Chapter 377: The Truth Slowly Surfaces
In a desolate town, everything was silent.
There was not a single person on the wide street. Even the neighboring houses were extremely quiet. Only the numerous shops and the vacant vehicles by the side of the road indicated that this was once a busy place.
In the entire town, only a few fat mice sprang out of the field, crossed the wide road, and rushed to the field on the other side again.
Occasionally, one could see some wild dogs and wild cats fleeing in one direction as if there was something behind them that made them extremely afraid...
Behind them was a huge cosmopolitan city.
However, if one looked at the city from a high vantage point, one would find that the skyline of this metropolis exuded an unusual gloom. Black clouds rolled eerily across in the sky, with a kind of manic, hysterical energy. In this apocalyptic atmosphere, the entire city was like a ghost town.
At this time, Chen Chen was in one of the houses in this town.
He was sitting in front of the computer with a black USB flash drive inserted into its case, but what was strange was that there were glimmering specks of light on the USB flash drive, just like stars in a night sky. These pinp.r.i.c.ks of light seemed to pulse oddly.
“I’ve got to be faster. I keep having this bad feeling...”
Chen Chen murmured. He quickly selected the movie that was meant to represent Ju-on and then double-clicked it to open it. However, after selecting the movie, the computer not only did not start the movie, but it kept flickering and made a clicking sound at the same time as if some malfunction had occurred.
“A problem with the computer?”
Chen Chen frowned, but gradually realized that the clicking sound in the computer seemed to be transforming. Before he knew it, it slowly turned into a gurgling sound...
“Something’s wrong!”
Chen Chen did not even think about it. He immediately pulled out the USB drive. At the same time, the wall in front of him quickly collapsed with a loud rumble and a gaping hole of two meters in diameter appeared!
Chen Chen pushed his feet into the ground and his body flew up with a buzz. He hovered in mid-air again.
At this point, Chen Chen looked at the gaping hole with a serious expression, only to see seven or eight pale slender arms slowly extending from the broken wall, wriggling twistedly toward Chen Chen...
“Is it almost reaching the outbreak period...”
Chen Chen squinted. This was a bit tricky. The eruption of the memetic effect was equivalent to a person’s death.
It did not matter that Chen Chen could escape by flight. Distance was not an obstacle to memetic killing. Even if he could fly out of the atmosphere or even out of the solar system, it was useless.
This was because memes cared nothing for the laws of physics.
Chen Chen gritted his teeth. He chose a room again and rushed in directly through the window.
With a “bang”, Chen Chen broke into the room promptly. After seeing a laptop placed in the room, Chen Chen’s eyes suddenly lit up. He grabbed the laptop and did not dare to stay in the room at all. He flew out again!
Chen Chen did not press the laptop’s power b.u.t.ton until he flew back into the sky. This Alienware computer was very powerful and it turned on quickly in five or six seconds. Fortunately, the system did not have any set pa.s.sword, directly entering the operation interface.
Seeing this, Chen Chen quickly inserted the USB flash drive and then clicked on the icon of the USB flash drive. However, at this moment, Chen Chen suddenly felt an uncomfortable sensation in his throat.
It was a very weird feeling as if something was constantly scratching his throat from the inside, trying to poke its way out...
Chen Chen subconsciously touched his throat, but suddenly, his expression twisted, and he opened his mouth involuntarily. At the same time, a thin white hand suddenly protruded from Chen Chen’s throat and clasped Chen Chen’s cheek!
At once, that sinister “rattling” sound sounded from Chen Chen’s throat again and this noise was getting louder and closer...
At this time, Chen Chen had completely lost the ability to breathe. He only felt that his chest and throat seemed to be stuffed with a large, hard object, and it was still expanding! It was a woman’s arm and behind the arm, there was an even larger foreign body trying to worm out of Chen Chen’s body!
Once it got out, Chen Chen was dead for sure!
“Hnnnggghhh...”
Chen Chen’s throat rang out with a deafening rattle and his chest bulged rapidly as if a person was slithering slowly in his chest, about to be born!
At this critical moment, Chen Chen forced himself to resist the indescribable pain. He directly selected the New Ju-on with the touchpad of the laptop and then pressed the left b.u.t.ton fiercely!
“Click!”
In an instant, Chen Chen only saw darkness in front of him and a pa.s.sage of pure black hue, without any light, appeared before him!
That was the USB drive’s portal to another world!
The moment this pa.s.sage was opened, Chen Chen tipped forward and plunged into the pa.s.sage headfirst!
In the next second, Chen Chen’s vision turned dark as if he had fallen into an endless swamp and completely lost all light in front of him.
However, as soon as he entered the pa.s.sage, Chen Chen felt his throat loosened abruptly. Before Chen Chen could react, his feet stepped on the ground again.
“Cough cough!”
Before he could observe the surroundings, Chen Chen squatted as soon as he stepped into this new world, his body racked by coughs! Earlier, his throat was almost torn apart by that arm. If Chen Chen’s movements were one step slower, he would only end up dying.
Chen Chen truly did not expect that after a failed attempt to kill him, Kayako would attack his body directly. If he had not opened the channel of the USB drive at the last moment, he would have likely died at the hands of Ju-on’s meme at this point.
It must be said that this kind of attack was truly bone-chilling...
However, the channel of the USB drive had the ability to cut off the memetic effect. Therefore, at the moment of entering the channel, the meme was isolated from the channel, so Chen Chen managed to survive.
However, this suspension was only temporary. If Chen Chen returned through the pa.s.sage now, he would still be pursued and killed by Kayako.
Hold on — cut off memes?
Chen Chen’s originally grateful expression suddenly sharpened. At this moment, a large memory he had no inkling of suddenly flooded his mind. These memories and Chen Chen’s original memories continued to overlap and conflict, causing Chen Chen’s body to tremble violently!
At this moment, Chen Chen suddenly remembered that he had seen a pair of eyes countless times!
It was a pair of blood-red eyes, cold and hollow, which was not something that humans could look like. It had appeared on every corner, even on everyone’s face!
...
In the cold and dark cla.s.sroom, Professor w.a.n.g Xi mechanically narrated the facts in the textbook...
When he talked about the fixed Hayflick limit, the gel pen in Chen Chen’s hand spun out with a “whoosh” as if it had rehea.r.s.ed this thousands of times...
Chen Chen bent down reflexively, but saw the blood-red eyes staring at him from under the table...
Chen Chen wanted to scream, but he opened his mouth, only to find that he could not make a sound as if something unknown was blocking his throat...
[I Saw You!]
At this moment, Chen Chen’s eyes first displayed a look of horror, but then his expression dimmed completely. His expression resumed its calmness again as if he had completely forgotten everything that had just happened, and he was just bent under the table with a slack expression.
“You there, burrowing under your desk, answer the question —”
Then, Professor w.a.n.g Xi’s voice came from the podium...
...
In the school’s Dorm 404, Chen Chen inserted the USB flash drive and the names of the four movies appeared on the computer — Ju-on.avi., Final Destination.avi., One Missed Call.avi, Ring.avi.
Seeing the names of these four movies, Chen Chen was just about to do something, but at this moment, the blood-red eyes appeared on the computer screen again...
[I Saw You!]
Chen Chen’s pupils contracted and he jumped up in fright, but the moment his gaze left the computer, he suddenly turned blank.
“What? After so much effort, I get nothing...”
Chen Chen closed the window wordlessly. “So, the USB drive is broken.”
A few minutes later, when the other people in the dormitory came back, Chen Chen handed the USB flash drive to Zhou Jie, who was beside him.
Zhou Jie’s eyes lit up. He took out his computer and plugged in the USB flash drive and then excitedly said, “Who said it was broken? Isn’t it working just fine?”
Chen Chen lifted his head to see the four horror movies in avi format on the computer...
...
In the interrogation room, Chen Chen was sitting on a chair. Suddenly, a young woman in office wear walked in from the door. She was wearing a pair of gold-rimmed gla.s.ses. As she walked in with large swaying steps, the smooth and clean marble floor clacked loudly.
Chen Chen turned his head to look, but saw that her eyes were blood red...
[I Saw You!]
...
Large swathes of memories emerged from Chen Chen’s mind out of thin air. These memories kept conflicting with the original memories, causing Chen Chen to hold his head tightly and let out a heartrending scream!
Every time those eyes looked at Chen Chen, he would have the feeling that he was going to die, but the moment he turned away, this feeling disappeared abruptly. It was only at this moment that Chen Chen recalled all of these memories as they gushed from within him like a flood!
He remembered, he remembered everything!
Chen Chen was sprawled on the ground, his hands and feet convulsing uncontrollably. It felt like only seconds had pa.s.sed, yet it also felt like centuries. He did not know how long it took. It was only after that desperate feeling of death swept over him like a wave that Chen Chen slowly recovered...
That kind of feeling was comparable to the first time he faced the Basilisk pattern. If his willpower was not strong enough, Chen Chen would have rather died than bore this kind of pain.
“That, that is... An antimeme!”
Chen Chen collapsed and sat up, panting heavily. Although he had experienced agony comparable to death, at this moment, his brain had never been so clear as if it had been washed by a clear spring.
“No wonder my memory had errors. So, it’s all thanks to an antimeme!”
Chen Chen gritted his teeth, resisting the subsiding pain, and at the same time, a.n.a.lyzed in a low voice, “It turns out that the night I was injected with the T-virus, I had this dream...’I Saw You’, is that the name of this antimeme?”
Chen Chen could not help frowning. “However, how did this antimeme find me? Could it be...”
Chen Chen’s pupils suddenly shrank!
At this moment, the quantum computer of the Earth Federation flashed through his mind.
He still remembered that after he had gained power by relying on the USB flash drive, he had wanted to find out its origin. After all, the USB drive came from Shangdu Jiao Tong University, where he was located. If he began with the school, it would not be difficult to find the source of the USB flash drive.
Due to this, he used Little X to investigate in many ways, but the origin of the USB drive was always like a black hole and not a single clue could be unearthed...
However, if he linked this to the nature of this antimeme, where all traces of a person’s existence would disappear after it had swallowed a person, then was it possible that this antimeme existed a long time ago?
Following this line of thinking, Chen Chen even arrived at a terrifying hypothesis —
If this antimeme had existed a long time ago, would it not be possible that the previous owner of the USB drive was swallowed by it?
In other words, the USB drive owner before Chen Chen was not non-existent. They might have used the USB drive to stir up some major events affecting the world and might even have rewritten the historical process of the world. No clues could be found by Little X because they were also swallowed by the antimeme!
This conjecture was not unfounded because the quantum computer of the Earth Federation was the strongest piece of evidence!
This thought flashed across Chen Chen’s mind but it made him shudder — if it was true, would it not mean that when he got the USB flash drive, the antimeme had already followed him, only it had been lurking in the dark. Was it only activated when certain conditions were fulfilled?
“Heh heh!”
Chen Chen laughed lowly. At this time, the death-like pain had completely disappeared. He stood up a little dazedly, a dark glint flashing in his eyes.
This antimeme was silently devouring this world...
The disappearance of Li Bo was the best proof.
Not only Li Bo, Chen Chen clearly remembered that there were more than 30,000 students in the entire school, but in the interrogation room at that time, the director’s memory and the information found showed that there were only more than 20,000 people.
It was not that Chen Chen’s memory was erroneous, but that the remaining 10,000 people were swallowed by the antimeme.
The reason Chen Chen could still remember the real number without being affected by the antimeme was not that he was special, but that he had memories from realities.
However, this was the limit.
In the subsequent spiritual abnormality that erupted across the entire city, it was unknown how many people died at the hands of this antimeme. It silently hid in the shadow of Ju-on, devouring lives, yet no one noticed...
This antimeme was not only devouring this parallel world, but also Chen Chen’s dream.
In other words, the goal of this antimeme, from beginning to end, had always been Chen Chen. Only by swallowing this parallel dimension that was mixed up with Chen Chen’s dream, would it completely swallow Chen Chen...
This would explain why Shen Qi suddenly appeared to save him when he was about to be killed by the grudge-curse — because he had been possessed by this antimeme. If he was killed by the grudge-curse in advance, it would have ruined the antimeme’s plan to devour him.
Even Zhou Jie’s unleashing of the four horror films was probably all caused by this antimeme, so that it could hide in the shadow of the spiritual abnormality and prevent Chen Chen from detecting it...
However, would an abstract existence like an antimeme, which was more like a law of nature, have its own thinking?
A dark look flitted across Chen Chen’s eyes, as a more terrifying conjecture gradually came to mind —
Perhaps there was another possibility...