Chapter 442: Reverse Lookup

Outpatient session ends.

Chu Che takes off his Doctor's Lab Coat, hangs it on the coat rack behind the Examination Room door, moving neither hurriedly nor slowly.

He picks up the Thermal Cup, screws the lid tight and stuffs it into the side pocket of his briefcase, then pulls a cleaning cloth from a drawer and carefully wipes a small speck of spray off the Gold-threaded Lens.

A nurse greets him in the Corridor.

"Dr. Chu, done for the day?"

"Hmm, heading home to rest."

He smiles, lifts his bag and walks toward the elevator.

His gait is relaxed, rhythm even, indistinguishable from any weary doctor finishing a shift in this building.

After exiting the hospital gates and reaching the parking lot, Chu Che drives away in his BMW.

Forty minutes later, the apartment door opens with the beeping of fingerprint recognition.

The foyer light comes on, revealing a 120‑square‑meter, finely renovated apartment—clean, stark, with not even an extra cup on the living‑room coffee table. The refrigerator forever holds only three bottles of mineral water and two boxes of ready‑made salad.

It doesn't look like a place for a single person.

More like an operating room meticulously maintained.

Chu Che changes into slippers, walks to the floor‑to‑ceiling window, and leaves the lights off.

Jiang Hai City's nightscape pours down from the thirty‑seventh floor, neon lights tinting half the ceiling an ambiguous orange‑red. In the distance, the Weird Domain quarantine zone's searchlights sweep back and forth, white beams cutting the night sky, a round trip every fourteen seconds.

He stands for a moment.

Then he pulls down the blackout curtains.

As the room darkens, he lifts his right hand.

His five fingers spread.

Palm facing upward.

In the void, a semi‑transparent control panel materializes out of thin air—the Weird Editor.

Crimson light outlines half his face in sharp contour, the lens reflecting a cold gleam. Chu Che does not sit; he simply stands in the center of the living room, left hand behind his back, right hand hovering above the interface.

His fingertips tap into the asset library.

"Fake Person — Smiling Dummy variant."

Rows of parameters float up.

Proliferation, cognitive alteration, concept overwriting, collective memory implantation…

Chu Che's gaze scans these rules one by one, swiftly yet reading each.

He begins to operate.

First step, he extracts a strand of consciousness from his own spirit body.

The process lacks any drama. No blinding flash, no agonized howl. Chu Che merely raises an eyebrow slightly, and a tiny cluster of faint blue light—smaller than a firefly—appears on his fingertip.

That is a small fragment of himself.

A "Chu Che fragment" cut from the foundation of his thoughts—sufficient to drive a puppet.

The habit of leaving things on the operating table kicks in again. Chu Che inserts this strand of consciousness into the editor's graft slot, as steadily as placing a donor organ into cold ischemic preservation fluid.

Second step, invoke the Fake Person's Core Rule template.

The editor's blue light flickers.

A mass of flesh and blood materializes out of nowhere above Chu Che's palm.

It has no skin, no facial features, only exposed muscle fibers and unformed cartilage, slowly writhing and breathing in the air. A nail‑sized eye bud protrudes from the side of the flesh mass, rotates, then retracts, as if undecided where to develop.

Is it pretty? Not at all.

Yet Chu Che's gaze at the thing is no different from looking at a bare heart beating on an extracorporeal circulation machine—focused, calm, with the surgeon's characteristic aesthetic detachment.

He begins editing the parameters.

"Concept cognition overwrite depth — maxed out."

This is the deepest horror of the Fake Person rules.

For example.

A Fake Person named Li Si appears at your dining table. It needs no forged identity documents, no tampered household records, no brainwashing of anyone.

It does only one thing—makes the concept "Li Si is always sitting at this table eating" become an established cognitive fact of the world.

Thus your brain fills in everything else on its own.

You will "remember" Li Si is your colleague. You will "remember" he helped fix your computer last week. You will "remember" you both drank together last month, he got drunk and told a lame joke, and you laughed until you choked on soda.

Those memories are real.

To your brain, they are one hundred percent real.

Because the Fake Person doesn't alter your memories—it alters the very concept of what a memory should be.

Thus it can't be detected.

No spiritual detection method can uncover it.

Because you weren't altered. Your memories are true, your emotions are true, your trust in Li Si is true.

The only false thing is Li Si himself.

Chu Che sets the concept overwrite depth to the highest level.

The flesh mass above his palm ceases its writhing.

Then it begins to change.

Muscle fibers rearrange at a visibly rapid pace, cartilage hardens into bone, skin grows from the edges toward the center, its hue shifting from red to pink, then to normal complexion. Facial features emerge within three seconds—bridge of the nose, lips, eyebrow arches, and finally the eyeballs.

In less than ten seconds.

A face appears before Chu Che.

A youth in his twenty‑seven or twenty‑eight years, with decent but unremarkable features—the kind of look that blends into a crowd without drawing a second glance. His brows and eyes carry a mild, easygoing warmth, and the curve of his mouth is just enough to make people think, "This kid seems decent."

Chu Che made a final check of the parameters.

He is 178 cm tall, weighs 68 kg. He speaks with a Jiang Hai local accent, at a slightly slow pace, habitually using "Okay", "Got it", "No problem" as catchphrases. On the inner side of his right wrist is a two‑centimeter old scar—from a bike fall in childhood.

Left‑handed.

He drinks only American‑style coffee, no sugar, no milk. The reason: "If you add those, it's not coffee; it's just sugary water."

Every detail has been meticulously calculated by Chu Che.

More perfection isn't better. An overly perfect résumé looks suspicious.

It should include minor flaws, bad habits, occasional grumbling about overtime, and complaints about the Cafeteria food.

It must be genuine.

So genuine that even he believes he's real.

"The name is—Xu Chen."

Chu Che typed the last two characters in the editor.

The flesh group's reconstruction was complete. A youth in a gray hooded sweatshirt and black work pants stood quietly in the middle of the living room. His eyes were brown, with the normal focusing reflex in the pupils.

Chu Che looked at him.

He also looked at Chu Che.

Then Chu Che snapped his fingers.

Xu Chen turned, opened the entryway door, and walked out.

There was no dialogue.

No dialogue was needed.

He knew what he was supposed to do, where to go, and after arriving, whom to smile at, whom to nod to, and which corner of the workstation to place the coffee cup.

Because these matters are not "commands" to him.

They are simply "the way it's always been."

——

Jiang Hai City, Old Town District, twelve meters below ground.

A modified air‑raid tunnel stretched forward, ending in an iron door reinforced with a biometric lock. Behind the door was a 60‑square‑meter sealed room, its floor lined with sound‑proof material and a full‑spectrum interference lamp hanging from the ceiling.

Eden Garden, Jiang Hai Intelligence Hub.

The staff is small, with seven permanent members. They handle information gathering, personnel tracking, and data cleaning across the entire Jiang Hai City area.

Senior Investigator Lao Hei—bald, in his early forties, with a scar above his left eyebrow—carried an American‑style coffee made with a machine Chen Shao brought from Northern Europe, and walked to the workstation in the corner.

At the workstation sat a youth in a gray hooded sweatshirt, staring blankly at three screens.

"Xiao Xu, why are you spacing out? Have you finished running the data the BOSS needs?"

Xu Chen snapped back, smiled briefly, took the coffee, and took a sip.

"Finished running; now doing a second cross‑check. The list of thirteen has been cut down to nine; four don't match."

"Efficiency's pretty high," Lao Hei patted his shoulder. "Don't overwork yourself; your eyes were red yesterday."

"It's fine, I'm used to it."

Lao Hei left.

Xu Chen, still holding the coffee, continued typing.

No one thought anything was wrong.

Lao Hei recalled that Xu Chen was transferred here three months ago; he doesn't speak much but works efficiently. Once they went upstairs to the Fly Restaurant for twice‑cooked pork; Xiao Xu's chopstick skills were poor, two grains of rice fell onto the table, and Lao Hei teased him for a while.

Dao Ba at the opposite workstation remembered that on Xu Chen's first day, he brought a case of milk tea for the whole team, didn't drink any himself, and said, "Too sweet."

In the server database, Xu Chen's access permissions, onboarding review form, background check report, medical exam record, six‑month performance rating, and three field‑trip reimbursement receipts were all present.

Even the incident two months ago when he almost tripped over a floor cable is fully recorded in the surveillance footage.

Everything is real.

Because to this world, Xu Chen "has always been here."

That concept has been written into the underlying code of reality. All related evidence, memories, and physical traces are automatically filled in by the world.

Just as the human immune system doesn't attack its own cells.

Because it recognizes those cells.

It "knows" those cells belong to itself.

And Xu Chen has already been stamped with the cognitive tag of "one of us."

——

In the apartment, Chu Che sat on the sofa.

He closed his eyes.

Visual sharing activated.

Xu Chen's visual field unfolded in his mind—blue light from three screens, streams of data dancing on the keyboard, and …

The original Level-1 Command issued by Chen Shao.

Chu Che, using Xu Chen's permissions, retrieved the full mission description.

"Thoroughly investigate the Weird origin of Jiang Hai City, focusing on personnel whose timelines intersect with Sequence 001 to Sequence 003, and filter suspects with motive and capability."

Command issuance time: forty‑six hours ago.

Issuer: the Leader.

Request source……

Chu Che's gaze lingered on that line.

Request source—internal ID: Yao.

Permission level: highest.

Chen Yao.

Chu Che lifted his hand and nudged the glasses on his nose.

Interesting.

It wasn't Chen Shao who voluntarily wanted to investigate. It was his sister who made the request, and Chen Shao approved it without a word.

Why would a thirteen‑year‑old girl investigate the origin of the Weird?

More precisely—who made her investigate?

Xu Chen's fingers never left the keyboard. He retrieved the communication logs for the ID Yao covering the past seventy‑two hours.

Encrypted channel, double obfuscation, Eden Garden's proprietary protocol.

But for someone who already has permission, pulling internal communication logs is just a matter of clicking the mouse twice in the system.

In the logs, Chen Yao recently had an encrypted voice call with an unidentified terminal.

Duration: four minutes twelve seconds.

The summary field is empty—this communication's confidentiality level exceeds Xu Chen's permission.

Yet the geographic coordinates of the communication origin were not hidden.

Qiu Ce Yuan.