Gordon told Joseph the story of Lionel (see Chapter 101 for details), and the latter listened calmly. Until he was told the news of William Chapman's death, his expression changed several times, and the last expression left on his face was one that was almost selective and cruel: "William is dead?"
"That's right."
"I thought...I thought..."
Gordon thoughtfully helped him finish his sentence: "Do you think I won't liquidate your family? Or at most, I will just expel them without harming their lives? How is it possible that the new king's accession to the throne will inevitably be accompanied by the blood of the old king? The end.”
"Besides, Joseph," Gordon looked at the active volcano sitting across from him with a half-smile that was ready to erupt at any time: "You look so angry, is it really because of the death of your youngest son?"
"Or is it because... the "other self" that you have cultivated so painstakingly is gone?"
These words seemed to have magic power. Joseph, who was about to fight with Gordon just a second ago, suddenly languished, and his anger turned into doubt and fear: "...how can you even do such a thing...you still know What?!”
"Ha, it's not easy to finally get to this point." Gordon felt very happy, but he couldn't be too arrogant: "If the previous conversations were appetizers, what follows is the main meal. "
"A meal that will completely break your illusions and defenses."
"You're curious about how I know the biggest secret in your life? It's okay. I'll explain it to you slowly."
Gordon's explanation began with a person's name: "First of all, Terry Chapman, your eldest son, he is the origin of all my investigations on this matter."
"Trick is over eighty years old, but he has no children. There are rumors that he suffered injuries in the War of Fire and lost his fertility."
"It is rumored that he has a nose and eyes, but unfortunately it is only half correct. It is true that Trick is infertile, but that has nothing to do with the War of Fire. The real cause is a genetic disease - Klinefelter syndrome."
"The common symptoms of this disease are taller body, slender lower limbs, thin and white skin, sparse beard, and often no armpit hair. Trick's body shape and appearance are consistent with the above points (see Chapter 63 for details) , and then I spent some effort to get his physical examination report, which confirmed this."
"Hmph, go on." Joseph lit a cigar and hid his face behind the curling smoke.
"The other children you had with your first wife all died in the Fire War. I can't find any decent insiders, so there is no direct evidence." Gordon changed the subject: "However, you have devoted decades to life sciences. The strong enthusiasm led me to draw an inference accordingly.”
"Brothers and sisters Sam and Cecilia are test-tube babies obtained through surrogacy; William is said to be a child born through natural methods. Klinefelter's syndrome is not a genetic disease, not to mention that microsperm retrieval surgery is also a method that can produce children. , why do these three supposedly healthy people have no offspring?”
"So I came up with a conjecture: Trick, Sam, Cecilia, and William actually all have genetic diseases, but Trick's Klinefelter syndrome, which affects fertility, cannot be hidden. Tracing the root cause , there was something wrong with your chromosomes, Joseph, and you brought random genetic diseases to your children, and all four of them chose Dink to cut off the continuation of your congenitally defective genes."
"I made a lot of efforts to verify it. To be honest, I wanted to give up halfway through the investigation. After all, it can only be regarded as tidbits about the Chapman family, not even black material. But I didn't expect it. , along this line, I dug up something incredible.”
Gordon calmed down and revealed the truth that the Chapman family had kept secret for many years: "William Chapman is actually completely healthy! This result overturned all my previous assumptions. I simply went to look at William's biological mother's File, only to find that it was a person who didn’t exist.”
"Since I don't believe in evil, I decided to use William as a breakthrough point. After conducting in-depth investigation, I discovered several unusual points that I had overlooked."
"1. You care and love William excessively, such as taking the initiative to assign Wade Fast to him as a bodyguard; 2. William himself is a capable person; 3. You have always known that he has been in trouble for more than a year. What did he do in the battle for the inheritance, but you turned a blind eye. It was not until this time that he attracted the revival organization, which disrupted your plan; 4. You are too similar in many aspects, William is simply your younger version. At this moment, in addition to sharing the common hobby of hunting, the methods of doing things are exactly the same as yours."
"I once thought that these similarities were due to your deliberate cultivation or William's deliberate imitation, but later I found that this was not the case," Gordon said loudly: "William Chapman and you are basically the same person."
"He's your clone."
Joseph responded to Gordon's shocking remarks with one puff after another of tobacco. It was not until he finished smoking one cigar that he lit up the next one and spoke: "It's a great conspiracy theory. It should be written in a tabloid." There will be a huge market for it.”
"Your behavior is completely different from before. It's because you think that William Chapman was burned to ashes by Leon using his supernatural powers, so you can pretend to be stupid without any evidence, right?"
"Humph, young man, I probably understand what you want to do." Joseph expressed his guess: "Although you became the lord of Southeast Asia through violent means, maybe you got rid of other people in the federal cabinet, so that They can support you, but in the eyes of the people, your regime lacks legitimacy. The only way is to throw dirty water on me and package yourself as a hero who defeated the evil leader, so that your coup act seems reasonable and legal."
"I can't see the day when rumors spread all over the place. I hope your bizarre slander will be effective."
Gordon raised his eyebrows when he heard this: "You are talking about the fact that in ancient times, rebels had to have a name similar to Qingjunzhi in order to rebel openly. Joseph, do you think I need to beat around the bush and use this method to smear you? Really? Your island hunting incident is enough to be infamy for eternity."
"After you realized that I had no conclusive evidence, you desperately changed the subject because you knew that what you did was much more anti-human than a killing game."
"If you think about it for a moment, you will understand the irrationality of it. You have spent so much effort just to cultivate a healthy self. He cannot live for you, so what's the point?"
"Unless William really has this function."
At this point, Joseph was already devastated. He never thought that the man in front of him had more secrets than he imagined.
"About forty minutes ago, I asked Reginald to go to a top-secret laboratory in Kuala Lumpur to pick up the soul-suckers hiding there."
"I connected all the clues together and spelled out a process chain of the story. You can listen to see if it is consistent with the facts."
Gordon began to tell: "It was the middle and late stages of the War of Fire. Humanity had achieved more results in genetic engineering than the previous thirty years of research combined. On the one hand, under the pressure of the war, various experimental projects and directions emerged one after another. , genetically modified human warriors are the product of that period; on the other hand, thanks to aliens, people on earth have learned a lot from their science and technology. In short, after experiencing a series of experiences such as Sam, Cecilia, Jack After these failed works, you finally succeeded in using your own DNA as a template to remove the disease-causing genes, artificially created one and only one healthy embryo and raised it to grow up, claiming to the outside world that it was you who gave birth to the child. His name was William Chapman."
"I think at that time, you probably didn't have those extreme ideas. You simply wanted to pass on your bloodline normally. But after you got the Soul Absorber, a bold idea was born."
"In Eastern fantasy terms, this should be called seizing the body, right?"
"You have been preparing for a long time. First, you asked Wade to accompany William as a guard. Most of William's powers did not awaken naturally, but you used the divine mist potion on him to turn him into an esper. After all, who doesn’t want to be stronger; your indulgence towards William is a good explanation, he was originally your default heir to the position of lord, so why not harm those brothers and sisters who are failures and illegitimate children.”
"The reason why you have delayed the soul exchange with William until now, I think maybe one is that you still don't dare to experiment on yourself, and you can't make up your mind until the last moment of your life; the other is that I guess William Due to his age and seniority, he has not yet matured into a person who can take on the important role of lord, so you cannot legitimately pass the throne to him, which will be very detrimental to you after you seize the body."
"Am I right? Joseph Chapman."
Joseph sighed deeply, and there was no need to deny it at this point: "It's almost right."
"I thought that the layout was flawless, but in fact it was full of holes. Unfortunately, too many forces were involved in this seizure, and the situation has long been out of my control."
"Even William took it upon himself to meet with the Renaissance organization and actually brought your man Lionel with him without telling Wade a word. When Wade knew about his plan and passed the news to me, Renaissance The masters of the organization have all arrived in Kuala Lumpur."
In this case, Joseph's defeat was too ugly, but he encountered a considerable number of black swan events, which was both time and life-threatening.
Gordon stood up: "Okay, no matter how much you regret, it won't help. Judging from your appearance, you should have accepted the reality. Let me, Gordon Gardner, put an end to your bloodline."
Joseph spit out the cigarette butt in his mouth and solemnly struck the match for the last time: "This time I want to experience the way poor people smoke cigars. It's probably like taking small sips like this and not daring to waste it. By the way, you want to Do it yourself?”
"No, it's poison." Gordon replied: "By the way, poor people can't smoke cigars, and I don't smoke either."
No one responded to him. Joseph Chapman had just died of poison. The source of the poison was the box of cigars. Everything was as expected by the God's favored one.
"Mr. Gardner." Lionel, who had been waiting at the door, greeted him.
"Let's go back and see how Palmer is handling it. We have to prepare for the global press conference tonight. We are very busy."
