Rhodes Island does not exist.

"So who are you?" Warfarin asked the Doctor with her hands on her hips. "You're calling me by my first name right off the bat. You may know me, but I don't know you. So I think you'd better introduce yourself first, otherwise I can't be friendly to you."

"Oh, I'm sorry," the doctor said with a smile, "I'm just a traveler. You can call me Doctor."

"Doctor, Doctor...? That's a strange name. Who calls themselves a Doctor?" Warfarin rolled her eyes at him. "Besides, in Colombian, Doctor and Doctor are the same word. Ah, you're not my colleague, are you?"

“If I had to say, I could indeed be considered your colleague, Dr. Warfarin.” The doctor nodded slightly to Warfarin.

"Hey! I told you not to be so familiar with me." Warfarin frowned. "Dr. Warfarin, Dr. Warfarin, what exactly is our relationship? Why do you call me that? And your name too, am I supposed to call you Doctor from now on? Doesn't that seem weird?"

"Strange? What's strange about it?" the doctor asked.

"Wait a minute." Warfarin suddenly seemed to realize something. "It doesn't seem so strange after all?"

Chapter 264, Part 262: The Return of the Swallows – A Familiar Encounter

After a brief silence, Warfarin finally let out a long sigh, then spread her hands somewhat dejectedly at the Doctor in front of her.

“Alright, alright, then call me whatever you want, and I’ll call you Doctor,” Warfarin said. “It’s strange, but I don’t seem to have any ill feelings towards you, so let’s not waste time arguing about how to address you.”

"And for some reason, I feel like the title 'Doctor' actually sounds pretty natural," she said, looking down at her nails, her tone slightly self-talking.

This is probably a habit left over from past experiences, or rather... a sense of déjà vu.

Even if memories in the brain are erased, habits left in the subconscious will never be erased.

“That’s a great help, Dr. Warfarin.” The doctor smiled. “I wouldn’t want to waste too much time with such an excellent woman as you over something like this.”

"...Are you flattering me? Or are you plotting something?" Hearing the doctor's somewhat sincere praise, Warfarin felt goosebumps all over her body and even took a half step back.

"Just stating the facts." The doctor's gaze swept around, then he pointed to the biological tanks with his right hand. "After all, the organs in these tanks are all your research subjects, right? There aren't many people who can create a laboratory-like scene in this kind of situation."

"Huh? No, no, no." Warfarin waved her hand dramatically. "It's not what you think. It was already like this when I came here."

"What does it look like?" the doctor asked. "This experimental site filled with organs?"

"Oh no, what I mean is that these experimental instruments were already there when I visited, but I was the one who found the contents," Warfarin admitted to part of her contribution.

"You found all of these? You mean the livers of these camel-like beasts, the brains of the armored beasts, the tail vertebrae of the Sarkaz, the gizzards of the Liberi, the horns of the Drak, the stomachs of the Minotaur, and this... Rupert's heart and Pero's lungs? You found all of these? Here, on this Rhodes Island?"

The doctor looked at the biological tanks one by one in order, and while observing them, he identified the various biological components preserved in the tanks and described them one by one.

Warfarin's expression instantly shifted from awkwardness to astonishment.

It was precisely because she knew which race those organs belonged to that she was able to understand that the doctor wasn't just making things up.

Moreover, he did indeed correctly identify the corresponding race and body part for all the organs.

This is enough to prove that the man in front of her possesses medical knowledge no less than hers.

"Why do you know so much about the organs of these races?" Warfarin asked a reasonable question.

"Hmm?" Upon hearing Warfarin's question, the Doctor realized that he had indeed seemed to be showing off just now.

He then spoke up, explaining his actions.

“As I said before, you can call me Doctor, but I am also a doctor, your colleague.” He looked into Warfarin’s red eyes earnestly. “If you can understand the origin of these biological organs, then I think… I also understand that this is probably not surprising.”

"Okay, okay." Warfarin accepted the doctor's explanation.

She had no choice but to accept it.

After all, this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

"So? Where did you find these organs? Based on my limited understanding of Rhodes Island, it shouldn't be a place with such biodiversity, right?" he asked Warfarin.

“Ah, indeed.” Warfarin didn’t seem to be trying to hide anything, but nodded and answered without hesitation, “There’s nothing else to be found here except for the Mud Monster, so the things in those jars you see are actually made of mud.”

"You mean those monsters...? Those monsters can turn into this?" Staring at the organs radiating vibrant life within the tanks, the doctor felt a sense of unease.

“Ah, that’s right, weird.” Warfarin nodded. “The essence of these things is those weird things. It’s incredible, it’s strange, isn’t it? That’s what I think too.”

"How did you do that?" the doctor asked.

“Me? I didn’t do anything,” Warfarin laughed. “The only thing I accomplished was going out to hunt some monsters, finding some food, and then… putting them all into these fish tanks.”

"They turn out like this after they're put into these tanks?" the doctor exclaimed in surprise.

“Ah, that’s right.” Warfarin nodded. “Biotechnology, isn’t it amazing? I didn’t do anything, and these bio-tanks accomplished everything.”

"Think about it, Doctor, this is a restoration!" She was a little excited. "If used properly, not only could we escape Rhodes Island, but we could even overthrow it."

"Escape from Rhodes Island... Is that your goal?" Seemingly having heard something of interest, the Doctor asked.

"Hmm? Ah." Warfarin nodded, while asking the doctor, "Isn't your goal to leave this awful place? Let me make it clear that this was my initial goal, I had no other intentions—until I saw these facilities in this room."

“You were drawn to these biological tanks,” the doctor pondered. “When you entered, were there any other people here? Or rather, were there other creatures in the tanks?”

“No, there isn’t any here.” Warfarin waved her hand. “There’s no one here, there’s nothing in the jar, and everything here is spotless. Everything you see here is something I added later.”

"It turned out like this the moment it was added in?" the doctor asked in surprise. "Was there any reaction time?"

“Yes, yes, I even wrote a work log at the time.” Warfarin turned and walked towards a certain place. “Wait for me, let me find it for you.”

In the doctor's eyes, she looked like a primary school girl.

However, she searched faster than she expected, and in no time she pulled a notebook from the gap between the two biological tanks and handed it to the professor.

The notebook was extremely ordinary in appearance, no different from the student diaries sold in small stationery shops on the street, highlighting its simplicity.

However, the content recorded in the notebook is far removed from the true meaning of being a student.

"Collection Log".

The professor closed the book and read the four words on the cover.

So this is what a notepad is for.

So the doctor turned the page.

The yellowish-white pages moved to the next area where text was recorded, accompanied by the creaking sound of the offset paper bending.

-

Thank you segment.

Thank you to the seller of Huatian Melon Seeds, Smiling Sorrow, Ariel's Paper Airplane Dream, Classic Top Lane ADC Shocker Fighter for the monthly pass and the blade, thank you.

Chapter 265, Section 263: The Train Heading Towards Its Destination

The world was covered by the color of the sky.

The interplay of azure and emerald green is divided in two on a vast scale, stretching infinitely towards the horizon.

It was a pure world, a world of only this space, and what separated the azure and the emerald was a moving line.

That was a train.

It gallops across this lush green grassland, with no beginning or end in sight, constantly moving and traversing in an abstract way, as if it could never stop, nor be able to stop.

Faced with everything before his eyes, the doctor was speechless.

In this world, he can neither move forward nor backward.

He could only stand there, watching the train speed past him, splitting the world in two.

What happens after the train arrives?

Is someone waiting for him after this train?

The doctor didn't know.

But as if in response to his thoughts, the train in front of him suddenly began to slow down slowly.

But what good would slowing down do? He still couldn't see what was behind the train.

However, perhaps he can board the train and then get off on the other side.

So he finally took a step and began to move forward.

Although the scenery remained unchanged and the train's slowed speed was not fast enough for him to board safely, he still did it as if he couldn't wait.

"laugh--"

When he stood less than a meter away from the carriage, the relentlessly speeding train finally came to a stop.

A door opened to him, and inside was pure light.

At this point, the doctor probably realized that this meant he could neither see the other side through the train door nor come out through another opening after entering the carriage.

If he actually stepped out and walked towards the car, he would probably only face the fate of disappearing.

So the doctor hesitated.

He hesitated about whether he should do it, and whether it was all worth it.

He faced a choice.

Choosing means giving up.

If he chose to come here, it would be tantamount to leaving everyone on Rhodes Island with fear, obsession, survival, chaos, killing, and all sorts of troublesome things.

No, that shouldn't be the case.

The doctor told himself he shouldn't have gone in.

He came here to wait for someone, someone he had once been incredibly close to.

Did he get his wish?

No.

-

"Wow."

"Crash, la, la, la-"

When the doctor awoke from that strange hallucination, his past self was rapidly flipping through the collector's diary.

“The Collector… Ah, the Collector.” Awakening from his deepest consciousness, the Doctor was able to begin to re-examine a corner of his memories from a third-person perspective. “It seems that Warfarin’s identity is indeed that of the Collector.”

"But I never expected that I would have a different dream while I was dreaming." The doctor was a little unsure how to react. "It even brought me up from my subconscious."

Modern PhD students have essentially moved away from their former first-person perspective and into the third-person perspective of observers.

This unexpected change began to make him feel like he was looking at a stranger who looked exactly like him.

However, perspective is not important; what matters is the content and what current PhD students are doing.

"I remember I was planning to read her diary before?" the Doctor muttered to himself, recalling past events.

And now—judging by the thickness of the notebook in the doctor's hand, he's been looking at it for quite some time.

"Kara la la la—"

The rustling of paper carried a crisp, unsteady sound between the two, and the Doctor longed to greet himself and Warfarin in this time and space.

Unfortunately, he is now merely an observer attached to his former self, perhaps not even a ghost, but just a simulated remnant soul.

So he could only follow the doctor's hand gestures and continue looking down.

"Shh-"

As the page turned, a huge white expanse suddenly appeared before the two of them.

The scene of him looking through that diary with Skadi in room 1002 was now faithfully recreated before his eyes.

So the professor continued turning the page.

White again.

Turn the page.

white.

Turn the page.

white.

Large blank spaces filled the gaps in the notebook.

Then, just when the doctor was about to think that the author had left no more text, new content appeared.

Day 32

After some events, I found my way back to this room. Fortunately, no one has entered since I left, which is a good thing for me.

【…】