Chapter 101 - 99: A Horrifying, Twisted, and Pathological Mentality

Back in these days, girls would at most wear a little makeup. There weren’t any selfies or anything like that.

Just having a photo was good enough. Of course, if it were a photo from the modern era, you might as well not look at it.

Photoshopping was a real pain for the police.

Xu Huo logged into another system.

He quickly pulled up Ma Ling’s information.

On the screen were Ma Ling’s ID card photo and pictures from her other documents.

Ma Ling was very beautiful.

She had become a model on the strength of her incredibly beautiful face. By Xu Huo’s standards, she could have been a movie star.

Her features were soft and delicate, her skin as white and smooth as suet jade. The poise of a model gave her an extraordinary air.

Even in her ID photo, you could tell she was a stunning woman!

However...

Xu Huo couldn’t help but turn his head to look at the ground, at the facial features that had been smashed to a pulp.

Without a doubt.

Her face was Ma Ling’s most beautiful feature, but now, it was nothing but a pile of mangled flesh...

"Wait, that’s not right. One had her hands chopped off, the other her face... Both were their most beautiful features..."

After looking at the ID photo and then back at the body, the others immediately sensed something was wrong.

Li Jianye frowned.

"It’s as if the killer had a grudge against those two specific parts!"

"The two most beautiful parts became the most severely damaged, yet the sexual assault was driven by a desire for beauty..."

To be honest.

Setting aside moral platitudes, people tend to treat unattractive and beautiful individuals very differently.

One might not feel hostility toward the former, but it certainly wouldn’t inspire the urge to rape.

As for the latter, even if they were to curse you out, their appearance might make some people want to be cursed out even more. But if they were disfigured, their face ghost-like, it would instead provoke disgust.

In other words, when people do certain things, they are driven by beauty.

Rape is no exception.

Not many people would rape an unattractive person. They don’t have to; with just a little bit of care, such people might throw themselves at them.

The killer was clearly driven by beauty, but why, after the rape and murder...

...did he then harbor such hatred that he hacked the victim’s most beautiful feature to pieces?

What was the logic in that!?

Xu Huo narrowed his eyes. Something was taking shape in his mind.

’Beautiful... Destroyed...’

’This is...’

"Cuteness Threshold?"

Lost in thought, two words slipped from his lips.

The others frowned upon hearing this.

"What’s that?"

Wang Hu and the others frowned, and Li Jianye’s face was a mask of confusion.

They had never heard of such a thing before.

"A threshold is the limit of something in the human body. The Cuteness Threshold, as the name implies, is the limit of cuteness a person can handle."

Xu Huo thought for a moment before explaining.

The human body is amazing. Its internal mechanisms are incredibly responsible and vast. At first glance, the combination seems fragile, but a deeper look reveals things hidden in the subconscious.

Take the brain, for example. It’s a top-tier component powerful enough to dominate all other living creatures, yet it can produce a useless line of thought like what to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This thinking seems weak, but it’s actually incredibly advanced—after all, it can give rise to self-awareness.

The Cuteness Threshold is one of those things.

"Have you heard the expression ’extremes beget their opposites’?"

"When something reaches a certain limit, it will produce the opposite reaction."

"Like crying. Some people may cry their hearts out over something, but in the end, they might start to laugh—crying and laughing at the same time."

"And some people, when their anger reaches a certain limit, also have a twisted smile on their face."

Xu Huo gave a few examples.

"This is what a threshold is. When your body detects that a certain emotion has surpassed a critical point, it will automatically generate an opposite emotion to dilute it."

"The Cuteness Threshold works the same way."

Psychologically, the Cuteness Threshold can lead to a...

very frightening, twisted, and pathological mindset!

Let’s use cute things as an example.

When you see a cute child, a hamster, a kitten, a puppy, or a whole range of other adorable things.

You might want to squeeze them. A destructive desire arises within you, a desire to...

...strangle them!

That is the Cuteness Threshold at work.

The ’cute’ emotion produced in your brain by the adorable thing is so overwhelming that your body’s subconscious system fears it could affect your physical well-being in an extreme state.

So, without you even knowing it, it activates a ’self-defense mechanism’.

It produces the opposite emotion. That’s why you can look at a cute animal and think it’s adorable, but the more adorable it is, the more you want to strangle it!

"This defense mechanism is usually triggered in one of three situations."

"One, cognitive factors, like a cognitive error. We can dismiss that one."

"Two, emotional dysregulation, like when excessive stress requires an outlet."

"And three is..."

Looking at the others, Xu Huo said slowly,

"...what’s known as a psychological defense mechanism, which can be further broken down into two types."

"First, emotional isolation. Something is so cute that the emotion floods your brain, and your subconscious detaches from that feeling to prevent you from doing something foolish."

"The second is..."

"...reaction formation!"

"This is common in things like jealousy. For example, a person who has had both legs amputated might, in the beginning, see someone with healthy legs and feel a fragile sense of jealousy, wishing the other person would fall and end up amputated just like them."

This is jealousy.

Over time, jealousy can become envy, and prolonged envy... becomes hatred!

"The killer destroyed the hands and face of the first and second victims. These were the most beautiful parts of their bodies."

"If we apply the second option of the self-defense mechanism, it’s clearly a case of envy."

There’s a slight difference between envy and hatred when you break it down.

Envy is more specific!

It’s directed at a specific thing, a specific aspect of a person, not at the entire person!

"Envy, like hatred, doesn’t fade with time. Instead, it grows stronger and deeper!"

"In other words, anyone who could commit rape and murder, and then still feel compelled to destroy the body with a knife, has long been blinded by a twisted, inner envy."

At this point, Xu Huo paused and turned to look at Li Jianye.

"Captain Li, at the first crime scene, based on the bloody hole in the corpse’s thigh, what was our profile of the killer’s appearance and identity?"

"Around 130 centimeters tall, a precocious student, eight or nine years old."

Li Jianye answered instinctively, but as soon as the words were out, he realized something was wrong.

"Yes, an eight-year-old child. And that’s where the problem lies..."

Xu Huo nodded.

"The kind of hatred born from envy needs time to fester."

"An eight-year-old child... take away three years of infant chaos and three years of childhood confusion, and you’re left with two years at most, during which they understand nothing."

"So, here’s the question."

Looking at the others, Xu Huo said gravely, word by word:

"If he really is a 130-centimeter-tall student, then the time necessary to develop that envy..."

"...where did it come from?"

"If an eight-year-old child doesn’t fit, if our age profile is wrong, then for him to still match the other facts of the crime, he..."

"...what is his true identity!?"