Chapter 534 - Chapter 534: Chapter 534: So Youre Called the Lord of the Forest? (Part 2) (1/2)
Chapter 534: Chapter 534: So You’re Called the Lord of the Forest? (Part 2)
Joel knew that hypnosis required channels. Whether it was influencing sensory perception such as vision, auditory, touch, smell, or directly through drugs or other substances, producing effects within the human body, whatever abilities used to carry out the hypnotic effect, it always required a trigger, an event, a process.
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.