Chapter 00154: Cognitive Interference
# Cognitive Interference
Chapter 154
Novel: AFK Game: Portal to Another World
Chapter 154 Cognitive Interference
Whether one's luck is good or bad, it all depends on how you look at it.
Li Chengxi felt that in less than two months, he had encountered two armed robberies, and both times he was forced into hand-to-hand combat.
This luck was definitely terrible, like something out of a sci-fi story, on par with winning the lottery.
He felt he should probably try some metaphysical method to solve it, like taking a bath with pomelo leaves to wash away the bad luck.
But from another perspective, he wasn't injured either time.
And when the police rushed in while he was clutching the gun he'd snatched from the robber, they didn't get nervous and mistakenly shoot him dead as a bad guy.
That could be considered a form of good luck, too.
But in reality, this had nothing to do with luck.
Hindered by the fact that the robbers had a hostage, the police did not dare to force a breach.
They first had a negotiator try to talk to the man.
But while they were talking, the police had already deployed a sniper team and an observation team.
It was just that the place where the robber was hiding didn't have a good line of sight, making it inconvenient for sniping and observation.
Just as the sniper and observation teams were repositioning, Li Chengxi charged out.
Although they didn't see where Li Chengxi had jumped out from, the police saw it as an excellent opportunity and immediately ordered an assault.
They weren't so incompetent as to be unable to distinguish between good guys and bad guys.
Telling Li Chengxi to put the gun down was purely out of fear that he might accidentally touch the trigger or something, causing the weapon to discharge.
So not only did they not give Li Chengxi a hard time, but they also asked him with great concern if he was injured or anything.
Especially when they saw that Li Chengxi's hands and feet were trembling as he explained himself (in truth, he was terrified), they thought he had been shot but just didn't feel it.
So they immediately called for a stretcher and, no matter how Li Chengxi tried to explain, they refused to listen, forcibly pressing him onto the stretcher and carrying him away.
Only after being carried out of the mall did Li Chengxi notice how bustling it was outside.
Police officers, SWAT, Armed Police, paramedics, and even the fire department were on standby.
Outside the police cordon was a large crowd of onlookers.
This incident had definitely blown up.
Seeing Li Chengxi being carried out on a stretcher, a group of emergency doctors rushed over anxiously.
After a flurry of vigorous activity, they finally confirmed that apart from a slightly elevated heart rate and blood pressure, Li Chengxi had no other problems, and most importantly, he hadn't been shot at all.
It wasn't just Li Chengxi; all the rescued hostages had to be checked by the emergency doctors.
When a person is under extreme stress, their sense of pain is greatly reduced.
There are frequent cases where people who have been shot don't feel it, only to discover after relaxing that they've lost a lot of blood.
Besides, what if one of the hostages had a cardiovascular or cerebrovascular disease and the shock triggered an attack?
So, every single one of them had to be thoroughly checked to confirm they were okay.
Li Chengxi thanked the emergency doctors and quickly stood by the ambulance, looking around.
Fortunately, Viola's red hair was extremely conspicuous.
The paramedics had also made her take off her hat for the examination, so Li Chengxi spotted her at a glance.
Like Li Chengxi, Viola was also undergoing an examination.
When her blood pressure was being taken, the girl was as still as a wooden doll, not daring to move an inch.
The moment she saw Li Chengxi, she immediately ran over with a series of mincing little hops and scurried behind him.
She was adorably timid.
Just after he had comforted Viola with a few words, Lei Lei walked over from the side of another ambulance.
"Brother Li, how did you know which way was the exit?"
"I can't really say for sure. I just followed my gut."
"Your gut feeling is way too accurate..."
Lei Lei was a little frustrated.
From the moment Li Chengxi said he knew the way out, she had been paying full attention to his every move.
But after watching him the entire way, Lei Lei couldn't spot a single flaw in his actions.
There was no mobilization of magic power, no use of spells, and certainly no use of magic treasures or divine abilities.
It left Lei Lei completely baffled.
Just what method did he use?
Just as Lei Lei was about to probe further with some indirect questions, Gan Xiaoyan ran over from the other side.
Seeing the three of them standing there unharmed, she let out a long sigh of relief.
"That's great, you're all okay. I was terrified when I got the news from the surveillance personnel. I rushed over with my colleagues right away."
What happened today was very strange, and it involved supernatural elements, so Section Nine would definitely intervene.
But...
Li Chengxi and Lei Lei exchanged a glance.
He asked:
"Why are you talking as if you weren't at the scene?"
This question baffled Gan Xiaoyan:
"I wasn't there, was I?"
"No, you were right behind us just now."
"I was on duty today. I've been with my colleagues since this morning."
Lei Lei was also a little dazed.
"You were on duty today? But when I sent you a WeChat message yesterday about going shopping together, you replied with 'OK'."
A large question mark seemed to pop up over Gan Xiaoyan's head.
"I saw your WeChat message, but I replied that I was on duty today and didn't have time."
Lei Lei took out her phone and opened WeChat.
She could indeed see that Gan Xiaoyan had replied with an "OK" emoji.
"I never sent this."
Gan Xiaoyan also took out her phone and opened WeChat to show Lei Lei.
Li Chengxi looked at the different WeChat content on the two phones and guessed:
"Tap on each other's friend avatar and check the WeChat ID."
The two did as he said and exclaimed in surprise:
"This isn't my account!"
It was very likely that someone had tampered with their phones when they weren't looking, deleted their real WeChat friend, and then added a pre-prepared WeChat account with a completely identical nickname and avatar.
It seemed like they were sending WeChat messages to each other, but in reality, they were first sent to a third party, who then forwarded them using the two fake accounts.
This method was very simple and unadorned, but it was indeed effective.
However, it also had an obvious flaw: neither of them could see their chat history, but neither of them had noticed.
It felt like the person who did this had ideas, but not much technical skill.
If they had the opportunity to tamper with the phones, directly mirroring the phones would have been much stealthier and harder to detect.
"Have either of you ever given your phone to someone else to use?"
"No, we usually only leave our phones in the classroom during P. E."
"But there was no P. E. class this week."
The P.
E. teacher's sick week, right? Understood.
At this moment, an idea flashed through Lei Lei's mind as if she'd been struck by lightning.
She turned to Gan Xiaoyan and asked:
"Last week, did you give Brother Li some cupcakes you baked yourself?"
Not knowing why Lei Lei suddenly brought this up, Gan Xiaoyan's face reddened as she quickly said:
"I did bake cupcakes, but I didn't deliver them myself. I asked you to help me deliver them."
"Huh? I don't know anything about that."
"How could that be? I personally handed them to you at the time and asked you to pass them on to Brother Li for me."
Li Chengxi also clearly remembered that Gan Xiaoyan had come in person at that time.
Just then, Viola tugged on the corner of Li Chengxi's shirt and pointed at Gan Xiaoyan's backpack, saying:
"Lord, the color of her backpack seems to have changed. The zipper was black before, but now it's white."
After relaying this to the two girls, Gan Xiaoyan said in a panic:
"Does this mean someone has been impersonating me? And we haven't noticed anything for a long time?"
This third party had used the information exchanged between Gan Xiaoyan and Lei Lei to operate while disguised as one of them, and neither of them even knew how long this situation had been going on.
The thought of someone having secretly infiltrated their social network sent a chill through the three of them.
"Is it some kind of shapeshifting creature?"
Li Chengxi remembered the shapeshifting assassin Viola had encountered not long ago.
In any case, it couldn't be simple makeup, or the flaw would have been spotted long ago.
"No, it's unlikely to be shapeshifting."
Lei Lei pointed to her own eyes and said:
"I have the Heavenly Eye Ability, which can see through the vast majority of illusions and transformations."
"Then what's going on?"
"I think it's possible... it's cognitive interference, and a very sophisticated type at that."
Cognitive interference targets a person's brain.
For example, what's on the table is clearly an apple, but after being interfered with, you will believe it's a pear.
If you even take a bite, you will taste the flavor of a pear.
Lei Lei had used a similar spell on Xue Wenshu, but she had only made Xue Wenshu a little more enthusiastic to make it easier to get information out of her.
The human-repelling barrier that Qian Sen used when he first met Li Chengxi was also a form of cognitive interference, meant to prevent irrelevant personnel from intruding.
At the same time, Section Nine would also use similar methods to distort cognition, helping ordinary people forget things they weren't supposed to know.
But the examples above were all simple and crude methods.
Anyone with a bit of ability could ignore the interference, and even ordinary people might suddenly break free from it due to certain triggers.
This time was different.
Putting others aside, Lei Lei, as a cultivator, possessed an extremely strong resistance to abnormal statuses, yet even she had not noticed anything wrong at all.