But aside from this kind of control, there is another kind: fusion! That is, after slipping in while the other side is vulnerable, instead of indirectly manipulating the other party’s thoughts, you merge into their consciousness, thereby achieving a far more direct control over that body and that mind!

Without a doubt, the latter is much harder than the former!

One is indirect, the other is direct; one is taking advantage of the situation, the other is doing it yourself...

To use a "ghost" metaphor from those supernatural horror tales: his first way of using the Heart Demon is like being possessed by delusions or having a haunting. The ghost mostly uses fear, hallucinations and similar tricks to steer people into irrational actions. The external force of the "ghost" is limited; more often, it uses various means to stir up the ’ghost’ inside a person’s heart, so they can no longer distinguish illusion from reality and follow along the ghost’s push. Usually only those monks of great virtue, sages and heroes with a clear conscience and an open heart aren’t affected.

The second way is like a ghost actually taking over a body, truly manipulating a person to achieve its goal. And that usually requires the ghost to have much deeper cultivation, while the possessed must be physically weak and mentally fragile for it to succeed. You don’t even need monks and sages; just people with a healthy body and strong spirit, whose so‑called yang energy is abundant, are already very hard to possess.

If Li Yan’s Heart Demon ability is compared to ghost tricks, then normally he’s just putting on a spooky act, bewitching people and exploiting their inner demons; but now, he’s going for a full possession, fusing with Liu Chen’s consciousness!

The difficulty for Li Yan here isn’t because Liu Chen has "strong yang energy" or anything like that, nor is it even because his Spiritual Power is tough. It’s because once Li Yan uses this method—having to first merge with the other person’s consciousness—that will cause a huge volume of the other’s awareness to pour into his own consciousness, hitting him with a massive shock! On top of that, he has to keep suppressing the other party’s consciousness the entire time; otherwise the whole thing could backfire on him.

Not only is this difficult, it will also consume far more of his mental strength, and any backlash will be that much fiercer!

But he has no other choice right now. If he wants to understand Liu Chen’s entire plan, he can only do it this way.

...

The instant he successfully invaded, controlled, and fused with Liu Chen’s consciousness, Li Yan’s head suddenly felt like it was going to burst open. Countless chaotic thoughts rushed into his brain at high speed! It felt like a normal person watching one movie in an hour and a half, their brain digesting it at leisure—only now, within one or two seconds, hundreds of movies’ worth of information flooded in at once. How could that not feel like it was about to split?

Li Yan was mentally prepared, though. Liu Chen had lived sixty‑seven years, but most of those memories and thoughts weren’t what he needed; all Liu Chen’s scheming in the business world—his plotting, strategizing, long‑term planning—also weren’t what he cared about. What he wanted now was just the recent stretch of memories, especially everything related to the arrangements made to avenge Liu Yuyang.

Even so, filtering out this massive amount of information was still extremely taxing—like a computer trying to delete countless files, even format the hard drive; it still needs a buffer period!

For a while that felt long but was probably only a few seconds in reality, Li Yan’s head felt like it was splitting, his brain exploding with data, until everything went blank!

When things finally stabilized a little, he had already quickly grasped everything. By now, it was as if all this had become his own memory; there was no need to narrate it line by line—it was just there, completely clear in his mind.

So it turned out Liu Chen really had dragged Liu Yunyun in, and also Liu Yuyang’s close buddy, Fang William—the one Li Yan had seen in the hotel restaurant that day. Fang William was the one who’d come up with the idea for Liu Yuyang, and also the one who’d introduced the Assassins. After the assassins failed, before Fang William could get any word back, he first heard the news of Liu Yuyang’s suicide. He spent several days in shock and fear, suspecting that Liu Yuyang had killed himself out of guilt!

But he also felt something was very off. After asking around, he discovered Li Yan wasn’t dead, while those two Assassins could no longer be reached. This left Fang William full of doubts. Then the police’s confirmatory report on Liu Yuyang’s suicide came out; on the surface, the evidence pointed to embezzling a huge sum of funds from a public account. But Fang William didn’t buy it. He knew Liu Yuyang skimmed some money on the side, but he also knew Liu Yuyang wouldn’t dare go that big. After all, Liu Chen’s family fortune was hefty; there was no reason for him to pull something like that.

After that, Fang William began making frequent trips to the Liu household. Upon learning about Liu Yunyun’s situation and hesitating for a long time, he finally told Liu Chen everything. He was the only one who knew about this; none of the other friends did. And he had no direct evidence that Liu Yuyang had hired someone to kill Li Yan, let alone any proof that Li Yan had killed Liu Yuyang.

But mere suspicion was enough!

Liu Yuyang’s fate scared him badly. He was terrified that Li Yan would come after him as well, and that the Assassins would give him up. So he and the enraged Liu Chen hit it off immediately. Liu Chen began cashing out large sums of money, preparing to unleash a frenzied retaliation against Li Yan and Zhang Yurong—the parties directly involved—as well as all of their relatives and friends. Meanwhile, Fang William used his channels to contact the world’s largest professional Assassin Platform, dropping a huge sum to hire high‑level Assassins for revenge.

—There was no way he was ever trusting low‑tier Assassins of Crow’s level again. He was spending money to buy peace of mind now, and spending Liu Chen’s money at that. A few million, tens of millions—he didn’t feel a thing.

Because the price was high and the listed difficulty wasn’t great, they placed several orders in a row, and each was quickly snatched up. As the operations chief of "their" organization, Yue Yao regularly monitored the various deals and missions posted on the Assassin Platform. But she was only one person; she couldn’t keep a 24/7, year‑round watch on everything. Plus, she’d been busy these days laying out "their" move against Country Li, so she only caught wind of it later.

From Liu Chen’s initial investigation, to them locking onto Li Yan, to contacting, placing orders, and arranging everything—all of that took time. They wanted a single decisive strike, so they made no moves that might alert the enemy. Not until now, when the Assassins had already arrived in S City, did it finally reach the moment for a conclusion. The call just now was from Fang William to Liu Chen, telling him that the Assassins were arriving one after another and that tonight would be a blood‑soaked night of revenge, and to keep an eye on breaking news before he went to bed.

...

The Assassins were already in motion. Whoever they were, they definitely weren’t some random mob of street thugs. There was no plan involving more than a dozen men capturing and gang‑raping anyone; Liu Chen had just said that to provoke Li Yan, and it was something that had only just occurred to him. —He might have gone mad with hatred, but he was originally a legitimate businessman. He could imagine killing Zhang Yurong to have her buried with his son, but as for the pitch‑black stuff like gang rape and humiliation, that only sprang to mind when he saw Li Yan and his malice surged up to his胆边.

Armed with this information, Li Yan felt a bit heavy inside.

But he was still just one person, unable to be in two places at once; things had to be solved and handled step by step.

The more critical the moment, the more he needed to stay calm and decisive!

If he tried to rush in all directions at once, he might end up failing on every front. Panicking himself first would do no good.

So he forced down his worry. He didn’t immediately kill Liu Chen and leave the Liu household. Instead, he kept a tight grip on Liu Chen’s consciousness and swiftly began to execute a counter‑revenge plan!

...

A few minutes later, Liu Chen "committed suicide" in their study, in the exact same way and at the exact same place as Liu Yuyang. Likewise, before "killing himself," he left behind a suicide note—written in his own hand—explaining the reasons for his suicide.

As for the other members of the Liu family—whether Liu Chen’s wife or the collateral relatives and in‑laws—none of them knew the specifics of the plan. Liu Chen’s wife was kept in the dark because he didn’t want her to worry and grieve. The other relatives, after Liu Yuyang’s death, all came by with fake warmth to mourn, while in reality they were salivating over Liu Chen’s fortune. With the sole heir dead, each of them was calculating how to grab a bigger slice of his assets. No one cared about Liu Yuyang’s death or his vengeance. They were all happy to see it happen!

Since they were irrelevant, Li Yan had no need to hunt them down one by one. Only one other key target had to die—Fang William!

But right now, there was something more important he had to do first! (To be continued. To find out what happens next, please log in to www.qidian.com. More Chapters available—support the author, support legal reading!)