Shang Jianyao looked back and saw that there was indeed no one in any of the rooms. He had no choice but to sigh and turn his gaze back to the blood-red door in front of him.
“Now that things have come to this, I can only go in and ask Xiao Chong in person!” The reckless Shang Jianyao, representing the majority, said in a low voice.
Overcoming all sorts of difficulties, he reached out and placed his hands on the door, beginning to exert his strength.
The blood-red door slowly opened, revealing a dim interior.
Shang Jianyao, in one burst of energy, strode through the doorway.
He was immediately enveloped by a darkness so complete he couldn't see his own fingers.
“Xiao Chong! Xiao Chong!” Shang Jianyao shouted loudly.
His voice traveled far, but there was no echo, making it seem less like the inside of a room and more like a vast, boundless wilderness.
“Xiao Chong! Xiao Chong!” Shang Jianyao persevered.
Still, no one responded to him.
Just as Shang Jianyao was trying to conjure up a megaphone, he heard a whimpering sound.
It was a woman crying softly not far away.
“Xiao Chong, you even have a female persona?” Shang Jianyao was both shocked and envious.
The woman was crying softly, ignoring him.
Shang Jianyao made his own guesses:
“Could it be an abused and aggrieved persona?
“Uh, why does this crying sound so familiar? I feel like I've heard it somewhere before…”
“Ah, that's right!” Shang Jianyao slapped his left palm with his right fist and said, “I heard it in that courtyard with the grey-earth style!”
That youth scientist, Lin Sui, who was suspected to be from the Eighth Research Institute.
Shang Jianyao instantly became excited:
“Xiao Chong, after you grew up, you secretly had a crush on Lin Sui, so much so that you split off a persona that imitates Lin Sui?”
The sobbing female voice stopped and said faintly:
“I am Lin Sui.”
“Ah?” Shang Jianyao was completely baffled.
Fortunately, his IQ wasn't low, he had a calm and rational side, and he had been heavily influenced by Jiang Baimian, so he quickly thought of a possibility:
“The blood-red door I opened just now wasn't the real one, I entered a hallucination created by you?
“You really came to stop me!
“Are you the November ruling star, 'Shattered Mirror'?”
The female voice sighed ethereally:
“If you continue forward, you can leave here.”
“Uh…” Shang Jianyao was stunned once again, then he suddenly understood, “You have secretly sided with the Change the Status Quo faction?”
Lin Sui didn't answer his question, and began to sob in a barely audible way.
Shang Jianyao asked with considerable kindness:
“Are you being forced to?”
Lin Sui was still crying softly not far away, sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right, sometimes in front, sometimes behind, without a definite location, and as for her consciousness, Shang Jianyao couldn't sense it at all.
“Since you don't say it, then I won't ask.” Shang Jianyao was very polite and changed the subject, “Why did you want to maintain the status quo in the first place, and why have you changed your position now?”
Lin Sui's voice sounded faintly:
“Continue forward.”
Obviously, she didn't want to answer Shang Jianyao's question.
Shang Jianyao was about to try to persuade her earnestly, but the other party began to sob again, as if harboring a bellyful of sorrow.
“Okay, okay, I'll leave now.” Shang Jianyao was both polite and civilized, and on the other hand, he was worried that continuing to pester her would anger Lin Sui, resulting in a tragic attack.
He took a step and walked forward a few meters like a blind man, and in his field of vision, he vaguely saw a darker patch of black, like ink stains that had been washed.
That patch of black stood there, seemingly the door to leave.
At this time, Lin Sui was still sobbing faintly in the depths of the darkness.
Shang Jianyao comforted her kindly:
“I don't know what kind of pain you've experienced, I can only advise you to think more positively.”
Saying that, he opened his hands, slightly raised his body, and looked at the upper-left corner and said:
“Everything is a dream, why take it seriously?”
Lin Sui was silent for a few seconds and said:
“That sentence was what I taught them.”
“…” Shang Jianyao was momentarily speechless.
Lin Sui started crying softly again, and after a few seconds, even the crying disappeared.
Only then did Shang Jianyao walk towards that darker patch of black.
After arriving nearby, he discovered that it was indeed a door, with faint light seeping through the cracks.
Shang Jianyao opened this door and walked out.
But he didn't return to the corridor, but appeared in a lush green field.
Here, the sky was clear, pagodas and Bodhi trees stood everywhere, and gold, silver, agate, lapis lazuli and other things were scattered all over the ground.
Further away, there was a mountain, and on the top of the mountain, a huge Buddha cast in gold was sitting cross-legged on a lotus platform.
Around the mountain, monks wearing yellow robes and red cassocks sat there, listening attentively to the Buddha's sermon.
Some of them had deep wrinkles, and some had faces that were pitch-black, reflecting the light of the Buddha, and the common point was that they were all indifferent to Shang Jianyao's approach.
“So the main force of Buddhism is here.” Shang Jianyao had been wondering before why there weren't many monks in the “New World” outside the tower.
He immediately manifested the half-human, half-mechanical Pudu Zen Master Dharma form, put his hands together and saluted the Buddha:
“Namo Anuttara-Samyak-Sambodhi, please enlighten this humble monk, Bodhi Buddha, and resolve my confusion.”
The Buddha, with his back against the giant Bodhi tree, sitting on the lotus throne, did not respond to him, and said solemnly and grandly to all the monks:
“Birth, abiding, change, and destruction, all dharmas are empty…
“All conditioned things are impermanent, this is the law of arising and passing away; the cessation of arising and passing away is bliss…
“The original substance is tranquil, apart from all appearances, therefore it is called cessation…
“All actions are impermanent, those who are born must die; those who are not born will not die, this extinction is the greatest bliss…”
Pudu Zen Master scratched his head repeatedly as he listened, wishing he could reveal Shang Jianyao's true form, make a scene in this "Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss," and ruin the Buddha's sermon.
He kept asking, but the Buddha ignored him, only speaking of the principle of entering extinction and the way of transcendence.
“Alas, like ‘Shattered Mirror,’ he is unwilling to face the fact that he betrayed ‘Zhuang Sheng’ and secretly changed his position…” The honest Shang Jianyao muttered his own speculation.
He had no choice but to head towards the golden gate, condensed from the light of the Buddha, at one end of this "Pure Land."
…………
At the entrance of the vortex-shaped building, Jiang Baimian, relying on a targeted plan, returned here in only a dozen minutes.
—When she was on the outskirts of the small city, she always walked in a straight line towards that tall tower. Anyway, as long as she got close to it, no matter which direction she ultimately came from, she would arrive in this area where the nuclear power plant was located.
And after arriving here, with only two large buildings, Jiang Baimian wouldn't get lost and wander to the nuclear power plant. When she reached the edge of the vortex-shaped building, she repeated the same trick, using a detour to return to the entrance.
Jiang Baimian, carrying Shang Jianyao on her back and holding the crate, quickly passed through the "front desk area" and the "waiting area," and once again arrived in the area that she couldn't enter at the moment.
She tried to go in a meter, and immediately felt a throbbing pain in her head, and had to retreat to her original position.
Without hesitation, Jiang Baimian placed the crate containing the nuclear warhead to one side.
Then, she untied the straps and allowed Shang Jianyao to detach from her back, leaning him against a nearby sofa.
After doing all this, Jiang Baimian sat down cross-legged, took out her water pouch, and began to eat an energy bar, taking a short rest.
She was waiting for Shang Jianyao to enter the depths of "Zhuang Sheng's" mind world and open that blood-red door.
At that time, she might be able to take the opportunity to enter the area in front of her, and there, the ultimate achievements of the Eighth Research Institute were likely to be hidden.
In order not to miss the potentially brief opportunity, Jiang Baimian didn't plan to continue searching the "ordinary research area" upstairs and other places. She prepared to rest for a while and then try to move forward every minute to determine whether she could go deeper.
Anyway, exploring upstairs should eventually yield a pile of information and the situations of some researchers. Relying on them, Jiang Baimian could assemble a professional team and spend a dozen or twenty years to recreate the ultimate achievements of the Eighth Research Institute. But now, the ultimate achievements were likely to be in the area in front of her, so why would she waste extra time?
That wouldn't solve the immediate problem!
…………
After leaving the "Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss," Shang Jianyao returned to the corridor.
Not far in front of him, the blood-red door stood quietly.
Everything he had just encountered seemed like a hallucination, and from the moment he saw that door, he seemed to have fallen into a hallucination.
Shang Jianyao turned around and found that the doors on both sides of the corridor were all open, and there was no one there, exactly the same as before.
“Amazing!” Shang Jianyao praised "Shattered Mirror."
In contrast, to the left and right of the blood-red door, there were two doors, one painted with the Taiji Yin-Yang fish, and the other painted with a large number of dots and lines, with a glass-embedded gap opened.
Just then, a face with red eyes appeared in the small window of the door on the right.
And the face itself was silver-black, shimmering with a metallic luster.
“Robots! There are robots in the ‘New World’ too? ‘Zhuang Sheng’s’ memories?” Shang Jianyao suddenly became excited.
The robot's face said through the window on the door:
“Don't go forward anymore, don't destroy everything now!”
“Which ruling star are you?” Shang Jianyao asked politely.
The robot's face suddenly twisted and turned into an LCD screen.
It said in a slightly mocking tone:
“I'm not a ruling star, we've met before.”
“Can’t guess.” Shang Jianyao shook his head frankly.
The LCD screen chuckled and said:
“I am ‘Future.’”
Shang Jianyao first had a sudden realization, and then asked curiously:
“Why don’t you open the door? Are you locked up?”