I loaded the ghost talk game

The discovery at Esaki's house was quickly reported to the Countermeasures Room.

Including the corpse of Ezaki Kazu, they were also taken away by the personnel of the countermeasures room.

Three days later, in the countermeasures room building in Tokyo. Kamitanigawa, Onizuka Kirihotari, Yukinari Masakisuke and other high-level officials of the Countermeasures Room gathered in a small office and began to discuss what happened to the folklorist more than forty years ago.

"It can now be confirmed that Ezaki Nagayasu did not suffer from Capgras delusion, also known as impostor syndrome. His wife was really replaced by something unknown. Here, let's call that thing for 'impostors'."

"More than forty years ago, because of the medical records issued by doctors, the police who took over the Ezaki Changyasu case investigated the incident as a case without extraordinary elements and closed the case. The incident was not reported to the countermeasures room at the time. There is no spiritual master involved, so no one has ever discovered the cellar hidden under the old house of Jiang Qi."

"According to speculation, the so-called auditory hallucination symptoms consistent with schizophrenia during Ezaki Changyasu's lifetime were probably due to the perception of the voice of his wife's deceased soul underground."

"The soul of his wife Ezaki Kazu was trapped underground and did not form a wandering spirit form. It probably disintegrated not long after. However, when Ezaki's body was discovered, there were still very small fragments of the living soul attached to it. Onizuka Kamiko I channeled the tiny living soul fragment, and here is the channeling report..."

This high-level confidential meeting was still chaired by Jiecheng Zhenjianyou, who gave an overview of the incident.

The truth behind this incident is weird and may be related to the encounter with demons, so it has attracted great attention from the countermeasures room.

"Mr. Yuchenei, I don't know much about mental illness. But through the incident of Ezaki Nagayasu, we can know that there is a real existence of 'impostors' who can quietly replace someone. Does that mean that... in this world? There is no such thing as Capgras delusion?”

The exorcists in the conference room began to look through the information, and soon someone raised such questions.

Jiecheng Zhenjianyou shook his head: "About this, I consulted experts and scholars in psychopathology yesterday. Capgras delusion is a real mental illness. Although it is rare, it does exist to a certain extent around the world. Number of people…”

Uncle Jiecheng's work efficiency is still very high.

He has personally consulted several psychiatric experts, and has also asked his assistant Nagatomo Masao to lead several spiritual exterminators to contact and investigate other patients recorded as suffering from "Imposter Syndrome" across Japan.

Assuming that the so-called "imposter syndrome" does not exist in this world, it means that there are already a considerable number of "imposters" operating in this world.

But preliminary judgment shows that impostor syndrome is a real mental illness.

Moreover, among the patients Nagatomo Masao came into contact with and investigated, it was really only because of his own cognitive disorders and problems that he had the uneasy idea that someone around him had been "replaced."

unless……

After the impostor replaces the human being, he exists in a state where even a spiritual exterminator cannot detect any abnormalities.

Then things became very serious and terrifying.

In short, Nagatomo is still contacting and investigating related patients, and he may find someone with the same situation as Ezaki Nagayasu next.

For now, we can only treat the situation of Ezaki Changyasu as a special case.

As an ordinary person, he most likely has a high level of perception, so he noticed something abnormal happened to his wife.

This former folklorist is really pitiful, because his initial performance, whether it was "auditory hallucinations" or "fantasies", was completely consistent with the performance of schizophrenia from beginning to end.

In this case, it seems that the doctor who diagnosed him at the time could not be blamed for misdiagnosis.

Once "diagnosed" and labeled as a mental illness, from Ezaki Changyasu's point of view, he had no way to prove to the people around him that he was not crazy.

He was forced to undergo compulsory treatment and take sedative drugs for a long time that had serious side effects and were harmful to the body.

Under such circumstances, you can finally fight back against the "imposter" with your own will...

It can only be shown that Ezaki Changyasu is really firm in his own judgment to the point of being a little "paranoid".

Of course, considering the truth of the matter, the so-called "paranoia" can be regarded as a compliment.

Someone in the conference room soon asked another question: "Even so, we still can't judge how many impostors there are in the world, right? Moreover, since the impostor is an extraordinary creature, let's classify it as an extraordinary creature... then... We have to reasonably doubt whether Ezaki Nagayasu really killed the fake Ezaki Kazu.”

"That's right." Jiecheng Zhenjianyou nodded.

There may be only one "imposter" in this world, or there may be many.

Moreover, the original investigation of Ezaki Nagayasu did not find the body of "Esaki Kazu" in Wakasa Bay. It is very likely that the impostor was not killed.

"I don't know if this is the right description, but the impostor feels a bit like... a cicada."

The speaker this time was Onizuka Kirihotaru, who participated in the investigation of the incident.

Impostors are a bit like cicadas——

It takes a human as a pupa, hides in the ground, "emerges" after a certain period of time, returns to the ground, and integrates into human society with a new identity.

The specific principles of this process are not yet known.

However, after the former Ezaki Kazu was replaced, Ezaki Nagayasu noticed that something was wrong. But neither Ezaki Nagayasu nor his relatives mentioned that Ezaki Kazu had been missing.

So it is reasonable to speculate that this process should be relatively fast.

It is not necessary to stay underground for several years like the young cicada.

Another point is that Kamiya and others now suspect that the impostor was attracted by a folk survey that Ezaki Nagayasu had done, so he appeared beside him and replaced his wife.

Afterwards, the impostor most likely disposed of all of Ezaki Nagayasu's research materials.

But strangely, Ezaki Kazu was still left in the basement of their house.

Even if the underground space itself is not easy to be discovered, leaving Ezaki Kazu's body behind is of no benefit to the impostor.

Why did it do this?

Not sure.

If combined with criminal psychology to explain, this question should be the same as "Why do murderers like to return to the crime scene", the reason is very complicated.

Replacing his wife, and leaving her twisted corpse at the feet of the husband who was thought to have gone "crazy", and admiring the poor husband who had glimpsed a certain truth struggling from a close distance...

"The truth is under your feet."

For the time being, we can only understand this as the extremely bad taste of the imposter.

And according to this line of thought, it is not difficult to see that the imposter seems to have an extreme "arrogance" towards the humans it fooled.

The Countermeasures Room has come into contact with many human-like extraordinary or supernatural species so far.

For example, "Aoyagi" who can regenerate through flesh and blood and infect other human individuals; for example, the Ozaki family who were disassembled and created by the craftsman god to serve as a "faith relay station".

But the "impostor" discovered this time is different from these known human-like species.

Even after "Aoyagi" infects humans, it still has significant and distinctive characteristics.

But if the "impostor" can continue to "use humans as pupae" and replace them, then as long as it wants, it can be anyone.

After it integrates into human society, it is not so easy to find.

Onitsuka Kiri Hotaru: "The impostor's ability to replace the victim allows it to become anyone. Our initial investigation was to track down Jiichiro Hisada, who revealed the information about Tianjin Mara to Shigezo Ozaki. This person was once a friend of Shigezo Ozaki."

"And investigating Jiichiro Hisada's network of relationships, it was discovered that he had known Nagayasu Ezaki. And three years before Jiichiro Hisada disappeared, Nagayasu Ezaki's wife was replaced by an impostor."

The little witch re-sorted out the mutual connections between the recent investigations.

Now there is a speculation-

After replacing Kazu Ezaki, the impostor replaced Jiichiro Hisada.

And using Jiichiro Hisada's identity, he contacted Shigezo Ozaki, who was very suitable to become the "ritual vessel" of Kinzan Biko God, and then disappeared again.

There is currently no evidence to support this speculation, but if the series of events recently investigated are all driven by the impostor...

Then this thing is likely to be the "Hai Hour" that connects the entire Omaji Organization.

In the process of maintaining the Omaji organization, Hai Shi might have been changing his social identity at will.

"I communicated with the fragment of Ezaki Kazu's soul, but that soul was too small, so I didn't get much information. I could only confirm her identity and the approximate time of death. But I also "saw" the only memory fragment flashback - Ezaki Kazu swallowed something into her mouth before her abdomen was cut open from the inside."

"That's it. We found it in the throat of Ezaki Kazu's corpse. According to Ezaki Kazu's final memory flashback, this thing is related to her husband's previous research."

Guizuka continued to explain and showed several photos to everyone in the conference room.

The photos were taken of what was later taken out of Ezaki Kazu's throat.

A small piece of clothing.

Probably a corner of a woman's shirt.

The fabric was soaked in blood, so it was bright red and mottled.

This thing has been preserved to this day because the last small piece of Ezaki Kazu's soul stubbornly attached to it, and it has not completely decayed.

After a series of mysterious technical treatments by the Countermeasures Room, a pattern that was once scribbled in blood on the clothing fragment was restored -

Generally speaking, it is a long and thin cross, and a curved line extends from each of the four ends of the cross.

Obviously, Kazu Ezaki knew about the folklore research that her husband had done.

And at the end of her life, even after her death, she did her best to preserve this hand-painted symbol.

In various senses, Nagayasu Ezaki and Kazu Ezaki are really a perfect match.

It is still a "perfect match" in a positive sense.

They each tried to fight back against the impostor in their own way.

The impostor may have destroyed the research content of Nagayasu Ezaki, but it left Kazu Ezaki's body behind in a bad taste. This extreme arrogance made Kazu Ezaki's "deathbed resistance" effective today, more than 40 years later.

Kamiya Kawa and other later comers have regained clues that should have disappeared.

Makenyu Yuki: "Our people have consulted a lot of existing information in the countermeasures room and compared it with the symbol left by Kazu Ezaki. Finally, we found some possible related information. After a series of investigations and re-comparisons, we now believe that this mysterious symbol is related to the previous "Ultra Boat Incident"-"

"We found this symbol in an ancient scroll that records the Ultra Boat Incident."

The word "Ultra Boat" comes from "Zhuangzi·Yamamu", which means "an empty ship without a driver".

In Japan, this word refers to a bizarre anecdote that occurred in the Edo period, namely the "Ultra Boat Incident" or the "Ultra Boat Barbarian Woman Incident".

It is said that one day in the spring of the third year of Kyowa, fishermen on the coast of Yoshigo County found a strange ship floating on the sea.

The curious fishermen rowed their boats closer and pulled the strange ship floating in the waves onto the beach.

The strange ship that drifted in was like an oval incense box, with a visual length of more than 5 meters and a height of about 3 meters.

The whole boat seemed hollow. The upper part of the boat was made of red-coated rosewood, and the bottom was welded with iron, which seemed to be used to protect the wooden hull from being damaged by sharp rocks. The hull had transparent glass windows in a lattice shape, and the windows were fixed to the hull with pine glue.

The fishermen could see the general structure inside through the window, and there seemed to be something moving inside the boat.

Then, a panel on the hull suddenly opened, and a beautiful woman walked out.

The woman wore a long and smooth dress made of unknown fabric, which was tight at the waist and loose at the ankles. She held a wooden box with unknown characters in her hands tightly and was unwilling to let go.

The woman looked about 18 to 20 years old, about 1.5 meters tall, with red eyebrows and hair, pink face, and long white ponytail hair strands vertical to the waist.

The hair strands were believed by the fishermen to be animal hair or dyed with white powder.

Later scholars who studied folklore believed that the appearance of the "Ultra Boat Barbarian Woman" was obviously not from China, Ryukyu, Korea and other places that had trade with Japan at that time. She should have drifted from Britain, Bengal or Russia.

In addition, some people believe that the "Ultra Boat Incident" was a UFO incident related to aliens.

Ezaki Nagayasu's younger brother, Ezaki Shoka, once said that he had the impression that his brother had studied aliens.

This matches the Ultra Boat Incident.

As for the symbols left by Ezaki Kazu before his death, they correspond to the symbols on the wooden box in the hands of the "Ultra Boat Barbarian Woman" in the ancient scroll.