After he hung up, Lin Huang sent the codes of the four men’s Emperor’s Heart Ring to Yang Ling. Within minutes, Yang Ling sent him the images of the four men’s conversations. However, the four of them were talking with four different accounts. All of them were females without profile pictures. The conversations were explicit with the exchanging of images. However, the images that were sent by the ladies were deleted, so Lin Huang could not tell who they were.
Just when Lin Huang was planning to call Yang Ling to ask about the deleted photos, Yang Ling called.
"I have investigated the four female accounts and although their addresses were all in Luoxi City, they were in different locations. However, all of the accounts were temporary ones whereby they would stop using the account after two to three days. Besides the first account, the other three accounts were created 25 to 26 days after the first account was created. Therefore, it was normal that the locations were different. It’s highly likely that the four accounts belong to the same person." Yang Ling started talking since Lin Huang picked up his call.
"Is it possible to retrieve the deleted photos?" Although Lin Huang knew it was not possible, he wanted to try his luck anyway.
"That’s not possible as the application’s programming is very simple. It’s good that it can keep the messages but it’s impossible to retrieve deleted photos. Moreover, the creator of the application made it for fun without the intention to make the application big, so it’s not connected to the cloud network of the Emperor’s Heart Ring. There’s no backup of messages in the application," Yang Ling said with his arms open.
"Are you the creator?" Lin Huang had the assumption when he heard Yang Ling said that the application had been created just for fun.
"Oh…You got me." Yang Ling shrugged his shoulders.
"Is there nothing that you can do?" Lin Huang asked.
"There’s really nothing that I can do as the programming itself is flawed. I never wanted it to be perfect. All I wanted was a smooth conversation in the application, so I didn’t put in many functions on the application. I used less than two hours to create it and launched it right away…" Yang Ling explained.
"Send me all the four addressed of the ladies then." Lin Huang thought the only clue that he might get was from the addresses.
Yang Ling sent the addresses immediately. Lin Huang projected the map and located the coordinates of the four underground hotels. He then connected all the coordinates to the manhole where the dead bodies were found.
"Please check for me all the surveillance cameras on the route to the manhole on the same night when the four men died. See if there’s anyone who appeared repetitively. If that person appeared several times when the bodies were getting rid of, the person could be the murderer that we are looking for," Lin Huang said to Yang Ling.
"I'll do that. Besides on the day itself, I will also look at the days after the incident happened."
"If there’s anything else that you need my help with, tell me now. I have things to do after 10 at night, you know," Yang Ling added.
"Not at the moment, I’ll let you know tomorrow. Is it possible to send me the surveillance footages by today?" Lin Huang asked.
"I need time for that, I’ll send them to you before 10." Yang Ling hung up the phone right away.
It was almost nine o’clock when the conversation ended. Lin Huang proceeded to read about the Brain Eater. However, the more he read, the more difficult he realized it was for him to handle the monster. The Brain Eater was a monster who relied on asexual reproduction. They usually lived up to 300 years and then would they start reproducing when they knew they were almost at their end. Their reproductive method was unique as a ball-shaped baby Brain Eater would grow on its head. The baby would absorb all the nutrients that it needed from its mother and grow. Once the mother was dead, it would detach from its mother.
Within 48 hours of detachment, it needed to find a host or else it would die. A Brain Eater that was just detached from its mother was only a size of a thumb, so it was hard to discover. It would usually go into another creature’s body and head to the brain. Once it arrived at the brain, it would attach its bottom on the host’s brain and release a massive amount of neurotoxins. The brain would lose its nerve function without feeling any pain. The Brain Eater would then devour the brain as the host was in deep sleep and take over the host’s body.
Han Ji had done many experiments on dead criminals by getting the Brain Eater to take over the dead criminal's body to see what would happen. According to the research, the Brain Eater would most probably inherit the host’s character on its first attempt. For instance, if the host loved smoking, he would still be smoking after his body was taken over. The same applied to those who loved drinking and eating spicy food. Such inheritance proved that the Brain Eater would take over most of the memory of the host.
The Brain Eater would not have its own consciousness during its first attempt of inhabiting a host’s body just to survive. Therefore, the first attempt would affect its own consciousness as it would mostly be affected by the host’s memories. Its consciousness was basically built on the host’s memories. For the following infections, the Brain Eater would acquire the memories of the following hosts as well especially after it has experienced the memory from its first host. However, the memories of the following hosts would do little to affect the Brain Eater.
Once the first takeover was done, the Brain Eater considered as an adult. It could absorb all the information from the memories that it wanted and learn from them to adapt to the environment as soon as possible. If the Brain Eater took over a human body, its learning speed would be terrifying because it could learn to use most of the tools within a couple of days. The most it needed was two to three days to perform exactly the same as the host without exposing itself to others.
Although the reproduction ability of a Brain Eater was weak, it was the most difficult one to handle among many parasites. As Lin Huang was indulged in the documents of Brain Eater that Han Ji sent, a message snapped him out of his focus. It was a short, single-sentence message from Yang Ling.
"I’ve found the culprit but I can’t see the face…"