"Is the rule of this world to manifest scenes from my memories? Or... have I really been sent to my room from my past life?"
When Wen Jing first saw the oracle bone script character for "fire" in the Ancient Wilderness, he had many guesses.
One of these theories is that the human 'traveled to the future'. Based on this premise, it can be deduced that the historical era before the emergence of Awakened beings and the absence of supernatural powers may have all become Ancient Wilderness ruins.
If this hypothesis is correct, then it's entirely possible that this ruin really is her room from her past life.
However, this is only one possibility; it also makes sense based on the manifestation of her memories.
Perhaps because of these two guesses, or perhaps because of the 'panel pop-up' status, Wen Jing suddenly felt something was wrong when he looked at this incredibly familiar room again.
She knew everything in this room intimately; each item was something she had bought bit by bit, filled with traces of her life.
There was a small plastic shoe cabinet for 9.9 yuan in front of the door, and on the mat on top of it was a pair of white sneakers with loose laces, worn and grayish from years of wear. Wen Jing remembered that her hands would turn red from the cold when she washed the shoes in winter, but when did she buy those shoes?
The desk on the right is where she spends most of her time besides her bed; she eats, works, and studies there.
The black mousepad's pattern had faded from wear, and the right mouse button was noticeably brighter than the left, likely due to frequent use. But what exactly did she use it for? Graphic design, video editing, or gaming?
Wen Jing walked to the desk and looked at the laptop on it.
Several colorful sticky notes were pasted on the silver casing. She used to unconsciously tear them off when she was thinking and spacing out, which caused the adhesive on the back to lose its stickiness.
The notes were inconsistent in content; one was written with 'abandon' in black ballpoint pen, another with 'weekly report due by 5 o'clock' in marker, and yet another simply said 'buy milk'.
The laptop on the notepad—she remembered its boot time was around 13 to 14 seconds, beating only 70% of computers nationwide. But what had she ever used it for? Was it the one she bought in college or the one she bought after starting work?
Behind the desk was a single bed placed across the window.
The blanket wasn't folded; it lay open haphazardly to one side, with a noticeable dent in the middle—the result of her leaning against the bed scrolling through her phone before sleep, her most relaxing moment of the day.
Right next to the pillow, a smartphone with a slightly faded plastic casing was charging. The charging cable, due to long-term bending, had yellowed and hardened white rubber and was slightly cracked.
But... which phone was that?
As Wen Jing observed more closely, the sense of incongruity was like the first crack appearing in a dam, gradually Disintegration.
This room holds memories for her in every corner, yet it also holds no memories for her in any corner.
Because of the lack of specific personal narratives.
It's like dreaming about a person or thing in reality; your cognition is simply telling you that it corresponds to a certain thing. But when you try to observe carefully or when you wake up from the dream, you'll find that there's a huge discrepancy between reality and reality.
In fact, human memory simply cannot achieve 'high definition'.
People's memory of specific things is not a precise copy, but a reconstruction of key features, which is determined by the structure of the brain.
The process will inevitably lose details and may even introduce distortions.
"Is it that my memories of my past life are blurred, or that the concept of 'my home' was merged together in the Ancient Wilderness world? It feels like both directions make sense."
However, the biggest sense of unease for Wen Jing right now isn't this feeling of familiarity mixed with strangeness, but rather—
"It's too safe."
Three full minutes have passed since she entered the room, and yet no danger has been triggered!
This is a relic of the information age, which is at a much deeper and more dangerous level in the world.
Such security is clearly unreasonable.
At the same time, the room itself also provided Wen Jing with a sense of psychological security.
Whether it was her inner inclination or her physical sensations, everything told her that there was no danger here.
But her experience and knowledge also told her that she needed to remain vigilant.
The tug-of-war between these two conflicting thoughts is like trying to stay awake when you're feeling sleepy, but you just can't open your eyes.
The presence of the other three consciousnesses prevented the Strongest Clone from escaping this state, and [ Calmness ] also failed to work, because there was indeed no danger here, nor any negative emotions that would affect her rationality; she couldn't possibly deceive herself.
Wen Jing turned his gaze to the window, where there was a soft halo of light and flowing blocks of color, with no real 'outside,' resembling an overly blurred background photograph.
"Let's start with regression Analysis to see if there are any anomalies..."
The eeriness of the place brought this thought to her mind.
But the next moment, she suddenly froze, realizing the problem.
"I actually want to come back like this?"
Returning to the room is fine, but they didn't even do the usual probing, like trying to damage something in the room.
She instinctively didn't want to damage anything in the room.
It's purely instinctive; who would deliberately cause damage in their own home?
"Does this place make my thought patterns revert to those of my past life?"
Wen Jing approached the desk with a mixture of surprise and uncertainty, his sharp forelimbs slashing at... the remaining few blank sticky notes.
She still didn't choose valuable items like desks or computers.
The next moment, a thin, long scratch appeared on the sticky note.
It wasn't as directly indestructible as it was outside the door, nor was it cut in half by her Sharpness forelimbs; it was as if it had been scraped by an ordinary human fingernail.
"Um?"
She tested it repeatedly, releasing energy attacks such as Frost Vein Silk and Wind Blade at the sticky note, but found them all ineffective. Finally, when she increased the force of her strokes across the sticky note, she saw it shatter into two pieces.
Throughout the entire process, nothing happened; the sticky note didn't turn into a monster and attack her.
Then Wen Jing experimented with other objects of varying sizes in the room, confirming that the things here were not indestructible, but rather could only be destroyed by ordinary people without supernatural powers.
"Therefore, my mindset here isn't a direct return to my past life; otherwise, I wouldn't be on guard. Instead, I'm inclined to think of myself as an ordinary person without supernatural powers."
"Perhaps without multiple minds or panels, I'm already living in a past life, and I can't help but wonder if my current life is just a dream or fantasy."
Having Analysis and figured out the hidden dangers in this world, Wen Jing felt slightly more at ease.
In a way, her wariness towards the Ancient Wilderness is also a kind of familiarity, a familiarity that belongs to this lifetime...
Immediately afterwards, Wen Jing opened his laptop and mobile phone to check the information inside.
However, the result was not as expected.
The computer is completely broken, with no power response. The phone is 'surviving,' but it's half broken; when I turn it on, the screen is completely white.
After pausing for a moment, Wen Jing's gaze fell on an oval-shaped glasses case in the corner of the desk.
She had opened the glasses case before when she was testing environmental destruction; it was empty except for a glasses cloth.
As a world linked by Tactical Glasses, it's clear that, just as the bronze fragments were originally on the chime bells of the Chess Game World, the glasses should originally be in the glasses case.
Wen Jing's heart skipped a beat. "Would it be different if I wore Tactical Glasses?"
Although advanced Wilderness Weapon risk 'returning to their rightful place' like bronze fragments, her goal is to devour this world. Even if the glasses remain here temporarily, they should return like bronze fragments after she has devoured the world.
Moreover, since the glasses and their case are separate items, they are not necessarily impossible to reassemble like a set of chimes.
If she wanted to conquer the relics of the information age, she wouldn't be afraid to take even this small risk.
The next moment, the gold-rimmed glasses appeared in front of the black insect's compound eyes, adding a touch of... well, not exactly refined, eerie charm.
"Fine."
After taking out the Tactical Glasses, the Wilderness Weapon did not go out of control like the bronze fragment before. It remained properly in front of Wen Jing's eyes, maintaining its mental imprint.
She peered through her glasses at the room's furnishings again, but no entries appeared.
After her exile to interstellar space, she also used Tactical Glasses to look at aliens, but no entries appeared. Therefore, it can be confirmed that the scope of the entries is limited to humans and Wilderness Beast.
"Um?"
The computer screen was still black, but then, as Wen Jing's gaze fell on the phone through her Tactical Glasses, she saw a normal smartphone standby screen.
Outside the glasses, the screen still appears as a blank white display.
She perked up, immediately picked it up, and began to carefully read its contents.
The phone interface is relatively simple, without any personalized enhancements to the icons and fonts. The complete shapes and logos are visible, but all text-related parts are blurred with a mosaic effect, resulting in incomplete content.
It looks like it's all about 'bao', 'dou', '*tuan', and some of them are just **.
However, I am very familiar with the colors and shapes of many of the apps in the Wen Jing, and I know which type of software they correspond to.
The time displayed at the top of the phone is 6:13, which is exactly the time in Ancient Wilderness times, but there is no date. At the same time, the Wi-Fi and signal are at full strength, location services are enabled, and the battery icon is charging.
"Click, click..."
Wen Jing tapped the screen with his sharp forelimbs, attempting to open the app.
After swiping it several times, there was no reaction at all.
"Why wouldn't it work?" Wen Jing asked, puzzled.
With her current level of technology and energy control, she can easily influence the screen's capacitance. The tips of her forelimbs are equivalent to a capacitive pen, so there are no issues with her physical limitations.
Even from the perspective of extraordinary rules, the fingerprint lock worked when she entered the door before, and her forelimbs correspond to her 'fingers', so there's no reason why she couldn't use her phone.