Conan: When Shinjiu and Maolilan swap bodies

Yes, this is the police station. There's no danger anymore, we can rest now.

Thinking about it, he relaxed, his exhaustion finally overwhelmed him, and he fell into a deep sleep.

He was awakened by a bucket of water being poured over his face. The cool water splashed on his face, filling the entire bucket and instantly waking him up.

He was tied up and strapped to a wooden stake.

Before him stood a menacing-looking man in black, with a group of children, roughly the same age as him, whose faces were obscured, standing behind him.

There was also a wooden stake nearby, with a dead person tied to it, emitting a strong stench.

But no one dared to cover their nose.

"Kid, you're pretty brave! You even killed the instructor! But what good is escaping? Besides the organization, where else can people like you find refuge?"

The man in black looked at the boys behind him, his voice tinged with pity:

"You must understand that you are all abandoned people. It is the organization that gave you the chance to survive! The organization's training is giving you strength, and you must know how to be grateful..."

After he finished speaking, the whip struck the boy.

The whip was made of iron, covered in barbs, and soaked in salt water, ensuring that every strike would tear the skin and cause excruciating pain.

He felt the fierce wind pressure from the whip, heard the cracking sound of the whip tearing through the air, and felt the long metal whip lashing against his body.

The excruciating pain I expected did not come.

It doesn't hurt. It really was just a dream.

The sharp whip lashed again and again. He kept his head down, letting his clothes be torn apart by the whip, his skin ripped open, and blood dripping from his body, without uttering a word.

He counted the number of lashes in his mind: one, five... thirty-one... seventy-eight... ninety-nine...

After being whipped a hundred times, he was thrown into a water dungeon.

The waist-deep water reeked of decay, and only a faint light could penetrate it.

The man in black looked at the silent boy in front of him, who remained completely silent.

Whether he was whipped or imprisoned in a water dungeon, he did not cry out in pain or beg for mercy.

It was as if they had resigned themselves to their fate and accepted everything.

He admired such unyielding spirit and looked forward to breaking their pride, crushing their arrogance, and forcing them to submit to the organization.

"If you are still alive three days later, you can continue to live and return to the training base."

"Remember, what organizations need are loyal people and people who follow orders. Otherwise, no matter how great your potential is, you have no value."

As soon as the words were spoken, the door to the water dungeon was closed.

The water dungeon fell silent, and the blood-covered boy finally raised his head.

He let out a low, hoarse laugh, which started as a small laugh but gradually grew bigger and louder, and tears streamed down his cheeks.

She didn't know why she was laughing, but she felt a dull ache in her heart, as if something had collapsed.

Three days, which should have been a long time, went by as quickly as the blink of an eye.

He was released, and the sunlight outside made him squint instinctively.

The wounds from the whippings were festering and oozing pus, and the skin soaked in water was ulcerated and festered. Leeches of all sizes clung to the wounds, constantly sucking out the blood.

My throat was dry and hoarse, and my hungry stomach felt like it was on fire.

But he survived.

He returned to the training base, where people in white coats scraped away his festering, oozing wounds and wrapped his entire body in layers of bandages.

He silently accepted it all, as if he had already accepted his fate.

The boy changed; he became more proactive and energetic, always the first to agree with the instructors and the first to obey their commands.

The organization gave it a second life—the organization is everything, and everything is for the organization!

He continued his relentless training, demanding to be number one in everything. He stopped making friends and stopped responding to others' kindness or malice.

His previous experience of escaping and being caught seemed to have had a huge impact on him, yet it also seemed to have had no impact at all.

He stood out from the crowd with his outstanding performance and became a candidate member of the organization.

Today is the day he will leave the base.

A ceremony is performed before each person leaves.

A ceremony that signifies they can never return to the sunlight.

A person was brought before the boy.

He remembered the face; it was the policeman who had brought him the milk.

The policeman who, after he had barely escaped, sent him back to this dark world.

The man was bound hand and foot, and a faceless man in black tore the tape off his mouth.

The man wept, the man begged for forgiveness, the man repented.

Chapter 302 He can never go back

Do you hate it?

Of course I hate it.

But it didn't escalate to the point of killing the other party.

The boy gripped the dagger in his hand, loosening and tightening his grip repeatedly.

A flood of complex emotions surged within me, as if a battle were raging within me.

On one side is the simple morality ingrained in our bones, and on the other side is the viscous, dark threat of reality.

Unlike the time he defended himself in the forest, this time, once he stabbed someone, there was no going back.

She felt the struggle and pain; she felt sadness, anger, and helplessness.

The boy wasn't very good at hiding his emotions and expressions; his struggles were written all over his face.

The instructor didn't urge him, but just watched him quietly.

Look at this hurdle that everyone who joins this world has to go through.

Is he a member of the organization?

She heard herself ask that question.

"Yes."

"What did he do? Is it just because he brought me back here that I need to kill him?"

The boy looked at the instructor, his tone filled with confusion and bewilderment.

"If that's the case, the organization is far too cruel and heartless towards its members."

If an organization is willing to sacrifice its own members, it is bound to be short-lived, because the morale of its members will crumble.

If that's the case, he could consider staying at this training ground and waiting for the day he'd have another chance to escape.

"Of course not. He violated the organization's rules and was supposed to be executed. It just so happens that he has some connection with you, and you are the most outstanding among these people, so he has appeared in front of you now."

Kill someone, or kill a policeman.

This means that, no matter what, the boy can never return to the world under the sun.

"Can I have a gun?"

A gun was tossed over, and the boy caught it.

There was only one bullet inside.

The boy raised his gun and aimed it at the tearful policeman in front of him.

I'm sorry, but I have to give way to my life.

I'll make your death less painful.

boom--

Gunshots.

The man lay in a pool of blood.

Seeing the man's dead state, the boy's hands trembled slightly, but he forced himself to steady them.

The world didn't give him many more options.

That night, the boy sat on a tall shrub all night long.

He looked up at the dim moon in the sky, wanting to reach out and touch it, but then pulled back.

Tears silently slid down my cheeks.

He can never go back.

……

"Dr. Payton, his consciousness is fluctuating violently."

This was said by Fiano, who had been watching the monitor screen the whole time.

Dr. Payton looked at the fluctuating curves on the screen, then glanced at the figure with closed eyes on the monitor screen next to him.

A tear was slowly rolling down Koniak's cheek.

"It seems to have reached a certain memory threshold. The emotional fluctuations are still within the normal range."

Fiano adjusted his glasses and asked the question that had been troubling him for a long time:

"There's something I don't understand. In this situation, how do we determine what we want to change?"

Unable to access Koniak's memories, they could only rely on the "iron bed" where Koniak lay to monitor his fluctuations in consciousness.

The others were undetectable.

"No, you're mistaken. My focus is on reshaping his emotional connections and cognitive weighting of important memories, adjusting his conscious frequency, and only after that comes the modification of consciousness."

"Humans are products of emotions, memories, and cognition. Changes in these things are essentially changes in the 'quantum vibrations' of consciousness—look at the waveform on the screen that represents his consciousness field."

Dr. Payton raised his hand, his fingertip emphasizing the pale blue curve in the center of the screen.

The sharp peak that had suddenly appeared at the previous important juncture was unusually gentle this time.

"The memory that caused him to have intense emotional fluctuations last time it appeared in the memory corridor has now subsided."

"This softening of emotions is not because I altered his memory, but because the emotional fluctuations attached to that memory affected the quantum vibration rhythm of his consciousness field through harmonic resonance, causing his originally trembling consciousness frequency to shift towards a more stable direction."

Fiano still didn't quite understand, so he simply asked.

What does this mean?

"This means that I am on the right track, and the harmonic interferometer can indeed subtly transform his consciousness."

Fiano looked excited, as if he saw a glorious door opening before him.

"But as long as his consciousness frequency is gradually adjusted to a specific band, then consciousness swapping will no longer be a dream!"

Fiano looked at the people on the surveillance screen and felt extremely regretful.

If the consciousness swap is truly achieved and the BOSS is in this body, then he won't be able to draw blood at will.

We need to save up more blood before the consciousness swap experiment succeeds.

……

As a reserve member with a codename, the boy left the training base and returned to modern society.

The 14-year-old boy no longer had the youthful spirit he once possessed; he had become much quieter and more reserved.

He suppressed his arrogance, concealing his sharp edge within his scabbard, his dark eyes round and innocent-looking.

Among the three reserve soldiers who came from training grounds in Japan and the United States, Vermouth chose him, selecting the most outstanding-looking boy.

A seductive woman with bright red lipstick looked down at him, gently lifting his chin with her index finger as she admired his face.

"From now on, I will be your teacher."

"teacher."