"Are you saying you want to enter her memory?" Jonathan Crane sat behind the desk, gently tapping the tabletop with his fingers, and then said, "You should be fully aware of how dangerous this is, Shiller. This isn't the same difficulty as treating a fat middle-aged arms dealer with a Saturday afternoon appointment to talk about his loveless romantic history."
Victor frowned beside them. What kind of cases do these psychiatrists usually take on?
"I don't need you to remind me, Professor Crane." Shiller sat opposite him, resting his hands on the armrests, "Since I proposed this plan, I'm naturally fully confident."
"I'd love to hear what confidence you have." Jonathan snorted coldly, "Doing this kind of thing, even God wouldn't dare claim complete certainty."
"God has never been able to stop me, not before, not this time either." Shiller's tone revealed a chill.
"Alright, since you've made up your mind, there's no point in persuading you. Let's talk about Noel." Jonathan became excited and said, "The behind-the-scenes manipulator of their revival must have tampered in their Spirit Domain. But how he did it, no one knows. Even to figure this out, we need another test subject."
"No." Shiller shook his head and said, "I will enter Noel's Psychic_Battlefield directly."
"Oh, my gosh, I never knew you were such a radical person before. This kind of treatment plan wouldn't pass in any hospital." Jonathan said. After saying this, he looked at Brand, who had remained silent beside him.
"Don't look at me, I specialize in brain science and pathology." Brand said, "I am skeptical about the existence of the so-called Spirit Domain."
"What do you think?" Shiller insisted on asking him.
Brand took out a bunch of materials and then said, "From the brain scan images, no problems can be seen. No patterned brain changes were found in these living corpses."
"What about brain wave activity?" Jonathan also looked at the pile of materials.
"No obvious abnormalities." Brand projected the images onto the screen and then said, "I considered pituitary abnormalities. Because you dictated to me that the living corpses have the ability to actively stimulate and gain enormous Strength. This may be due to the pituitary secreting some special hormone. But the examination results didn't show anything."
"However, I still believe Noel's situation is very special." Brand changed his tone and said, "I think this may be crucial for Hugo to break the control of the behind-the-scenes manipulator and perform a special brainwashing on her."
"What is it?"
"She is extremely weak." Brand took out a physical examination report and then said, "Although no autopsy was conducted, after a physical examination of her condition, doctors unanimously concluded that her cardiopulmonary function is at a critical point. Radically speaking, with her physical condition, she should have long lost her normal mobility due to insufficient blood supply to the heart. But she is still able to move freely, which is abnormal."
"Assuming the behind-the-scenes manipulator assigns the same amount of Power to everyone and doesn't give more to someone particularly weak, then these powers might not be enough to wake Noel up."
Shiller frowned. He could roughly understand what Brand meant. Although the exact principle of the Power of Death resurrecting others is unclear, irrespective of how they died tragically, once revived, they are lively.
For example, Steel Bone Victor's mother, who couldn't even be interred in a complete form due to a severe car accident, didn't have a good method even for the Funeral Director. But when she came back, she was a complete person.
This indicates that the Power of Death didn't reset them to the moment of death. Otherwise, they should all be injured, and some might not even resemble human shapes.
He must have jumped the timeline forward, restoring the resurrected person to a better period. And because the revived people look close to the age at their death, it might be a period near death when their physical condition was best, used as the resurrection state.
However, there's a problem with Noel. Her health was never good from birth, whether at the time of death or before death; she was always in a half-dead state. Even when she was born, she was probably very weak.
In this case, if the Power of Death given by the behind-the-scenes manipulator is not enough, the revival might fail. Noel is like a damp piece of wood, which cannot be ignited with a match and at least requires a flamethrower.
However, Noel still woke up. This in itself is abnormal. Brand was analyzing this point, and he said, "I suspect that during the revival process, the human body will actively allocate the Power of Death, choosing the most likely plan to wake up to resurrect the corpse."
"That's absurd," Victor said, "The corpse will actively allocate the Power of Death?"
"It's actually not strange." Brand said, "You may have heard such a theory, that after a person is beheaded, they still have a period of consciousness, eye movements, and make expressions."
"Isn't that muscle reflex?" Victor frowned.
"Not entirely." Brand said, "The brain doesn't shut down immediately at the moment when energy supply is cut off. This process is usually delayed. And the delay's standard depends on when the brain realizes it has already died."
"Sounds a bit idealistic." Victor clearly didn't quite understand this aspect.
"Indeed, that's the case. The human race's consciousness regulates the body far more than people imagine. Even the brain is like this. So, I believe that when we found the Power of Death isn't sufficient to revive the corpse, while Noel was in a half-dead state, her brain actively allocated the Power of Death for her own energy, and then she woke up with extremely strong willpower."
Shiller listened intently. After some careful thought, he said, "You mean the Power of Death is likely concentrated in her brain."
"Yes. It means your entrance into her Spirit Domain will be more dangerous than previously expected. Most importantly, you can't dispel the Power of Death during the process of releasing her from hypnosis, otherwise she might revert to being a corpse."
"This is troublesome." Jonathan said with some schadenfreude, "If now only her brain is alive, then you can't even give her anesthesia. Because once her brain stops working, it might never restart."
"Are chemical methods useless too?" Shiller asked him.
Jonathan froze for a moment, as if he hadn't expected the question. He turned and picked up a sheet of paper from beside him, beginning to write and draw. Victor leaned over to look but was glared at by Jonathan.
"What are you doing? I'm not going to steal your formula."
"Pfft, as if you could steal it away." Jonathan said dismissively, "I just don't want you pointing at my brilliant design with your ice-block brain. Go away!"
Victor almost wanted to draw his gun immediately, but after some thought, he abandoned the action. Jonathan scribbled on the paper for a long time, slapped the table, fell silent for a while before finally speaking, "I have an idea, but it might not work. But if it works, it will work really well..."
"Spit it out already." Victor rolled his eyes dramatically.
"Don't rush. You're not going anywhere." Jonathan said, "First, to prevent her body from dying, we need to freeze her. Just like you froze your wife with your cold-headed technology..."
Victor widened his eyes and said, "Freeze her?"
"Exactly. Your wife was gravely ill at the time, wasn't she?"
"Who told you that?" Victor said, "Nora just had a relatively rare degenerative disease at the time. If left unchecked, it might pose a life threat. But she hadn't deteriorated to the brink of death. I wouldn't act under the circumstances you suggest."
"But you do have this technology, right?"
"I'm just saying their situations are different and shouldn't be generalized. Moreover, once frozen, the brain functions in a low-temperature state, reducing brainwave activity to the minimum. How can you ensure her Spirit Domain won't shut down because of this?"
"That's my realm." Jonathan said, "Before freezing her, use my fear gas to bring her brain to an extreme state of excitement, then use freezing for cooling her down. This would allow her brainwaves to maintain a relatively stable and controllable range."
"What's the point of this?" Victor said, "The difficulty now lies in Shiller's activities within her brain, which could lead to mental meltdown and brain death. And brain death means physical death, as her body is already too weak to survive. Low temperatures won't change this."
"No, no, no." Jonathan said, "There might still be a change. What's the principle behind your body-freezing cryogenic technology?"
"In low temperatures, the body's energy consumption is minimized, entering an almost death-like dormant state. This can nearly infinitely extend the decay process of the body..."
"Exactly." Jonathan tapped the table and said, "With energy consumption minimized, her weakened cardio-pulmonary functions are no longer a problem. At this point, the brain might redistribute the concentrated Power of Death to other parts of the body. Because it detects that the energy is enough. The corpse can truly revive without relying on willpower."
Everyone looked at Brand. Brand thought for a long time and then said, "It's indeed possible. But we can't determine whether it is brain control or Power of Death control."
"What do you mean?"
"Although I believe concentrating the Power of Death is a brain's autonomous action, we can't rule out the possibility that the Power of Death, finding body revival useless, actively enters the brain to specially strengthen willpower."
"What's the difference?" Victor asked.
"The difference is that if the Power of Death truly optimizes the revival process automatically, it means it's not just some energy but a form of will. In this situation, Shiller should not enter Noel's Spirit Domain. Otherwise, he may face the Behind-the-scenes Manipulator directly."
"I think it's impossible." Shiller said, "If the Power of Death has autonomous will, it wouldn't fail so miserably in other universes. And if facing the Power of Death means facing the Black Death Emperor, how did Hugo successfully hypnotize Noel?"
"That's the problem." Brand leaned back in his seat and said, "How do you know it's not a trap he set specifically for you? The purpose being to lure you into Noel's Spirit Domain, so you directly face that guy."
"He doesn't dare to face me." Shiller said coldly, "Otherwise, he wouldn't have needed the living dead to circumvent me."