Chapter 139

Xu Ming certainly didn't think it was her bag's fault. She had used several strange stories to make this bag, and it would have become a spirit long ago, so why wait until now?

In comparison, this space itself was obviously a more suspicious object.

Looking around again, Xu Ming pursed his lips and quickly made up his mind. He tore off another piece of paper from the notebook and copied the nursery rhyme he had dictated before, marking a number on the corner of the paper to distinguish them. Then he put both pieces of paper in a conspicuous place and walked quickly to the door.

"?" Lu Yueling was puzzled, "What are you doing?"

"Testing." Xu Ming said briefly, her hand already on the door handle - this time, she deliberately chose the opposite exit from before.

In a blink of an eye, the person walked out from the right door when he came in.

The door was closed gently, and the room fell into silence again. There was no one, and there was no movement.

After a while, accompanied by the sound of approaching footsteps, the blue door on the left slowly opened, and Xu Ming walked in from outside.

Sure enough, no matter what, it will come back - Xu Ming confirmed this fact again in his heart, and quickly checked the clock on the shelf again.

The time jumped another hour, and now the pointer pointed to eleven o'clock.

Looking at the two notes he left behind, there was only one left - there was a number specially marked by Xu Ming on the corner of the paper, which was the newer of the two.

The old one was missing again. The dolls used to weigh down the paper were clearly still placed on the cabinet, but that piece of paper, it was just that, it couldn't be found.

...So, it's not the problem with her bag.

Xu Ming held the only remaining piece of paper and came to a conclusion in his heart.

The problem lies in this space.

It's an infinite loop, connected from beginning to end. No matter which door you go out, you will go through the corridor and come in from another door; and every time you enter, the time on the clock will fast forward one hour, and when it fast forwards to a certain time, a shrill nursery rhyme will start playing. This is the conclusion Xu Ming has drawn from his observations now. There

is also the problem of the note...

At the same time, or in other words, every time she re-enters the room, the "old text records" in the room will be cleared, leaving only the latest one.

Of course, this is just a guess, and the specifics need further confirmation. But no matter what, it is an obvious fact that they cannot leave here for the time being.

And there is the abnormality of Lu Yue's spiritual root, which is hard to ignore... Fortunately, the rule book seems to be normal at present.

Thinking of this, Xu Ming thought about it and took out the rule book to confirm it again. By the way, he turned to Guo Shuyi's work card record, thought for a while, and took out a pen.

The impact of the previous wrestling was still there. In order to save energy, Xu Ming did not plan to communicate directly with Guo Shuyi for the time being, but chose the more conservative Industry and Information Technology contact.

After waiting for a while, there was no reply from Guo Shuyi, Xu Ming was not in a hurry. He closed his eyes and sorted out his mood. He took out several draft papers from his bag and arranged another experiment again.

And with the opening and closing of the door of the room again and again, and the replacement of the notes left again and again, the ghost mechanism of this haunted place finally became clear.

——First of all, it was just as she guessed. Each time you enter or leave the door, it is equivalent to a "refresh". After the refresh, only the latest copy of the text records in the room will be left, and all the rest will be "swipe" away. If you do not leave a new note, the old one will continue to exist until a new text record appears and "replaces" it.

Secondly, the refreshed space is not limited to the current room, but also includes the corridor outside. In other words, even the records left in the corridor will be replaced after the new text record appears. The text records held before entering the space are not affected.

Third, it is not just the records written on paper that will be refreshed. Even the calligraphy and paintings written on the wall and the ground, or even the marks made of doll clothes, will disappear with the refresh of the room. But meaningless changes will always remain. In other words, what is swiped away is actually "information" in essence.

Even if you modify or add to the old information directly, it will still be regarded as leaving "new information" and will still trigger the room's refresh mechanism...

"Wait, wait, wait, I don't understand this sentence."

Lu Yueling, who was conscientiously acting as Xu Ming's fully automatic thought sorting machine in the rule book, spoke at the right time:

"Does it mean that after the modification, the original content will still be deleted?"

"Yes." Xu Ming looked at the note marked with "9" in his hand and nodded thoughtfully, "For example, if you first write a sentence, saying 'Mystery Man Get Out of Strange Stories'. After entering the door for the second time, add an exclamation mark after this sentence..."

Then when you enter the door for the third time, you will receive a piece of paper with only an exclamation mark. As for the previous text, sorry, it was all deleted.

"Well..." Lu Yueling tried hard to understand everything.

Because she couldn't experience it herself, she had to rely on Xu Ming to retell her everything, which resulted in her still being confused about many concepts: "What if, after I finish writing this sentence, I just add an exclamation mark to it..."

"Then they are one." Xu Ming said immediately, "Unless you went out once in the middle."

"Oh." Lu Yueling roughly understood, "So, um, it's like the door is a timestamp. Every time you go in and out, it will cause changes..."

"Strictly speaking, it's 'entering the door' that will cause changes." Xu Ming corrected it strictly. This was the conclusion she came to during the eighth experiment.

"I think the strangest thing is that you can actually see these changes." Lu Yueling couldn't help but say, "Aren't you an idiot?"

Xu Ming: "..."

To be honest, the name of this distortion characteristic is sometimes really infuriating.

"Two possibilities." Exhaling lightly, Xu Ming found a place to sit down and rubbed his pale face. "Either, just like on the 26th floor, my idiotic characteristics are ineffective here again. Or, this place has a unique judgment mechanism, and every time I enter this room, it is regarded as my first time here..." The characteristics

of idiots, to put it bluntly, are "whatever this place looked like when I first saw it, it will always be the same", automatically ignoring all subsequent changes.

Assuming that her idiotic characteristics are always online, then the only possibility that may have led to the current situation seems to be the "special mechanism".

But it's hard to say, after all, this is a place where even the roots can turn against each other and go crazy, who knows how many weird things it hides.

"...Ah, I don't understand again." Lu Yueling sighed in despair in Xu Ming's mind, "Sometimes it's the old room and sometimes the new room, I care more about how to leave this room...By the way, hasn't your rule book been upgraded? Can't you just open a door and leave?"

And they came here to look for someone...but now, they haven't seen a single mutant root, and they are trapped in a room and can't get out. What a situation.

"I've tried it, but it didn't work." Compared to Lu Yueling, Xu Ming was calmer. He looked at the paper in his hand again and said, "If I could just pinch the door, would I have spent so much time here studying?"

Although it had only been a short time since she upgraded to the first-level rule basis, she had already put it into practice, and Xu Ming had a rough idea of ​​the scope of what she could modify - at least for now, she still couldn't create rules out of thin air.

The biggest advantage of upgrading to the first-level rule basis is that you can modify, add or subtract existing core rules, and rarely encounter the situation of "unable to change"; you can also interfere with marginal rules more freely. But it is still unrealistic to want to build a tall building on flat ground without any basis.

Even if it could be realized, as the creator of the rules, she would have to bear more responsibilities.

... Putting herself in other people's shoes, she finally understood why Fang Xueqing was so nervous every time she used her own rule book that she felt like she was going to break her wrist. The price of this ability to truly break the door with bare hands would not be cheap no matter how you think about it.

"Okay." On the other end, Lu Yueling didn't know if she understood or not. She just sighed again, paused for a while, and said, "Then let Xiao Xiao Guo and the others help you change it? Isn't there a miracle door in the elevator? Why don't you ask them to add something that can help you?"

"Unfortunately, this road doesn't seem to work." Xu Ming took out the rule book and flipped through it, then put it back calmly, "Guo Shuyi hasn't replied to my work letter yet, and I can't seem to contact her directly."

Even if you try to spy on the other party directly through the work card record, you can only see darkness. It seems that something is blocking them.

"..." Lu Yueling was quiet again.

After a long time, he suddenly said, "So, what you mean is..."

"We lost contact." Xu Ming hesitated for a moment, but still told the truth, "We can't ask for help from the outside world, and we can't leave this room."

We can't find other people either.

To put it simply, we are completely trapped.

"...Oh my god." After a few seconds of silence, Lu Yueling couldn't help but curse again.

Xu Ming pursed his lips and touched the cover of the rule book soothingly. He opened his mouth to say something when he heard Lu Yueling say dejectedly, "Well, I'm sorry."

"......?" Xu Ming paused, "What?"

"I said, I'm sorry." Lu Yueling lowered her voice and had difficulty enunciating the words, "I thought I could help, but in the end I couldn't do anything, and I even made you fall."

She was very sure that Xu Ming must have fallen on his head at that time - otherwise, according to normal procedures, they might have been out by now.

"I'm just hurt, not stupid, thank you." Xu Ming's expression became subtle, "And to be honest... I thought you would regret coming with me."

"Well, I do regret it." Lu Yueling said immediately, "The main reason is that I didn't expect it to be like this... Hey, if you could make a time machine now, that would be great."

Xu Ming: "?"

"Back to when you were still in the elevator, I held your hand and asked you to change the settings." Lu Yueling said, and she said "hmm" in self-affirmation.

She remembered very clearly that Xu Ming had said at the time that for safety reasons, she added a safe zone to the 100th floor... The problem is that this thing is completely useless.

If she could do it again, she would definitely ask Xu Ming to give her a □□ - the kind that can directly open a new room.

Xu Ming: "..."

So, if I have the ability to make a time machine, why don't I just make one?

She rubbed her forehead with a complicated expression. She opened her mouth to speak, but her expression suddenly froze.

Then, she changed the subject and asked Lu Yueling: "What did you say just now?"

Lu Yueling: "...Open a new room?"

Xu Ming: "No, count the previous one."

Lu Yueling was still at a loss, Xu Ming had already spoken to himself: "Time point, you said - go back to the previous time point..."

Lu Yueling: ... No, I didn't say that, really.

Xu Ming seemed to understand something, and stood up suddenly. Because of the violent movement, her body swayed. Regardless of the brief blackness in front of her eyes, she quickly walked to the shelf, picked up the clock on it, and fiddled with it seriously.

——Because of Xu Ming's repeated attempts before, the hour hand of the clock has almost turned one circle and is now pointing to seven o'clock.

Thanks to this thing, Xu Ming has almost figured out the sound pattern of the newspaper barrel: three, six, nine, twelve. When the hour hand points to these numbers, the newspaper barrel will start playing that annoying nursery rhyme three times in a row.

After figuring this out, Xu Ming has never looked at this clock carefully again until now.

After successfully prying open the glass cover on the surface of the clock, Xu Ming had to admit a terrible fact-

maybe just like Lu Yueling said, she might really be stupid after falling.

Time! Room! Change! Such an obvious connection, she had never thought of it!

"No, no, what's wrong?" As if she had sensed Xu Ming's inner roar, Lu Yueling spoke with some hesitation, "Have you discovered something again...?"

"Not yet." Xu Ming answered straightforwardly, while trying to move the hands on the dial, "It's just that I suddenly had an idea... I want to try in another direction."

While speaking, the hands had been adjusted. Xu Ming adjusted them back to the position of 8:10, carefully put the removed glass cover back, and hurriedly left the room. After

a while, the door opened.

Xu Ming entered the room again. The clock jumped directly to nine o'clock. The newspaper bin started to recite the noisy nursery rhyme again. But Xu Ming didn't care about these -

what she cared about was that the marked note she had left in the room was missing.

Instead, there was a crumpled piece of paper. When I picked it up, I saw that it was the observation record left by Lu Yueling.

"..." Without a second's hesitation, Xu Ming turned around again and turned the clock back to seven o'clock in the same way. She entered again, and this time Lu Yueling's observation record was missing again - but in the body of another doll, she found a note with italic words.

It was the note they found at the beginning.

The inner guess was confirmed again, and Xu Ming didn't know what expression to put on for a moment.

Lu Yueling's confused voice rang in his mind again, but Xu Ming didn't bother to explain, and just hurriedly said "wait and talk about it", and picked up the clock again. This time she turned it back another hour, and it was more difficult for the pointer to move. Xu Ming was a little weak to begin with, and this time he had to use both hands to move the pointer over.

The pointer was turned to six o'clock, and the newspaper barrel immediately started to sing a weird nursery rhyme. Xu Ming ignored it and walked to the door, going out and coming in in one go. The moment he stepped into the room again, the newspaper barrel's chanting stopped abruptly, and the time on the clock jumped again, pointing steadily to seven o'clock.

That was one hour before they entered the room.

Xu Ming took a deep breath and looked towards the center of the room. Sure enough, the piece of paper with italic words had disappeared again. Instead,

there was another piece of paper, a complete "Strange Story Demolition and Relocation Office Employee Code of Conduct." It was pressed on the display cabinet with a doll, and you could see it when you entered the door.

Xu Ming approached carefully and picked up the paper. He saw a line of strange and hasty handwriting on the blank space of the rules:

[Don’t trust him]

“…”

Don’t trust whom?

Frowning in confusion, Xu Ming put the paper down and picked up the clock again. On the other side, Lu Yueling, who had heard her simple retelling of the situation, seemed to understand and made an unbelievable sound:

“Oh - time, room! So that’s what you mean! The clock is not only used to tell time... it’s also a locator!”

“That’s about it.” Xu Ming responded, sat down where he was, holding the clock and fiddling with it, “Or you can understand it from another angle - it’s not that the room we are in is changing with time, but that we use time as the landing point and keep entering new rooms.”

This can also explain why the clock will fast forward one hour every time you enter a room. What jumped was not the time, but their position. This is why she could see the changes even though she was an idiot - because every time she opened the door, it was a new beginning for her.

But she was not wrong about one thing: at the same point in time, there can only be one piece of information in the room. When new information appears, the old one will be "refreshed".

When they first entered the room, the corresponding time was a little after eight o'clock, and what they found was the note with italic words. In other words, there was probably another piece of information in the room before it, so Xu Ming tried to turn the time back a little, and sure enough, he found another message.

...Although this message is even more confusing. It has no beginning or end, and I have no idea how to interpret it.

Xu Ming let out a breath and moved the hands of the clock more vigorously. He quickly turned the clock back one more time and hurried out again.

When he came back, the note hadn't changed. Xu Ming didn't give up and tried twice more. When he tried the third time, he finally found a new message - he

still used the "Strange Tales Demolition and Relocation Office Employee Code", but the blank space read:

[I'm fine, I'm fine. Please tell me how to leave if you know.]

Xu Ming recognized it at a glance. It was Landor's handwriting. It was followed by the signature again: [Strange Tales Demolition and Relocation Office].

...Another message without a beginning or an end, but it looked like a response to something.

Who was he talking to? Why did he have to communicate through this piece of paper?

More questions came to his mind. Xu Ming's lips moved slightly, and without saying a word, he turned the clock back again.

This time when he entered the room, the message on the paper turned into that familiar italic font:

[I seem to have found a way to leave. But I'm in a very confused state now and can't try.

[Any of you willing to give it a try?

[Also, how is the dog now? Your words make me worried. ]

"..."

The hand holding the paper tightened involuntarily. Xu Ming adjusted his breathing, turned back the clock again, and walked out of the room. When he

came back again, the message on the paper was covered by the previous unfamiliar handwriting:

[Be careful of the dog!

[He lit up [crossed out] He's crazy!

[Don't pay attention to anything he says, don't see him!

[Don't let him know the time you are in, he will take the light over! ]