Chapter 617

Unless she also intended to waste her life here.

Ma Ma Liang could only pin her hopes on her future self, that at some moment, she would notice someone had disappeared.

At the last moment, she closed her eyes, took a step back, and crossed the threshold.

"The rain has let up a bit."

Ma Ma Liang lit a cigarette and looked back at the main building.

It was time for the routine inspection of "Containment-3125."

"Is this the anti-memetic effect..."

March 7th watched Ma Ma Liang walk away silently, truly realizing the terrifying nature of the anti-memetic effect.

No matter what feelings one had the previous second, whether intense or plain, in the face of the anti-memetic effect, there was no difference; they would be equally erased.

"Hmm, it is a fearsome effect," Jing Jing Yuan nodded. "If some Lord Ravager possessed this ability, the suffering the 'Legion' brings to the galaxy would be far more than what we see today."

Fu Bai Xuan also had a guess:

"The Unknowable... it actually reminds this seat of 'Enigmata.' I wonder if the Path governed by this Aeon is related to this power."

Welt Yang:

"I don't think so. According to the containment files, if the Path of 'Enigmata' had an anti-memetic effect, this Path, and its corresponding Aeon, would not be known to the galaxy at all."

Miss Miss Tingyun also looked regretful. She whispered to Bai Bai Xuan:

"That Ms. Moreno reminds this little woman of herself. If not for the benefactor's rescue, this little woman would have ended up with her soul scattered."

Adam Bellamy Wheeler was born into a wealthy family in England on February 27, 1962, in the Gregorian calendar.

From a young age, he showed musical talent far beyond his peers, and by middle school, he was considered one of the most talented violinists of his generation.

Even past fifty, time had not been too harsh on this musician; he was like aged wine, the older he got, the more charming he became, attracting everyone from young girls to elderly women.

On the surface, and from a rational perspective, his life was perfect.

He graduated from the Royal Academy at twenty-two and naturally joined the New England Symphony Orchestra "183," starting as a common violinist and working his way up to concertmaster.

As a professional violinist, he made a living from the music he loved, enjoying the gifts brought by his talent: praise, applause, and moderate wealth.

Except for the fact that there was no lady he could call "Mrs. Wheeler," more than half of his life seemed fulfilled.

Was it really so...?

For some reason, a touch of gloomy sorrow would always rise in Adam's heart.

It was during those few minutes of waking up in the early morning, before stepping into the bathroom; it was during those long, silent moments backstage when mobile phones were forbidden and he could only wait quietly.

When that feeling appeared, Adam felt as if he were under some vast shadow, shrouded by an unfathomable and enormous thought.

But for the rest of the time, he and his manager kept his schedule as busy as possible.

Half the reason was "What you love is your life."

The other half was that Adam felt he wanted to escape that emotion; he tried to use endless work to set up an invisible barrier to separate himself from these potential questions.

He participated in various performances, whether solo or orchestral, recorded music, taught composition...

And it worked.

August ▇▇th, 6:00 AM.

"..."

His eyes snapped open.

When Adam broke free from that emotion, he had already forgotten what past had drowned him.

Again...

Adam raised his hand, rubbed the corners of his eyes, and struggled in vain against the discomfort coming from inside his eyeballs, which felt like they were on fire, sour and gritty.

After a while, the hallucination of swelling and bursting eased slightly.

Adam left the bed, not attempting to recall the dream buried at the moment of waking, not knowing if he was afraid of picking up some fragment that shouldn't appear, or seeing a truth that wasn't allowed.

He stood in front of the bathroom mirror brushing his teeth when a small black slug suddenly slid from the corner of his eye and fell into the hotel sink.

"hfuidsafaz...?" he mumbled indistinctly.

He rubbed his eyes, the foam from his toothbrush flowing down his cheeks.

Adam leaned close to the mirror and examined it carefully.

Sure enough, there was a larger slug, its black tail slowly emerging from his tear duct.

Spitting out the toothpaste and saliva, Adam wiped the foam from the corners of his mouth and took a pair of tweezers from his toiletry bag.

He carefully clamped the slug's wriggling tail and pulled it out, just like pulling a nose hair.

He threw the slug into the sink to reunite with its friend, then flushed them away with the toothpaste foam.

When he finished all this, Adam's movements suddenly stopped.

"What happened..."

Adam stared at the sink drain for a long time, feeling a sense of loss in his heart, unable to grasp even a hint of a clue.

He shook his head helplessly and continued his morning preparations.

Watching the raging waves unfold on the screen, the audience expressed that they were shocked.

"? What kind of development is this?"

"What do you mean 'you'll regret not watching, but regret it even more after watching'... I feel like there are slugs crawling in my eyes."

"I'm gonna puke."

"Why slugs? Was he infected by some containment object after his wife performed a memory erasure surgery on him?"

"Adam is so explosive right from his debut; I have a feeling the following content will be even more explosive."

The New England Symphony Orchestra toured for nearly a month.

Tonight was the final performance.

For Adam, the tour was an exploration of life's possibilities.

During this time, he could push aside a pile of worldly concerns and immerse himself in the world of music, his life simple enough to just involve waking up, traveling, performing, and sleeping.

But four weeks in a row was also exhausting.

Even the most optimistic and cheerful members of the orchestra could not hide their fatigue and nervousness; the repertoire became lackluster after repeated performances, making the players feel bored.

According to the schedule, today's rehearsal started at 11:00 AM.

Adam carried his tuxedo and violin, taking a taxi from the hotel to the venue.

The violin was a family heirloom with hundreds of years of history; the tuxedo was nothing special, just a common performance outfit.

The concert hall was located in the bustling heart of the city center, and even though the rush hour had passed, the taxi still struggled to move.

Getting off early, Adam walked through the busy crowd to the backstage, changed his clothes, and took out his violin to tune it.

He knew tonight's repertoire by heart; thinking about it now, it was less like reviewing and more like killing time.

Then came the boring waiting time; Adam took out his phone and browsed the news listlessly.

As expected, some terrifying trends he couldn't understand were spreading wildly on social media.

Today's fashion was to paint a black rectangle, leaving this inexplicable mark on walls, at the top of mirrors, or on the edges of paintings.

And the conversations of the people around him made him even more confused—they used a strange and peculiar language, as if it were a variant of English, with vowels and consonants swapped.

Adam was not a singer, but in the past, he had performed works containing lyrics in Latin, German, Greek, French, etc., but the language he heard today left him baffled.

It didn't seem to belong to human civilization, as if it were a language crudely created.

He didn't take it to heart; maybe it was some new popular unique grammar, just like those black rectangles.

The rehearsal proceeded as planned, and Adam's performance maintained its usual grace.

However, he noticed that many people in the orchestra seemed distracted; he tried to communicate with the conductor with his eyes several times, but the response was equally distracted.

During the dinner break, the conductor named Luján said to him privately:

"Their eyes need some adjustment."

Adam didn't understand what he meant for a moment and reflexively rubbed his own eyes.

Something was trying to surface from the deep sea of the collective unconscious, but failed.

Adam only felt a bit dazed for a moment; he didn't care and asked the conductor: