Seeing Julian enter alongside Ethan Caldwell, Felix Tate placed the stack of documents in his hand onto the glass table. Stripped of the joking demeanor or the scrutinizing gaze from the early days, the look in Felix’s eyes as he watched Julian was now filled with the absolute seriousness and calmness reserved for equal partners.

"Take a seat." Felix Tate jerked his chin toward the sofa opposite them.

Julian Sterling was slightly taken aback by this solemn attitude. It was true that Felix’s prior attitude toward him had not been terrible, but it certainly had never reached this level of respect. Not to mention they had just argued about various things the night prior, so for Felix to present himself in this manner truly caught Julian off guard.

Seemingly seeing right through Julian’s thoughts, Felix Tate interlaced his ten fingers, tapping a rhythmic beat against the table’s surface: "There is no need to be surprised. We are fully capable of investigating the reliability of what you told us. Furthermore, we also managed to investigate the company that you and Lucas Hill established."

Speaking up to this point, Felix paused for a moment, as if wanting to observe Julian’s facial expression. It was a pity that Julian displayed no reaction whatsoever; he simply sat naturally and comfortably onto Ethan Caldwell’s lap. Ethan did not object in the slightest, even casually opening his arms to hold Julian in his embrace. In his hand, Ethan was holding a stack of documents, which were likely the very things Felix had just mentioned.

Ethan Caldwell did not mind Julian Sterling reading these materials, and Julian was not the least bit afraid of them digging up his secrets either.

Regardless, they could now be considered to be riding in the same boat, so if they wanted to, they might as well be completely straightforward with one another.

"To be honest, putting the past aside, ever since the day you married Ethan Caldwell, you truly made me look at you in a different light." Judging by the investigation files, the period before Julian was hospitalized for his suicide attempt and the period afterward were indeed two completely different states, one could even say they were polar opposites. Ignoring the earlier phase, the later Julian Sterling was much more resilient and sharp than the frail, delicate facade he intentionally put on display.

Julian did not particularly care about those trivial things anyway; there were matters that sometimes only needed to be heard at face value, for at the end of the day, it was nothing more than diplomatic pleasantries.

"They do not merely lure people in. CORE possesses an incredibly sophisticated screening system. They target abandoned individuals, people who have suffered severe psychological trauma, or those with specific brainwave frequencies. They refer to that extraction experiment by a certain name..."

Julian Sterling hesitated for a fraction of a second, vague memories flashing through his mind like a scorched, vintage film roll. These were the genuine memories locked within this body slowly being reawakened, rather than the plot points he had known through the original novel. Precisely because of this, Julian did not have a clear grasp of the information either; it kept flickering inside his head like a lightbulb on the verge of burning out.

The scene of a stark white laboratory, an intricate maze of plugged-in tubes, and a chillingly cold voice echoing from the broadcasting speaker system.

"The Eden Project." Julian articulated clearly: "They call it the Eden Project. I honestly cannot remember everything precisely, but in there, they would never address each other by names; the entire procedure and all communication processes were conducted using identification codes. I... I mean, in the past, was designated as A-01."

"The Eden Project? A-01?" Kieran Talbot furrowed his brows tightly, swiftly opening his laptop and typing away with continuous clacking sounds to search for the encrypted keywords within the classified database they had managed to gather. "This word Eden, it is likely alluding to the Garden of Eden. Do they view themselves as God, wanting to forge a brand new genesis by manipulating the memories and souls of human beings? Do these lunatics truly believe they are the Creator?" 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

"It is not that they are delusional, but rather they actually have a foundation for their madness." Felix Tate let out a heavy breath, his sharp, angular face turning extremely dark: "You yourself are well aware of the origins of CORE; they are not just some spontaneous syndicate. Behind them lies an incredibly clear-cut system, along with powerful financial backers supporting them. Previously, I used to think that their top leader was nothing more than a figurehead, a puppet erected by the board of directors of capitalist conglomerates to take the fall. However, the latest intelligence retrieved by my network has proven the exact opposite."

Felix pulled out a blurry, candid photograph from the file folder. In the picture was the back silhouette of a man dressed in a black suit stepping onto a helicopter.

"According to the intel I received, within the internal ranks of CORE, this person is only referred to as Sir, without any accompanying name or identity verification. Although it is unknown what exact role he ultimately holds, he is definitely not a sacrificial figurehead set up to bear the disaster for the executive machinery behind the scenes." Felix Tate spoke very concisely, summarizing the core information: "No one clearly understands the apparatus of CORE. The individuals who come into contact with him are also the masterminds, so very little information gets transmitted back. Yet, rumors say that any decision concerning the vital core of CORE, including the suppression of the government’s investigation years ago, was single-handedly directed by him. The tycoons pouring money into CORE are not the ones controlling him. Rather, they are kneeling in submission to him, and as for the reason... it is most likely his research on memory storage and transferring it into another vessel?"

Even Felix Tate himself could not pinpoint the actual, genuine reason.