Chapter 27: Mental Stabilizer (Part II)

Jiang Hui felt as if fate was playing a cruel trick on her, one that might just be the death of her.

Who could tell her why she had ended up here again? Could it be that her greatest obsession after living two lifetimes was actually this house on Blue Star?

Oh, right—that was the property her parents had spent their entire lives working hard to secure.

They had finally finished paying off the mortgage, only to pass away before they could truly enjoy it. By the time it reached her generation, she hadn’t even had the chance to benefit from being a homeowner before she was thrust into the interstellar era. She had no idea who would eventually inherit the thing their family had spent two generations struggling to hold onto.

So, it was only natural that she would think of it in her final moments. But she truly could not understand why this thing... was appearing here. Jiang Hui looked with a complicated expression at the mutated computer embedded in the floor-to-ceiling window.

Why did it seem that every time she dreamed of her home on Blue Star since arriving in the interstellar age, this thing would appear? Truth be told, it was a hideous contraption; not only did it lack any aesthetic appeal, but it also got in the way. Wasn't the clear, expansive window fine as it was?

She had wanted to look at the open scenery outside. Why, even in death, did she have to face this wretched computer? Was this a reminder of just how stifling her death had been?

Looking at the oddly protruding computer mounted on the wall, Jiang Hui couldn't help but pat the pitch-black screen in a fit of frustration.

However, taking her anger out on an object quickly backfired.

This computer was not as fragile as the ones in her memory; it felt hard and solid, just like a stone wall. Her soft palm striking it felt like throwing an egg against a rock.

The computer screen didn't deform in the slightest, but the recoil sent a sharp, stinging pain through her hand.

Jiang Hui hissed in pain, instinctively clutching her wrist and crouching down. It took a long while for the buzzing in her head to subside.

Good heavens, why did she still feel pain even after death? Could this be another world after one passes away?

But was she truly dead? Had she died so inexplicably once again? If so, her cycle of dying over and over was far too sudden and bizarre.

At this moment, in a place that she couldn't even identify, Jiang Hui suddenly felt a sense of collapse and helplessness.

She crouched on the floor, head bowed against her palms, her hands covering almost her entire face as if that were the only way to keep her emotions from spilling over.

After a long while—she didn't know how long—she finally composed herself and stood up.

But the moment she rose, she saw that the previously pitch-black computer screen had changed—it had turned on.

Although it wasn't a screen she recognized, the interface was undeniably active.

On a black background, a line of red characters was ticking and refreshing. Well, it would be more accurate to call them garbled code. There were numbers and symbols, but also many unknown asterisks. They appeared in a column without any apparent pattern, and she had no idea what they represented.

Jiang Hui stared at the red running code, a nameless dread creeping into her heart. Because in her final moments before the accident on Blue Star, she had seen code of that exact color on her computer screen, right before she lost consciousness and woke up in a different world.

The red code on the computer screen didn't seem to be running smoothly; the line, less than half a meter long, stuttered and stalled, ticking along intermittently, pausing for long moments at a time.

This period of waiting felt entirely meaningless, yet for some reason, Jiang Hui found herself captivated by that short string of code. She felt as if… she could actually understand it.

But what was all this? Something about… approximately 1ml… 1.35cm… XX caliber… round opening… curvature XXX… verifying with database… likely a test-tube-like apparatus… originating from the interstellar era. Collecting… cross-referencing data… modeling… modeling complete, similarity over 80%.

Large amounts of data inexplicably flooded her mind, as if appearing out of thin air. She couldn't keep up; it was overwhelming.

Accompanied by a series of "beep" sounds, Jiang Hui suddenly felt as if something had been drained from her mind, and she experienced a momentary wave of dizziness.

"Thud—" Almost at the same instant, a sound rang out nearby.

Jiang Hui instinctively looked toward the source. A small, crystal-clear object had bumped against the table. Due to the slight incline of the desk, it slid toward the edge and was about to crash onto the floor when the girl caught it with lightning-fast reflexes.

When she saw what was in her palm, she couldn't help but freeze.

This was… a test tube?

No, to be precise, it was a test tube from the interstellar era—the very one that had held the mental stabilizer, though the stabilizer itself was now gone.

Looking at this test tube, which clearly belonged to a different era than this room, a strong sense of dissonance rose within Jiang Hui.

So, had she really died in the interstellar era again? Otherwise, how could she be seeing items from two different worlds at once? Or was this still just a dream within the interstellar era?

But if it were a dream, the frequency with which this room appeared was far too high. Every time she was here, she felt an inexplicable sense of wonder… as if she were touching upon some mysterious, profound realm—something she couldn't describe but found deeply strange.

And this computer. Was its bizarre form in this strange room truly because of her lingering resentment over the cause of her previous death?

Jiang Hui felt she was getting closer to the truth, hidden behind a thin veil; she only needed to go a little deeper to touch it.

Yet, despite how thin that barrier was, she struggled for a long time without being able to break through, and in the end, she had to give up.

She sighed softly, pulled over her executive chair, and held the suddenly appeared test tube between her thumb and forefinger, examining it closely under the light, lost in thought.

The test tube seemed a bit different from the ones she had seen in the interstellar era; it seemed more crystal clear and lacked so many bubbles… Hm? Her eyes widened. As she thought this, she turned the test tube, and the small bubbles she had seen embedded in the glass wall vanished—not a single one remained. Moreover, the entire test tube seemed to become crystal clear in that instant, as if what she had seen moments before were merely an illusion.

Jiang Hui sat up abruptly, her back straight, her mind suddenly sharp and clear.

Her first reaction was to look at the computer screen, where she saw that a new line of code had appeared. It was short—much shorter than the ones above.