Chapter 714 Trample the mountains underfoot
Li Shentan’s arrival was not necessarily bad news for Vanilla. At the very least, they would not need so many people to keep watch at night anymore. When Li Shentan was ready to go to bed, the people under Li Shentan’s control stood outside the campsite in a circle and held hands with each other. Vanilla suddenly felt like he wanted to play the Drop the Handkerchief.[1]
Disregarding whether this was a strange sight or not, with such a force guarding around the campsite tirelessly, no one could successfully launch a sneak attack at all.
Just as Li Shentan was about to enter his tent, he suddenly stepped back. “Oh yeah, I forgot something important.”
When he said that, everyone at the campsite stopped what they were doing for fear that Li Shentan would do something crazy.
Li Shentan walked to the center of the campsite and said, “Listen, will our friends from the Pyro Company please turn around?”
With that, around 30 people standing guard outside that were under his control turned around to face the campsite.
Then Li Shentan said, “You all were active in this vicinity. I’m guessing you all were waiting for someone to give you a signal, right? See if there are any of your fellow members in this campsite. If there are, point them out to me.”
Vanilla was stunned. When he received news from Cheng Yu’s side during the day saying they had discovered some Pyro Company spies in their group, he was still thinking about identifying them based on the tattoos near their ribs.
However, his plans were disrupted by the arrival of Li Shentan. He had completely forgotten about this matter.
And now, Li Shentan was actually using the people under his control to identify their accomplices.
“He can even do that?” Vanilla muttered softly.
Next to him, Tang Hualong gave a wry smile. “The Demon Whisperer is very eccentric and unpredictable. I wonder who’s capable of being friends with him.”
Right at this moment, two Pyro Company members suddenly raised their hands and pointed at two people in the campsite.
The two who were pointed out looked terrified. “We aren’t members of the Pyro Company. We don’t have any tattoos near our ribs. You can have a look if you don’t believe it.”
Li Shentan clapped his hands and started laughing. “Your Pyro Company was the one that spread the information about those tattoos to the public. Wasn’t that precisely so it could throw us off in times like these? I won’t trust any common knowledge that everyone is aware of.”
It was very easy for humans to trust what was known as common knowledge to them. However, how could there be so much common knowledge in life? Most of them were just castles of lies.
So only at this moment did the others in the campsite finally understand that not all Pyro Company members were tattooed at their ribs. Some of them simply did not have any tattoos at all.
Vanilla sighed. They had been very cautious when they were screening the candidates for this group. But in the end, two Pyro Company members still managed to sneak through.
The two Pyro Company members suddenly saw Li Shentan take a silver coin out of his pocket. Li Shentan said with a smile, “Let’s play a game of heads or tails. If you guess right, I’ll spare your lives.”
The two Pyro Company members looked at each other. If it were someone else that said this to them, they would be lying. How could the Anjing House possibly let the two of them from the Pyro Company leave? However, when Li Shentan used a game to decide their fate, it somehow sounded more convincing. One of the Pyro Company members said, “I’ll guess tails.”
Li Shentan nodded. “Watch carefully.”
As he spoke, he flipped the silver coin high up into the air with his thumb. There was an engraving of a young woman on the heads’ side of the exquisite silver coin. She had bright eyes, white teeth, and a graceful smile on her face. On the back, there was an engraving of a bouquet of lilies.
No consortium in this world had ever issued such a silver coin. Li Shentan had personally carved it.
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As the silver coin flew past the bridge of Li Shentan’s nose, it hovered at the position of his eyes and kept spinning.
Everyone was waiting to see the outcome of the toss, but it just remained suspended in the air and did not fall back down!
Vanilla shouted, “Everyone, shut your eyes!”
However, it was too late. Many of those in the campsite turned blank at the same time, with only a few managing to escape the hypnotism.
Li Shentan looked at Vanilla and said with a smile, “You’ve got a pretty quick reaction.”
Vanilla’s face darkened as he was immediately prepared to start a killing spree. Although Li Shentan had a reputation, Vanilla was no small fry who could easily be manipulated either.
Honestly, though, no one expected Li Shentan’s hypnotism to be so difficult to guard against. But before he could even make any moves, he heard Li Shentan say with a smile, “Other than the Pyro Company members, the rest will have their hypnotism lifted after I snap my fingers.”
When he snapped his fingers, some of the people, including those who had been under Li Shentan’s control earlier, woke up from their hypnotism. Only the Pyro Company members remained standing there in a daze.
Vanilla was stunned. What was Li Shentan trying to do? Why couldn’t he grasp the logic of his actions?
He had thought Li Shentan was trying to use this opportunity to control everyone. But now, even the people he had been controlling earlier had their hypnotism dispelled. Just what was Li Shentan planning? Nearby, Si Liren, who had been staring at the silver coin, curled her lips and said, “I’m still waiting to see the outcome. How can you not keep your promises?”
Li Shentan smiled and said matter-of-factly, “What’s the point of asking a mental patient like me why I can’t keep my promises?”
Si Liren curled her lips again. Li Shentan was always using his mental illness as an excuse these days. It was as though mental patients could just do whatever they liked!
Those who had just regained consciousness felt like they had been in a long dream. They stood where they were and did not know what to do.
They could not even remember what happened while they were under Li Shentan’s control.
A majority of them were feeling a little weak. That was because they had not been eating or sleeping ever since they got hypnotized by Li Shentan. They were fully drawing on their life force to maintain their mobility.
Among these people, some were from the various consortiums, and there were Anjing House members as well. Vanilla quickly had his subordinates settle the people down. Then Li Shentan turned his head to Zhou Yingxue. “Why didn’t you get hypnotized just
now?”
“What do you mean by why?” Zhou Yingxue said disdainfully, “That was just some party trick.”
Li Shentan smiled and said, “It looks like you aren’t typical either. No wonder you became his maid.”
Zhou Yingxue beamed. “At least you’re observant.”
Although Li Shentan’s hypnosis just now was done casually without using his full strength, it was still not something anyone could withstand so easily.
Since Zhou Yingxue was not affected, it showed that Zhou Yingxue’s mental strength far exceeded that of normal people’s. And the relationship between a supernatural being and their mental strength corresponded to how powerful they were.
There were only a few people in this world Li Shentan could not see through. For example, when he first saw Ren Xiaosu back at the Li Consortium’s stronghold, he could sense his mental strength was unique, vast like the sea. Li Shentan asked Zhou Yingxue in a whisper, “Do you really not know where your boss is? I think you should also want to see him, right? Tell me where he is, and we can go and look for him together.”
Zhou Yingxue carefully sized up Li Shentan.Ren Xiaosu had indeed said Li Shentan was a friend. Moreover, when they were at Luoyang City, both parties had also expressed their attitudes clearly. At the very least, Ren Xiaosu did not have any clear animosity for Li Shentan, and it was the same for Li Shentan.
She thought for a moment and said, “He should be on the west side. We’re separated by the Sacred Mountains between us.”
Li Shentan laughed and said, “When you want to meet your friends and the mountains are in your way, trample on them.”
[1] A variant of Duck, Duck, Goose. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck,_duck, _goose#Kiss_in_the_Ring_or_Drop _Handkerchief