Chapter 4893

Tim and Brand's negotiations were still not going well. Although this guy was threatened by him, he always beat around the bush to evade the topic and was unwilling to reveal more information about himself.

Going round and round, he could only find out that he was a superpowered individual, a friend of Professor Xilei, and that someone was hunting him down. Tim did not want to know these things.

Tim was not interested in his relationship with his enemies and with Professor Xilei; he only wanted to know what exactly happened in yesterday's murder case. But obviously, Brand was exceptionally unwilling to admit this. Or perhaps the reason he did not take other drastic actions was that he wanted to brush this matter aside.

Tim had to start thinking about why this was. Even if being hunted down and failing to escape was embarrassing, now was not the time to dwell on such issues. When great calamity looms and one still holds back, there must be a reason one has to do so.

Brand seemed unable to drag it on any longer. He looked at this cunning brat in front of him, and the other party precisely grasped his weakness—Brainiac could not see illusions.

As an electronic lifeform, Brainiac was completely immune to all illusion attacks. This meant he could only rely on some external force to judge whether a person had suffered an illusion attack, and his judgment was not very precise either; he could only take the victim's word for it.

Tim happened to exploit this point, saying that Brand was using illusion attacks on him, and Brand could not prove his innocence. And because Brainiac could not see illusions at all, he could not help defend him, only able to follow Tim's testimony.

Brand was not afraid of Brainiac hitting him. The problem was, Brainiac now controlled Earth's order, and if he wanted to do something within the rules, he could not avoid this electronic lifeform and could not offend him. So he could only compromise with Tim, letting him not act out a painful appearance to extort.

But this clever guy was not easy to deal with; apparently, he considered himself a great detective and insisted on figuring out exactly what was going on with that corpse. Even if Brand really did not want to talk, he would have to reveal something to exchange for a chance to meet Xilei.

He reached out his hand toward Tim, and Tim warily stepped back one step. But neither Tim nor Brainiac saw Brand's movement clearly. From the surveillance angle, Brand disappeared and then suddenly appeared in front of Tim, pressing a finger against his forehead.

"Ugh!" Tim immediately half-kneeled down, clutching his head in some pain, as countless memory fragments flashed in his mind—he seemed to know what Brand was.

He could not say Tim had no regrets either. If he had known earlier that this guy was related to the outer gods, he would have beaten him to death rather than accept his knowledge. Because the way outer gods impart knowledge is not by speaking—too inefficient for them; they directly pour it into the spiritual world.

Looking at the fallen Tim, Brainiac let out a sharp explosive bang; firearms directly opened fire, bullets flying wildly in the room, lasers plowing deep scorched marks into the walls. But all this had nothing to do with Brand.

He now seemed merely a dense shadow, without a physical body, so all attacks were ineffective against him, mostly passing straight through. Even though Brainiac could not see illusions, he knew how strange this situation was, and he almost immediately contacted Xilei.

But before Xilei could reply, Tim on the ground stopped twitching. He slowly stood up, speaking frankly: just now he had been focused on the pain and had not noticed what knowledge the other party transmitted; now that his reason had returned, he could only see some fragmented shards.

A secret transaction, a manipulated psychiatrist, a car accident, a sacrifice and descent...

These memory fragments looked completely jumbled; Tim spent a while before, by guessing and piecing together, he roughly figured out what was going on: Brand was not an avatar of an outer god, but a follower who had sacrificed his own body to an outer god.

Simply put, Brand was a human, but due to certain encounters, he offered his flesh to the outer god to let it descend into the mortal world.

From the process, it was roughly like this. Long ago, Brand was a newly graduated psychiatrist. No one knows whether he was forced or involved in a money-power deal, but he participated in a human experimentation project targeting brainwashing and mental manipulation. But this project ran into problems.

It was not that the research made no progress or failed, but that some big smart among them, using certain mental means, communicated with an outer god and gained its attention. At that time, people had little research on outer gods and still thought it was a major breakthrough in research. The behind-the-scenes manipulator began to pull up the ladder after pulling up the bridge, preparing to silence Brand.

As a result, precisely because they had established a mental connection with the outer god, Brand, when his car accident hung by a thread, felt the outer god's summoning between life and death, reached a pact with it, sacrificed his body in exchange for the outer god's descent, and his flesh became the outer god's vessel.

Having figured this out, Tim immediately understood some previous doubts, such as how this true body and fake body came about. Perhaps there were never two bodies; the one appearing in the room, in the water, wrapped in black substance, was simply the corpse of the human Brand.

Due to some accident, this corpse was killed, and now the Brand standing before him was merely an outer god taking on Brand's appearance. He had no human flesh left, which also led to his spiritual pollution seeming somewhat externalized, unable to possess the seamless disguise he had when existing in human form.

But the case was still not fully resolved. Tim looked at Brand and asked: "Why exactly did Edward fall ill?"

He cleverly avoided the topic of murder, knowing Brand did not want to bring it up. Whether it was because his own flesh was destroyed, feeling some embarrassment, or because he wanted to cover up for Edward, directly asking would certainly yield nothing; one had to approach indirectly.

"I have been away for a while," Brand seemed to be weighing his words, "I said, I had already heard the wind of my enemies coming to find me, so I left immediately."

"So that was your enemy, not Brand's?"

"If it were Brand's enemy, why would I run?" Brand looked somewhat helpless.

Tim thought about it too. Those behind-the-scenes black hands running the experiments were, after all, humans, with no deep research into outer gods; how could outer gods fear a bunch of ordinary people?

But if one followed this line of thought, who was the outer god's enemy? To drive an outer god to this point—would it not again require some multiversal-level disaster?

Tim's heart sank. Brand continued: "I admit I was a bit greedy; I have used this body for so long that I could not bear to give it up. So I retrieved a part of the original soul and let it hold things for me first, to use again when I returned. But I did not expect..."

Brand pressed his lips: "This guy's skills are inadequate; the conditions of those few patients of mine are all very complex, and a slight mishandling would cause problems. But he simply could not cope, would not treat, and even could not pretend to be me. Obviously this stimulated Edward..."

Now Tim understood. This outer god might have retrieved the original Brand to occupy this body first; otherwise, an empty, motionless corpse would be a corpse, soon rotting. When the wind passed, he would return, probably reduced to a pile of white bones, and this account would be completely ruined.

But unexpectedly, in the field of psychiatric illness, this outer god's professional level was actually much higher than that of the psychiatrist Brand. He had acted too hastily, and his patients had not had time to be transferred. The returning Brand doctor saw this pile of difficult and miscellaneous conditions and was completely numb.

Because he fundamentally could not treat Edward, leading to Edward's condition worsening. Added to his original persecution complex, Edward noticed the doctor's abnormality and became even harder to control; thus, taking advantage of the withdrawal, he directly killed this returning Brand doctor.

Tim was momentarily at a loss between laughter and tears. He had thought Edward discovered the outer god's true form and wanted to kill the outer god, hence the murder. But he did not expect that the attending physician Edward liked was actually the outer god, not this later-returning inept second-in-command.

But thinking about it, it was also true: regardless of whether Brand was an outer god, his professional level was genuinely high, standing alone in psychiatric and pathological research. He had almost cured Edward, that ultimate psychiatric patient with myriad symptoms bundled into one. This level—you cannot but admire it.

Edward merely had a mental illness, but he was not stupid. Whoever's treatment was effective on his symptoms, whoever was good to him, he could feel. It was just that Brand might not have told him too much of the truth, and even if he had, Edward would not care. He only wanted to stab this "monster" impersonating his attending physician and then get his own doctor back.

Moreover, coincidentally, he was quite talented in this regard. Even though his condition had deteriorated to affect his mobility, he still seized the gap of a natural disaster to create a murder case that even Brainiac could hardly fathom.

And the reason he made the corpse appear in that state was actually to tell Brainiac and those behind him that this Brand doctor had a problem, wanting them to investigate this matter and then retrieve the real doctor.

"Then why did you suddenly come back?" Tim asked again.

Brand showed some embarrassed expression: "After Brand died, I knew things were bad; the killer could not possibly be a second person. And if I let this matter develop further, I might just gain a second enemy."

Brand said it rather vaguely, but Tim understood.

Among Brand's patients, only Edward had the ability to kill. So when that returning Brand doctor died, the outer god immediately knew it was Edward who had done it.

Thus he immediately realized he had fled too hastily, failing to arrange for the patients, leading to the other's condition worsening and him lashing out to kill. If, because of this, Edward suffered something or was caught, it would be hard to say what Professor Xilei would think.

Originally that enemy and Xilei had some connections; if truly pursued, perhaps they could still rely on Xilei's favor to escape a calamity. But if they also messed up Xilei's side, he would be done for. So he had no choice but to hurry back, trying to settle this matter.

This is why the corpse disappeared. Because the outer god was destroying the corpse and erasing traces, not hesitating to sacrifice the account number, also wanting to erase Edward's suspicion. Tim suspected he had done more, because Edward's disappearance from the hospital was also strange.

At the time, the surveillance footage showed Edward walking over himself; it was very likely he saw his familiar attending physician calling him over, so he went into the dead corner. Then Edward's memory was very likely also tampered with; he would not remember killing anyone.

No corpse, no DNA, the killer does not remember doing it—then this could not possibly constitute a murder case. Tim thought, no wonder Brand dared so confidently to go find Professor Xilei; originally he had settled everything.