Bruce didn't have Landon's clearance card. When he pressed the button for the fourth floor, the elevator didn't move at all.
"Fuck!"
Bruce cursed angrily, then went outside the villa and looked up.
The lights on the fourth floor were still on, but Landon was already lying on the floor fast asleep.
[Why is Bruce here? Is he taking over the mission to capture Kaitō Kid?]
[He's the Federation's top agent. Kaitō Kid is in serious danger now!]
[Top agent or not, in front of Kaitō Kid, he's still got to step aside. At best, he ranks second!]
[Bruce once went up against Nakajima Misaki before. I'm really curious—what will Nakajima's reaction be when he wakes up and finds out Bruce showed up again!]
[Oh my god! Thank goodness Kaitō Kid left earlier. If he had run into Bruce, there's no telling if he could've gotten away!]
Among all the federal agents in Eagle Nation, Bruce was without a doubt the one with the strongest overall abilities.
Sente and the others were with the FBI, but they weren't part of the core team. They were just regular agents in the Bureau.
Sente's rank was just that of a small team leader among many agents.
Bruce, however, was in a completely different league. He had carried out countless classified missions and had never once failed.
He had even uncovered several major enemy conspiracies, earning high-profile coverage from the media in Eagle Nation.
Nakajima Misaki himself had once suffered defeat at Bruce's hands. Even though that was years ago, many viewers in the livestream still remembered that incident.
Bruce didn't linger long in the livestream. He quickly walked out the door.
[What the hell? He just left? Isn't he going to deal with the people lying all over the place?]
[Is Bruce going after Kaitō Kid?]
[No way. By now, Kaitō Kid is long gone. Bruce won't be able to catch him!]
[Guys, I just looked it up. Bruce really isn't someone to mess with. All his missions are top-secret military operations. No way Eagle Nation sent him just to capture Kaitō Kid!]
[Sending Bruce to catch Kaitō Kid seems like a total mismatch. Their roles don't even line up!]
At this time, Zhang Yang had already delivered the three original volumes of the Yongle Encyclopedia to the Dragon Nation Embassy. He had no idea that Bruce had gone to Landon's villa.
Meanwhile, news about Kaitō Kid's hypnosis skills had already started making headlines worldwide.
Hypnosis experts from all over the world were shocked by the fact that an entire villa full of people had been hypnotized at the same time. More than shock, they were filled with confusion and disbelief.
[If Kaitō Kid really hypnotized Sente, Landon, and all the others, then his hypnosis skills could probably control anyone with ease!]
[If the hypnosis community could invite him for an interview, it might push the entire field of hypnosis to new heights!]
[Hypnotizing over thirty people at once and making Landon fully obey hypnotic commands… this level of hypnosis is terrifying!]
[Oh my god! My teacher can barely hypnotize three people, and even that takes over half an hour with full cooperation!]
[Shit! Kaitō Kid must be the greatest hypnotist in the world! Why would someone with skills like that choose to be a master thief instead?]
For professional hypnotists, it was a huge loss to the field that someone with Kaitō Kid's level of hypnosis wasn't officially part of their community.
Once the hypnotic effects wore off, Sente and the others began waking up one after another in the yard.
Over thirty people were sprawled all over the ground, stacked on top of each other in a tangled mess.
"What the hell?"
Sente furrowed his brows and staggered to his feet. Looking at the others just waking up around him, he was left speechless.
"Baka! Why the hell am I lying on the ground?"
"Where's Kaitō Kid?"
As everyone started waking up, their memories slowly began to piece themselves back together.
In the livestream, viewers filled the screen with comments as they watched them frantically searching for Kaitō Kid inside the mansion.
[Don't tell me none of them noticed anything? With this many people, not a single one realized what was happening?]
[Oh my god! What are you even saying? If they knew, they wouldn't have been hypnotized in the first place!]
[The highest level of hypnosis is suggestive hypnosis. You won't even realize it's happening. I always thought that kind of thing only existed in movies!]
[Damn, Kaitō Kid could seriously make a movie out of this. It would crush every box office record worldwide!]
On the fourth floor, Landon finally woke up in the exhibition room. When he saw that the original volumes of the Yongle Encyclopedia were gone, replaced by a notice letter, he froze for a moment, unable to process what had happened.
He picked up the notice letter, which had Kaitō Kid's signature on it, and glanced around the room. He couldn't remember why he was even in the exhibition room.
"Oh shit! That dream I had was real!"
Landon grabbed the signed notice letter and rushed downstairs. The moment he saw Sente and the others, he immediately told them to stop searching.
"Sente, you guys can stand down!"
"Kaitō Kid already stole what he came for—the Yongle Encyclopedia. You've lost!"
Landon handed Sente the signed notice letter. Sente stared at it, hesitating, and finally voiced the question that had been bothering him.
"Mr. Landon, do you have any idea what just happened?"
Landon hadn't checked the livestream comments yet, but he was well-informed, and combined with the dream he just recalled, he could pretty much confirm what had happened.
"Sente, I think all of us were hypnotized by Kaitō Kid. After that, I personally took him to get the original Yongle Encyclopedia."
The suggestion implanted in Landon had been different from the others, so after being hypnotized, he had retained a dreamlike awareness.
[Tsk tsk tsk, how did Landon figure it out so fast?]
[Aren't Sente and the others professional agents? Didn't they go through specialized mental resistance training?]
[Shit! I almost forgot. Sente and the others are agents—they're not supposed to be this easy to hypnotize!]
[Oh my god! The more I think about Kaitō Kid's hypnosis, the scarier it gets!]
When Sente heard they'd been hypnotized, he was in complete disbelief, utterly shocked beyond words.
"What the hell? What did you just say? Hypnotized?"
The livestream comments weren't wrong. Agents went through intense mental conditioning. Hypnotizing one of them was at least ten times harder than hypnotizing an ordinary person.
Landon being hypnotized was bad enough, but both Sente and Nakajima Misaki—trained agents—had also been hypnotized so easily. This was bound to stir up massive controversy.
[Oh shit! Is this because Sente and the others aren't mentally strong enough, or is Kaitō Kid's hypnosis just too powerful?]
[Looks like the Island Nation and Eagle Nation really need to step up their mental resistance training for their agents!]
[Maybe Bruce should give it a shot. It's obvious Sente and the others aren't even close to being a match for Kaitō Kid!]
[Oh my god! If Bruce can't catch Kaitō Kid either, won't Eagle Nation end up just as humiliated as the Island Nation?]
[Damn it! Why did Bruce leave? He should've stayed!]
Landon picked up the tablet from the floor and officially declared the game over—the winner had already been decided.
This round was over. The livestream was ending.
Landon then saved the replay of the livestream and handed it over to Sente and the others to review.