Chapter 18 – It Is Laughing

A wave of heat surged forward, the orange-red flames casting silent shadows upon the cold metal walls, contorting them into twisted shapes.

He wore an expressionless face and, with a long-handled iron tongs, methodically fed the white lab coat—tainted with unknown contaminants—and all associated garments, one by one into the high-temperature incinerator’s feed chamber.

The polymer fibers curled and carbonized instantly at over a thousand degrees Celsius, emitting a sharp, acrid smell of burnt resin.

He spared no detail; even the shoelaces of the shoes were gripped with the tongs and carefully fed into the heart of the flames.

A high-definition camera mounted on a tripod faithfully recorded every moment, its red recording light like an unblinking, tireless eye in the dimly lit disposal room.

This was evidence destruction, but also a ceremony of farewell.

He had to personally burn the “sandbox” that the enemy had crafted to rebuild his own fortress upon this scorched earth.

Returning to the brightly lit office, he spread out all the evidence related to the "Teacher" once more.

This time, he was no longer seeking clues but searching for a pattern of thought—a core driving force hidden behind every action.

His gaze finally settled on a photocopy of a document titled The Yiji Hall Funeral Records.

Previously, everyone’s attention had been fixed on the victim’s horrific spontaneous combustion, neglecting a detail marked as “of no significant relevance” in the on-site inspection report.

The record showed that in the modest rented room, the forensic expert had discovered a line of charcoal writing on the wooden backing of an old-fashioned dressing mirror.

Because the mirror shattered in the fire, the writing was blurred and dismissed as mere random scribbling born of the deceased’s mental confusion.

He donned white gloves, picked up a magnifying glass, and leaned close to the high-resolution photograph of the scene.

The charcoal powder was deeply embedded in the rough wood grain, the strokes pressed heavily, conveying despair.

He deciphered it word by word, silently mouthing: “You... cannot see me... so... I must... make you see.”

In an instant, it was as if a thunderclap exploded inside his mind.

All his previous deductions were shattered in that moment.

He was wrong—colossally wrong.

He had always believed that the Teacher’s obsession stemmed from a twisted vanity, a desire to be remembered, to leave a mark on history.

Hence, he chose to hide, to erase his presence, hoping that obsession would dissipate without an anchor.

But now he understood that it was not about “being remembered” at all; it was a more fundamental, primal need—to be acknowledged as existing.

Like a child ignored in a crowd, who cries, throws tantrums, or even causes destruction to attract a parent’s gaze.

He was not seeking to be “remembered”; he merely wanted, in that moment, to confirm within his parents’ sight, “I am here.”

The Teacher’s ritual was the same; its essence was not to have the world chant his name, but to find a host—someone else—who, at a cognitive level, would utterly confirm “you” as “me.”

When Su Wanying, Lin Xiaoya, or anyone familiar with him wholeheartedly pointed at Shen Mo and affirmed, “He is the Teacher,” the ritual was complete.

It was not imitation, nor acting, but a total cognitive overwrite.

All his previous hiding and avoidance had played right into the enemy’s hands, like a game of hide-and-seek he had unwittingly lost.

Cold sweat trickled down Shen Mo’s temple. He had to immediately verify this terrifying hypothesis.

He needed a reference point—an anchor defining the “real Shen Mo.”

He thought of Su Wanying.

Her understanding of him penetrated to the level of behavioral logic.

An hour later, he placed a forged “Shen Mo Mental State Assessment Report” before Su Wanying.

He named this small experiment the “Identity Dissociation Test.”

The report’s language was highly professional and well-referenced, claiming that Shen Mo, overwhelmed by long-term exposure to high-risk anomalous events, exhibited significant dissociative identity symptoms, blaming his responsibilities and failures on an imagined “Teacher” persona, and recommending immediate isolation and psychological intervention.

Su Wanying read quickly, her brow furrowing tighter and tighter.

She did not respond with panic or worry as Shen Mo had anticipated. Instead, she pushed the report aside sharply, her gaze piercing as she looked at him, her tone resolute and dismissive: “This isn’t you.”

“Why?” Shen Mo’s voice remained perfectly calm, his pen poised to take notes.

“Because the logic is flawed,” Su Wanying said decisively. “The report claims you created the ‘Teacher’ persona to evade responsibility. But you’re not that kind of person. The Shen Mo I know always shoulders every responsibility first, even if it crushes you. You feel guilt. You suffer. But you never avoid it. At its core, this report denies your fundamental character. So, it’s false.”

Shen Mo’s pen left a heavy dot on the paper.

He had succeeded.

Unaware, Su Wanying had seen through his disguise by analyzing his most fundamental behavioral logic.

This proved that the identity “Shen Mo” was not a blank slate to be easily altered.

Its existence was forged by countless genuine actions and choices, possessing an intricate depth and texture impossible to tamper with lightly.

He folded the report and forcefully wrote a new anchoring phrase in his notebook: “My existence is not defined by others.”

The next day, Shen Mo voluntarily applied to return to front-line duty at headquarters.

When the news broke, everyone breathed a sigh of relief but was puzzled by his additional conditions.

He requested that all future meetings requiring his participation be conducted via encrypted voice calls as a rule; if face-to-face communication was necessary, he would wear specially designed sunglasses and refuse any unnecessary physical contact.

His requests were approved.

When Shen Mo stepped into the familiar conference room again, all eyes focused on the peculiar sunglasses on his face.

The lenses had an almost perfect mirror finish, reflecting every face and light in the room clearly, yet revealing none of his own eyes.

No one knew that the glasses had polarized dual-layer lenses: the outer layer a highly reflective mirror surface, while the inner layer, close to his eyes, projected a pre-recorded static image of his face at complete muscular relaxation.

He cut off visual contact. Physically, he ensured no one could truly “see” him.

“From today onward,” Shen Mo’s voice came through the microphone on the table, calm and clear, echoing in everyone’s ears, “what you see is only what I allow you to see.”

Three days later, Lin Xiaoya showed up uninvited.

Like a startled bird, she burst into Shen Mo’s office, tightly clutching an old-fashioned Polaroid camera.

“They all say you’ve changed,” she panted, her eyes full of stubborn fear. “I want to see with my own eyes, take a photo of the truth—to prove you’re still you, or... that you’re not.”

Shen Mo sat behind his desk, still wearing those sunglasses.

He did not stop her; he even slightly turned to give her a better angle.

Lin Xiaoya’s hands trembled, but she raised the camera.

“Click.” A flash went off, and a photo slowly emerged from the camera’s slot.

She nervously pinched the photo’s edges, gently shaking it; the faint chemical smell of developing filled the air.

The image gradually appeared on the white paper.

There stood Shen Mo’s figure, clear as day.

He wore no sunglasses but a clean white lab coat, a slight smile curling at his lips—compassionate yet piercingly insightful.

That gaze was identical to the expression in the Teacher’s file photo.

Lin Xiaoya’s face instantly turned pale, and the camera slipped from her hands.

Shen Mo stood, calmly walked past her, and picked up the photo.

He glanced at it, then, before her eyes, fed it into the paper shredder beside the desk.

The motor roared as that compassionate smile was shredded into countless thin strips.

Immediately afterward, he pressed a switch on a player atop the desk.

A recording began—Shen Mo’s own voice, calm and steady, devoid of emotion, reading something aloud.

Lin Xiaoya soon recognized it as a passage from The Yiji Hall Substitute Speech—a speech the Teacher had once delivered to the desperate.

The recording was edited, a collection of audio clips from seven consecutive days, each hour spent reading those words aloud in full.

He used his own voice to recite the Teacher’s words, as if performing a long and tedious mimicry.

When the last word fell, the office fell into complete silence.

Shen Mo turned off the player, facing Lin Xiaoya, as if speaking to some invisible presence in the air.

“I hear you,” he said clearly, word by word, “but I will not become you.”

The moment his voice fell, wisps of blue smoke suddenly rose without warning from inside the shredder.

The shredded photo strips’ edges quickly blackened, as if scorched by an unseen flame, releasing a faint burnt odor.

That night, Shen Mo returned to his apartment.

He did not turn on the lights; the entire room was washed in the soft glow of the city’s night.

He drew the curtains, enveloping himself in absolute darkness, then lay down, ready to sleep.

He closed his eyes.

Yet, the moment his eyelids shut, a vivid image appeared clearly on his fully light-blocked retina.

It was a face.

His own face.

The face stared directly at him, so close it seemed to touch his nose.

In the absolute darkness, it gazed deeply, then slowly, slowly lifted the corners of its mouth into that same compassionate yet eerie smile seen in the Polaroid.

Then, it blinked gently at him.

Shen Mo’s body did not move; his breathing remained unchanged.

He did not open his eyes to dispel the vision because he knew it was no illusion.

He calmly reached for the recording pen on the bedside table and pressed its switch.

A faint red light flickered on, then off.

In the boundless silence, he spoke in a voice as cold and composed as ever to the face in his mind:

“I know you’re there. But when my eyes are closed, that is my world.”

As his words fell, outside the window, the massive glass facade of the skyscraper directly opposite his bedroom rippled silently, as if pebbles had been cast upon its surface.

Soon, countless office buildings, apartments, and shopping malls all across the city seemed to awaken, their glass walls coming alive in the deep night like billions of slumbering giant eyes slowly opening.