Chapter 153 Memories

Knowing that the female supporting character was targeting him, Luo Huayi was extremely cautious about every step he took.

He had planned everything, but he hadn't anticipated that the other party would kidnap his special assistant.

Luo Huayi was devastated when he received a phone call from Xin Xin forcing him to go to the abandoned factory alone.

"Get here within an hour," Xin Xin's voice was a mask of ruthlessness, "or I'll kill Cheng Zheng right now!"

Luo Huayi “…”

"Are you sure the male lead will obey and come over right away?" The burly man glanced at Cheng Zheng, who was tied up like a dumpling in the corner, then turned to ask Xin Xin, "Won't he get suspicious?"

Xin Xin's appearance was blurred into something else. If Cheng Zheng hadn't been able to identify her through the code, he would have mistaken her for an accomplice of the kidnappers based solely on her appearance.

“If all else fails, we’ll apply to reset his memory,” Xin Xin said anxiously, thinking about the prison’s urging. “There’s no time left. If we can’t find any useful clues to prove our worth before the prison guards personally intervene, we’ll all be sent back to the Upper City Prison.”

The burly man fell silent.

Perhaps because they recalled their experiences in a real-world prison, the men's expressions turned grim.

"Xin Que..." Xin Xin scratched her palms, trying to calm herself down.

Did this madman really die at the hands of the out-of-control AI, or is he hiding in some corner they haven't discovered?

The missing convict and the virus hidden in the prison reignited a sense of fear in Xin Xin's heart.

The atmosphere was terribly gloomy.

Luo Huayi looked at her phone signal being blocked again, her expression grave.

All avenues for seeking help were blocked, leaving Luo Huayi to drive alone on the only passable street to the abandoned factory.

This situation is somewhat similar to the story space where he and Xin Que were imprisoned before.

However, the difference is that now Luo Huayi is all alone.

Perhaps because in the story's view, Xin Que is already dead, she wasn't involved.

After parking the car in the desolate open space of the factory yard, Luo Huayi glanced at the oppressive and rigid hypocritical sky above her head, and finally stepped into the factory.

After Xin Que broke free from the control and monitoring of the plot, she experienced for the first time what it was like for the plot space to descend.

Just as she was about to drive onto the elevated road to the Zhou family's house, she saw that the sky over the distant suburbs was suddenly filled with garbled characters, as if cut from paper, and directly separated from the complete and harmonious scenery.

Xin Que immediately turned on her hazard lights and pulled the car over to the side of the road.

The other NPCs couldn't see the anomaly in the sky at all. People came and went in front of the shops, and the streets were bustling with traffic. Everyone was moving around and chatting according to their pre-defined routines, but no one paid any attention to that strange sky.

“The method of spatial interference is different from what we expected,” Xin Que muttered to himself, staring at the sky that was being rapidly decomposed and pieced back together from the scrambled code. “It’s actually dismantling and reassembling…”

In her past experiences of being thrown into the story space by the prison multiple times, Xin Que always thought that they used a set of replicated independent spaces or parallel small worlds, like casually moving a chess piece to another chessboard, transferring her and the characters between two spaces.

But the scene Xin Que witnessed with her own eyes, combined with the abandoned factory that Cheng Zheng had secretly sent her, directly refuted her previous speculations.

The woman's phone vibrated in her pocket, then the screen lit up, displaying a private message notification.

[The other party are all from the prison; their goal is clearly to find your whereabouts from Luo Huayi. Do not come over!!!]

...

Cheng Zheng passed on the final warning message to Xin Que and continued to pretend to be his hostage.

These characters are all based on real people; they're either prison guards or prisoners like Xin Que. He couldn't possibly reveal his extraordinary physical abilities to them, so he had to play dumb and wait for them to leave.

When Luo Huayi went up to the third floor as the kidnappers demanded, her pupils suddenly contracted.

Cheng Zheng was tied up tightly and left in a corner, his fate unknown.

Hearing the commotion at the stairwell, the kidnappers all turned their attention to him.

“I’ve come as you requested,” Luo Huayi raised her hands to indicate that she posed no threat. “What exactly do you want?”

"Money or..."

He slowly walked towards the kidnappers, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cheng Zheng mouthing something to him, then immediately looked away.

Were they after Xin Que?

Are these the people who are chasing her?

Before Luo Huayi could finish speaking, the leader of the kidnappers suddenly attacked and charged at him.

After a dizzying spin, Luo Huayi was roughly slammed onto the dusty cement floor by a hand that appeared out of nowhere behind her.

“No time to waste words with him,” a sinister voice rang out from above him. “Just request a thorough investigation of all his memories.”

Cheng Zheng suddenly raised his eyes.

Such direct methods?!

Luo Huayi was pinned to the ground. He tried to break free and cursed, "What do you mean by thoroughly investigating memories... Who are you?! Are you lunatics who escaped from a mental hospital?!"

But the kidnappers completely ignored his words.

“The character’s resistance is too strong. I request that his mental connection be severed immediately.” Xin Xin glanced at the disheveled male protagonist on the ground.

As soon as she finished speaking, Luo Huayi felt a sharp pain in her brain.

Then, everything went black for the man, and he completely lost consciousness.

Cheng Zheng was about to struggle when he heard a familiar mechanical voice near Xin Xin and immediately stopped.

The management system has intervened.

[Application approved.]

[Extracting the execution record of Humanoid Restraint Program 01.]

【Scope: All selected.】

Cheng Zheng could only watch helplessly as these people and Luo Huayi, who had fainted on the ground, were swallowed by shadows and taken to an unknown place.

His gaze, which was peering at these people, was invisibly blocked.

Afterwards, Cheng Zheng was sent back to the residential area where he lived under his new identity, and the time was reset to the time when he got home from get off work, as if nothing had just happened.

Once he was certain that he was no longer under their surveillance, Cheng Zheng immediately informed Xin Que.

Luo Huayi has been forcibly taken away by prison guards to extract her memories. Get away from here immediately!

Xin Que did not reply for a long time.

Cheng Zheng felt inexplicably uneasy.

The entire map was designed by the prison. Even if Xin Que knew she had to run, where could she run to?

His temples were throbbing wildly, and he couldn't calm down.

What if the people in the prison find some clues in Luo Huayi's memory about the two of them colluding to deceive the prison...

All previous efforts were in vain.

Cheng Zhengteng suddenly stood up from the sofa, then slowly sat back down.

The more pressing the situation, the less he could expose himself.