Zhang Yunxiang's statement matched the case file almost word for word. He spoke slowly, mechanically, like someone who had repeated the same story so many times that the words had lost all meaning.
He said that day he'd gone to meet a client about a self-media collaboration deal. The client wasn't satisfied with his proposal, said his follower count wasn't high enough, wanted to cut the price in half. He'd been in a terrible mood and went to Night Wanderer Bar in the afternoon to drink away his frustrations.
"How much did you drink?"
"I don't remember... a lot. Beer, then switched to something stronger."
"Whiskey? Brandy?"
"Whiskey." Zhang Yunxiang paused. "Doubles."
Yin Wuwang noted mentally: He remembers the type and quantity of alcohol. Not the kind of detail someone who'd blacked out would recall. Either he wasn't as drunk as he claimed, or certain memories had been burned into his mind so deeply that even alcohol couldn't wash them away.
"Then what?"
"Then I just... remembered that thing."
"What thing?"
Zhang Yunxiang's fingers began twisting together. "The thing about my wife."
"What thing?" Yin Wuwang asked, already knowing the answer.
"She..." Zhang Yunxiang's Adam's apple bobbed again. "Someone told me she was having an affair with Chen Wan."
The moment those words came out, Yin Wuwang caught the first crack.
Zhang Yunxiang's gaze drifted down and to the left. Very brief, less than half a second, but Yin Wuwang saw it clearly. In the cultivation world, he could track the trajectory of sword light—mortal micro-expressions were as easy to read as turning pages.
Down and to the left.
Not the direction of "recall," but the direction of "internal dialogue"—he was hesitating about whether to say something, or deliberating how to say it.
Interesting. Yin Wuwang thought. When mentioning his wife's affair, he hesitated. No anger, no pain. Just hesitation.
Yin Wuwang's expression didn't change at all. He continued: "Who told you?"
"A woman."
"What kind of woman?"
"I don't know... couldn't see clearly." Zhang Yunxiang rubbed his eyes, as if genuinely trying to remember. "The lighting was dim, and I was drunk. I only remember... her voice."
"What kind of voice?"
"Pleasant." Zhang Yunxiang said. "Very pleasant."
Yin Wuwang leaned back in his chair, tapping his knee twice beneath the table. "Couldn't see her face clearly, only remembers her pleasant voice"—he'd said this very smoothly, as if he'd rehearsed it countless times in his head. But when he said "pleasant," his tone shifted. Not the tone of someone recalling a specific person, but of someone reciting a feeling.
"What did she say to you?"
Zhang Yunxiang was silent for a few seconds. His fingers twitched against his thighs, and his gaze dropped to the iron table between them. Then he spoke:
"She said... your wife is having an affair, with Chen Wan. She often waits for him at the bar's back door to go on dates."
This entire sentence, he said with perfect fluency.
So fluent it was unnatural.
Yin Wuwang savored the texture of that fluency in his mind. Three thousand years of experience told him that when people recall real conversations, there are usually pauses, repetitions, corrections—"She said something like... wait, no, her exact words were..." But Zhang Yunxiang's sentence had no stumbles from start to finish, as if even the punctuation had been pre-arranged.
Not "recalling." Reciting.
Words that had been repeatedly drilled into someone eventually became part of their own memory—he wasn't "repeating what someone else said," he was speaking something that had been carved into his bones.
"That's all she said?" Yin Wuwang asked.
"That's all."
"How many times did she say it?"
"How many times?" He repeated the question, as if not understanding.
"I'm asking whether that woman said these words to you once, or many times?"
Zhang Yunxiang lowered his head, staring at his own hands. They were shaking even harder now.
"...More than once." His voice was very small.
Yin Wuwang didn't press further. He simply watched Zhang Yunxiang in silence, patiently waiting.
"Several times." Zhang Yunxiang finally spoke again. "Every time I went drinking alone, when I'd had too much, she would... appear. Sit down next to me, lean in close, whisper."
"Did she say the same thing every time?"
Zhang Yunxiang froze, his brow furrowing tightly, as if painfully searching for some image in his mind. "...She also said she'd seen them embracing with her own eyes."
"Did you see it with your own eyes?" Yin Wuwang stared at him intently.
"I..." Zhang Yunxiang's hands suddenly gripped his thighs hard, his voice beginning to shake, knuckles whitening from the pressure. "I didn't see it... but the image is in my head. Every time I close my eyes, I see them in the back alley. It's so real, it's like... like I really saw it myself."
Yin Wuwang leaned back, his gaze deepening slightly.
In the cultivation world, this was called the highest level of "voice-induced delusion"—not simply making someone believe a statement, but using long-term suggestion to make their brain generate false images on its own. Zhang Yunxiang could no longer distinguish what others had told him from what he'd "seen" himself.
This was no ordinary manipulation. Whoever that woman was, she understood the human mind with frightening precision. She hadn't just planted a seed of doubt—she'd cultivated it, watered it, let it grow roots so deep that Zhang Yunxiang's own brain had started producing evidence to support it.
"How long has this been going on?" Yin Wuwang continued.
"I'm not sure... half a year? Maybe longer." Zhang Yunxiang's voice shook badly. "I didn't believe it at first. Xiaoqing isn't that kind of person. But she said it so many times, I started to think... what if it's true? What if..."
He didn't finish.
Yin Wuwang waited five seconds before asking the next question.
"All right. That night, after you finished drinking, what happened?" Yin Wuwang asked, his tone deliberately casual.
[End of V2_Chapter 11]
Next: A bottle, a body, and a man who thought he was a murderer—but wasn't.