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ArabicHonkai Star Rail: Summoning the Chrysos Heirs — Chapter 29
Chapter 29: Deep Suggestion
“Dr. Su Zhiwei, that’s the situation.”
Lei Ye stood rigid beneath the harsh, sterile fluorescence of the consultation room. He slid a freshly printed diagnostic report across the polished mahogany desk. His voice remained low, his dark eyes locked onto the woman seated opposite him. Even now, the sheer absurdity of what had transpired in the interrogation room gnawed at his sense of logic.
“Ten seconds. In ten seconds, she sifted through nearly a month’s worth of a man’s Remembrance.”
Su Zhiwei’s fingers, poised to turn the page of the dossier, froze.
She slowly lifted her chin. Behind the thin gold rims of her glasses, her eyes narrowed, searching Lei Ye’s grim expression for any trace of exaggeration. Finding none, her brow furrowed.
“Even for a specialized mental-type Ability User—someone whose cerebral development vastly outpaces an ordinary human—attempting to process that volume of raw memory in such a compressed timeframe is physiological suicide. The sheer data load would trigger massive cortical congestion.”
She closed the folder, her manicured thumb absently tracing the edge of the cover. “How could she possibly endure that kind of mental strain? Let alone the fact that she is a newly awakened rookie.”
“That is exactly what I cannot understand,” Lei Ye replied. He pulled out a chair, sinking into it with a heavy sigh, and steepled his fingers beneath his chin. “I am no mental-type, but I have worked alongside enough of them to know the signs. The usual stagnation, the fragmented hesitation that comes with diving into another mind… she showed absolutely none of it.”
He paused, struggling to articulate the bizarre memory. “It felt… effortless. As if she were casually flipping through a picture book on a Sunday afternoon.”
“A picture book…” Su Zhiwei murmured. She leaned back into her leather chair, her gaze drifting toward the blank white wall. As a leading authority in both clinical psychology and mental-type Supernatural Abilities, her mind raced, desperately trying to force this anomaly into an existing theoretical framework.
“Logically, we are looking at three possibilities.” She raised a single, slender finger. “First: Cyrene obtained Zhao Qiang’s background information beforehand. The fraudster’s criminal record is classified, yes, but not entirely sealed. If someone leaked the file to her, she could have memorized the details and simply put on a theatrical performance for your benefit.”
Lei Ye remained silent, offering only a curt nod to prompt her forward.
“Second: an Ability mutation.” A second finger rose. The cold overhead light caught the lenses of her glasses, obscuring her eyes. “Her specific mechanism might bypass traditional empathy or image reconstruction. Instead, she might be directly converting the Remembrance into highly compressed data streams. Bypassing the emotional weight of the memories would exponentially reduce the cognitive burden, making a ten-second sweep theoretically viable.”
Her voice suddenly dropped, the temperature in the room seeming to plummet alongside it.
“As for the third…” She raised her third finger, her expression darkening with professional dread. “She is not the newly awakened novice her file claims she is.”
“If she has invaded the Remembrance of others repeatedly—if she has honed this intrusion into a second nature—then her terrifying proficiency makes sense.” Su Zhiwei hesitated, a heavy layer of clinical concern bleeding into her tone. “Individuals who spend extended periods prying into foreign minds inevitably suffer from ego-deterioration. I suspect her mental state has already fractured into implicit dissociation. This ‘normal, innocent’ demeanor she displays? It might just be a flawlessly constructed psychological facade.”
Lei Ye said nothing. He stared at the thin report resting on the desk, the image of Cyrene’s impossibly clear, unbothered blue eyes flashing through his mind.
After a long, suffocating silence, he pushed himself up from the chair.
“I understand.” He adjusted his coat. “I apologize for dropping this on you, Dr. Su. But regarding her threat rating and mental stability, I need a definitive verdict. Your assessment determines whether she joins us as a teammate, or if she gets locked down as… a controlled subject.”
A soft, drawn-out yawn shattered the quiet tension of the consultation room.
Su Zhiwei’s chaotic train of thought snapped back to the present. She looked up from her desk.
Curled up on the plush sofa opposite her, the pink-haired girl was rubbing her eyes. A few stray tears of physiological fatigue clung to her lashes. She looked utterly harmless, stretching her limbs like a lazy cat that had spent the entire afternoon soaking in a sunbeam.
“Sister Su, are there any more questions?” Cyrene blinked her watery blue eyes. Her voice carried a thick, sleepy nasal tone, yet it retained that signature airy politeness. “Using my Ability took a lot out of me. I feel so sleepy now…”
Su Zhiwei stared at the seemingly defenseless girl. Her grip on her silver fountain pen tightened until her knuckles turned white.
As a senior psychologist with years of clinical practice, and a mental-type who had awakened her own Ability a year prior, Su Zhiwei was an undisputed authority. In her office, no matter how deeply an Ability User buried their trauma or malice, they always cracked. Her professional induction techniques always brought their hidden demons to the surface.
But after nearly an hour of conversation with this girl, Su Zhiwei felt nothing but a suffocating sense of frustration.
She couldn’t see through her.
She absolutely could not see through her.
To Su Zhiwei’s trained eye, Cyrene was a pool of crystal-clear spring water—vibrant, endearing, and occasionally flashing a childish naivety. There were no logical inconsistencies in her story. No micro-expressions betraying hidden anxiety. And absolutely none of the suffocating, gloomy aura that clung to those who routinely waded through dark Remembrance.
Cyrene claimed she only saw fleeting images. She claimed she had no prior connection to Zhao Qiang. Every single response aligned flawlessly with the archetype of an innocent, newly awakened teenager.
A wave of cold anxiety washed over the doctor’s heart.
If even she failed to provide a definitive psychological evaluation, bureau protocol dictated that unanalyzable, high-risk Ability Users be transferred to the upper-level laboratories for ‘deep testing.’And that kind of invasive testing was a living nightmare for a young girl.’I have to confirm her true nature right here. For the safety of the bureau, and… as a doctor responsible for her patient.’
Resolving herself, Su Zhiwei closed her eyes. When her lashes fluttered open a second later, the gentle, accommodating warmth of a therapist had vanished, replaced by the cold, sharp focus of an operative.
Since conventional psychoanalysis had failed, she had no choice but to force the issue with her Ability.
“I’m so sorry, little Cyrene. I know I’ve taken up far too much of your time.” Su Zhiwei’s lips curved into a soft, apologetic smile. Her voice dropped an octave, becoming exceptionally smooth and rhythmic, as if terrified of startling a sleeping bird. “But I promise, once you answer these last few questions, you can go straight to sleep.”
Before the sentence even finished, her right hand—previously resting quietly on her lap—lifted toward the solid wood desk.
Her index finger curled.
Tap.
Tap.
The sound of her knuckle striking the mahogany was crisp, echoing with a strange, resonant clarity. The rhythm was absolute. The intervals between each strike were mathematically perfect.
It wasn’t loud, but within the confines of the dead-silent room, the noise seemed to bypass the ears entirely, striking directly against the deepest layers of the brain.
“Is it… really almost done?” Cyrene mumbled. Her eyelids, already fighting a losing battle against gravity, grew impossibly heavy. Her body went slack, sinking deeper into the plush cushions of the sofa. The edges of her vision blurred into a hazy vignette, her conscious mind seemingly swept away into a warm, suffocating sea of cotton clouds.
Watching the girl’s pupils dilate and lose focus, Su Zhiwei finally ceased her tapping.
This was her trump card: [Deep Suggestion].
By using specific auditory frequencies paired with psychological induction, the Ability forcefully bypassed the target’s surface consciousness, plunging them into a deep hypnotic sleep to allow direct communication with the unprotected subconscious.
Confirming that Cyrene’s breathing had evened out into a state of total hypnosis, Su Zhiwei picked up her fountain pen. She flipped to a fresh page in her notebook and leaned forward, her voice dropping into a low, commanding magnetic hum.
“Alright, Cyrene. Now, tell me the truth…”