Chapter 122: Schrödinger's Plot

Chapter 122: Chapter 114: Schrödinger’s Plot

Yin Zhen opened her eyes and found herself held in Zoe’s arms. Zoe was trembling, and large teardrops were falling into the hollow of Yin Zhen’s neck.

“I succeeded, so why are you crying?”

Zoe refused to speak and just kept crying. Her heart ached terribly, an unbearable kind of pain.

She had triggered a resonance with the memories of others before and experienced different emotions from their pasts, but none of those emotions were like Yin Zhen’s… so agonizing!

Feeling helpless, Yin Zhen let Zoe hold her. She unequipped her Character Card and raised her hand to look at her palm. There was nothing there.

However, she could feel that with Zoe’s help, the engraved mark on her soul had been activated. She just couldn’t manifest it physically yet.

[Congratulations, Player. You have learned the first level of ‘Inheritance’: Origin.]

[Origin]: A passive ability. You have gained extremely high resistance against any form of memory reading, mental invasion, or consciousness manipulation. Any Strength attempting to invade your mind will touch upon your ‘Origin’.

It is no longer a weakness you fear, but a defense line forged from your pain. Invaders will hear the echoes of your agony. In mild cases, their minds will be shaken; in severe cases, they will temporarily lose control of their own spiritual power. (Let the enemy feel the pain, MWAHAHA!)

Yin Zhen felt that her Villain Aura was starting to take effect. She had previously failed to trigger a resonance with Zoe’s blood, but now she had so easily learned the exclusive ability of Chi Hai’s protagonist, and it was even much stronger than Zoe’s. Thinking about it this way, it felt pretty good.

Zoe cried for a while before releasing Yin Zhen. Without saying a word, she wiped away her own tears.

“The second mark of the Inheritance is called ‘At this moment.’ Your most resolute thought at this moment is your sharpest weapon. Gather your emotional field and use your thought to push it out of your soul. Don’t just think about it in your head; use your willpower to force it out and let it take shape externally.

“The first manifestation usually requires an extreme emotional shock or a near-death experience to trigger. If you can’t fully manifest it, you can temporarily rely on a sufficiently sturdy vessel, which will also allow you to unleash the Strength of the Inheritance. There’s no rush for this. Don’t try it today.”

Yin Zhen nodded. This feeling was probably like an Enchantment in a game, allowing one to add Special damage against the soul onto a Weapon. She would wait until Zoe fell asleep before slowly experimenting with it.

“What about the Third Level?”

Zoe’s brows slowly knitted together. “The Third Level is also the final one, called End. Source once used the End in exchange for severely injuring Lilith and the others, but Source died as a result. It wasn’t worth it. Source asked me what I was willing to trade for the outcome I wanted—whether it was this hand, these eyes, or my soul. Different prices yield different future outcomes, so this level requires me to comprehend it on my own. I’ve never tried it, and I hope you never have to use it either.”

“Got it. By the way, can there only be one mark of Origin? If I use the End at the cost of the mark disappearing, will the emotions condensed within the mark disappear with it? Can I engrave a new one afterward?”

Zoe froze, her eyes gradually widening to their limits. Finally, she lowered her head in shame and picked at her fingers.

“I didn’t ask… I’m sorry, I never thought of that.”

Yin Zhen comforted her. “It’s okay. Source definitely never thought of it either; otherwise, as a teacher, she would have told you directly. It’s all her fault.”

Zoe looked as if a door to a whole new world had been opened for her. “Can… can you really look at it that way?”

Yin Zhen put on a serious expression and nodded solemnly.

Zoe mouthed a silent ‘oh’ before suddenly saying, “Right, I know the coordinates where Chi Hai and Chalk will appear. Source noted them down carefully. You can find a way to locate them in Ancient Abyss ahead of time. I’ll write them down right now.”

“Wait, Zoe.”

Yin Zhen stopped Zoe, who was about to get out of bed to find a pen and paper. Zoe looked at her in confusion.

“You can’t write it, because I’m worried they are currently in a Schrödinger’s state.”

“Schrödinger’s?”

“How should I put it? I’ve always had this feeling that before I made that phone call looking for Ian’s family, this person named Yi Guanfu might not have actually existed in Sea City, a place I couldn’t reach, because no one ever answered the phone. But after I made the call and had Lucy look into it, this person suddenly appeared in a state that was both similar and dissimilar to what I expected.”

Zoe nodded, even though she didn’t quite understand.

“Speaking from the logic of a novel, we are all Characters in a novel. Although we have awakened now, we are still inside the novel. Our actions will generate the plot, especially me right now…”

Yin Zhen paused. She was now the villain of Ancient Abyss, and the ability of the Villain Aura was precisely to avoid being swept along by the plot, allowing her to create new plot points.

“In short, I’m worried that Chi Hai and Chalk, who might not have appeared yet, would manifest at that location prematurely just because I saw the coordinates you wrote down. That would cause the Blood Plague to break out early in Ancient Abyss. Therefore, you can’t write it.”

Zoe tried to wrap her head around it. “But what if they still show up in the future? Wouldn’t you be looking for a needle in a haystack?”

Yin Zhen thought it over carefully. Zoe had a point.

“Let’s do this: you’re just a tourist who came to Ancient Abyss and don’t belong to Ancient Abyss yet. You write it down. After writing it, fold it up and place it deep in my drawer. I won’t look at it unless absolutely necessary, so it will remain in that Schrödinger’s state. When it truly becomes necessary, I’ll open it then.”

“Okay. Regardless, listening to you is definitely the right choice.”

Yin Zhen stood up. “Then go ahead and write it. Once you’re done, get some rest early. I’m going out to check on Lucy and figure out a way to get some explosives to deal with Lilith and the others when we cross over.”

As soon as Yin Zhen stepped out of the bedroom, she froze. There wasn’t even a place to step in the living room. It was completely covered with parts that Lucy had sorted and arranged into categories. They were so neat that every tiny screw was facing the exact same direction. Even Ying, who was sitting there playing games, was encircled by a ring of parts.

Staring at the computer, Lucy didn’t even lift her head as she said, “I need to dispose of the gold I brought as soon as possible to buy some tools and components. It would be even better if we could move to a bigger house so I could have my own workshop. The defense Level here is too low. It’s extremely unsafe, and it doesn’t meet the requirements for installing Weapons.”

Walking on her tiptoes like a cat, Yin Zhen carefully navigated her way through the gaps between the parts.

She found Ding Yi’s bank card and handed it to Lucy. “Buy whatever you want for now. This is all my savings. I’ll take care of your gold tomorrow. Also, I need to make a phone call. Can you help me block any wiretaps?”

Lucy turned her head, picked up Yin Zhen’s phone from the sofa, and handed it over. “I’ve already implanted a firewall and encryption program I wrote. You can use it without any worries.”

Yin Zhen took the phone, sat down at the dining table, and dialed Bai Qiang’s number.

The phone rang twice before it was connected, and a lazy voice came through. “Hello, who is this?”

“Me.”

There was a flurry of chaos on the other end of the line. It sounded like the phone had been dropped on the floor, the person had fallen down with it, and then scrambled back up to retrieve it.

“HAHAHA, Zhang, is there something wrong for you to call so late? It’s not very convenient for me lately. How about we schedule a time to meet another day and talk then?”

“Our conversation won’t be wiretapped.”

“You should have said that earlier! What’s up?”

“I need explosives.”

“Yin, I’m a psychiatrist, not a terrorist. You’re asking a psychiatrist for explosives? I don’t have any explosives, but what about sleeping pills? I can give you as many as you want!”

Yin Zhen could sense that the Protagonist Card was on Bai Qiang. She had assumed that Bai Qiang had already taken over everything from Nan Jiamu, but now it seemed that she couldn’t be bothered to care.

Taking a deep breath, Yin Zhen decided to patiently give Bai Qiang an Explanation of the current situation.

To destroy Chi Hai, she had to rely on the Strength of the authorities.

“Now I’ll speak, and you listen. Chi Hai’s invasion doesn’t just happen in one way…”

Over an hour later.

Bai Qiang hung up the phone with a solemn expression. Although there was a pile of troublesome matters, thanks to this phone call, she had figured out what happened in the secret laboratory and completed her hidden quest.

Moreover, because she was now the protagonist, her rewards had been upgraded. This was the first time Bai Qiang had ever seen an Item more Advanced than Golden Items.

Bai Qiang took out the reward item. “What is this thing? An Electronic Pet Machine? Let me see… My god, using it once actually requires this high of a word count! Damn system, are you sure this isn’t a pig-butchering scam targeting me?

“Seeing that I have a high word count now, the consumption jumped directly from the hundreds to the hundreds of thousands, right? And giving me this thing now, what are you hinting at? You have ulterior motives!”

Bai Qiang put the Item away, stood up, and paced around the room a few times.

“Fine, I’ll let you owe me a big one this time! Shen Qing, your grandaunt is going all out against you!”