Chapter 10 - Persistent Little Crow

Wu Yaya remained in the hospital for five days, and Yu Haowei accompanied her for five days. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to run away. He simply couldn’t when bodyguards were consistently outside their door.

She would follow him around during the day and stare at him the entire time he slept.

No matter when he opened his eyes at night, he would always see that pair of black eyes glowing a faint red. Irrationally, the thought struck him that those eyes couldn’t have belonged to a human. They had to belong to a beast or a monster.

Lin Xiuzhu must have cracked under his intense oppression and become a monster.

She was obsessive and crazy. She was beyond reason. She still loved him with the same humble devotion as before, but he could no longer find an ounce of enjoyment from it.

Her love had become a mountain pressing on him, suffocating him with its presence.

He laid awake every night. His heart was in a perpetual state of anxious dread. He wanted to flee!

He wanted to flee to the ends of Earth, where he would be free from Lin Xiuzhu.

Of course, he would never make this known to either of the sisters, lest they keep an even closer watch on him.

On the sixth day, Yi Ling arrived at Wu Yaya's hospital room, accompanied by two highly authoritative psychologists. They had been invited to conduct a psychiatric evaluation.

“Miss Wu, it's been a while,” Yi Ling said as he took a seat beside the hospital bed. The two psychologists sat on the sofa opposite to them.

Yu Haowei was peeling an apple with a fruit knife. He had lost weight significantly in just a few days. His face was paler than the girl who had had her uterus removed. Dark circles painted his eyes, a look of severe sleep deprivation.

The apple had been cut, and toothpicks were placed onto bite-sized pieces, which he set on a plate. He carefully placed it on the table surface next to the bed, then stood to leave.

However, he froze in his tracks at the slightest glance from the girl. He bent closer to her and said, “I’m going to the stairwell for a smoke. I’ll be back soon. I’ll have them follow me. Don’t worry, I won’t leave. I’ll be here with you.”

He pointed to the bodyguards standing outside. His caring actions and soft tone would make any unknowing audience mistake him for an exceptionally thoughtful boyfriend.

However, Yi Ling knew that this caring facade was the result of being dominated. In just a few days, this vicious child had accomplished what Lin Xiuzhu failed to do in several years.

She had incapacitated the scum and stripped him of his freedom as a human.

The psychiatrist curled his lips in amusement. He didn’t even wait until the man was out of the room before speaking in a low voice, “Breaking the eagle’s spirit?”

There’s an old method of taming eagles through sleep deprivation. It wasn’t hard for Yi Ling to surmise what the man had gone through, judging from his complexion.

Wu Yaya shook her head, “You’re flattering him. He’s no eagle.”

She had been afraid of eagles before she became a spirit. Yu Haowei was a dog at best.

Yi Ling let out a throaty chuckle.

The other man, who had yet to step out the door, paused in his step briefly before dashing away. He took out his phone once he was in the stairwell to search up what “breaking the eagle’s spirit” entailed. He only made it past the first few lines before he lashed out against the garbage can.

The bodyguards watched his tantrum coldly as they blocked the stairs above and below him, as well as the middle of the hallway, leaving him no room to escape.

If destroying hundreds of women can be considered an accomplishment, then he was a well-decorated man without a doubt. It wasn’t by chance that he had reached this status. He had undergone systematic training and had spent several hundred grand on professional instructors for manipulation techniques alone. 

He was well-versed in skills such as how to invent a character, how to crush self-esteem, how to destroy a person’s mentality, how to incite suicide, how to swindle money from women… the list goes on.

Now that he looked at it, these tactics were considered “tame” compared to what Lin Xiuzhu was doing. The truly insane didn’t need a reason.

The three men just now were here to give her a psychiatric evaluation. Once she gets the diagnosis, her insanity would be recognized by the law.

That reminded him of what Lin Xiusong had said the other day, when his girlfriend almost strangled him to death. She told her sister to let go, but the reason wasn’t that it was wrong to kill someone—it was that they hadn’t gotten the psychiatric evaluation yet. That meant she wouldn’t interfere with her madwoman of a sister once they did get it.

Because an insane person takes no legal responsibility.

That realization struck Yu Haowei like lightning. He froze in the middle of kicking the garbage can. His head buzzed and his ears rang. Then, he slumped on the stairs as his strength failed him, cold sweat streaming.

He had to run! As fast as possible and as far as possible! Otherwise, it would be too late!

Back in the hospital room, Yi Ling and the two psychologists took turns asking Wu Yaya questions and assessing her psychological state based on her responses.

They also had to wake up the primary ego after these questions to confirm her dissociative identity disorder.

It wasn’t an easy task given the alter ego was so abnormally powerful. The two psychologists tried many methods and failed. At the end, they looked helplessly at Yi Ling.

Wu Yaya followed them and looked at Yi Ling as well. Her head was tilted like a child waiting to see a trick from a magician. She stared with mirthful anticipation at the man who had become her source of entertainment. 

It had been a long time since someone last looked at him with those eyes, but he wasn’t offended by it. The conflicting mixture of naughtiness, malice, naiveness, and purity he felt on the girl gave him feelings of familiarity.

That was why he was particularly patient with this child.

He took off his fake glasses, and spoke in a gentle lull, “Look at me.”

The girl leaned on the table, examining his brilliantly coloured eyes carefully. She spoke through a smile, “I would be looking even if you didn’t tell me to.” Her head tilted left and right, and she told him with infatuation, “Doctor, your eyes are so pretty.”

Yi Ling smiled and his voice even deeper, “Then, keep looking. Don’t look away now. Tell me, what do you see?”

Wu Yaya approached, close enough for the tips of their noses to touch, her breaths entangled with his. The sharp glint in her jet-black eyes softened into a hazy mist. Stirring. Dizzying.

This was a physical distance the man had never experienced before. It was because of his past that he maintained a safe social distance from everyone. He took a step back out of instinct.

But the girl cradled his face in her pale hands. Her dark pupils were overflowing with a heated, obsessive infatuation. She was melting into Yi Ling’s abyssal gaze.

He suppressed his urge to draw away, allowing the girl to do as she wished.

“I see dark clouds as well as a clear sky. I also see twinkling stars and swirling black holes.” Wu Yaya’s lips were barely an inch from his. Every word she spoke scorched his icy lips.

Yi Ling appeared to be unaffected by how close they were.

He was still so composed and detached.

The two psychologists looked on with bemusement at the pair close enough to kiss.

“Doctor, the stars in your eyes are twinkling faster. Why is that?” Wu Yaya murmured this question.

Of course, Yi Ling knew why. He was being affected by the girl. He wasn’t used to this kind of intimate touch.

But he didn’t pull away. Instead, he asked in a low voice, “Can you describe how they are twinkling? Can you count its frequency?”

Wu Yaya would enter into a deeper state of hypnosis after she started counting. Once she falls asleep, he could awaken Lin Xiuzhu.

The two psychologists averted their gaze as they waited for the primary ego to return. They would also be affected by the hypnosis if they hadn’t looked away.

Just then, the girl’s misty eyes shone brightly.

She moved quickly and touched her icy lips to his warm eyelid. Her tone was hot from obsession, “Doctor, I really love your eyes so much.” She tilted her head, and her ponytail swung behind her.

She was smiling. Her eyes twinkled with satisfaction from her cunning triumph. She hadn’t been hypnotized at all.

Yi Ling thought he heard a faint sound somewhere inside him. Like a heartstring being strung, or a butterfly flapping its wings. Something landed softly in his heart along with the touch that barely counted as a kiss, only to flutter away again, leaving nothing but a faint tingle. He tried to blink away the heat that was gathering on his eyelid.

He leaned back in his chair and spoke in a deep, husky voice, “I stand corrected. Your acting is indeed impeccable.”

He didn’t suspect a thing when the girl was just pretending to be hypnotized.

To think those shiny black eyes as clear as spring water were capable of lying too.

The man shook his head as he chuckled amusedly.

Wu Yaya had half her body on the table. She cupped her own face and grinned triumphantly with him.

“Doctor, I can’t bear falling asleep when you’re here. I just want to look at you.” She was a spirit, of course she knew how to trick a human.

That was a half-truth. This body was her own, so there was no alter ego to slip into a slumber. But she did enjoy looking at Yi Ling. She wanted to look at him for ever and ever… never growing sick of it.

Her deep infatuation was written in her eyes, on her forehead, and at the corner of her lips. She made no attempt to hide this fiery passion.

The two psychologists shook their heads and teased, “Oh no, Mr. Yi has gotten himself another admirer. That’s why handsome men shouldn’t go into psychiatry, because it’ll only make their patients worse.”

“They should. Or else their patients would be without a cure.” The girl said while smiling.

That gave the two psychologists a pause, before their laughter broke out.

Normally, Yi Ling would brush this kind of situation off with a smile. But he was rubbing his temple as it was giving him a headache this time. He was genuinely unsure how to handle it.

He put on his glasses again and said gently, “It seems like we won’t be seeing Lin Xiuzhu today. In that case, we’ll take our leave.”

He stood up and gave a curt nod.

The girl looked up at him, reluctant for him to leave, “Can I still come to you for treatment after I get discharged? Is an hour of counselling a day enough? How about two?”

The psychiatrist returned his chair to its spot and sighed in resignation, “Twice a week is enough; you don’t have to come every day.”

Getting pestered by a child sure was troublesome

“Alright. I’m getting discharged today. I’ll see you tonight. I want two hours.” Wu Yaya said excitedly.

Yi Ling subconsciously touched the eyelid that had been kissed as he reached the door and walked away without looking back.