I described the wooden door I had seen to the girl, Lu Chan.
The appearance of the wooden door wasn’t much to speak of, just an ordinary pale yellow antique door with a rough surface, seemingly long neglected. A spherical doorknob hung on it, which looked very loose. The truly strange thing was not the appearance of the door, but its very existence. As she listened to my description, she gave a strange glance, then stepped forward to touch the door and pressed her ear against it, gently tapping the wall.
"...There really seems to be a secret room behind this wall," she said calmly, "I didn’t expect there to be such a hidden space behind the manager’s room. There might be sothing very important hidden there.
"It’s probably best not to break through the wall directly, as that would definitely set off an alarm system. To open this secret room normally, you need to operate so sort of special hidden chanism, or you need a special password. I suspect that it requires using the computer over here.
"However, that’s the normal procedure. If it’s you..."
Towards the end of her sentence, she turned to look at , and her stiff face seed to be struggling to maintain its composure.
I reached out and grabbed the doorknob, then twisted and pulled, directly opening this "door that can only be opened by operating a hidden chanism."
"Password correct, please enter."
The wooden door even emitted a chanical voice prompt, despite the fact that I did not deliberately input any password. It felt like cheating through a horror ga, bypassing all the puzzle-solving and going straight through the level.
"..." Lu Chan said, "Let’s go in."
She seed not wanting to comnt further.
Behind the door was a narrow corridor, only wide enough for one person. Inside, there was no lighting, pitch-black. I summoned a small Fireball with my Outer Path Impermanence Sword, and through the glow, roughly made out the passage constructed of concrete. Not knowing whether there were traps for intruders inside, I went in first, with Lu Chan closely following behind .
The corridor was not long, and we quickly reached the end, where there was another wooden door. I pushed the door open and entered the space beyond.
This place also looked like a cell, but the space was at least three tis larger and had no other exits apart from the entrance we ca through. It indeed was a secret room. And in the center of the room, there was a huge container.
I was montarily at a loss how to describe the container. To put it, the container was like a transparent glass vase enlarged to a full four ters tall, with two-thirds of its interior filled with water, and what was suspended in that water wasn’t a bouquet of flowers, it was a figure I was all too familiar with.
Looking closely, the figure imrsed in the water was none other than Changan, whom I had been searching hard for.
At this mont, he had his eyes closed, naked, with a sealed breathing mask on his face, needles and electrodes hanging from several parts of his torso, suspended in the water in a pose reminiscent of a futuristic warrior from a sci-fi movie who had been seriously injured and placed in healing fluid for treatnt.
Beneath the container was a tal base, from which a faint green glow radiated. Before I entered with the Fireball, that was the only source of light in the room. A mystic atmosphere pervaded the place.
I had finally found Changan.
Seeing that he was intact, I managed to breathe a sigh of relief.
He appeared to be unconscious. Although I didn’t know why he was captured and brought here, I had to find a way to take him out.
"Is that Zhu Changan?" Lu Chan asked.
I nodded, then approached the container, with her following close behind.
However, before I got much closer, I felt a strange force acting upon from nowhere.
This was my first encounter with such a sensation. Although it was a "force acting on ," the feeling was not of an external force trying to manipulate , but as if my muscles had their own will, for so reason contending with to drag this body in the opposite direction of my own will.
I rembered my experience with the "knee-jerk reflex" from elentary school, where I would tap my own knee with a reflex hamr and then try to oppose the physical reflex with my will. In the past, whenever I wanted, I was able to suppress such reflex movents to so degree. Now, however, the intensity of these "reflex movents" had been magnified countless tis, and the duration was incessant. Caught off guard, I actually found myself retreating two steps involuntarily.
Is this a trap? But it doesn’t seem to be lethal?
With this thought, a stubbornness arose within , and I forcefully tried to move my body forward. As I did so, the "reflexive action" unexpectedly retreated step by step. I moved very smoothly.
Lu Chan, on the other hand, seed different. She too was swept up by that mysterious force, retreating rapidly backward involuntarily, stopping only when she reached the entrance to the room.
I noticed her sudden movent and stopped in my tracks, glancing her way.
To my surprise, she wore an astonished expression and blurted out, "Is this... the power of restart?"
Could this actually be Dr. Silver Mask’s "reboot"?
Hearing her say that, I stopped resisting the mysterious force acting upon my body and let myself move under the compulsion of "reflexive actions". My body moved backwards rapidly, as if ti had reversed, following the previous walking motion until I arrived beside her.
This phenonon perfectly matched the "reboot" I had heard of.
While moving backwards, I scanned our surroundings, and the young girl Lu Chan was alertly looking towards the corridor we had co down. But apart from us, there was no third person in sight, no new figure clapping their hands appearing while announcing that we had fallen into their trap.
Moreover, besides the ergence of this mysterious force, no further "enemy tactics" descended upon us.
It seed that the recent power of restart was not Dr. Silver Mask actively wielding his power from the shadows, but rather it was set up as an autonomous defensive chanism in this place. The obvious reason was to prevent intruders from approaching that container.
But what he probably hadn’t expected, what even I hadn’t expected—I seed to be able to directly resist the power of restart.
Was it because my power was so great that I could burn through the fabric of ti and space with just a little effort, making it not so easy for "ti restart" to manipulate ?
Or was there so other special reason?
Although I had consciously acted affected by the power of restart, it was clear to the girl Lu Chan, as she said incredulously, "You can resist the power of restart?"
"Seems like it."
To reconfirm, I attempted to move forward again, and the mysterious force acted upon my body once more. This ti, however, I did not allow my body to be controlled, but resisted the force and moved forward while feeling both my body and consciousness.
It appeared that the mysterious force was not only acting on my body but also attempting to influence my consciousness. However, as I consciously resisted this force, sothing within my consciousness vibrated subtly. It was the Divine Seal Fragnt—as if reacting to the provocation of an unwelco intruder, the Divine Seal Fragnt seed to release an invisible power that expelled the foreign mysterious force affecting my consciousness.
The Divine Seal Fragnt exhibiting such a reaction confird that I was indeed encountering Dr. Silver Mask’s power of restart.
At the sa ti, I had co to understand.
Regardless of the principle behind the power of restart, the source of this power must be the Divine Seal Fragnt in Dr. Silver Mask’s heart. Even if he could thus influence other things at will, he could not directly affect another Divine Seal Fragnt; it seed I had beco an exception because the Divine Seal Fragnt was stored in my consciousness.
And my body, consciousness, and flas are equivalents; since the Divine Seal Fragnt could not affect my consciousness, it naturally could not affect my body and flas either.
Of course, that’s the reasoning, but perhaps on an instinctive level, I hadn’t fully equated the body with consciousness, which is why, despite the absence of any effect on my consciousness, my body was still sowhat affected. Fortunately, it was within a degree overcomable by my willpower.
This was undoubtedly great news. Although I hadn’t completely thwarted Dr. Silver Mask’s power of restart, just knowing that I wouldn’t be controlled by it physically and ntally was a significant step forward.
I had also reflected in the past on how to overco Dr. Silver Mask’s power of restart. Although this power seed insurmountable, that was for the subjects who could not leave the base; it wasn’t the sa for . My original thought was to use the limitation that "reboot phenona are confined to the inside of the base" to escape the infinite loop by leveraging my existence "spanning both inside and outside the base".
Now, with this discovery, not only could many steps be skipped, but it also showed new possibilities.
But that alone was still not enough. I might be able to avoid being controlled by the power of restart, yet Dr. Silver Mask was still capable of reviving at will and resetting this independent reality space countless tis. The conditions for conquest were still insufficient.
It seed Lu Chan had realized sothing, as a barely contained excitent flickered across her face, but she restrained it for the mont, focusing her attention on Changan. Watching her, I found myself pondering that question again.
Why wasn’t her mory erased by Dr. Silver Mask’s "reboot"?
I was exempt because there was a Divine Seal Fragnt in my consciousness, but why was she?
"Zhuang Cheng, there seems to be sothing inscribed on the pedestal over there; can you see it clearly?" she asked.
At her words, I brought the Fireball closer to the tal pedestal and looked down. The pedestal seed to be engraved with complex runes and patterns, possibly so kind of array; I could not discern its effect.
I manipulated the Fireball to grow brighter and larger so that Lu Chan, standing at the entrance, could also get a clear view of the marks on the tal pedestal.
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