Memory inheritor

Chapter 46 The Journey

For Wei Hongsi, the past weekend was fulfilling and enjoyable.

I worked two and a half days overtime, and the progress and results of the work tasks were satisfactory. In my spare time, I went swimming twice, finished reading a book, and both my body and mind felt fully refreshed. I also had a big meal, and my sleep quality has been excellent every night.

When a plan is effectively implemented, a sense of satisfaction arises from having the rhythm under control, and the brain generously rewards with dopamine, which can be summed up in one word: "爽" (爽 means "great" or "satisfying").

The only drawback is that the two "system" tasks have not yet been completed.

On Saturday night, Feng Xiaoxu sent a message saying that he had spoken with Officer Wei and provided some information, and asked when Wei Hongsi would return to school to treat everyone.

So Wei Hongsi asked his older brother about the situation. Wei Hongbo's reply was so simple and perfunctory that he didn't ask any further questions.

However, this brief exchange revealed that the investigation had entered a crucial stage, and the team was making good progress. It seems the information provided by Senior Brother Feng was indeed helpful.

Based on past experience, the "system" is very "idealistic" in judging task completion. Even if the corresponding event has objectively reached a result, it still needs information to be transmitted to it before the settlement is completed.

Wei Hongsi had some understanding of the police's work processes. Even if the suspect had been apprehended, there were still many procedures to go through, which would take time. Perhaps he would have to wait until the investigation phase was over before he could get relevant information from his brother.

Since those two tasks don't have a time limit, we can just wait patiently.

Wei Hongsi has never lacked the necessary patience, especially since this was not originally part of the plan.

So on Monday morning, he was in a very relaxed mood as he walked to the company.

After walking for a few minutes, just as I was considering whether to get some egg pancakes, a light gray fisherman's hat came into view.

Wei Hongsi's lips curled up slightly. It had been five days since he'd seen the energetic uncle; it was a good opportunity to invite him out for breakfast and have a proper chat.

So he stopped at the entrance of the alley where the breakfast shop was located and waited for the energetic middle-aged man walking towards him.

Wei Hongsi has excellent eyesight, but as the distance gradually closed, he noticed that the seemingly energetic man looked quite unwell.

Fang Zheng's face was full of fatigue, and his eyes seemed a little dazed; there was half a clear footprint on the brim of his hat, probably because it had fallen on the ground and been stepped on; his beige T-shirt was more than a size too big, and it looked loose on him, with the sleeves hanging down to below his elbows and several stains on it, as if he had just squeezed out of some narrow and dirty passage.

Is this middle-aged man being bullied?

Wei Hongsi couldn't help but feel uneasy. People with mental disorders are bound to encounter such situations.

When the two were only about 30 meters apart, the middle-aged man's gaze fell on Wei Hongsi, and his face immediately showed surprise, and he stopped in his tracks.

Wei Hongsi was about to raise his hand to greet him when he saw the middle-aged man's face contort, his eyes filled with terror, as if he had seen a ghost in the middle of the night.

This surprised him greatly, and he only slightly raised his arm without lifting it.

However, the mentally challenged man's next move completely shocked Wei Hongsi.

Suddenly, the energetic middle-aged man ran towards the road, causing two electric scooters to collide as they tried to avoid him. Without stopping, he crossed the median strip and charged straight into the traffic lane.

A bus sped past, and the driver clearly did not expect someone to dart out from the green belt on the right. He only started to brake after hitting the person.

The middle-aged man was thrown seven or eight meters away, landing on the road like a leather sandbag, bouncing up and rolling several times.

The bus brakes were already fully engaged, and the tires were rubbing against the road, emitting blue smoke, but due to the enormous inertia, it still slid forward at an angle, running over the mentally challenged man's body.

Several vehicles traveling in the same direction were unable to avoid the collision, resulting in a collision and a rear-end collision.

The series of collisions and the strange noises caused by the brakes drew the attention of passersby, who stopped to watch, and some even exclaimed in surprise.

Wei Hongsi stared at the scene in disbelief, a strong sense of déjà vu filling his mind.

Suddenly, the noise around me receded like the tide, and the people and things around me vanished like fleeting shadows. The whole world suddenly became empty, as if I had crossed dimensions and entered another space.

A whistling sound echoed in my mind, sounding like an old man playing a whistle.

Wei Hongbo felt a moment of disorientation, but his senses quickly returned to normal. He was still on the street where the car accident had just happened, and the noise was ringing in his ears again.

He exhaled a hard breath and walked towards the bus.

The middle-aged man's body was hidden under the chassis of the bus, with only half of his lower leg visible and bright red liquid constantly flowing out.

Traffic police quickly arrived at the scene and partially reopened the lane where the accident occurred. Pedestrians who had stopped to watch gradually left, but new passersby stopped to observe.

Wei Hongsi stood silently on the sidewalk, wondering if he should provide the police with some information. Then he realized that he knew very little about the mentally ill man. Apart from knowing that the man was suspected of having a mental disorder, he knew nothing else, making him no different from the other onlookers.

Not long after, several ambulances arrived at the scene.

More than a dozen people were injured in the accident, mostly passengers on the bus who were not wearing seat belts, but their injuries did not appear to be serious.

Only when the mentally challenged man was lifted onto the stretcher was he covered with a white sheet.

……

……

Wei Hongsi was not in a good working state that day.

He was well aware that his efficiency was not as high as usual, but the progress was still ahead of the project team's plan, and since he was working in a separate space, no one noticed.

After get off work, Wei Hongsi had dinner in the company cafeteria and then walked home. Passing by the scene of the car accident from that morning, he couldn't help but recall the strong sense of déjà vu he felt when he witnessed the mentally unstable man being hit and thrown into the air.

As someone with a background in this field, he was well aware of the causes of the hippocampal effect. Simply put, it's when the brain retrieves memories that the timing information is lacking.

For example, if something that just happened is directly entered into long-term memory and immediately retrieved by the brain, it can be mistakenly perceived as something that happened in the past, giving a sense of déjà vu. This is why déjà vu is also known as optical illusion. This is more common during adolescence.

In some distant memories, the brain sometimes can't distinguish which event came first and which came later. It then forcibly merges and reconciles these memories, creating a seemingly plausible yet undeniably certain recollection. Many arguments among middle-aged and elderly people about the past stem from this.

However, Wei Hongsi was very certain that although his feelings were no different from déjà vu, they were not caused by the hippocampal effect.

He returned to his dormitory and took down the book he had just finished reading, "The Story of Time," from the bookshelf.

Turning to Chapter Four of the novel, there is a passage that reads as follows:

He gave me a bright smile, then waved and ran across the street. I closed my eyes, imagining him coming to me with a large bouquet of flowers, but the screech of brakes and the sound of flesh being hit startled me. I opened my eyes and saw his body flash past me…

This is the first description of a car accident in the novel. This chapter alone isn't much, but there are more later.

There is a similar description in Chapter Fourteen of the novel.

This time, however, it was "I," the narrator, who was thrown into the air. The plot was similar to the previous one, except that "I" survived.

A similar plot reappears in Chapter Thirty-Four of the novel, described in more detail.

He stared at me blankly, as if I were a complete stranger, as if all memories of us had vanished. I called his name, hoping to remind him, but fear gradually crept onto his face.

Without warning, he ran into the middle of the road, knocking down two innocent pedestrians. He seemed oblivious, leaping over the guardrail and rushing into the busy traffic lane, as if he didn't care about anything as long as he could get away from me.

—I watched helplessly as the bus crashed into him, his body arcing heavily through the air, landing more than ten meters away, before being run over by the bus…

When Wei Hongsi first read this passage, he didn't have any particularly strong feelings about it. He just felt that the author's use of similar car accidents and related chapter numbers made the expression of so-called fate seem a bit too deliberate.

But looking at it now, I can't help but feel a chill run down my spine.

The description of the car accident in this chapter is almost identical to the mentally unstable man's experience. In particular, the mental state exhibited by "him" in the novel is virtually indistinguishable from that of the mentally unstable man seen that morning.

A novel published six years ago has accurately depicted today's car accident?

Or perhaps the middle-aged man was influenced by this novel and thus replicated its plot?

Wei Hongsi closed the book and put it in the drawer.

……

……

In a clean space, a fisherman's hat approaches from afar. Beneath the hat is a slightly chubby face, the features quite blurry, only vaguely recognizable as a middle-aged man.

The man took out a whistle, put it in his mouth and blew it, but the sound it produced was the familiar sound of a cell phone alarm.

Wei Hongsi woke up, reached for his phone and turned off the alarm, then stared blankly for a while.

How strange, I had a dream before I woke up. Could it be because I was too shocked by seeing the mentally ill uncle die violently?

Everyone has many memories of dreams. But for Wei Hongsi, this area is almost entirely blank.

He can only recall his most recent dream experience from around the second grade of elementary school, but he can't remember the content of the dream anymore.

People's memories of dreams are the easiest to forget. Often, we can remember some fragments when we first wake up, but we can't remember them for long. However, at least we can remember that we had a dream.

Over the past decade or so, Wei Hongsi has never retained any memory of his dreams.

Of course, this doesn't mean he hasn't had any dreams over the years. It's very likely that his dreams occur in the first half of his sleep, which is when they are most easily forgotten.

Because he always felt that his sleep quality was very good, which usually requires a certain amount of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep to regulate the brain.

Actually, it's quite simple to verify whether you've had dreams; you can do polysomnography to record the REM sleep stages, but it's not necessary.

But this brief dream left Wei Hongsi feeling somewhat unwell. Upon waking, he still felt tired, and his mental state didn't seem to have fully recovered.

When I went to the bathroom to take a shower, I summoned the "System" panel that I hadn't seen for two days.

Unsurprisingly, the two side quests remain unfinished.

His gaze swept over the notification message on the "System" panel and lingered for a moment.

[Tip: Being able to support yourself is only the most basic requirement; strive to become a person who truly contributes to human society!]

For some reason, after seeing this sentence, Wei Hongsi's mood suddenly calmed down, and the slight mental fatigue he had felt earlier disappeared.

Could this "system" possibly also have the function of calming emotions and regulating the mind? That's clearly impossible.

It must have been thanks to the hot bath, and perhaps the "system" also played a placebo role.

Wei Hongsi did not delve into the issue; he only knew that his work efficiency for the day had returned to normal.

Thursday arrived in the blink of an eye.

During his lunch break, Wei Hongsi received a message from his older brother asking if he was free that evening and if so, to come over for dinner.

Wei Hongsi replied with a pleasant surprise, "Okay."

It's not even the weekend yet, and my brother's already home for dinner, which means the investigation is nearing its end. Looks like going to his house tonight will not only bring a delicious meal but also a reward for my mission.

As soon as it was time to leave work, Wei Hongsi immediately left the company and took a taxi to his brother's house.

I got off the car at the entrance of the residential area, first walked around the shops next door, bought some fruit and milk, and then carried them into the residential area.

When I was in school, I didn't earn any money, so I could come here and eat and drink for free without any guilt. Now that I'm working, I can't be empty-handed anymore.

No one taught him this; he just watched his mother do it since he was little.

He went upstairs and knocked on the door. His sister-in-law, Guan Shan, let him in. Seeing that he was still carrying things, she scolded him a few times.

"It's just some fruit, to be served as a fruit platter after the meal." Wei Hongsi put the food aside and changed into slippers at the door.

Wei Hongbo poked his head out from the kitchen and said, "That's right, it's just some fruit. He shouldn't be short of money now."

"You, as the older brother, have no manners at all," Guan Shan scolded her husband again.

Wei Hongsi walked to the kitchen door and asked his older brother, "Are you done with work?"

"Hehe!" Wei Hongbo said.

Wei Hongsi was quite surprised.

Judging from his attitude, the case has clearly taken a turn for the worse. The fact that he's still staying home under these circumstances seems rather ominous!

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(Two parts combined, please vote!)