Rebirth
"Peng Yue blames you!" Zheng Tong was panicking. Who could tell her why her boyfriend was so naughty?
Time goes back ten minutes.
Zheng Tong looked down at the specimens when she suddenly heard a beep. She looked closely and saw that Peng Yue had pressed a green button.
Their eyes met, and she put her hands on her hips and asked fiercely, "What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything, just... there's a button here." Peng Yue pressed it accidentally because of his quick hands. Besides, this green sign really looked like an escape route.
Zheng Tong walked over and asked him, "Did you press the button?"
"I..." Peng Yue lowered his head guiltily, glancing at the pattern on the wall that was actually ajar. He could tell there was a door there. He felt this must be the exit, and shouted, "Hey, I found the door!"
Peng Yue pushed the door open happily, and the next second, the NPC inside rushed out and everyone burst into screams.
“Ahhhhhh!!”
The lights went out and they panicked in the darkness, bumping into people after only a few steps.
Zheng Tong reached out and touched the person who bumped into her, her voice trembling as she asked, "Peng Yue, is that you?"
The NPC's face changed, they put on masks, and when Zheng Tong felt relieved, the light of the horror mask suddenly lit up, accompanied by a roar that hit her pupils. She was afraid of ghosts!
"Ahhh!" Zheng Tong was so frightened that his legs went limp. He fell to the ground and babbled nonsense, "Help! Don't scare me!"
Jiang Li was dodging the NPCs chasing him in the dark. He was wondering why these NPCs could always pinpoint his position. Later he realized they had infrared glasses. He broke free from the pursuit of three NPCs and saw something glowing in the dark.
He was also attracted by the green button.
The door where the NPC was released is now passable. "Here!"
Yu Xiaowei helped Zheng Tong up, and they crossed the passage one after another. Zheng Tong glanced back and said, "They are too dedicated! They are still chasing!"
The road was not long, and the exit was the basement. Jiang Li looked at the basement which was no different from before, and met Chen An's eyes with a puzzled look.
The NPC came after them, crossing the passage and rushing towards them, forcing the seven people to disperse.
Jiang Li looked for cover along the way, pushed open the rusty iron door, and carried a box on his back. When he saw an NPC approaching from the corner of his eye, he immediately covered himself and squatted, muttering to himself: I'm just a box.
The location he chose was not good, as it was in a hall where people were passing by frequently. The others should have been hiding, so the sounds of chasing were much quieter.
The same furnishings made him wonder if they were back in the basement again.
On the other side, Zheng Tong got a big shot. She followed Chen An all the way, and the two hid in the storage room. She only breathed a sigh of relief when the NPC outside went away.
"What do we do now? They won't keep chasing us, will they?"
Chen An said, "You stay here, I'll go out and find the door."
Zheng Tong, with the mentality of clinging to someone close to her, would never let him go. She grabbed Chen An's arm and said coquettishly, "No, don't leave me alone."
Chen An frowned slightly and broke free from the hand on his arm. "I'll come find you when I find a way out."
After saying that, he opened the door and went out without hesitation.
Jiang Li hid in the box, moving with difficulty. There were two small holes on the box, just enough for him to see what was happening outside. He dragged the box and raised his head. The cabinet next to him was labeled "filing cabinet", thinking there might be a clue. So when Chen An passed by here looking for someone, he saw a moving box.
The box first opened the cabinet below, took out the documents stealthily, closed the door and restored everything. The box was silent again, as if the documents had been eaten by the box.
A few minutes later, a muffled voice came from the box, "What's all this?"
Then the documents were spat out and lay innocently by the side, and the box began to move again.
Chen An, wanting to tease him, stepped closer. The person in the box heard the sound and immediately stopped moving. Chen An approached, tapped the box with his finger, and said with a subtle smile, "Hello, is anyone home?"
Jiang Li held up the box, revealing a pair of innocent and clear eyes, looking at him as innocently as a deer.
The second he saw the person clearly, he rolled his eyes at him and said strangely, "Is it fun?"
Unexpectedly, the man smiled even more, "It's quite fun."
Someone passed by the window, "Someone!" Jiang Li pulled him and they both hid in the box.
The box is not small, but it is still a bit difficult to accommodate two people.
"No! Don't catch me! I don't want to play anymore! I..."
Jiang Li saw Peng Yue through the small hole.
"Peng Yue has been arrested." Jiang Li's eyes were focused. "Tell me, if we were all arrested, would that mean there's a bug and the boss would let us out?"
"Not necessarily. What if there are more mysteries in the prison that we need to solve?"
"That's right." Jiang Li lowered his head and sighed, "Why haven't we left yet?" Then he sat down.
Chen An touched his head and said, "Don't worry. The more anxious you are, the harder it will be to get out."
"Hey, are you also this tired when you're investigating a case?"
Chen An smiled and said in a light tone, "Not really. Most of the time, there's no need for a chase."
Jiang Li also laughed. They had been chased three times in the past three hours, which was more exercise than he had gotten in a year at school.
There was also only one file in the cabinet above the filing cabinet. The two of them held the file in the box and looked at it. Jiang Li read the words on the newspaper to Xiao Kong.
"In 2075, the secrets behind the jump plan were exposed. The survivors' curse descended upon the human world, the zombie tide expanded to an unprecedented scale, and an unknown virus entered human society along with the experimental subjects. In just one week, nearly half of the Earth's population was infected and on the verge of death. The jump ship's test flight failed, and the jump plan was completely reduced to a fantasy."
"By 2080, the Earth's environment will have deteriorated further, and there will be fewer than 100 million people left alive."
These are all reports about human society. Among these limited texts, Jiang Li discovered an unusual report.
"According to astronomer Dr. P's research, the motion of galaxies in the universe changed unprecedentedly in 2076, with all planets moving in retrograde motion. The cause is still unclear. Furthermore, Dr. P suggested that humanity may have reached a point of collapse, leaving behind a puzzling statement: 'Humanity has always been watching humanity.'"
Jiang Li rubbed the newspaper and said, "It's not ink, it's just that I can't see clearly."
"Who of you can drive?"
Yu Xiaowei accidentally discovered that the car key could be used to start an abandoned van in the basement, and Chu Pingan finally took the key.
Jiang Li looked through the remaining newspapers, but found nothing special. He discussed with Chen An, "Do you think this is the basement from the beginning?"
Chen An thought about it carefully. Although the furnishings in the two places were the same, he didn't think it was the case.
"No, at least it's not that cold."
"So, what exactly do we need to do in this secret room?"
"Anyone else?"
"Jiang Li, where are you?"
Someone was calling them outside, and the sound of a car starting up and rolling over the concrete ground was mixed with the roar of the NPC.
As the saying goes, two legs can never outrun four wheels. Chu Ping'an and his team left the NPCs far behind.
Jiang Li and Chen An opened the paper box and got into the car when the time was right. Qiu Xiaojing said happily in the car, "Thank goodness Xiaowei found a car. Oh, and where's Zheng Tong?"
Chen An said, "She's in the storage room."
Chu Pingan killed the NPC on the left, turned sharply, and left the NPC far behind. Then he shouted towards the storage room: "Zheng Tong!"
Zheng Tong came out and saw the shabby van in front of him. "Get in! What are you standing there for?"
After she got on the bus, Qiu Xiaojing counted the number of people and said, "One is missing."
Jiang Li said: "Peng Yue was captured by the NPC."
Qiu Xiaojing hesitated, "Should we still look for him?"
Chen An said firmly, "Look for it." Then he quickly got out of the car and exchanged seats with Chu Ping'an. The car drove smoothly in the not-so-spacious basement.
The flying dust made the NPCs cough. They reported into the intercom, "Boss, use the props. We really can't catch them."
In an instant, a huge net caught the car, and the NPC dragged them into the small dark room.
It’s not actually accurate to call it a small dark room, because it’s not even dark inside, but a dark blue space with clocks of various sizes hanging on the walls.
Peng Yue had obviously been waiting for a long time, and he had also tortured the tablet on the wall for a long time. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw them, "You are finally here, come and see, I think this is the way out."
Everyone gathered together to look at the questions on the tablet.
"Players, please correctly infer the current year based on the story of the Eternal Night Star Research Institute."
Zheng Tong's physical and mental strength were exhausted. He slumped to the ground and said, "I'm so tired. Come on, everyone."
Qiu Xiaojing noticed that there were many clocks hanging in this room. She walked past them one by one. There were round clocks with twelve-hour time and twenty-four-hour time. They all counted according to the normal flow of time.
Jiang Li tried to find the special one among these clocks, but he looked left and right and couldn't find anything wrong with the clock and was confused for a moment.
Yu Xiaowei said, "It says based on the story, shouldn't we restore the story?"
She turned her attention to the only two people who knew the full story, and in the end it was Chen An who came out to retell it.
"In 2070, the Eternal Night Star Research Institute and the then-current government jointly launched a warp-jump program. Their external purpose was to select exceptional individuals to board spacecraft and leave Earth. Their internal purpose was to exploit those who failed the tests, using their flesh and blood to build the ladder for those who had already been designated."
"In April 2071, the corpses stored in the basement mutated, and a zombie tide descended. In 2075, the jump plan was exposed, the spacecraft test flight failed, and the virus ran rampant. In 2080, the environment deteriorated further, and humanity was on the verge of extinction."
Yu Xiaowei said, "So what time are we at now?"
Qiu Xiaojing thought for a moment and said, "Based on the time when the zombie tide broke out, it will definitely be after 2071."
The discussion over there was in full swing. Jiang Li was playing alone in the jungle. He stared at the clocks and tried to find clues from them.
Hard work pays off, he found that the largest clock automatically jumped back to three o'clock after nine o'clock.
He began to verify his idea. He found a 24-hour clock, and without exception, it would jump to the antipodal point when it was about to reach the next time period.
He told Chen An about this discovery, which reminded Chen An of a sentence in the newspaper, "Humanity has always been watching humanity."
The two looked at each other and stepped back synchronously. The clocks hanging randomly formed an infinite loop of shadows on the wall.
Jiang Li said: "The present is the future, and the future is the present."
Enter 2024, the door opens.
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