This earth-shattering speculation was like a thunderclap, exploding silently in the silent room, causing Tang Yao and Ling An to look at each other in shock and realization.
After a moment of surprise, Ling An quickly caught up with Song Yecheng's train of thought and pondered, "So those files... might not be real. Maybe we didn't even participate in the first stage, and we didn't lose our memories at all?!"
Song Yecheng didn't rush to confirm, but asked rigorously: "How did you know that you had participated in this experiment before you came to the base?"
They had actually mentioned this issue at the dinner table last night, but no one was honest at the time because they wanted to keep it a secret. In the end, Dr. Jin gave an ambiguous explanation, saying, "Some of you use scheduled emails, some use calendar reminders, and some entrust relatives and friends to convey messages."
Hearing this question again, Ling An and Tang Yao no longer had any desire to hide it. Ling An immediately replied, "I did receive an email from myself. It said I participated in the first phase last year and will now participate in the second phase."
"Me too!" Tang Yao said in surprise immediately.
Song Yecheng understood. "So there's no other way. We all learned about this experiment via email. And if we didn't write that email ourselves, they probably used technical means to access our mailbox, wrote it in our name, and set it to be sent on a scheduled basis."
After he finished his speculation, he paused briefly and then asked, "By the way, do you have any evidence of your crime in your files?"
"have!"
Ling An, as if reminded, replied eagerly, "And when I saw the evidence, I had a vague feeling that something was amiss. Now that I think about it, the evidence is actually a bit far-fetched."
After that, he quickly repeated the contents of the file he had obtained:
His role is an agent. The file says that he once forced to death a female artist named Yu Tianxin, whom he brought into the circle, because he had the other party's negative information and used it to blackmail her, which eventually led to her committing suicide because she was desperate.
"There are several screenshots of chat logs in the file," Ling An said. "It was an anonymous chat app. Someone sent Yu Tianxin evidence that she was being kept before her debut, and threatened to expose the evidence if she didn't pay 10 million. Yu Tianxin couldn't come up with that much money, and the other party refused to give in. In the end, she was forced to commit suicide."
Song Yecheng thought for a moment and analyzed, "But that chat app is anonymous, so the chat records can't actually prove that the person is you, right?"
"That's right!" Ling An said, "From what I remember, I only know that she committed suicide, but I have no idea why she did it. I also don't remember using that anonymous app."
What he meant by "existing memory" was the role memory obtained after reading the archives and through the "role empathy" provided by the mirror text, just like when Song Yecheng learned in the dressing mirror that he had invited the parents of the deceased to his home for tea out of pity.
Song Yecheng nodded and turned to Tang Yao: "What about you?"
"My file says that before I was promoted to head nurse, I once killed a child," Tang Yao said. "Because I mixed up his skin test with another child's before the infusion, he died of a penicillin allergy."
"What is the evidence?" Song Yecheng asked.
"It's the remittance record of 100,000 yuan to the child's parents," Tang Yao said. "The file says that it was hush money I paid to the child's parents in order to avoid punishment."
Song Yecheng sorted out his logic and recalled it a little before continuing to ask: "Then in your existing memory, do you still remember this incident?"
He was actually not very sure about asking this question, because he was not sure whether Tang Yao had completed the role empathy and obtained that memory before he knocked on Tang Yao's door.
Fortunately, Tang Yao was not stumped by the question and nodded quickly: "I have an impression."
She recalled: "As far as I can remember, although the child received the IV drip at our hospital, I was not involved in the procedure, and I don't remember any 'skin test mix-up'. I only remember the cause of death given by the hospital at the time was that the child had a relatively rare delayed drug allergy [1], which is why there was no abnormality in the skin test, but an allergic reaction occurred after the IV drip."
She paused and continued, "And as far as I remember, the reason I transferred the money to that couple was because they didn't get compensation from the hospital. I learned privately that their family was in a particularly difficult situation, and that they had even lost their jobs because of coming to the hospital every day to demand an explanation. So, I didn't want them to continue wasting their energy on this matter, so I gave them some 'compensation' in my personal name."
The content of her file was obviously more complicated than Ling An's, so after she finished speaking, Song Yecheng and Ling An both took a little time to digest it.
After digesting it, Ling An turned to Song Yecheng: "What about yours? What's in your file?"
"Falling objects from a high altitude caused death," Song Yecheng said. "The file says that the vase that fell was mine. The evidence is a receipt for the vase and a taxi ticket for that day."
Ling An thought for a moment and asked, "Are there any signatures or card numbers on the receipt or ticket?"
"No," Song Yecheng said, "The receipt only has the product, amount and purchase time, not to mention the taxi ticket. No one would swipe a card and sign to pay for a taxi."
"Then there's no way to prove that you bought it?" Ling An said.
Song Yecheng nodded.
The contents of the files of the three of them were very different from their existing memories. He originally thought that this was the result of participating in the "memory burial" experiment and changing their memories, but now it seems that it is not that simple.
Seeing him looking thoughtful, Tang Yao couldn't help but ask, "What's wrong?"
Song Yecheng pondered and said, "I'm thinking of another thing."
Ling An asked curiously, "What?"
Song Yecheng turned to look at him and said, "Although these cases may not have been committed by us, they all really happened in our memories, so the cases themselves should not be fabricated. Then there are two possibilities."
"The first is that the case is real, but the evidence is fake—your chat history and my receipt are both forged—but this doesn't explain Tang Yao's evidence, because in her memory, she did transfer money to those parents. Whatever the reason, at least the transfer record is real."
"The second possibility is that the case is real, and the evidence is real. Does that mean that even if we didn't commit these crimes, there is indeed a real culprit? Then how did the base obtain the evidence, and why did they pin it on us?"
This is indeed the most core issue at the moment.
——The base’s motivation.
If they previously thought that the base was intended to punish crimes, and this could be seen as an act of justice by someone with a Zorro complex, then judging from the current clues, the entire experiment seems more like a conspiracy.
But what is the purpose of this conspiracy?
The three of them fell into silent thought for a moment.
After a while, perhaps because of his impression of Song Yecheng as a "gamer," Ling An turned his eyes to look at him, raised an eyebrow, and asked, "Do you have any ideas?"
Song Yecheng was silent for a moment.
He did have some ideas, more than one, but they were just divergent speculations or guesses based on the current clues. He had no concrete evidence to support them, so he didn't rush to put them forward. Instead, he said, "Let's look for more. The evidence we have now isn't enough to reveal the truth. I think there must be other clues we haven't found yet."
Ling An and Tang Yao agreed when they heard it, and immediately stopped hesitating. They nodded and continued to look through the filing cabinet.
Song Yecheng took the dormitory design album from Tang Yao and flipped a page. He thought he would see the next dormitory design, but he didn't expect that it was not the next one.
Hmm? No Duan Jingming?
Starting from that page, the following pages were all floor plans of each floor and area of the base's main building. Unlike the simple drawings they found in the dormitory last night, the floor plans here were much more detailed and looked as if they were the original design drawings of the building.
Song Yecheng read two or three pages carefully and did not find anything special, but when he saw the fourth page, his eyes suddenly paused.
This page has three plans: top, middle, and bottom.
At the top is the instructor's dormitory area on the left side of the second floor, in the middle is the volunteer dormitory area on the right side of the second floor, and at the bottom is the experimental area on the third floor where they are now.
What caught Song Yecheng's attention was that there were two dotted lines between the three pictures.
The first line connects from an instructor's dormitory in Figure 1 to a volunteer dormitory in Figure 2, and the second line connects from the volunteer dormitory in Figure 2 to a room in the experimental area in Figure 3.
Following the direction of the two dotted lines, Song Yecheng quickly constructed a three-dimensional picture in his mind, and then he was surprised to realize that the end point of the dotted line was...
The middle section of the corridor in Experimental Area B on the third floor.
Left side.
Song Yecheng stared at the intersection of the dotted line and the border representing the wall, the small red x indicating the intersection, took a few steps back, returned to the center of the room, and looked up at the filing cabinet in front of him in disbelief.
The next second, he said, "Stop for a moment."
Ling An and Tang Yao turned around in confusion.
Song Yecheng held the folder in one hand and pointed to the filing cabinet in the middle with the other: "We may have to move it."
"Huh?" Ling An was confused. "Why?"
Song Yecheng walked forward again, spread the folder on the table, pointed the dotted line on the diagram to the two of them, and then pointed to the intersection of Figure 3: "If my guess is correct, there may be a secret passage behind this."
Ling An and Tang Yao were not stupid. They glanced along the dotted line and thought about what Song Yecheng said. They reacted almost instantly.
"Oh my god!" Ling An said excitedly, "Is it so exciting?"
Tang Yao also seemed eager to try it out. After all, secret passages were not common in real life. Upon hearing this, she immediately put down the documents she was flipping through and turned around to push the filing cabinet.
"Wait a moment."
Song Yecheng walked forward, took down the two rows of documents from the top of the cabinet, and piled them on the desk to prevent them from shaking and falling. Then he called Ling An, "Come on."
The two of them climbed up the cabinet frame, one on each side. Tang Yao saw that there was no need for her to exert any effort, so she simply took two steps back to make some space for them.
After a series of clanging sounds, the filing cabinet was slowly moved perpendicular to the wall. As the wall behind the cabinet gradually revealed itself, the eyes of the three people all lit up.
There was indeed a metal vent on the wall that looked like a Venetian blind, about half a meter wide and one meter long, shaped like a low door. It was most likely the entrance to the so-called secret passage!
Ling An, who was closest to him, immediately came forward actively.
However, when he took a closer look, he found that the metal frame was actually fixed, with all four corners screwed to the wall. He was immediately speechless and said, "...How do I open it?"
Song Yecheng had not expected this to happen. He bent down and looked into the window frame through the gap, only to see that it was pitch black inside and he could not see anything at all.
But he didn't hesitate for too long. He immediately turned around, opened the doors under the three cabinets, and rummaged through them. After finding that they were full of paper materials, he turned around and opened the drawer of the desk.
"Yes," he said, "here are the tools."
There were several screwdrivers of different sizes scattered around in the drawer on the left side of the desk, and a flashlight in the drawer on the right side.
Song Yecheng turned his head to look at the type of screws fixing the window frame, picked up the cross screwdriver and went back, unscrewing the screws at the four corners in a few seconds. Then he held the frame with both hands and pulled it outwards, and with a "clang", he removed it and dropped it to the wall.
Ling An had already picked up the flashlight. As soon as the window frame was removed, he immediately shone it inside out of curiosity. Then he said excitedly, "Hey! There really is a secret passage!"
Song Yecheng and Tang Yao stretched their heads to take a look, and saw that there was indeed a passage hidden behind the wall, heading straight to the right, about two meters high, and just wide enough for one person to pass through.
"Are we going in?" Tang Yao turned around and asked.
Seeing her expression clearly showing that she couldn't wait any longer, Song Yecheng said with a smile, "How about this? Should I seal it back?"
Ling An followed with a smile, nudged Song Yecheng's elbow, and handed him the flashlight: "Will you lead the way?"
Song Yecheng had no objection. He took the flashlight and was about to step in when he suddenly remembered something. He returned to his desk and stuffed the remaining screwdrivers in the drawer into his pocket. Then he turned back to the cave entrance and greeted the two of them, "Let's go."
As he spoke, he bent down first and entered the secret passage full of unknowns.
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