1TWITF[C Chapter 158

Chapter 158

Lu Yanli’s brain only relaxed after he successfully entered the next level. He asked, “Are you sure you didn’t get anything on you?”

“No.” Lu Yanli shook his head.

The sound of seawater rushing above them grew louder. The soundproofing seemed to have failed, and they could hear the thumping getting closer and closer. The doors of the rooms on this level were faintly shaking. The staff members who had mutated into monsters were locked inside, but the defense system had completely failed. Relying solely on the doors was not enough.

*Why didn’t they just let me go straight to the bottom floor from the beginning? Didn’t the institute have elevators?*

Lu Yanli didn’t ask the question aloud. He wanted to know what the Brain was planning. So far, it hadn’t shown enough malice to make him truly wary, but he found it hard not to be suspicious.

It wasn’t until Lu Yanli’s physical strength was almost completely exhausted that he finally reached the last level.

The Brain was right. The future him was indeed waiting on the last level. He had been waiting for a full three hours.

During those three hours, one of them had been constantly expending energy, while the other had been resting quietly. So, when they met and fought, the outcome was beyond doubt.

Lu Yanli from the future, the one with the scar on his face, pulled out a dagger, casually wiped it on his sleeve, and put it back.

The Brain didn’t speak. Lu Yanli opened the door and walked inside. On the ground, a man who looked exactly like him lay dying, blood blooming around the area of his heart, his chest no longer rising and falling.

The only remaining staff members of the institute were all on the last level. Through the one-way glass, Lu Yanli saw them constantly adjusting a strange machine. One end of the machine was connected to the outside wall, and the other end was connected to an unknown, twisting black mist.

“It can travel through space?” He couldn’t help but move closer, his breathing becoming lighter, as if afraid of disturbing those people.

“Yes, this is the only machine we have developed that can perform spatial jumps without relying on unnatural forces.” The Brain was very proud. “In order to obtain the corresponding data, we have been sending investigators through the use of collectibles for space-time travel for the past few years.”

“Why don’t you let those staff members take you?”

“Wait a little longer, wait a little longer…”

The surveillance monitors inside the institute went black one by one. The few screens that were still lit clearly showed all kinds of strange creatures in the ocean. Some still looked vaguely human, while others had long since deviated from the category of creatures that humans could understand.

Lu Yanli muttered, “Where did these deformed things come from…”

Perhaps because he was about to leave, the Brain said, “Mutation.”

The consequences of these accumulated mistakes were a completely collapsed world. No one wanted to save it. It was riddled with holes and would soon perish.

There was only one hour left until the end of the 24 hours.

“Space coordinates have been determined.”

“Energy is ready…”

“Conduct the first experiment…”

They prepared a carefully cultivated white mouse that had no mutations. The cage was placed in the middle space of the machine, looking somewhat empty.

“Three.”

“Two.”

“One!”

They were disappointed.

The cage had disappeared. In the center of the field, which was large enough for seven or eight people to stand, there was only a small pile of bloody, blurry mouse corpses covered in white fur.

“Impossible, something must have gone wrong.”

“We can’t fail. We’ve been doing experiments for so long, how could we fail?”

No one could tolerate such a gap, especially now that strange objects had invaded the institute. They didn’t have time to endure another decade.

“Could it be that the energy required to travel through space is too great, and the white mouse couldn’t withstand it?”

Indeed, when humans walk in outer space, they also need spacesuits to balance the pressure. Perhaps there was pressure between spaces that the white mouse couldn’t withstand?

“Now, who is willing to try?” A researcher asked everyone.

Lu Yanli quietly asked the Brain, “Are you sure it’s successful?”

The Brain quickly scanned once. “The success rate is very high.” As soon as it finished speaking, its speed suddenly increased. “Damn, they’ve already reached the second to last floor!”

This sentence wasn’t said quietly to Lu Yanli, but to all the staff members.

On the surveillance monitor, Lu Yanli’s figure was erased. They didn’t know that a “non-human” from another world had mixed into the crowd.

“Never mind, everyone put on pressure suits, let’s start now!” The person who asked the question said hurriedly.

Of course, they had pressure suits, more than one set per person, but the pressure suits were difficult to put on. Lu Yanli also received a set. Holding it, he quietly walked out while everyone wasn’t paying attention.

He needed to keep his promise and take the Brain out.

“Take it off directly?” Lu Yanli put down the pressure suit, his hand surrounding the Brain, seeming a little hesitant, not knowing how to start.

“Crap…” This was Lu Yanli’s last thought.

He couldn’t move at all. He could only watch as thin, soft, red tendrils stretched out from under the brain, like a newborn octopus, climbing on the surface of his skin. Soon, they reached the position of his head.

He shouldn’t have trusted himself.

Lu Yanli struggled to mobilize the strength of his limbs. He couldn’t see anything. The soft, cold touch of the Brain pressed against his face, leaving only a little bit of space for his nose to breathe. He could feel that the Brain was trying to drill into him from the position of his eye sockets.

An eyeball was completely dug out, and the skull in the area of the eye socket sent out a sharp pain.

It was said that after the eyeball was dug out, if it wasn’t damaged, putting it back in a short time wouldn’t affect it.

“Click.”

Half of the mechanical brain landed on the ground. Only half of the human brain was still drilling in through the position of the eye socket. Compared to the hard mechanics, the soft human brain easily crawled in from the eye socket.

Lu Yanli heard the voice that sounded in his head. After removing the electronic sound component, the voice was exactly the same as his own.

“We’ve all been waiting for a long, long time.”

He couldn’t speak. Only his remaining brain was operating frantically, seeming to want to repel the other brain that was the same as him.

He remembered what the Brain said about “willingly being swallowed,” and remembered it saying “two absolutely identical things cannot exist in the same space-time.”

Why, why did he forget such a simple truth?

There was a sharp pain in his head, and familiar yet unfamiliar memories began to merge and devour each other.

He saw…

The scene of himself killing his past self for the first time.

At that time, his past self was willing to die in his hands. He originally thought that his past self was for the so-called balance, in order to allow this space-time loop to continue, but he didn’t expect that he was wrong from the very beginning. His past self, before dying, gave him a psychological hint –

He was indeed willing to be swallowed, but he was only swallowed halfway. The other half of the brain obtained a human body through equivalent exchange. Then, the half of the brain that obtained the human body went to the inner world, building an ordinary human life for himself. The other half stayed in the institute, carrying out manipulations.

Lu Yanli, who initially obtained a body and lost his memory, wanted to break the time loop, but he couldn’t break it at the beginning, otherwise it would cause a series of dangerous consequences that even he couldn’t be sure of. He knew himself best and knew what he would do, so he gave his past self an implication before “dying.”

In the first few times, this past self also caused those people to commit suicide, but because the time was too short, it didn’t cause too much change.

And after several cycles, this time, Lin Chu’s death time was extended by five seconds.

Therefore, she was able to say her last words, causing Chu Xian to be suspicious, thus triggering a series of consequences.

Now, it was about to succeed.

It sensed danger, but it couldn’t avoid it.

“Bang!”

A slight gunshot rang out, and the bullet accurately hit half of the brain.

Outside the door, Lu Yanli, who should have been killed, slowly walked in, pulled back the safety on the pistol, and aimed it at his past self’s eye socket. With a “bang,” there was another shot.

He wasn’t dead.

Even if he didn’t integrate the memory of the Brain, seeing this scene, plus the speculation, what else didn’t he know?

Now, those things… have already broken in.

Lu Yanli lowered his head and glanced, randomly tore off a piece of cloth, dragged the brain out of the eye socket, and then filled the eyeball back in.

The future him was completely dead. His carotid artery no longer pulsed. Beside him was half of a metal brain and a huge pressure suit.

He quickly put on that pressure suit for his future self, stuffed the dead brain in randomly, and dragged him out, back to the laboratory.

The machine was running, the white light looming. The other researchers were all frantically putting on pressure suits. He also took a set, and while he wasn’t paying attention, he quietly walked out.

But he was happy in his heart.

On the long, painful, and lonely road of time and space, the man in the pressure suit showed his first truly relaxed smile.

Whether he succeeded or failed, he had done his best.

He didn’t know how long it had been, but Lu Yanli barely regained a little consciousness. He heard the gentle sound of the sea washing against the coast, and felt the lightness of his body being lifted up by the waves.

He slowly opened his eyes, and sunlight penetrated the cracked helmet mask, eagerly drilling into his eyes.

It was a normal sun.

He reached out and took off his mask, wanting to smile. He curved the corners of his lips, but the arc was immediately flattened. After sitting for a while, he reached out again and took off the mask of the person next to him.

A face that looked exactly like him, but was already pale, was revealed. His eyes were slightly open, his expression calm.

Half of a human brain also slipped out, floating in the seawater, and he picked it up.

“I’m free.”

He threw the mask into the sea, reached out and closed the corpse’s eyes, and said to himself in a low voice, “We are free.”

[End of main text]