie," An Wei said.
To outsiders, Robbie seemed crazy. He thought Ping'an would refuse his invitation, but to his surprise, Ping'an agreed, which made Robbie overjoyed, as he had never had a world champion as a research subject.
At a medical research base in the Arctic Circle, Ping'an underwent a month of research under Robbie. During this month, Robbie took only three days to obtain all of Ping'an's data and process it into a "formula." Subsequently, he conducted experiments on recruited volunteers, but the results were not ideal. Looking at the failed projects, Robbie finally concluded that his research was flawed, but Ping'an encouraged him, suggesting that perhaps the "infusion" method was wrong? Perhaps the volunteers needed not just parameters, but experience, or rather, the memory of experience.
With Ping'an's encouragement, Robbie revised the research plan, and from then on, he began his path of crime. Unable to find suitable volunteers, he resorted to smuggling and kidnapping to obtain them. Of course, whether Ping'an knew about the situation at the time and whether he used his influence within organizations to commit crimes is unknown.
In any case, Robbie succeeded in memory replication on a father and daughter. At the time, a young mother had just become pregnant. The moment the mother gave birth to a baby girl, Robbie performed craniotomy on the father and daughter, then scanned the father's neurons to obtain the father's memory "formula," creating a cortical chip. He then used physical surgery to reconstruct the baby girl's neurons and "activated" it using the father's cortical chip. Once the hippocampus successfully converted the father's memories, the chip was removed.
Although the surgery was complex, it was successful. The baby girl's father was a French teacher. When Robbie saw the tiny baby girl, whose eyes were not yet fully open, writing French in the sand with her small hand, he was ecstatic! But when an assistant who understood French translated the French into English, he was terrified!
The French phrase translated to: Damn it! Why have I entered this child's body!
Robbie's research was considered successful; the baby girl had successfully inherited her father's foreign language "talent," but she had also lost herself, becoming her own second "father."
Robbie didn't want to create monsters; he only wanted to benefit humanity, so he intended to give up. However, Ping'an saw a different future.
"If a dying elder only needs healthy sperm to conceive his offspring, and then through Robbie's technology, could theoretical 'immortality' be achieved!" Ping'an exclaimed excitedly at the time.
This was akin to a transmigration, or in today's popular terms, a "soul transmigration."