Chapter 4869: Wondrous Shadows, Marvelous Drama (Thirteen)

"A gathering of luminaries, a bizarre murder, an atypical detective, an unusual suspect, a seemingly innocent bystander drawn in..."

Chris seemed to have entered some kind of divinely inspired state. He lowered his voice, mimicking a broadcaster's tone: "Youth is full of passion, but some people's younger years forever revolve around murder, mystery, and death. Tony Stark, the playboy in the common eye, the world-renowned billionaire, has a past more tumultuous and treacherous than most. Surrounding him besides flowers and applause are many pairs of unusual eyes. Beyond the arena of fame and fortune lies a hunting ground — who is the hunter, who is the prey?"

"Stop!" Stark shouted. "What do you mean 'tumultuous and treacherous past'? How would I not know? What tumult does my past have?"

At those words, Chris instead looked Stark up and down with his eyes, until Stark's back grew cold under the gaze. Stark leaned back as far as he could, trying to escape Chris's scrutiny, but wondered if he was overreacting. To maintain politeness, he awkwardly lowered his head and coughed: "What? Is there something on my clothes?"

"Was your youth that peaceful?" Chris asked.

"Peaceful... not exactly," Stark said, a bit embarrassed. "My rebellious phase came late. Roughly after my father left home, I started smoking and drinking, indulging my desires. I indeed caused quite a bit of trouble during that time, reputation wasn't great. Counts as a bit more of a mess than other heirs, I suppose."

Chris slowly shook his head: "That's not what I mean. Have you never been targeted by anyone?"

"Uh, you mean those people trying to scheme against me?" Stark recalled. "My uncle Obadiah blocked most of them. Drove off those greedy pests after the inheritance, and some ill-intentioned corporate spies. Of course I've been conned too, but losses were mostly minor, just embarrassing."

Chris shook his head again: "That's not what I mean either. Who was the first psychopath you encountered?"

Stark's gaze kept darting toward Shiler, but he clearly didn't dare look directly. Chris seemed quite surprised. He said: "When did you two meet?"

"Since we were little," Stark said directly, referring to the timeline where he and Greed were brothers. "We grew up together. I'm his older brother."

"I see," Chris realized. "Then you should thank your little brother, otherwise you wouldn't be alive today."

"What do you mean?" Stark finally heard something wrong. When anyone hears he and Shiler are brothers, shouldn't the reaction be "Shiler is the most dangerous existence by your side"?

"Has anyone ever told you?" Chris looked at Stark. "You have a fatal attraction to psychopaths."

Stark's expression visibly cracked. Chris poured oil on the fire: "Simply put, you extremely attract mentally unstable people. To them, you're like a bait exuding an irresistible fragrance. They will absolutely go crazy for you."

"Why?" Stark asked incredulously. "Why would I attract lunatics? What did I do wrong?"

Stark also noticed that ever since he appeared in this form, both Shiler and Strange were a bit odd, and Chris wasn't quite right either. He could even predict that if Natasha came here, she would definitely go crazy too. What was wrong with this bunch?

Mainly, they'd partied together just days ago, and not a single person had shown any extra interest in him. They gathered as usual, ate, drank, chatted — no one ever told him "your eyes have a story." How many days had passed? How did this bunch all go crazy one by one?

And, saying he was handsomer when young than when older wasn't necessarily true. Young Stark had actually been called "too immature." Westerners don't really like faces with too much childishness; rather, tough guys and slightly weathered uncle-types are more popular. If it's a baby face, it has to reach DiCaprio's level to be popular.

So Stark started growing a beard early on, intentionally cultivating facial hair and grooming it to look more mature — a required course for Western men. Stark even had a dedicated image consultant, so his beard was always impeccably groomed, allowing magazines to shoot flawless covers. Only after he started acting more mature did his looks-based fanbase grow.

"You didn't do anything wrong," Chris said. "But your eyes reveal too much. Tony, if you were like this in your youth too, it's hard to imagine you weren't dragged into a few serial murder cases."

Stark was truly near breakdown. He genuinely couldn't understand this psychopath bait talk, and completely didn't understand why he would be dragged into murder cases.

Chris looked at Shiler. Shiler sighed lightly, speaking leisurely: "The FBI National Academy once conducted a social experiment. They interviewed over a hundred incarcerated serial killers, asking what traits of their victims attracted them."

"Wait," Stark interrupted. "Serial killers kill because they're serial killers, because they're bad people, they just want to kill — not because the victims did anything."

Shiler nodded, acknowledging Stark's point, but then said: "However, a condition for selecting these serial killers was that they all admitted they didn't kill impulsively or randomly — they conditionally screened their targets. The experiment's purpose was to figure out what those conditions were."

"So what were they?" Stark grew interested too. "Is there some unified standard?"

Shiler lightly tapped his own eyes.

Stark's eyes widened slightly. Shiler leaned against the bar: "In over 60 investigation reports, the killers all mentioned vocabulary related to eyes, or rather, related to gaze."

"Common vocabulary used by serial killers to describe their first encounter with victims: 'He looked at me,' 'He stared at me,' 'He was looking at something,' 'He was looking at someone.'"

"That's normal enough," Stark said. "As long as you're not blind, most states in life involve looking at something. Besides, these killers love shifting blame — claim the motive was the other's provocative gaze, and their crime is rationalized. After all, there's no evidence for a gaze."

Shiler shook his head: "The key isn't the truth of their testimony, but that so many killers share the same description — it means most of them care deeply about this."

Stark showed a puzzled expression again. Shiler continued: "The content of the narration doesn't matter; the manner of narration matters. Many of these serial killers are mentally ill lunatics — much of what they see may be hallucinations. For instance, they believe the victim stared at them, but the victim didn't. Why they *felt* the victim stared at them is the key."

"Gaze can only convey emotion." Shiler rubbed the tabletop with his fingertips.

Stark was slightly stunned. He'd never thought of this, but on reflection it made sense. Gaze has always conveyed emotion, not logic — no human can use gaze to convey logic.

Like that gaze pie chart joke: from someone's eyes you see three parts contempt, three parts indifference, four parts nonchalance. All emotional descriptors — never heard of seeing three parts calculus derivative, three parts force analysis, three parts substitution reaction formula in someone's eyes.

A pair of human eyes sits there, needing no extra words, and people can read their emotion. This is humans' innate empathy. Even if each person empathizes with different emotions, at least no one sees those eyes and first thinks of logical causality or such.

So eyes are the gateway of emotion, and *only* the gateway of emotion. Eye contact is the most basic, purest form of emotional communication. Many avoid eye contact — they're actually avoiding emotional exchange.

Stark recalled what Strange had pointed out — that often it was Stark avoiding eye contact. He reflected, found it seemed true, but not because he didn't want eye contact with friends — purely habit.

Anxiety made him habitually avoid meeting others' eyes, because this extremely direct emotional exchange made him more anxious. Over time, he'd grown used to speaking without looking at others' eyes.

"The emotion conveyed by gaze is excessive," Shiler threw out another conclusion. "Easily causes empathy overload."

Stark nodded vigorously. Just now he was thinking: why does anxiety make him afraid of eye contact? What is he trying to escape? Then he realized — it's not that the other person is actually transmitting intense emotion through their gaze, but that the slightest emotion revealed in their gaze gets easily amplified by his empathy.

Take his uncle Obadiah — when reminding him about his private life, or persuading him not to indulge in alcohol and drugs, the gaze might only hold a bit of worry. But Stark's empathy would amplify that worry, evolving into disappointment, then into contempt, disgust, and other negative emotions. A textbook case of empathy overload.

The other person didn't use their gaze to convey so many emotions; rationally he knew even if Obadiah truly wanted to kill him, he'd never look at him with contempt. Obadiah knew best how high his talent was — no one could contemptuously regard a teenage genius who could single-handedly uphold Stark Industries' R&D division.

Yet his overactive empathy organ deceived him, making him feel intense emotions the gaze never conveyed. This is also the cause of many persecutory delusions — many just can't realize it's empathy overload.

Thinking here, Stark could somewhat understand why those serial killers all mentioned gaze. They all fixated on certain people's gazes, even imagined gazes — because these killers all had severe empathy overload issues.

Their empathy organs were so sensitive that even when no one looked at them, they had to imagine a gaze to empathize with.

Many might think many psychopaths lack empathy or have weak empathy — but this doesn't actually conflict.

Human emotion is a pool; empathy is the pipe draining water in. Some have thicker pipes — more water enters per unit time, meaning stronger empathy. Some have thinner pipes, or pipes outright blocked — naturally weaker empathy.

But if there's enough emotion, strong enough stimulus, when the flood comes, pipe thickness doesn't matter — all burst. Many so-called weak empathy, innately "thick-skinned" people — under massive stimulus it's the same.

Killers' weak empathy doesn't mean they won't collapse from emotional impact — on the contrary, because their empathy organs have gone unused too long, poor quality, they're more easily damaged, entering empathy overload mode, where the slightest emotional imposition makes them see threats everywhere, jump at shadows.