Chapter 536: Chapter 536: So You’re Called the Lord of the Forest? (Part 3)

The surveillance video that Joel saw in the restaurant in Liushi was a work of Alice’s.

John and Alice, and even other details in the video, such as the food on the table, were all created by Alice.

If a human were to create these “special effects”, a lot of effort and technical skill would be required. Conversely, “face swapping” is the easiest and most realistic approach, but still, someone would have to “impersonate” John, and then replace the “captured face of John”. The same applies to Alice’s image, it needs someone to play the role – because Alice’s actual presence cannot be captured on camera.

However, Alice has her own “editing” method for this kind of digitized video material. Unlike humans who need to operate at the image level, she can directly edit and create the source material according to the effect she wants. She has human learning and cognitive abilities and program operational convenience, which makes her production of fraudulent and perfectly integrated videos and pictures, deceiving human eyes, exceedingly swift.

Of course, this ability did not only start to develop when she found out Joel was entering the country. Xiang Kun had previously assigned Alice a related long-term task, so she was well-prepared.

However, currently, she couldn’t perfectly create and insert every person’s image into the background using digital devices. She had to have previously collected a large amount of information.

John happened to be the target of her special attention, so she was able to counterfeit surveillance footage and even replace the face of Joel taken by the cellphone.

As for having Alice appear in real-time surveillance, that was nothing more than a simple operation.

In the future, as Alice collects more and more data, the number of “virtual reality images” she can create in real-time will also increase. These can be deeply integrated into their eventual foray into VR and AR technologies.

As for helping Xiang Kun to “go invisible” in surveillance or even “face swap”, those are basic operations.

Of course, besides video and images, Alice also had many other ways to influence and guide Joel.

Joel felt he was hypnotised and suggested to, but everything he saw was objectively “real”. The suggestions were overt.

Just like the life insurance advertisement on the big screen of the square in front of the restaurant that he saw was publicly displayed by Alice after she altered it.

Besides Joel, basically, no one would notice that phrase of the English advertisement which was already drowned in the surrounding noise. Even if they noticed, they wouldn’t overthink it – only Joel would realise that the sentence and the words he once said to John were almost identical.

Originally, after attracting Joel’s attention, he was subtly suggested to check out the travel agency that the lady in the ad pointed to, and there would be another set of operations corresponding to indirectly suggest Joel to go to Wushu Mountain. The reason for choosing Wushu Mountain over Chongyun Mountain is because as a 5A Scenic Area, Wushu Mountain is more famous, making the suggestion simpler and more reasonable, and also leaves room for further manipulation.

Of course, even if Joel didn’t go to the travel agency, Alice had a series of subsequent influences lined up, including spoofing a sales call to passersby, guiding passersby’s voices and reactions.

She controlled the display of billboards within Joel’s line of sight. Some seemingly normal advertisement sounds were altered by Alice into potent indirect phrases.

A lot of the information was tailored based on John’s knowledge of Joel from his dreams.

Just like when you were engrossed in reading a book on your phone in the living room, if the TV was playing an advertisement you didn’t care about, you could easily ignore and temporarily block it out, as long as it wasn’t too loud. But if the TV suddenly mentioned the name of your long-time crush, unless you were too engrossed in your book, you would usually react.

Then you look up and realize that even though the name of your crush was said, it was just two common words in a sentence, unrelated to the person you like, so you continue reading your book.

But, going forward, time after time, the goddess’s name keeps getting mentioned on television in different ways, hence you can no longer concentrate on your novel and start thinking: Could it be that the heavens are hinting that I should confess my feelings for the goddess? Are we meant for each other?

For Joel, it was slightly different, but the influence and the suggestive pattern was largely the same.

He just needed to take into account all of Joel’s possible suspicions, guess on his train of thought, and smoothly guide it.

Of course, these were not planned by Alice alone. Xiang Kun and Old Xia had always been providing guidance, planning the strategy, while the tactical execution was left to Alice.

Xiang Kun, based on the information from John’s dream and what Alice found, organized it all and established a preliminary behavioral cognitive model of Joel. It served as a guide to predict his behavior and was then improved with more feedback.

Moreover, there was Old Xia. Compared to his cognitive model, Old Xia’s instant judgment also provided a strong reference.

Old Xia was more cautious. With limited information about the target, she would not act rashly. Therefore, when she first learned that Joel had entered the country and tried to guess his whereabouts and started devising traps everywhere, it was mainly Xiang Kun and Alice who took charge.

After Joel fell into the trap, based on his exact response and various visible images transmitted by Alice from inside the city and the cars, Old Xia would analyze, judge and then offer her opinion.

When Joel was about to go straight to Pengcheng City regardless of anything else, Old Xia suggested that Alice, in the name of John, should send an email to Joel, directing him directly to Pengcheng City, and even deliberately made the content of the email fake.

According to Old Xia, this was to make “going to Pengcheng” an option, similarly to “going to Wushu Mountain”, for Joel to choose.

Comparatively, even though “going to Pengcheng” seemed much more reliable and was originally Joel’s plan, “going to Wushu Mountain” posed a lesser external threat to him.

In Old Xia’s observation, Joel was essentially a timid and soft-hearted person who would definitely choose the safer route if presented with one.

Indeed, after Joel received the blatantly fishy email and arrived in Pengcheng, as soon as he got off the highway, he immediately found a car to take the highway towards Wushu Mountain.

Of course, even without Old Xia’s ideas, Xiang Kun and Alice had a series of backup plans arranged in Pengcheng City, many of which were traps. This would have been a lot more troublesome, and they might have even had to change their observation location in the end.

Upon seeing Joel entering the Chongyun Mountain area on the surveillance feed, Xiang Kun breathed a sigh of relief. After routinely praising Alice, he instructed her:

“Next, it’s up to you. Anyhow, don’t let him leave Chongyun Mountain. Try to confine his activities within the area we’ve marked as C-23 to C-29. Don’t let him be too comfortable, keep pressuring him mentally, but don’t give him a specific target to fight against, and also don’t let him descend into complete despair; try and make him breakdown as quickly as possible. You understand what I mean, right?”

“Alice understands! No problem! I’ll definitely make the arrangements! Boss, don’t worry!” Alice responded crisply, with the volume of the loudspeaker turned up, as her request to co-manifest was unsuccessful.

Regarding this, Xiang Kun naturally had no doubts. Inside Chongyun Mountain, Alice had tons of resources, as if she was swimming in her own hard disk.

After Joel went deeper into the forest, where there were no cameras to capture him, Alice voluntarily suggested that they could present simulated images. She could display what she observed using her Super Sensory Information senses on the screen and then use the environmental images she had previously collected from Chongyun Mountain to simulate real-time surveillance video that appeared genuine.

It indeed looked quite intimidating. Those unaware of the situation might even think that it was real-time footage from a drone in the sky. Moreover, it could switch angles and zoom in for a closer look.

However, because Alice handled it too delicately, causing the image to lag, Xiang Kun asked her to simply use a simplistic cartoon diagram to mark positions. Regardless, everyone knew this information was falsified. It was more important to ensure fluency and reduce delay.

So real-time monitoring turned into: a “Little Fatty Girl-style” sketch of a person, who looked like the KFC old man, but blonde, moving around within the “Little Fatty Girl-style” forest.

Alice provided occasional commentary: “He’s standing still now, seems a bit lost. Probably doesn’t know where to go! Boss, should we give him a hint? Oh wait, you told me to handle this myself, so I’ll just guide him!”

Then on the screen, a small square object lit up at the blonde man’s feet. He picked it up. Alice explained: “I lit up his phone for him and took a picture! After the picture was taken, I turned his face into John’s! Woah, he got scared! He’s tense! All muscles are tight, pupils dilated, he can’t believe it! He took a few more pictures, and I changed it again! He’s stunned and motionless, seems he’s doubting life itself. Hey, I changed it back! He looks left, he looks right, continuing to question life…”

Alice’s tone was particularly passionate and excited, sometimes even imitating the characteristic style of Little Fatty Girl’s recent crosstalk performances, speaking in a Hunan and Chu dialect mimicking Tianjin dialect, like a one woman talk show.

However, Xiang Kun and Old Xia both remained expressionless and unresponsive in front of the screen. Old Xia genuinely didn’t get it while Xiang Kun was simply tired of listening. Alice’s enthusiasm was 24/7. She had been this excited while planning every stumbling block for Joel.

At the beginning, every time Joel stepped into a “pit”, Alice would ask for a co-manifestation to show off her achievement in front of them with animated enthusiasm.

So now, whenever he heard Alice’s excited voice, he automatically pictured a miniature Old Xia-like little girl, incessantly pumping her arms and legs and shouting. It was painfully loud. But he couldn’t stop her from being ebullient either because, after all, she was performing extremely well…

“Oh? He seems to want to run. That’s impossible! In Alice’s forest, no one can escape! No one can!”

Alice continued her passionate commentary. Then a “Little Fatty Girl-style” little girl in a white dress appeared with a pop near the blonde old man in the cartoon forest. She swayed a little, then disappeared with another pop.

“The evil vampire overlord is chasing the righteous Alice, but he can’t get to her. He looks for her but can’t find her. He wants to run again? Alice won’t let him get away. Alice reappears, whoosh!”

Not only was the video in “Little Fatty Girl” style, Alice’s commentary was also “Little Fatty Girl-ified”.

Xiang Kun couldn’t help but think, if the Little Fatty Girl was here to watch this “live commentary” by Alice, she would probably be super excited and engaged, probably wishing she could use five Coin Matrix to add the power from “Sister Luosi” in aid.

But he quickly dismissed this thought. If that actually happened, Alice’s exhilaration would be off the charts as she’d be sure to show off with all kinds of stunts in front of her Sister Lingdang.

Xiang Kun glanced at Xia Libing next to him. Old Xia was staring blankly at the screen, seemingly focused on Joel’s situation. However, Xiang Kun knew that Xia was likely spending more energy studying Alice than Joel – after all, the latter was already fully deceived, and the real experiment only required Xiang Kun to enter his Super Sensory State.

But through sensory analysis, Xiang Kun knew it was getting late and Old Xia was beginning to tire out and would probably fall asleep soon.

He looked at the cartoon blonde old man on the screen and said, “Alice, speed it up a little.”

Finish off this old vampire as soon as possible, collect his Super Sensory Information, so that Old Xia can rest assured and go to sleep.

“Roger that, Boss!”

“I’m going to use the powerful moves I learned from Old Xia!”

“Fog! Fog! Big fog! A big fog rises! ”

…

In the depths of Chongyun Mountain, Joel naturally couldn’t hear Alice’s whiny and childish “Fog is rising”, but he did witness a sudden burst of fog materializing from thin air.

Then these eerie-looking fogs quickly spread around him, obscuring his entire field of view.

Joel was extremely surprised, this fog clearly had an issue, could it be another hallucination?

What assured him that this was his own hallucination was that this fog actually had the smell of barbeque!

Joel strenuously swung his arms and rushed forward, but not only could he not clear the fog, he couldn’t break free either. Instead, he stumbled, landed on the ground, rolled a few times, and stopped after hitting a tree.

What Joel didn’t know was that if anyone was looking down from the sky at this time, they would see a more eerie spectacle than he did in the fog —— a cloud of fog seemed to be alive, moving continuously in the forest.

And in the middle of that cloud of fog, was Joel.

This fog completely covered an area with a seven or eight-meter radius all around Joel. It shielded his view and stuck to him wherever he went.

After Old Xia co-manifested this fog to obscure the environment more than a month ago, Alice acquired the ability to co-manifest as well —— she naturally inherited the ability to co-manifest objects that Old Xia could, including pig’s knuckles, cakes, ice creams and not limited to those.

Inside the fog, Joel became more restless, but he was still slightly rational. Even if his vision and smell were affected, he still had the “prosthetic tissue fluid” that he secretly placed in various locations to help him anchor his position.

So after he fell, he didn’t get up. He lay directly next to the tree, placed his head on the ground, and tried to sense his prearranged “prosthetics”.

However, what he didn’t know was that, with the rise of the fog, a large number of ants emerged from all over Chongyun Mountain. Some had wings like bees, some jumped out of the soil, gathered densely together, and swarmed towards the locations where Joel had arranged the “prosthetic tissue fluid”.

The plants parasitized with “prosthetic tissue fluid” seemed to be normal and didn’t show any change, but when the ant colony approached and began to nibble away, they immediately began to swing their trunks as if in pain, and sprayed corrosive fluid from their flower-like organs.

Huge piles of ants smoked until they died, but their companions still proceeded regardless, relentlessly attacking the plants Joel called “prosthetics”, clinging to them, gnawing endlessly.

Joel was known as the “Lord of the Forest” because these “prosthetic” plants he arranged could help him detect others in advance and ambush them.

Inside the fog, even if his vision and smell were blocked, he could use his previously strategically placed, scattered “prosthetics” to discern direction and identify enemies.

However, now that the “prosthetics” were being attacked by ubiquitous ant swarms, he finally felt despair.

He knew that this invisible large hand really had him gripped within it, with nowhere to escape.

But what’s even more terrifying is that up until now, he still didn’t know who his enemy was, who his opponent was. In all his sensory methods, in his surroundings, and along the way, there were no “Blood Clan”, “Blood Beasts”, “Blood Plants”, or even any barely detectable creatures!

Just as he fell into despair, a little girl’s voice sounded, “I heard you’re called the ‘Lord of the Forest’?”