Chapter 221: Hypnotherapy

The hypnotherapist was a middle-aged male with gold-rimmed glasses and a scholarly air.

He pushed his glasses up as he replied to Cheng Xi, “His sense of self-preservation is too strong, so he’s completely unwilling to listen to my commands.”

Cheng Xi was speechless at the result. “Are there any other methods, then?”

“If the hypnotherapy were performed by someone he trusts, then the probability of success would increase significantly.”

But where was Cheng Xi going to find someone like that? And how long would it take, given how much time and effort it had taken Cheng Xi to reach her current level of trust with him?

“Then you can do it yourself, can’t you?” the hypnotherapist asked when he saw her despairing expression, “Aren’t you also a psychiatrist?”

“......I don’t know hypnotherapy at all.”

“If you don’t know how to do it, then learn. It’s really not that hard. All you need to do is hypnotize him. I can handle the rest.”

Cheng Xi looked at him unsurely, feeling that this was a very sloppy plan.

“It should work,” the hypnotherapist said with a shrug, “And nothing else viable comes to mind. And given his personality, I’m sure that you’d be hard-pressed to find someone he trusts as much as you.”

And so Cheng Xi rolled up her sleeves and started a crash course in the subtle art of hypnotherapy. Lu Chenzhou was more than happy with this change as he was naturally more comfortable and able to relax with Cheng Xi than a strange man.

After Lu Chenzhou lost his position as CEO, he found that he had far more free time than he could spend. He had accompanied Cheng Xi around as she visited her friends and family, and now that she was about to learn hypnotherapy, he was more than happy to keep her company at home—finally, they would have some alone time.

He fervently wished that Cheng Xi would take a long time to grasp hypnotherapy, so he continuously bothered her when she studied. For example, one day, Cheng Xi was reading a book on the subject when he sat down by her side. At the beginning, he was in a normal position, but eventually, he somehow ended up behind her, hugging her from the back.

Cheng Xi tended to take her reading seriously, and since she was trying to learn this foreign material with a pressing deadline hanging over her head, she was thoroughly engrossed in her book. Even though Lu Chenzhou pressed himself against her for quite a while, she didn’t respond at all.

Lu Chenzhou felt like she had forgotten about him, which left him unsatisfied. He continued trying to provoke a response from Cheng Xi, and slid his hands into her clothes. His fingers crept over her underclothes as they pinched and kneaded her soft and jade-like skin wherever they went.

But Cheng Xi only softly chastised him. “Don’t make a fuss.”

However, her soft words only further encouraged him; he tilted her chin back and kissed her, gently wrapping their tongues together even as his fingers’ movements turned somewhat rough, pinching her in retaliation for her ignoring him.

Cheng Xi groaned in pain, and he asked, “Does it hurt?”

Cheng Xi made a pitiful expression. “It does.” She hoped that this would satisfy his craving for attention, but Lu Chenzhou pressed his forehead against hers and softly said, “Really? Then let me see.”

“......”

And then, before she could even respond, he pulled her clothes up, buried his head in her chest, and lapped at her skin as he asked, “Where does it hurt? Here? Here?”

Cheng Xi lowered her head, and her gaze was filled with his dark brows and clear eyes. They usually gave off a sense of sanctity and purity, but now that he was doing something like this……

She felt her heartbeat speed up slightly as her hands and feet went numb, leaving only her intellect. She clutched his ears in resistance as she weakly muttered, “Lu Chenzhou…”

But he grabbed her waist, breaking her words off. “I want to have sex with you.”

And then they had a half-day-long marathon session. By the end, Cheng Xi was so tired that she just lay in bed without getting up. When she finally found the energy to stand up, the sky was already dark. Lu Chenzhou was in the kitchen making dinner, and Cheng Xi was no longer in the mood to read, so she grabbed a bowl of fruit, plopped down on the sofa, and started idly scrolling through her phone.

Her classmates were making a huge commotion about something in the group chat, and her original colleagues were actually calling for her to join them. “Dr. Cheng, come out and have fun with us!”

Temptation was lurking behind every corner.

Even in this distraction-filled environment, Cheng Xi somehow managed to finish studying all of the theoretical knowledge necessary to hypnotize someone. Then, she had a grueling training session with a hypnotherapist over the course of two days. Finally, Cheng Xi formally entered the training phase. In order to raise her chances of successfully hypnotizing Lu Chenzhou, she chose to test out her skills on a simpler test subject first. Naturally, she called Cheng Yang over. “Let me test my theoretical understanding on you.”

And so Cheng Yang was led to the study like a sheep to the slaughter. He gazed at her warily. “What’re you trying to do? I’ll tell you straight up—there’s no need for any kind of lie detectors. I’ve never lied to you about anything.”

Cheng Xi chuckled. “Then what about Lu Chenming?”

Cheng Yang wilted instantly as he asked, “What do you want from me?” But then, he patted his chest proudly as he declared, “I’ll do anything.”

When he realized that Cheng Xi was going to try to hypnotize him, he became clearly unnerved. “Why’d you start learning this, anyways? Didn’t you come back home to visit your friends and family and treat that fellow? If so, you should just focus on those things~”

He felt like his life was unusually difficult. When Cheng Xi had been studying facial cues in the past, she had practiced on him; after that whole ordeal finished, he felt like all his secrets had been laid bare in front of her.

And now, he was about to be hypnotized…… My goodness, she wasn’t going to uncover every embarrassing thing he’d ever done in his lifetime, was she?

Cheng Xi had an idea of what her brother was thinking about, and she tried to calm him, saying, “Don’t worry. I just want to know if I can actually do it or not. I’m not interested in your sordid past.”

And so, Cheng Yang apprehensively became Cheng Xi’s first test subject.

While Cheng Xi was getting ready, Cheng Yang thought to himself, “I won’t be hypnotized, I won’t be hypnotized.”

But in the heat of the moment, he actually said it out loud.

“......”

Cheng Yang laughed dryly. “Haha, it’s nothing. Ignore me.”

Cheng Xi raised her eyebrows, smiling faintly. She didn’t try to rush into it, and started by aimlessly chatting about nothing with him, choosing some random topics that Cheng Yang was interested in. As they talked, she casually took out a pocket watch and waved it in front of him. “Do you know what this is?”

“A pocket watch.”

“What time is it?”

The pocket watch swung back and forth in graceful arcs, and Cheng Yang’s pupils followed it like an unerring metronome. Cheng Xi gently intoned, “Brother, aren’t you tired? If you are, then shut your eyes. Don’t think about anything else. Just listen to my voice…”

Cheng Yang slowly closed his eyes.

While Cheng Xi and Cheng Yang were busy practicing hypnosis in the study, Lu Chenzhou was sitting in the living room by himself, watching a movie. Halfway through, he saw Cheng Yang recklessly run out of the study as if his pants were on fire.

Not long after, Cheng Xi also came out, a faint smile on her face.

“Were you successful?”

“Yes, I was.”

Of course, her successful hypnosis of Cheng Yang was mainly because he was quite susceptible to hypnosis, unlike Lu Chenzhou. When she actually tried to hypnotize Lu Chenzhou, the hypnotherapist was also present. Cheng Xi didn’t expect to succeed on her first attempt, but surprisingly, it went smoothly.

When Lu Chenzhou quietly laid down on the sofa, completely open to suggestion, Cheng Xi released a pent up breath. Under the guidance of the hypnotherapist, she slowly led him back to the time of the accident. “You’re eight years old, and you’re standing by an intersection. What do you see?”

Lu Chenzhou’s eyelashes twitched, as if uneasy and fearful memories were being unearthed.

Cheng Xi thought that he was about to wake up, but then, a moment later, she heard him softly say, “I see… a cliff.”