Chapter 140

"Um, Xu Ming? Ming, Teacher Mingming?"

After a while, as if realizing that Xu Ming was not in a good mood, Lu Yueling said hesitantly: "Are you okay? What did you see? Why didn't you speak for so long..."

"It's okay." Xu Ming responded quickly, and while speaking, he tried to move his eyes away from the paper in front of him, "It's just that Landor... his condition seems a little bad."

She gave Lu Yueling a brief description of what she saw, and Lu Yueling let out another low cry, and then was deeply confused.

"Who wrote this paper?" she asked curiously, "How did it know that something happened to the dog man...Landuo?"

"I don't know." Xu Ming adjusted his mood, supported by the rack and stood up, "From the current situation, there should be three people involved in this conversation."

One is the one who wrote in italics, and it is estimated that he is the consultant of Anxin Gardening; the other is Landuo. The remaining third person, the one who accused Landuo of being abnormal, cannot be identified for the time being. It can only be speculated that he is also one of the mutant roots trapped in this place, either "Cat" or "Happy".

These alien roots were probably once locked in this room like her, trapped in a cycle, separated by time, and could only communicate through notes...

But judging from the statement on the last note, they have a way to find each other. All they need to do is to know the "time" of the other party.

But how to do it specifically? What exactly is the "way to leave" that Anxin Gardening Consultant mentioned? Have they left? Or are they still trapped here like herself, but she can't see them?

... And what about Landor, what happened to him now?

Scanning the paper in his hand again, Xu Mingwei lowered his eyes.

She thought that with the information Anxin Gardening Consultant had given her before, she would be mentally prepared for any situation. But until she saw this clue, she realized that she

was mentally prepared, but not much.

At least for her now, it was a little inadequate.

The problem was that at this time, it was useless to be anxious. The only thing Xu Ming could do was to suppress the uneasiness in his heart, and then picked up the clock and turned the hands back several hours in one breath -

then entered the door once ,

entered again.

Turn again, enter again, turn again, enter again... In the end, his feet became numb when he went in and out of the door, and the force required to turn the clock hand gradually exceeded Xu Ming's ability. The last few times, she even had to take the risk of releasing Lu Yueling first, asking her to help turn the needle, and then quickly locking it back before her hair danced.

With each retracing, the intelligence obtained continued to increase. Because the information seen could not be saved separately, Xu Ming could only memorize it one by one. Some of the things that he didn't remember the first time had to be replayed again - and it was precisely because of these replays that Xu Ming discovered another very important fact in addition to accumulating intelligence.

First of all, as she guessed, it was indeed difficult for those mutant roots to see each other, so they could only communicate by leaving messages - but the strange thing was that sometimes even if they were in the same time period, they seemed unable to sense each other's existence.

As a result, at the same point in time, two or even several messages will appear. When she goes back, these messages will appear randomly in front of her; in other words, at the same point in time, she may see Landor's message when she goes back for the first time, but when she confirms it the second time, the information she sees has become someone else's.

This is not good news for Xu Ming, which means that she may have to go back three or even four times at each point in time to collect all the messages; even if she uses the rule book to modify the rules to cheat, she can only get a maximum of two messages at a time, and there is no guarantee that the messages will not be repeated...

This is too much trouble. And Xu Ming really doesn't have the energy and brainpower. So after a brief entanglement, she decided to give up and study the part she had collected first.

Xu Ming found a place to sit down in the room, and quickly took down and sorted out the collected contents with the help of her memory, her eyes gradually sank.

Because all the contents were memorized by rote, she couldn't copy and recite them completely, so she could only summarize and sort out all the messages in a format of introduction, development, transition and conclusion according to her own understanding -

first, the "beginning" part - that is, when the mutant roots were just tied into this place. No one knew where they were, and couldn't see each other, so they could only be nervous and panicked alone, until someone took the lead in trying to communicate using messages, and then everyone gradually understood the situation and all participated in this way of communication...

It is worth mentioning that the first person to use messages was Landor.

Obviously, he strictly followed the fine traditions of the Ghost Story Relocation Office, carrying a pen and a work badge with him, and after realizing that he was in a ghost story and couldn't leave, he immediately took out the only paper and pen he had and began to record everything he had experienced - and this message successfully passed through the time interval and was seen by other mutant roots who were also trapped, and they only then realized each other's existence.

This is why the subsequent messages were almost all written on this "Employee Code of Conduct". Xu Ming had reason to suspect that this was most likely the only piece of paper the four of them had.

Maybe the pen was also Landor's... because the color of the words was the same.

In addition to Landor, there were three other people who participated in the speech. Anxin Gardening's consultant, she used her voyeuristic ability to help find many patterns, such as the replacement rules of messages; the mutant root codenamed "Happy", she was the one who pointed out that there was something wrong with Landor, she was very keen to speak, would describe her experiences in detail, and even use emoticons and Internet terms to describe them... As

for the last one, it was also the one that Xu Ming cared about the most.

Its codename was "Cat", and Xu Ming was very suspicious that it was the one in the eye hospital, or at least it was related to there. It spoke the least, wrote the ugliest words, and each message was the simplest; but it seemed to know the most about the current situation.

For example, it was the first to connect their current situation with the "door", and it was also the first to suggest that they might be pulled to this place as an alternative key.

——Then, it is the second stage of "inheritance".

It is called "inheritance" because at this stage, basically all the alien roots have figured out the situation and started to think about a serious solution. For example, the consultant of Anxin Gardening suggested that everyone write down the exact time and speech number after each message they leave, so as to avoid confusion in the order when reading the message. If there is any missed information, the scope of the backtracking can be roughly locked.

...And it was at this stage that the weirdness of this place became more and more obvious.

Xu Ming was not sure whether it was because she was a human or because she was blessed by idiocy. So far, she had hardly encountered any crisis in this space, nor had she seen anything bad. The only time she was shocked was because of Lu Yueling. However, for those mutant roots, this place was obviously not so peaceful.

Hallucinations appeared from time to time, fatigue that could not be shaken off, and wounds that suddenly appeared on her body. Or like Lu Yueling, they will inexplicably see another self and fall into a state of self-mutilation; or as if being controlled by someone, they will suddenly recall some long-standing, bad memories, and sink into the mud with their emotions, unable to extricate themselves...

"Happy" would describe the scenes she saw and the attacks she encountered in detail at the beginning, but as time passed, the number of words in her messages gradually decreased, and the frequency of emoticons and Internet terms appeared less and less; as for "Cat", it is almost impossible to find its comments, and even if it does leave a message, it is concise.

Among all the alien roots, it is the one that least describes its own experience. Xu Ming tried to recall for a long time, searching his intestines and stomach, and it seemed that he could only remember three sentences in total.

The first sentence was, Oh my god.

The second sentence was, I hallucinated that I was losing hair.

The third sentence was, This weird story is so mean.

... and all the sentences were written with plain periods, which inexplicably revealed a certain calmness in the face of danger and indifference to insults.

As for Landor... he still carried forward the fine tradition of the Weird Story Demolition Office, trying to show a stable mood, describing his feelings in detail and trying to summarize them, while trying his best to comfort other mutant roots from a distance, trying his best to calm the scene, and even trying to liven up the atmosphere... although it was an ineffective operation that was visibly ineffective.

To be honest, just by looking at those messages, Xu Ming could imagine his difficult expression at the time. In a sense, Landor really tried his best.

But his real mood was obviously not as calm as he showed, which can be seen from his increasingly messy handwriting and frequent spelling errors.

Even so, he did not forget to add the signature of "Strange Talk Demolition Office" after each of his remarks... Xu Ming did not know whether to cover his face or be relieved.

And with the sentence "This strange talk is so mean" as the dividing line, the following content was all classified by Xu Ming into the "transition" stage of the introduction, development, turning point and conclusion.

——Because just one hour after "Cat" wrote this impressive sentence, the consultant of Anxin Gardening announced another crucial news.

She "spy" on the method of combining with others.

The method is not difficult, but it is more troublesome to operate. Simply put, one person needs to leave the exact time they are in, and the others need to take their own clocks, leave the current room, and adjust the time on the clock before pushing the door to enter the room again, making sure that the time on the dial is roughly the same as the time of the other person...

and then push the door again, and there is a chance to enter the room where the other person is. The smaller the error, the higher the probability of the two being consistent.

The reason why it is troublesome is that, on the one hand, it is still a bit of a gamble; on the other hand, when you can only communicate by leaving messages, not instant messaging, it is still a bit difficult to adjust both sides to the same time.

Fortunately, this matter is relatively easy to solve for abnormal existence. Judging from the subsequent messages, they have indeed successfully converged twice. However, after two mergers, they soon ended up running away in all directions.

The reason is very simple - because they soon discovered that the encounter between two mutant roots not only means the doubling of hallucinations and emotional influences, but also means that once they fall into a trance again, what they do is not just self-mutilation. Judging

from the message records, Consultant An and "Happy", "Cat" and "Dog", the two groups of people have merged once respectively. Consultant An and Happy almost fought, and in the end it was Consultant An who woke up first and quickly took the clock to another time; while the cat and dog group was relatively peaceful and did not make such a big fuss. At least not in Landor's opinion.

So in the subsequent messages, he still suggested to try to combine with others. In response, the reply of classmate Mao was still concise and to the point. If I remember correctly, there seemed to be only three sentences in total.

The first sentence was, get lost.

The second sentence was, I don’t want to see you hugging a strawberry bear and shouting "MM" and crying about committing suicide for love.

The third sentence was, M your head, unlucky.

...

How to say it.

Because some slightly subtle abbreviations were used in it, Xu Ming was not sure what scene it described, nor could she be sure what kind of hallucination Landor saw...

Anyway, she only knew one thing.

After the cat left this message, Landor never mentioned the reunion again, and even stopped talking for several rounds; "Happy" finally regained her happiness briefly, writing a row of hahahaha on the message paper, and also drew a hand-drawn emoticon of laughing out loud.

In a sense, she is also a talent.

It's a pity that this short-lived happiness did not last long.

Because not long after, consultant An sent another message.

Xu Ming remembered it very clearly. It was a question with many traces of corrections and pauses. Of course, what she cared about most was the content of the sentence itself.

——[Did you encounter anyone knocking on the door over there? ]

——[A very strange person kept knocking on the door and asked if you wanted to turn on the light. 】