The discovery at Esaki's house was quickly reported to the Countermeasures Room.
The corpses of Ezaki Kazu were also taken away by personnel from the countermeasures room.
Three days later, in the countermeasures room building in Tokyo, Kamiyagawa, Onitsuka Kirihotari, Yukisama Kensuke and other senior countermeasures office officials gathered in a small office and began to analyze the Minsei who had lived more than forty years ago.
Discuss what happened to scholars.
"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 supernatural elements and closed the case. The incident was not reported to the countermeasures room at the time.
There was no spiritual exterminator involved. Therefore, no one has ever discovered the cellar hidden beneath the old house of Esaki."
"According to speculation, the so-called auditory hallucination symptoms consistent with schizophrenia during Ezaki Changyasu's lifetime may have been 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 strange and grotesque, and it 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 the 'impostor' who can quietly replace someone really exists. Does that mean that... in this world?
Is there no such thing as Capgras’ delusion?”
The exorcists in the conference room began to look through the information, and soon someone raised such a question.
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 psychiatry 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, the patients Masao Nagatomo came into contact with and investigated really only had the uneasy idea that someone around him was being "replaced" because of his own cognitive disorders and problems.
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, which is why he noticed something abnormal happened to his wife.
This former folklorist is indeed pitiful, because his initial performance, whether it was "auditory hallucinations" or "imaginations", 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 he was "diagnosed" and labeled as a mental illness, from Ezaki Nagayasu'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 sedatives 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 bit "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 for the time being... 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 "Ezaki Kazu" in Wakasa Bay, so the possibility that the impostor was not killed is very high.
"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 being as a pupa, hides it underground, "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, although Ezaki Nagayasu realized that something was wrong. However, neither Ezaki Nagayasu nor his relatives mentioned that Ezaki Kazu had disappeared.
Therefore, it is reasonable to speculate that this process should be relatively fast.
There is no need to stay underground for several years like a baby cicada.
Another point is that Kamiya and the others now suspect that the impostor was attracted by a folklore survey conducted by Ezaki Changyasu, so he appeared next to him and replaced his wife.
After that, the imposter most likely disposed of all the research materials of Ezaki Changyasu.
But the strange thing is that Ezaki Kazu was still left underground in their home.
Even if the underground space itself is not easy to discover, leaving the body of Ezaki Kazu will not do any good to the impostor.
Why does it do this?
Not sure.
If explained in conjunction with criminal psychology, this question should be the same as "why the murderer likes to return to the scene of the crime." The reasons are very complicated.
He replaced his wife, and left his twisted corpse at the feet of the husband who was considered "crazy". Watch closely the poor husband who had glimpsed the truth and struggled...
"The truth is at your feet."
For now, we can only understand this as the extremely bad taste of the impostor.
And if you think about it this way, it is not difficult to see that the impostor seems to have an extreme sense of "arrogance" towards the humans it fools.
So far, the Countermeasures Room has come into contact with many human-like extraordinary or supernatural species.
For example, "Aoyagi" can regenerate through flesh and blood and infect other human individuals; for example, the Ozaki family was dismantled and created by the craftsman god to serve as a "faith relay station".
But the "imposter" discovered this time is different from these known humanoid species.
Even after "Green Willow" infects humans, it still has significant and distinctive characteristics.
But if the "impostor" can continue to "pupa" and replace others with others, then it can be anyone as long as it wants.
When it integrates into human society, it is not so easy to find.
Onizuka Kirihota: "The impostor's ability to replace the victim allows it to become anyone. Our initial investigation was to track down Jiichiro Kuda who revealed the information about Tenjin Maro to Juzo Ozaki.
I was once a friend of Ozaki Juzo."
"An investigation into Jiichiro Kuda's relationship network revealed that he had met Nagayasu Esaki. And three years before Jiichiro Kuda's whereabouts were unknown, Nagayasu Esaki's wife was replaced by an imposter."
The little witch reorganized the correlation between the recent investigation incidents.
Now there is a speculation——
After replacing Kazu Ezaki, the impostor then replaced Jiichiro Kuda.
And using the identity of Jiichiro Kuda, he came into contact with Ozaki Juzo, who was very suitable to become the "ceremony instrument" of Kanayama Bikojin, and then his whereabouts were unknown again.
There is currently no evidence to support this speculation, but if the series of incidents recently investigated are driven by imposters...
Then this thing is probably the "Hai Shi" that connects the organization to the entire Enchanshi organization.
In the process of maintaining the Fengmashi organization, Haishi may have been changing his social identity as he pleased.
"I channeled the soul fragment of Ezaki Kazu, but the fragment of soul was too small, so I didn't get much information. I could only confirm her identity and approximate time of death. But I also 'saw' the only one
Memory fragment flashback - Ezaki Kazu swallowed something in his mouth before his abdomen was opened from the inside."
"This is what we found in the throat of Ezaki Kazu's corpse. According to the flashback of Ezaki Kazu's deathbed memory, this thing is related to her husband's previous research."
Onizuka continued to explain and showed several photos to everyone in the conference room.
The photo was taken of what was later taken out of Ezaki Kazu's throat.
A small scrap of clothing.
Probably the corner of a woman's shirt.
The fabric had been soaked with blood, so it was red and mottled.
This thing is preserved today because the last piece of Ezaki Kazu's living soul stubbornly adheres to it, and it has not completely decayed.
And after a series of mysterious technical treatments in the countermeasures room, a pattern once scrawled with blood on the clothing fragments was restored——
Generally speaking, it looks like an elongated cross, with a curved line extending from each of the four ends of the cross.
Obviously, Ezaki Kazu was aware of the folklore research that his husband had done.
And at the end of her life, even after her death, she tried her best to preserve this hand-drawn symbol.
In all senses, the couple Ezaki Nagayasu and Ezaki Kazu are really a perfect match.
It's still a "good match" in a positive sense.
Each of them tried to fight back against the impostor in their own way.
The impostor may have destroyed the research content of Ezaki Nagayasu, but it left the body of Ezaki Kazu in a bad taste. This extreme arrogance made Ezaki Kazu's "dying resistance" more than 40 years later today.
Take effect.
Latecomers like Kamiyagawa regained clues that should have ceased to exist.
Kisei Shinkensuke: "Our people reviewed a large amount of existing information in the countermeasures room and compared it with the symbol left by Ezaki Kazu. Finally, they found some that may be related, and after a series of investigations and re-comparisons,
It is now believed that this mysterious symbol is related to the previous 'Void Boat Incident'——"
"We found this symbol in an ancient scroll that recorded the Xuzhou incident."
The word "Xuzhou" comes from "Zhuangzi Shanmu", which means "empty ship with no one to control it".
This term is used in Japan to refer to a bizarre anecdote that occurred in the Edo period, namely the "Kurosune Incident" or the "Kurosune Barbarian Girl Incident".
It is said that one day in the spring of the third year of Xianghe County, fishermen on the coast of Jihe County discovered a strange boat floating on the sea.
The curious fishermen paddled their boats closer and pulled the strange boat floating in the waves onto the beach.
The strange drifting ship looks like an oval incense box, with a length of more than 5 meters and a height of about 3 meters.
The entire ship seems to be hollow. The upper part of the ship is made of red-coated rosewood, and the bottom is welded with iron. It seems to be used to protect the wooden hull from being damaged by sharp rocks. The hull has lattice-shaped transparent glass windows.
Pine gum was used to fix the windows to the hull.
Fishermen could see the general structure inside through the windows, and there seemed to be something crawling inside the boat.
Then, a panel on the hull suddenly opened, and a beautiful woman walked out.
The woman wore a long, smooth dress of an unknown fabric, tight at the waist and loose at the ankles. She held a wooden box engraved with unknown characters tightly in her hands and refused to let go.
The woman appears to be about 18 to 20 years old, about 1.5 meters tall, with red eyebrows and hair, a pink face, and long white ponytail hair that reaches vertically to her waist.
The fishermen thought the hair was animal hair or dyed with white powder.
Scholars who studied folklore in later generations believed that the appearance of the "Void Boat Barbarian Girl" obviously did not belong to China, Ryukyu, Korea and other places that had trade with Japan at that time. It should have drifted from areas such as Britain, Bangladesh or Russia.
In addition, some people believe that the "Void Boat Incident" is a UFO incident related to aliens.
Ezaki Nagayasu's younger brother, Ezaki Tekka, once said that he had the impression that his brother had studied aliens.
This coincides with the Xuzhou incident.
As for the symbols left by Ezaki Kazu before his death, they correspond to the symbols on the wooden box in the hand of the "Horse Barbarian Girl" on the ancient scroll.