Watching Pei Yan, who had been sitting there in a daze ever since the Dragon Soul was stripped out, Gu Shenghui waved for the others in the room to leave first. Then he took the Soul Necklace in hand, walked up to Pei Yan, and gently placed it in his palm.

"It's over."

Gu Shenghui's soft murmur pulled Pei Yan back from his stupor. He let out a dull "oh," lowered his head to look at the necklace in his hand, and then sighed long and helplessly.

"How are you? You alright?" Gu Shenghui dragged over a chair and sat down opposite Pei Yan. He took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, held it out to him, and asked.

Putting the Soul Necklace away into the storage ring where he kept his treasured items, Pei Yan casually took a cigarette, clamped it between his lips, lit it, took a drag, and answered a different question instead: "What rating did the Bureau give her ability back then?"

Gu Shenghui was taken aback by the counter-question. Ability ratings were the Investigation Bureau's rough evaluations of each ability user's powers. For people like Ye Ruozai and Gu Shenghui, their abilities were rated S-class within the Bureau—already top-tier powers—while Pei Yan and Pei Jin were rated Extremely Dangerous-class, a rating only the two of them held in the entire Bureau.

"D-class, Burn." Gu Shenghui recalled the injuries the little girl had caused Song Yuanming at the time, and the series of tests that followed, which found that when she was angry she could make anyone who touched her feel a burning pain, but she couldn't cause any damage to non-living objects. So her ability had been assessed as a burn of unknown origin, preliminarily rated D-class, and then her memories were sealed.

"That undershot her. Her ability is at least S-class." Pei Yan exhaled a plume of smoke and said lazily.

"S-class? What kind of ability does she have?" Gu Shenghui asked in surprise.

"All Things as One—Subconscious."

"Subconscious?"

Pei Yan nodded and said, "You've heard of that famous death-row bloodletting experiment, right? A doctor blindfolds a condemned prisoner and tells him he's going to cut open his arteries and let him bleed to death. In reality he only makes a small cut on the prisoner's wrist, then plays the sound of tap water dripping into a bucket beside him. In the end the prisoner dies of cardiac failure brought on by extreme anxiety. And there's the refrigerated truck experiment: someone accidentally gets locked in a refrigerated truck, and when they're found they've frozen to death, body showing all the signs of hypothermia. The strange thing is, the truck's refrigeration unit was never turned on. There are lots of experiments like that. They're all cases where psychological suggestion affects the subconscious and then triggers physical changes in the body."

As he said this, Pei Yan put his hand on Gu Shenghui's wrist. Before long, Gu Shenghui grimaced and yanked his arm back with a hiss, feeling a burning sensation where Pei Yan had touched him. He grabbed Pei Yan's right hand, which had been waving casually in front of him, and when he felt it, the temperature was no different from a normal person's—no obvious change at all.

"She can directly force her own consciousness into an enemy's body and guide the other party's subconscious to affect themselves. Back then she was young and just simply wanted to kill her opponent, but her ability had only just awakened and was too weak, so it only caused a small-area burning effect." As he spoke, Pei Yan glanced at Moira, who had collapsed limp in place after having her soul stripped, then continued, "When he used this ability on the arena, it acted directly on my consciousness, making my whole body writhe in agony—and that was just the most basic use of this power."

"Then she really did give you quite a big gift in return." After listening to Pei Yan's explanation, Gu Shenghui sighed with feeling.

"Not just that ability." Cigarette between his fingers, Pei Yan stood up and walked over to Moira's side. He kicked hard into her stomach. Hearing the muffled grunt Moira let out in her unconscious state, he said with disdain, "She also transferred a portion of her Blood Race essence into my body. That Essence Blood has already fused with the Demon Race Essence Blood in me, letting me use part of the Blood Race's powers."

"So what are you planning to do next?"

"Interrogate him."

With nothing to do between matches, Pei Yan found himself a job—interrogating Vlad II. When Pei Yan reappeared in the basement after a night's rest, Little Vlad, whose soul had been freed, looked at Pei Yan and curled his lips into a mocking sneer.

"Hehehe, that little girl you were so desperate to protect—where is she now? She's no longer inside my body. Dead? Didn't you say you'd definitely save her? Where is she?"

Staring at the smug, petty expression twisted on Moira's face, Pei Yan pulled over a chair and sat down in front of him. Crossing one leg over the other, he pointed at him and said, "Yesterday I told you I'd teach you properly what kind of attitude a captive should have. Looks like the lesson didn't really sink in."

As soon as the words left his mouth, before Pei Yan even had to say anything, Jiang Feiyang, who was standing to the side, drove a fist into Moira's stomach. As Moira's body bent slightly under the blow, she, still sneering at the punch, spat a mouthful of bloody phlegm into Jiang Feiyang's face.

"What did I say, stuff like this, just leave it to me." Zheng Jia Ru said, propping Moira's body up as he looked at Jiang Feiyang with contempt. "You call that hitting someone? Your fist is all soft and fluffy—what, you think he's Lin Daiyu and you're here to pity the delicate beauty? Watch carefully if you want to know how you're supposed to hit someone." With that, Zheng Jia Ru drove another punch square into Moira's stomach.

The short, sharp, rapid punch sank into Moira's abdomen, making his body spasm and his eyes roll back. Seeing him fall to his knees in front of him, Pei Yan, like some street thug, hooked Moira's chin up with the tip of his shoe and said coldly, "Everyone knows what kind of scum you are. So if you want to suffer a little less, then when I ask, you answer. That way you'll at least have a few more days that aren't complete hell."

Seeing that Moira had stopped resisting, Pei Yan went on murmuring, "Right now there's only you left in this body. Should I call you by your current name, Moira, or by your real identity, Little Vlad?"

"Do I still have the right to choose?" Moira raised his head, wiped the bloody froth from the corner of his mouth with his sleeve, and gave a bitter smile.

"Of course. I've always been a very reasonable person who respects other people's opinions."

Although he sneered inwardly at this claim and despised it to the extreme, Moira still chose to answer honestly in order to avoid another beating: "Then call me Little Vlad. The name Moira brings me more humiliation than anything else." 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Seeing Little Vlad make his choice, Pei Yan followed up on his words and asked, "Humiliation? You don't like your current identity. If I remember right, the one who invaded Lei Youting's home and actively seized her body was you, wasn't it? Don't tell me you were forced?"

"I did it of my own will—but that doesn't mean I wanted to be a woman." Little Vlad coughed a few times, clutching his aching ribs as he leaned against the stone wall. A trace of helplessness showed on his face as he sighed, "Before I answer that, can I ask a question?"

"Uh, as the interrogator I really don't like it when the person I'm interrogating starts asking questions. But what can I say, I'm a magnanimous man. Go ahead and ask—though I'd advise you to be smart about it and not try to piss me off."