booktalesy Chapter 152 Mission Reset Out of Control?
Chapter 152 Mission Reset Out of Control?
Chapter 152 Mission Reset Out of Control?
"I have a second uncle?" Li Jiuhe was completely dumbfounded.
In his memory, he grew up in an orphanage, and he even remembered the little things he did playing with his friends there.
As for his family, he had no recollection of them at all.
Xu Wei said, "My investigation revealed that you never went to an orphanage, but grew up in your second uncle's house. Your second uncle lived in a rural area of Wangchuan City. He was unmarried and had no children of his own. When he passed away from illness, you were just starting university. He sold his self-built house in advance to help you finish university."
"You just mentioned my file—"
Li Jiuhe's words were quickly interrupted by Xu Wei: "Yes, there's a problem with your file; it's been altered. I only found out after our newly appointed director of the Wangchuan City Investigation Bureau used his abilities to check it. All the documents in your file have been modified at the source level," altered at the paper level. This should also be a kind of sequence ability.
After a pause, Xu Wei added, "However, since you have been transferred, the paper files will soon be transferred to the General Administration. You can have a more capable investigator from the General Administration re-examine them to prove the results of our investigation."
Li Jiuhe's head was buzzing, and he didn't speak for a long time.
It seems that, just like what Luo Shuo and Ma Li told him before, he turned out to be the most suspicious one after all.
As things have progressed to this point, he is completely bewildered by the whole affair, unable to understand what has happened to him or his family.
Their daughter was replaced, their wife was killed in a car accident, and their own identity remains a mystery. It seems that none of the three members of this family have experienced anything normal!
So, was it because of my own differences that my wife and daughter had an accident?
It seems the whole matter needs to be investigated further, but not by Luo Shuo, because Luo Shuo's investigation ability has been stuck at the point three years ago when his wife was hit and killed by a car.
Further ahead, Luo Shuo's abilities are no longer sufficient to detect anything. The only option now is to find a Sequencer on the same Sequence Line as Luo Shuo, but one who is even more powerful than him.
If they still can't find the cause, Li Jiuhe has no better solution.
After talking with Xu Wei for a while, Xu Wei seemed to know that he was terribly confused at the moment, and told him to calm down and that they could continue to communicate later.
After hanging up the phone, Li Jiuhe sat in the car, reclined the seat back, and half-reclined like Ma Li, his mind constantly processing the information he had just received.
But the more I thought about it, the less clue I could find.
Because he hadn't slept all night, his eyelids quickly grew heavier and heavier, and he fell asleep without realizing it.
I slept without any dreams.
When I woke up, I found that it was already night outside the car, and various emergency lights illuminated the area around the haunted house as if it were daytime.
Investigators were seen rushing around nearby.
Looking towards the haunted house, you can see that the main door is fully open, and there are lights in the passageway, with people going in and out.
Seeing that Ma Li was still fast asleep, Li Jiuhe shook his head. This big worm was sleeping even more soundly than Luo Shuo.
After he opened the car door and got out, Song Zhixing quickly came over, and another investigator handed him a boxed lunch.
"Eat it while it's hot, you haven't eaten all day," Song Zhixing said.
Li Jiuhe took the lunchbox, opened it, and saw that it was a box of twice-cooked pork rice that was still steaming hot. The aroma was irresistible, and he immediately felt his mouth water.
Song Zhixing pointed to the door of the haunted house: "We have checked the inside and outside of the haunted house and found nothing unusual."
Li Jiuhe shoveled a mouthful of rice into her mouth, and upon hearing his words, she was slightly taken aback: "Inside and outside? You've already entered the haunted house?"
Song Zhixing nodded: "Yes, I went in and checked it myself. Now it's just like any other haunted house. All the anomalies from before have disappeared. I'm sure it's now an empty, ordinary haunted house. This sequence object doesn't seem to be able to move as we suspected."
Li Jiuhe asked, "What about the two investigators we saw missing at the beginning? What's their current situation?"
"They're fine for now, but there's still a strange noise coming from their earplugs. After they were removed, they fell into a coma. They've been taken to the hospital and are being cared for by specialists," Song Zhixing said.
"Has no trace of the Moth Woman been found nearby?" Li Jiuhe asked in surprise.
Song Zhixing shook his head: "We searched the whole place, inside and out of the haunted house, and even the entire White Stone Park, but we didn't find the Moth Woman."
"So—they escaped along with the main body of this haunted house sequence?" Li Jiuhe muttered to himself, still somewhat incredulous.
"That should be the case," Song Zhixing said. "If you're still worried, you can go back into the haunted house and check again."
"it is good."
Li Jiuhe had no appetite and only took one bite before putting the boxed lunch aside and going to the car to wake up the sleeping Ma Li.
Then the person and the insect walked towards the haunted house.
While rubbing her eyes, MaLi exclaimed in surprise, "How did time fly by? I only slept for a little while, and it's already dark. I need to control my sleep schedule! Strange, why aren't the ant larvae waking me up?"
As she spoke, she looked down at her stomach and said, "Why didn't you give me a reaction? Why didn't you wake me up? Were you asleep too? That shouldn't be the case, don't you only sleep for ten minutes a day?"
They had already entered the haunted house passageway, and Li Jiuhe peered inside from the entrance.
The place was also brightly lit by numerous lights, making it even brighter inside than outside, and there was nothing unusual about it.
"Handsome, you have to believe me!" Ma Li was still explaining, "I'm usually very reliable, and I'm not this sleepy. This was a complete accident today—"
Li Jiuhe didn't answer her, but what Ma Li said was indeed true; she wasn't usually like this.
The two entered the haunted house passageway and then stood at the entrance, peering inside.
The first principle of haunted house design is that the lighting must be dark; this is the main theme of a haunted house.
Dimming the light can give people a psychological suggestion and bring a sense of unease.
If the lights in the room were as bright as day, this sense of insecurity would be instantly swept away. So, to Li Jiuhe and the others, they felt nothing at all and just thought everything was normal.
Upon entering the first floor of the haunted house, the guillotine, the mortuary, the ghost bride—various scenes are clearly displayed before your eyes, and you really can't sense anything unusual about the sequence of objects.
Li Jiuhe couldn't help but turn back and ask Ma Li, "Have you ever heard of a sequenced object possessing a physical body after awakening? Like this haunted house, when it wants to abandon this body, it can simply leave without a trace."
Ma Li shook her head: "I haven't heard of it, but it's possible that such a situation does exist, just like what you humans often talk about as the soul and the body. The soul of this Rubik's Cube haunted house is gone, but it left behind a useless body."
Li Jiuhe frowned, clearly unable to accept this statement for the time being.
After all, the powerful sequence objects he encountered, such as the Morning Bell of the Second Seventh Day and the Boundary Stone, were always with their original bodies. They would disappear together or exist together, and there had never been a situation where they were separated.
They quickly explored the second floor as well, and everything seemed normal, with nothing unusual about it.
Back outside the haunted house, Song Zhixing was already notifying the others to prepare for evacuation, leaving only a small group of people to remain and observe.
Upon seeing Li Jiuhe emerge, Song Zhixing said, "Investigator Li, we're preparing to conduct a large-scale search of the city for buildings similar to those in the haunted house sequence to see if we find anything. However, this matter might need to be led by you. I'm handing over my special operations team members to—"
Before he could finish speaking, the scene before him vanished instantly.
When Li Jiuhe came to his senses, he found himself sitting in the official car he had just been in, with the seat behind him reclined and him comfortably lying on it.
Meanwhile, Mali was fast asleep next to her, still blowing bubbles.
Li Jiuhe was completely stunned.
"The mission was reset? Why was it reset?"
He quickly glanced at his almost maxed-out reset attempts; his limit was 40, and he currently had 39 left.
point.
I'm sure it did reset once, but I didn't actively trigger it; in other words, this reset was triggered passively.
But why would it be triggered passively?
Currently, he has only one mission line: "Survive."
But before the passive was reset, he didn't encounter any crisis. On the contrary, the supposed major crisis of the Rubik's Cube haunted house had disappeared.
However, since the task reset was triggered passively, there must be a reason for it.
Li Jiuhe looked around and found that he had returned to the moment when he had just woken up in the car. It was still dark outside the window, and the inside and outside of the haunted house had been investigated.
He soon discovered another strange thing: he had not set a reset point during this time period at all.
In other words, if you want to reset, you should reset directly to the beginning of the "Survive" task setting.
He remembered resetting the "Survive" quest loop when he first arrived at White Rock Park. He had checked the rewards for another questline and then casually reset "Survive".
"Why wasn't it reset to that time?" Li Jiuhe was completely dumbfounded.
This was the first time he had ever felt out of control about his ability to define tasks.
He got up, opened the car door, and got out. Just like before, Song Zhixing quickly approached him, and the investigator next to him handed him a boxed lunch.
"Eat it while it's hot, you haven't eaten all day," Song Zhixing said, repeating the same words as before.
Li Jiuhe subconsciously took the lunchbox, still pondering the reason behind all of this.
He had a gut feeling that something was wrong, and it was happening to him, but no matter how hard he searched, he couldn't find the problem.
The task was triggered and reset passively, but it did not return to the initial task settings.
Furthermore, it's possible that you encountered a life-threatening situation before the reset, otherwise the reset mechanism wouldn't be triggered.
"Hmm, is it shredded pork with garlic sauce over rice?!" Li Jiuhe suddenly looked down at the boxed lunch in his hand.
He clearly remembered that before the reset, the boxed lunch he had just eaten was twice-cooked pork rice, not shredded pork with garlic sauce at all.
The investigator who handed him the boxed lunch hurriedly said, "Excuse me, don't you like shredded pork with garlic sauce? I just grabbed this from over there. How about I get you a different one?"
"No, no need." Li Jiuhe shook his head, then put down the lunchbox without eating.
His doubts had reached their peak at this moment.
Song Zhixing, just like before, pointed to the door of the haunted house: "We have checked the inside and outside of the haunted house and found nothing unusual."
Li Jiuhe asked, "You went in and looked around too?"
Song Zhixing shook his head: "Not yet, we're just about to go in. Investigator Li, shall we go together?"
Li Jiuhe was stunned again.
No, after this mission reset, some of the events he experienced were clearly different from before.
Song Zhixing had already been to the haunted house before the mission was reset, but not this time.
The last time something like this happened was during the pursuit of the murderer You Hong.
However, when pursuing You Hong, Li Jiuhe clearly understood why things had turned out differently: You Hong's sequence line rank was only slightly lower than his own, belonging to a higher rank.
Moreover, because of the judgment and interference of the death pass, You Hongcai has a kind of intuition that makes him subconsciously avoid factors that are unfavorable to him before the mission is reset.
But that situation is different from the current one. Even a Sequencer of You Hong's level is completely unaware of it, so how could the investigator who gave him the boxed lunch have noticed it?
Also, why did Song Zhixing himself enter the haunted house to investigate the first time, but not this time after the reset?
This can no longer be explained by You Hong's experiences.
Li Jiuhe recalled the rule he had later added to the "Survive" mission.
[If consciousness is lost due to external forces, or if the individual becomes separated from their body, and this continues for more than one minute or beyond the necessary limit, the mission will automatically reset.]
Looking at the words "necessary limits," he guessed that the sudden reset might have been related to the situation exceeding the necessary limits.
So, could it be that at this moment, an external force caused him to lose control of his consciousness, or that his consciousness became detached from his body?
There are several possible interpretations of this "loss of consciousness," such as falling into madness and being unable to control oneself, losing consciousness and being in a coma, or being attacked like a silent singer and experiencing a detachment of mind and body.
In either case, it has at least triggered an automatic task reset.
After thinking for a moment, Li Jiuhe no longer hesitated and took the initiative to reset the "survive" task.
The scene before him changed, and when the surrounding scenery became clear, he looked left and right and was immediately terrified.
He found himself back in the official car, with Ma Li still blowing bubbles beside him. It was still night outside, and the haunted house had been opened, with people moving around inside and outside.
Li Jiuhe swore that after he voluntarily reset, he should have appeared at the location where he had just arrived at Baishi Park, not at this time.
Moreover, he didn't set a reset time anchor point at this location.
Sitting in the car, this time he didn't choose to get out. Instead, he was completely bewildered, his eyes darting around, staring at the Rubik's Cube haunted house not far away.
"Could it be that my current predicament is related to this haunted house?" he wondered to himself.
He then reached out and nudged Ma Li: "Ma Li, get up quickly—"
Startled awake, Ma Li turned to look out the window and exclaimed dramatically, "Oh dear, how come it's already dark? I only slept for a little while—"
"Wake up and come with me to get out of the car and take a look," Li Jiuhe urged before she could finish speaking.
As Ma Li nodded, she continued talking to herself, "That's strange, why aren't my ant chicks waking me up? That shouldn't be the case, you all get more than ————"
Upon hearing this, Li Jiuhe, who had already opened the car door and was about to get out, paused slightly and turned around at the car door.
Then I saw Ma Li looking down, blaming herself for her stomach.
Her belly was full of her ant babies, those little guys who only slept for ten minutes a day.
"You just said that if you sleep for too long, your ant colony will wake you up?" Li Jiuhe asked.
Ma Li nodded: "Yes, I told them before I went to sleep that I would only sleep for a little while, and they would wake me up when we arrived at our destination."
"Has this ever happened before, where they don't obey your commands?" Li Jiuhe asked again.
MaLi pouted and shook her head: "No. But handsome, let me explain. Although they've never had this happen before, we can't ruin them because of one oversight. They're all my own flesh and blood—"
She thought that because she hadn't woken up for a long time, she had delayed Li Jiuhe's plans, so Li Jiuhe wanted to punish her by killing part of the child in her womb.
Li Jiuhe waved his hand: "Don't misunderstand, our current situation is very strange. Follow me first."
Ma Li looked at him in surprise, then nodded blankly, "Oh."
At this moment, the feeling of unease that had been nagging at Li Jiuhe resurfaced. He tried hard to figure out what was wrong, but he still had no clue.
It's like this line of thought suddenly broke off and can't be reconnected.
As the man and the insect stepped out of the car, Song Zhixing immediately came to greet them. The investigator beside him, as always, handed them a boxed lunch.
This time, Li Jiuhe didn't take it, but instead asked, "What kind of boxed lunch is it?"
The investigator glanced at it and replied, "Scrambled eggs with tomatoes."
"It's changed again," Li Jiuhe muttered to herself, then continued to ask the investigator, "Did you just take it randomly?"
The investigator nodded and pointed behind him: "There are a few left over there. If you don't like scrambled eggs with tomatoes, Investigator Li, I'll go and get you a different one."
"No need, I'm not hungry," Li Jiuhe waved his hand.
He felt that the problem wasn't with these people at all, but rather that the current situation had become extremely abnormal.
If his own task reset doesn't trigger automatically, even he won't notice the anomaly.
He walked to the side with Song Zhixing and asked, "Director Song, after I fell asleep, you rescued the two missing investigators?"
"Yes." Song Zhixing nodded. "Both are fine, but they were restrained for a while. They've been taken to the hospital."
.
"Were any other unusual circumstances discovered at the time?"
Song Zhixing looked surprised, wondering why Li Jiuhe would ask such a question. He replied, "No, but the haunted house suddenly became normal, and we didn't find the Moth Woman either. These things were indeed beyond our expectations."
It's clear that these people are completely unaware that something is amiss in their surroundings.
Li Jiuhe confirmed this guess. If he hadn't been passively triggered to reset the mission, he would probably be like them now, thinking that there was no problem with the haunted house and would have already returned home with them.
And what exactly is it that I feel is wrong?
Is it related to oneself, to the surrounding environment, or both?
"Why can't I figure out what's wrong? Is something blocking my way?"
Various thoughts arose in Li Jiuhe's mind, and he felt increasingly confused.
Then Song Zhixing said, "We spent eight hours searching the entire Baishi Park, but we still couldn't find anything—"
"Eight hours?"
Li Jiuhe looked at him, and Ma Li's words from earlier quickly came to mind again. Her ant larvae had never disobeyed orders, and it had taken so long to wake her up.
"Time! Time again?! Eight hours—"
He kept muttering to himself, feeling that he was about to grasp that forgotten key. His brows furrowed and his mind raced.
Suddenly, he abruptly raised his head.
"Wait, my mission is only five and a half hours long, but I've already slept for eight hours, yet I can still reset the mission!?"