Half a day later.
Jiang Yuan was flown straight to an underground military base by helicopter. A woman in a white lab coat and glasses, who looked like a researcher, took charge of him.
“Hello. I’ll be handling your examinations and psychological evaluation from here on. For your own sake, I suggest you don’t ask questions. Just cooperate.”
“Um…”
“I believe I told you not to ask questions.”
When the woman saw Jiang Yuan about to speak, she immediately shot him a glare. The soldiers escorting him went even further, raising their guns and aiming them at the back of his head.
Jiang Yuan was scared half to death. He could only shut his mouth, his face falling into a sullen silence.
After they took him from school, they put him straight on a helicopter. Then they brought him here with guns pointed at him the entire way. The soldiers escorting him wouldn’t even say a word to him, leaving him tense and in terrible shape by the time they arrived.
A little later.
They took Jiang Yuan through a whole series of medical tests: bloodwork, a CT scan, a urine test, an MRI, secretion tests, an ultrasound, and more. They threw everything they could think of at him, using the full range of equipment—from ordinary hospital machines to specialized military devices.
After that came a series of tedious psychological evaluations and personality tests.
The woman seemed intent on creating an oppressive environment. She ignored his exhaustion and didn’t give him a chance to rest, making him reveal his truest self without warning during the various psychological tests.
Fortunately, Jiang Yuan really was a healthy, well-adjusted student with the right values. He showed almost no antisocial tendencies.
But even after he passed the tests, they still didn’t talk to him. They simply locked him in a small room to wait for the results.
He waited for three days.
After spending three days and nights in a sunless underground facility like this—with no phone, no internet, no entertainment, and nothing to do but stare at the white walls and ceiling—Jiang Yuan felt like he was really about to go insane.
He couldn’t understand why he was being treated this way. Just because he was going to become a major villain in the future? But he hadn’t done anything yet!
Why couldn’t they gently guide him and set him straight?
Wouldn’t treating him like this only push him into hating the world?
But he didn’t even dare think about revenge. He knew that if he gave in to negative emotions, he’d never pass the psychological evaluations that came later.
On the night of the third day, the researcher from before came to see Jiang Yuan. If there hadn’t been a digital clock on the wall, he wouldn’t have been able to say how long he’d been there. He’d lost all sense of time passing.
“Hello, Jiang Yuan. You’re now allowed a certain degree of freedom, and you’re permitted to ask me questions.”
The researcher came in and gave Jiang Yuan some good news. She was also holding a cup of hot water, which seemed to be for him.
“What are you going to do to me now? Execute me? Dissect me as a test subject? Or keep me locked up like this forever?”
For the past three days, Jiang Yuan’s mind had been filled with negativity. He couldn’t stay optimistic in a place like this.
He’d stopped hoping for much from his future. After all, he was the great sinner of the future, the culprit who’d destroyed half the world.
It wouldn’t be strange if they treated him cruelly in any number of ways…
“None of those things will happen. We still have a degree of regard for humanitarian principles. Even if we could confirm that you’re the sinner, our current approach would still focus on correction and containment. In their fear and confusion, the public hasn’t realized something else…”
“Codename Jiang has the ability to kill three heroes outright. We have every reason to believe that Codename Jiang, as an Esper, is unquestionably the strongest human alive.”
“If we can guide him down the right path, then he can go from being a great sinner to becoming the guardian deity of human civilization.”
The researcher slowly explained everything to Jiang Yuan. From what she said, he gathered two things: first, they hadn’t confirmed whether he was the person in question; and second, even if they did confirm it, they’d still try their best to reform him because Codename Jiang possessed humanity’s strongest ability.
“You just said ‘even if we could confirm that I’m the sinner.’ Does that mean there’s still a chance I’m not?”
“There’s indeed a two-thirds chance that you aren’t.”
“How so?”
Hope suddenly stirred in Jiang Yuan. A two-thirds chance that he wasn’t the person they were looking for—that was pretty high. It meant he could still return to a normal life. He wasn’t that great sinner of the future!
“Codename Jiang is East Asian, and we can be certain that his name contains the character ‘Jiang.’ That puts him in the Chinese-character cultural sphere. Countries across Asia scanned the faces of people in images from the future, then compared them against their citizen databases.”
“The final result was three people. You three had the highest match scores. What surprised us was the last screening criterion: all three of you met it completely. You all have Esper factors in your bodies.”
“Huh?”
“In other words, all three of you have Esper abilities. They just haven’t awakened yet. If you didn’t, we could naturally rule you out as suspects.”
“I see… I don’t know whether I should be happy or sad.”
Jiang Yuan was happy to learn that he had a special ability known as an Esper power. But he was sad that this ability meant he couldn’t clear himself of suspicion.
“Whether you’re happy or sad, this is the truth. All you can do is accept it and cooperate with the arrangements. If you aren’t the person we’re looking for, the day will come when you’re cleared of suspicion. If you are, then as long as you cooperate, the day will come when your identity changes—from sinner to hero.”
After the researcher finished speaking, she pushed her glasses up with a finger and handed Jiang Yuan a report.
“This has information on the other two. Your faces really are very similar, so don’t think we’re singling you out unfairly. The people around them identified them almost immediately—faster than we could get their results from the citizen database.”
Jiang Yuan took the report and looked it over. The two people in it really did look a lot like him. Their facial features and contours differed only slightly.
One was named Ito Jiang, and the other Jin Zaijiang. The report even listed their match scores: Ito Jiang’s was as high as 92 percent, while Jin Zaijiang’s was 85 percent.
“What’s my match score?”
“Seventy. You’re the least suspicious of the three. Ito Jiang has violent tendencies and is a typical delinquent. Jin Zaijiang was bullied at school and has personality issues from being under long-term psychological pressure.”
“And you, Jiang Yuan, have excellent grades, behave well, and have no bad habits. You’ve also acted fairly normally over the past three days in custody. So you’re the first one we’ve allowed to return to daily life, under supervision.”
