Chapter 327: Undercurrents in the Clinic

The world they lived in was so peaceful and beautiful.

This was the simplest truth in Miss K’s heart, the conclusion supported by all her memories.

Miss K raised her head, too, to gaze at the sky. She wanted to share this tranquil, golden afterglow with her dear friend.

Suddenly, she narrowed her eyes.

Strange.

Was there something… up in the sky?

Above that canvas of interwoven dark gold and deep violet, dyed by the twilight, in the gaps between the clouds—

That was—

A… person?

………………

In reality, within the psychoanalysis studio, on the treatment bed.

The heavy curtains were drawn tightly shut, sealing all the clamor of the outside world beyond that layer of fabric.

Inside, only a single incandescent lamp remained lit. Its filament buzzed faintly under the weak current, releasing a drowsy amber light that draped the entire room in a murky, oppressive atmosphere.

Miss Anomaly lay flat on the treatment bed, eyes closed, her breathing steady and measured, as though she had simply slipped into an ordinary afternoon nap.

Pandora and Dr. Elias M. Brenner stood quietly by her side.

Dr. Brenner was slightly bent over at that moment, observing Miss K’s micro-expressions with intense, meticulous care.

He noted the rapid darting of her eyes beneath the lids, the almost imperceptible twitching at the corners of her mouth, the way her brows furrowed and then smoothed in subtle shifts.

At least so far, the effects of this hypnosis session had been nothing short of perfect. The deep consciousness had been successfully accessed, the guided implantation smooth and natural, with no signs of rejection or disturbance.

Pandora stood to one side, her tone unhurried and deliberate, as she spoke the final line at a leisurely pace:

“Everything in the city is still so peaceful and beautiful.”

Dr. Brenner nodded slightly. Without looking up, his voice dropped to a near whisper, only loud enough for the two of them to hear.

“Good, just like that…”

“This session has already reached the deepest layers of memory. The data we’ve obtained far exceeds expectations.”

“Now, this treatment is going to conclude. I’ll begin the gradual process of guiding her back out of the hypnotic state…”

The words had barely left his mouth when—

A stifled, agonized moan suddenly burst from the treatment bed, cutting the doctor off.

The sound wasn’t loud, but it was extraordinarily sharp, as though it had been forcibly wrenched from the very depths of her throat.

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Pandora noticed immediately.

Miss Anomaly on the bed—her face, so serene moments before, was now contorted in sheer terror.

Her brows were knitted tightly together, fine beads of cold sweat dotting her temples. Her lips trembled faintly, as though she was trying to speak but something was blocking her throat.

She murmured, her voice fragmented and trembling:

“A person… pure-white… an angel…”

“The heavens… the Gateway!”

The fear in that voice was so visceral, so intense.

Miss Anomaly’s delirious words instantly conjured a familiar image in Pandora’s mind.

It was the Anomaly she had encountered right after arriving in this world—the Gateway to Heaven.

That Pure-White Silhouette suspended against the sky, like an inverted reflection cast by some unspeakable, unnameable existence, gazing silently down upon the earth.

But that particular Anomaly… they hadn’t encountered it in a long time now.

She hadn’t expected…

That it would seemingly appear in the old memories of Miss Anomaly.

What did this mean?

Thoughts surged through Pandora’s mind. However, in the very next instant, her gaze abruptly sharpened.

While Dr. Brenner was preoccupied with handling the sudden shift in Miss Anomaly’s hypnotic state, Pandora had already directed her eyes beyond the doctor’s back.

There—

An invisible, formless force was gathering.

The plush, thick carpet spread flat across the floor seemed now to possess a life of its own. The nap stood on end, fibers twisted, threads tearing apart.

Soundlessly, the surface of the carpet began to bulge, as if shaped and deformed by a pair of unseen hands.

The bulge rapidly coalesced, growing taller, more concentrated, until at last, it solidified into an eerie humanoid silhouette…

A tall man, clad in a black trench coat.

“Ah—!”

With a distorted shriek, Miss Anomaly jolted abruptly awake from her state of deep hypnosis.

She shot upright, her eyes stretched impossibly wide, her gaze locked in sheer horror behind Dr. Brenner. Her pupils contracted to pinpricks. That stare was fixed, deathly fixed, on a presence the doctor had yet to perceive.

Dr. Brenner felt a chill crawl over his skin under that sudden gaze. An icy dread slithered up from the base of his spine. Instinct screamed that something was wrong.

He started to turn his head—

“Doctor.”

A hand, unceremoniously, pressed down firmly on his shoulder at that very moment.

It was the hand of a young woman—slender and pale, resting upon the shoulder of the doctor’s dark gray suit, yet it felt as heavy as a mountain.

And an inexplicable, formless force instantly suppressed the impulse he had to look back.

“Dr. Brenner, I believe you shouldn’t be distracted right now.”

The young woman’s voice remained calm, even tinged with a faint smile. But the commanding weight in her tone was exceptionally clear, brooking no argument.

“Your priority should be soothing my friend’s emotional state.”

“After all, this is your field of expertise, isn’t it?”

“Y-you… you’re right, Lady Pandora.”

As a professional psychoanalyst, Dr. Brenner was no stranger to authoritative guidance. His thoughts, scrambled by fear, unconsciously cast aside all distractions under the steady, suggestive cadence of Pandora’s voice. His mind followed the path she directed.

He turned back to face the terrified girl on the treatment bed, beginning to soothe her in his most professional tone.

He had no idea.

That right behind him—right in the direction he had just been about to turn his head—

A bizarre gunman in a black trench coat had abruptly, fully materialized.

The hem of the coat fluttered silently, as if stirred by an unseen wind. The pitch-black muzzle of the gun, leveled over the doctor’s shoulder, was aimed dead at the horrified girl on the bed.

The gunman’s finger rested on the trigger.

Should Miss Anomaly’s “accidental death” ability activate—

No doubt about it.

In this cramped treatment room, leaving nowhere to hide, the one who would die was certain to be this highly esteemed psychoanalyst, a man with no command of any supernatural power whatsoever.

Dr. Elias M. Brenner.

However, Pandora would not allow that to happen.

She had conducted countless experiments on Miss Anomaly. By now, she was intimately familiar with the activation pattern of her ability.

From the accumulation of fear, to the gunman’s formation, to the pulling of the trigger—there existed a brief yet exploitable window of time.

Almost at the speed of thought alone—

Countless threads, finer than gossamer yet impossibly resilient, materialized out of thin air.

These were the Witch’s Heartstrings. Nearly transparent, they refracted only the faintest hint of a dark crimson sheen, like the luster of dried blood, under the dim yellow light.

With incredible speed, they wove and intertwined, instantly forming an impenetrable, densely-woven net that bound the gunman rigidly in place.