novelhk Chapter 675: After the Dead End
Chapter 675: After the Dead End
‘...So there’s no need for a transplant at all. Something capable of collecting information is already on me.’Evans stared at the arm still twitching on the rebar. He had no idea what to do with this thing, but he couldn’t just leave it alone like this.
‘Hope it doesn’t regain consciousness...’
Evans struck his right elbow and wrist repeatedly until he shattered all the joints, then pulled out the rebar.
His right arm kept twitching, but it could no longer attack him.
‘Blood circulates through the body. By common logic, my other parts should also be able to collect information. But I don’t understand informationization, so it’s better to play it safe.’
Evans tucked the rebar under his armpit, then pressed his right forearm against the wall with his left hand. He moved along the wall in the darkness like this.
That way, he could not only use his left arm to contact the wall and collect information, but also leave marks on the wall with the rebar. The researcher might find him through those marks.
He didn’t know if this would lead him to the right path, but it was a method nonetheless.
He walked through the pitch-black corridor for a while. This time, he only encountered a few branching paths. He constructed a maze map in his mind. After several wrong turns, he found a corridor with no forks.
At the end of this corridor, he came across a metal door.
‘So I still have to find an access card?’
After failing to open the door with every method he tried, Evans slumped down beside it. He had already lost all sensation in the right half of his body; he’d been dragging that side along the whole time.
Now he no longer had the ability to search for an access card.
‘Hope that simulation attempt count wasn’t fake. Otherwise, I’m really screwed this time.’
Evans slowly regulated his breathing, organizing the various bits of information he’d gathered during this simulation. He tried to find a way to open the door. Even in this dire situation, he refused to give up struggling. Only death seemed capable of stopping him.
But no matter how hard he thought, he couldn’t find a way to open the door. What couldn’t be opened simply couldn’t be opened. No amount of thinking would change that.
Just then, the metal door behind him suddenly swung open. White light flooded the corridor, blinding him.
‘What’s going on?’
Evans quickly rolled inside the metal door, afraid that whatever had opened it might close it again.
But the metal door didn’t close. Behind it was another corridor, though this one was noticeably wider. Some strange decorations hung on the walls.
Then, a line of text appeared on the wall beside him.
“Evans, are you okay?”
“Did you open the metal door? How did you get the access card?”
Evans grabbed the rebar with his left hand and barely managed to carve a message into the wall.
“Not long after I entered the darkness, I kicked this access card. I suspect it belonged to one of those combat squad members. They were probably looking for a way to solve the problem too. I got lost in the darkness—the corridor was full of branching paths. Luckily, you left marks, or I never would have found this place.”
The researcher breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the message. She had been afraid Evans was already dead. If she and Evans had swapped places, she wouldn’t have lasted this long.
The scratches in the darkness had given her the courage to keep going. Otherwise, she might have just sat there in the dark, waiting to die.
“When you passed through the door, did you remember any new memories?”
Evans struggled to his feet. He had recalled some things from the past, too, but they didn’t seem like his own memories.
Or rather, they weren’t Evans’s memories.
“Yeah, I remembered something about a friend. Important memories, but not really relevant to this place.”
“Same here. Let’s keep going, then.”
“Alright.”
Evans dragged his body forward. Out of habit, he glanced at the marks on the wall—only to notice that the black line drawn with a permanent marker below had already pulled away from him by a noticeable distance, speeding off rapidly.
The researcher wouldn’t suddenly do something like that. That meant she was under some kind of threat and running for her life!
Evans’s pupils constricted. His eyes tracked the moving line as he assumed the stance for a heavy strike. He raised the rebar with his left hand, lifting it above his head.
“Die!”
Evans hurled the rebar with all his strength. The rebar was the monster’s weapon, and the monster’s blood had merged into his body. That was a form of information transmission, so the opponent might not be able to ignore his attack.
“Cough, cough...”
After throwing the rebar, Evans leaned against the wall, somewhat exhausted. A blurry figure was pierced through by the rebar. Before long, the figure vanished.
The rebar clattered to the ground with a crisp sound.
Something invisible dragged the rebar closer. The black thread also returned to Evans’s vicinity.
Evans took the rebar. Through it, the two of them made their first physical contact.
If that could even be considered within the realm of physics anymore.
“Thanks. I thought I was dead for sure this time.”
The researcher carved a message into the wall.
“No need to thank me. Can you touch the rebar?”
Evans felt this question was more important.
Evans grabbed the rebar with his left hand and barely managed to carve a message into the wall.
The researcher started pondering this as well.
“But you’ve already touched the rebar. You should have collected its information. Why can’t you see it?”
Perhaps due to the influence of some information pathogen, Evans felt his thinking had become much slower.
“That was just one instance of information contact. I might need multiple contacts to fully collect the rebar’s information.”
The researcher quickly thought of several possibilities.
“So you’re saying, if I come into contact with those monsters a few more times, I’ll be able to detect their positions?”
Evans stood up, leaning on the rebar.
“That’s possible.”
With so little data collected, the researcher couldn’t give a definitive answer.
“Then let’s keep going. My consciousness is already starting to fade. If we can’t leave the informationization area within half an hour, you’ll have to continue on your own.”
Evans’s nervous system was starting to malfunction. In his field of vision, the surrounding walls began to warp and tilt, and the floor turned into a slope.
“I’ll lead the way this time. You follow behind me. Hold on—we can definitely get out of here!”
The researcher moved ahead of Evans, quickening her pace while watching for changes in their surroundings.
Evans moved his body forward inch by inch, gradually adapting to the distorted vision. He began reconstructing the surrounding scene in his mind.
The two soon reached the end of the corridor. But what lay ahead was not the exit they had hoped for—it was the experimental center of this research facility.