“To take Pingping drifting down the river—then you’ll become a message in a bottle!”
Jiang Yan gazed at the out-of-place quip and thought it was exactly the kind of joke Le Yi would make.
She set the drawing aside and emptied Pingping’s file.
Aside from the picture, there were only two sheets of paper.
They detailed Pingping’s medical history. Her health was abysmal; her limbs had been amputated at age three or four to fit her into a vase. All her bodily functions were managed through a single external tube. Her bones were stunted and warped, her internal organs underdeveloped, her entire existence a litany of maladies.
Heart disease, endocrine infections, pneumonia, neurosis, and so on and so forth.
But the records listed no surgeries—nothing but medication. Expensive drugs to barely keep her alive, agents to arrest her development, and a slew of prohibited medications riddled with side effects.
None of this was unexpected.
Without her vase, the vase girl would lose her value as a collectible. Any surgery would have meant breaking the vase, something Jiang He would never allow. So Pingping survived her entire life through medication alone.
The record was brief—Jiang Yan finished reading in two or three minutes.
The last entry was dated a year ago.
Meaning, Pingping died at Baishan Sanatorium in May of last year.
That was the same period Jiang He was diagnosed with liver cancer, stepped into the background, and began to hand over authority to the deputy director.
According to the private detective, Jiang He was probably already dead by then, and her twin sister Jiang An had assumed her identity. Never having managed the sanatorium, once Jiang An took over, she divided control, keeping only the profits for herself.
If the current director truly was Jiang An in disguise, Pingping’s death was easy to explain.
Because of her condition, Pingping could never appear openly. She probably had a dedicated, hidden sickroom—one only Jiang He and her trusted confidants could access. After Jiang He’s death, Pingping was left without constant care. Hidden away in a secret basement, when Jiang An took over, she likely never even learned of the girl.
Once Pingping ceased to be a “precious collectible,” her rapid death was inevitable.
Frankly, considering her condition, she should have died long before.
No one could survive that many years in a vase; it was only the illegal medications that kept Pingping alive to age nine.
That was the absolute limit her body could endure.
Jiang Yan put Pingping’s file back together and moved on to the others.
She opened Le Yi’s file next—by far the thickest.
A towering stack.
Almost all of it was blood draw records.
Beside her, Shen Huanhuan frowned at the sight.
“How can anyone survive being bled so much…”
Jiang Yan handed over Le Yi’s blood type record. “Do you know this blood type?”
“RhNULL…”
Shen Huanhuan thought for a moment before looking up. “I remember it’s called the golden blood type. The odds are about one in six million—there are probably fewer than fifty cases worldwide.”
Jiang Yan remembered what Le Yi had told Yu Renwan the previous night: once the nurses sobered up, they’d never let her die, as she supported the entire sanatorium. The nurses’ designer handbags were all bought with money from selling her blood.
Staring at the blood type record, Shen Huanhuan hesitated.
“What is it?” Jiang Yan asked.
After a few breaths, Shen Huanhuan explained, “I recall that an overseas billionaire has a daughter with this blood type—her health is very poor. Three years ago, he placed a global newspaper ad searching for Rh-null donors.”
Jiang Yan was surprised. “You remember a news story from three years ago?”
“I followed the news closely back then,” Shen Huanhuan replied.
Jiang Yan didn’t ask further.
She continued reading Le Yi’s medical file.
It was simple: blood draw after blood draw, interspersed with injections of psychiatric medications.
Shen Huanhuan wasn’t familiar with these drugs, so the trio quickly searched for information on them.
They were specialized manic episode drugs.
Shen Huanhuan remembered Jiang Yan mentioning Le Yi’s diagnosis. “Wasn’t that girl supposed to have delusional disorder?”
Jiang Yan hummed an affirmation.
She hadn’t had a chance to explain earlier, so she briefed the twins now: “This afternoon, I asked Le Yi about herself. She and her friends don’t actually seem to have any mental illnesses.”
“But strangely, except for Le Yi, the other children all think they’re mentally ill.”
Jiang Yan’s confusion didn’t last long.
Because she saw the note on the drug’s Baidu entry:
[This drug has been expressly banned in China. Though effective for treating mania, it damages brain tissue. Prolonged injection leads to severe consequences—confusion at best, amnesia or dementia at worst.]
Shen Huanhuan saw the note as well and drew a sharp breath.
They were injecting special drugs for mania into children who didn’t have the condition.
They weren’t treating these kids—they were making sure the side effects would shape them.
“So that explains why those children think they really are mentally ill,” Shen Huanhuan said.
Jiang Yan replied, “That must be the reason.”
“And judging by their mental states, except for Le Yi, none of the other children remember their time in the human circus.”
If they did, they could never remain so naive about the world.
That morning, the group discussed panhandling and dumpster-diving as survival strategies. Xiao Tian and Le Jia even thought they’d strike it rich that way, which didn’t fit the broken spirits Jiang He’s cruelty would have left behind.
Most telling, Le Jia had mentioned “home.”
She’d said, “I used to watch the news at home—they said you could live picking trash or begging, but if we stay here we’ll die.”
But how could she have a home?
Given her age, she’d been bought by Jiang He before she even had memories—whatever she saw on TV as a four- or five-year-old could not have been retained.
Jiang Yan was certain Le Jia would never have called Jiang He’s house “home,” so all their memories were jumbled. Le Yi’s exact state was unclear, but she seemed to be the most clear-headed, remembering the most.
She shared her assessment with the twins, whose faces darkened.
This circus of human experiments was just as inhuman and monstrous—against both decency and humanity itself.
After a while, Shen Huanhuan sighed. “For some, clarity is the harshest pain.”
[I used to envy Le Yi’s gift, but now I just pity her.]
[True… I suspect the reason Le Yi remembers is thanks to her ability. Psychics react to these drugs very differently from ordinary people.]
[So Le Yi is faking mental illness, but the other children have drug-induced memory loss—they really believe they’re sick?]
[Yes, and I don’t think the drugs alone could erase their memories this thoroughly. The children were probably hypnotized as well, so they’d truly forget.]
[Agreed. Honestly, Le Yi’s resistance to the drugs is nothing to celebrate right now—wouldn’t it be better to just forget?]
[Le Yi really is pitiful, but I feel for Pingping the most.]
[Me too, Pingping…]
[It may not do to compare suffering, but Pingping’s was just too much.]
[So, is Pingping the spirit behind this half-energy field?]
[Damn, that drawing convinced me the kids really cared for each other. If Pingping still had emotions as a spirit, would she not be miserable, targeting her friends this way?]
[Praying it’s Jiang He, just let it be Jiang He…]
But prayers were futile—whatever spirit pulled the strings was already decided.
Jiang Yan opened the other children’s files.
She spread all their records together.
Just as the chat had guessed, the drugs couldn’t fully erase memories. Each Wednesday, these children had sessions in the psychological therapy room, under the program “hypnotic awakening.”
Given all the evidence, “hypnotic awakening” was intended to wipe their memories of the underground circus, replacing them with false recollections.
For example: that they had families, or that they’d been abandoned in a sanatorium.
But that raised a question.
If a doctor was hypnotizing these children, he must know what they’d really endured.
Which made the doctor an accomplice of Jiang He’s. Now, if Jiang He was dead and being impersonated by Jiang An, could this doctor really not see through the deception?
After all, Jiang He had cut all ties to her relatives long ago—her relationship with Jiang An was terrible. Jiang An could never have known all of Jiang He’s secrets or arrangements.
Being exposed by Jiang He’s acquaintances was inevitable.
Yet the doctor had not revealed the truth.
Did he simply not care?
Or had he come to an agreement with Jiang An?
Without more clues, Jiang Yan put this aside for now.
She immediately turned to the next question.
Why erase these children’s memories at all?
She doubted it was out of kindness—Jiang Yan was more inclined to believe that Jiang He wanted to keep them from even wanting to escape, wanted them to think they’d been abandoned, so even if they escaped, there’d be no home to run to.
Jiang He’s motives were transparent.
Even after laundering her identity and dissolving the circus, her “collectibles” were still only that—her property.
So even if the children were no longer being trained or forced to perform, Jiang He still wanted to see them every day.
Through them, she could relive her own past glory.
Yet, after the emergence of the half-energy field, the children—who once feared wandering the streets—were now, as the weirdness of the field increased, beginning to contemplate escape.
Thus, Jiang He’s hypnotic suggestion merely saddled them with an imperfect past, but not one that crippled them—
The hypnosis did not erase their ability to think; the children still felt happiness and fear, bickered and cooperated, with Le Yao even passing herself off as Le Yi’s cousin.
Most importantly, they were clever enough to devise meticulous plans for survival.
These children were smart.
Under hypnosis, it seemed they had only lost their painful memories, replaced by some unpleasant but not devastating new ones.
To her surprise, Jiang Yan found the results of hypnosis almost positive.
She still didn’t believe Jiang He would have sanctioned positive hypnosis for the children; in Jiang He’s shoes, she’d have rather left them simple and witless.
For a collectible, intelligence is utterly irrelevant.
After all, the best way to keep them captive for life was to dull their minds so they couldn’t survive without her.
So what was the real reason?
Jiang Yan circled back to the original question.
Was the hypnotizing doctor truly just a henchman? After discovering Jiang He had been replaced, why didn’t he speak out? Was it apathy, or had he struck a new deal with Jiang An?
Her brows drew lower and tighter until, abruptly, an idea flashed through her mind. She slowly looked up.
The twins held their breath at her gaze.
“What’s wrong, Jiang Yan-jie?”
“Nothing,” Jiang Yan said, resting her chin on her palm with a smile. “I just had a thought.”
The one who’d struck a deal with the doctor—
seemed to be Le Yi.