Apocalyptic Era: Starting from picking up a Bishoujo
Chapter 195 - 186 Found Changan

Chapter 195: 186 Found Changan

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 me 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 something 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 some sort of special hidden mechanism, 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 me, and her stiff face seemed 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 mechanism."

"Password correct, please enter."

The wooden door even emitted a mechanical voice prompt, despite the fact that I did not deliberately input any password. It felt like cheating through a horror game, bypassing all the puzzle-solving and going straight through the level.

"..." Lu Chan said, "Let’s go in."

She seemed not wanting to comment 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 me.

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 times larger and had no other exits apart from the entrance we came through. It indeed was a secret room. And in the center of the room, there was a huge container.

I was momentarily at a loss how to describe the container. To put it, the container was like a transparent glass vase enlarged to a full four meters 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 immersed in the water was none other than Changan, whom I had been searching hard for.

At this moment, 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 treatment.

Beneath the container was a metal 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 me from nowhere.

This was my first encounter with such a sensation. Although it was a "force acting on me," the feeling was not of an external force trying to manipulate me, but as if my muscles had their own will, for some reason contending with me to drag this body in the opposite direction of my own will.

I remembered my experience with the "knee-jerk reflex" from elementary school, where I would tap my own knee with a reflex hammer and then try to oppose the physical reflex with my will. In the past, whenever I wanted, I was able to suppress such reflex movements to some degree. Now, however, the intensity of these "reflex movements" had been magnified countless times, 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 me, 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, seemed 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 movement 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 time had reversed, following the previous walking motion until I arrived beside her.

This phenomenon 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 come 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 emergence of this mysterious force, no further "enemy tactics" descended upon us.

It seemed 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 mechanism 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 seemed 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 time and space with just a little effort, making it not so easy for "time restart" to manipulate me?

Or was there some 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 time, 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, something within my consciousness vibrated subtly. It was the Divine Seal Fragment—as if reacting to the provocation of an unwelcome intruder, the Divine Seal Fragment seemed to release an invisible power that expelled the foreign mysterious force affecting my consciousness.

The Divine Seal Fragment exhibiting such a reaction confirmed that I was indeed encountering Dr. Silver Mask’s power of restart.

At the same time, I had come to understand.

Regardless of the principle behind the power of restart, the source of this power must be the Divine Seal Fragment in Dr. Silver Mask’s heart. Even if he could thus influence other things at will, he could not directly affect another Divine Seal Fragment; it seemed I had become an exception because the Divine Seal Fragment was stored in my consciousness.

And my body, consciousness, and flames are equivalents; since the Divine Seal Fragment could not affect my consciousness, it naturally could not affect my body and flames 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 somewhat 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 mentally was a significant step forward.

I had also reflected in the past on how to overcome Dr. Silver Mask’s power of restart. Although this power seemed insurmountable, that was for the subjects who could not leave the base; it wasn’t the same for me. My original thought was to use the limitation that "reboot phenomena 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 me 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 times. The conditions for conquest were still insufficient.

It seemed Lu Chan had realized something, as a barely contained excitement flickered across her face, but she restrained it for the moment, focusing her attention on Changan. Watching her, I found myself pondering that question again.

Why wasn’t her memory erased by Dr. Silver Mask’s "reboot"?

I was exempt because there was a Divine Seal Fragment in my consciousness, but why was she?

"Zhuang Cheng, there seems to be something inscribed on the pedestal over there; can you see it clearly?" she asked.

At her words, I brought the Fireball closer to the metal pedestal and looked down. The pedestal seemed to be engraved with complex runes and patterns, possibly some 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 metal pedestal.

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