Rhodes Island does not exist.

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Lavender was silent for a moment, then suddenly said something.

"Huh? What are you talking about?" The doctor didn't realize which topic she was referring to.

“You said before that there were other strange things in this prison, but judging from the traces here, no one has been here for a long time.” Lavender’s dozens of eyes looked around, gathering information about the surroundings.

“Perhaps he left after hanging that strange creature on the hook,” the doctor pondered for a moment. “After all, you said earlier that you never heard any sounds coming from the fifth floor.”

"Does that mean the fifth floor is safe?" Lavender looked away and turned to the doctor.

She didn't really care about her own safety.

After all, the monster's prey is only the Doctor, not her, so all her observations are actually on the Doctor's behalf. Therefore, as long as the Doctor deems it harmless, she will immediately cease this meaningless behavior.

"I think that's possible for now," the doctor thought for a moment, "but our main objective is still to find the door."

The two were now at the far end of the lower level of the prison, where there was only one staircase leading to the upper level.

The prison's multi-level structure was clearly visible when the door was opened, so if nothing was found on the lower level, it meant it was time to check the upper level.

"I suggest you gather as many supplies as possible, and I'll also keep an eye on the situation in both cells."

As they went upstairs, Lavender, who was following behind, spoke up.

"Yes, I know." The doctor gave a grateful smile. "Why do I feel like you've become nicer to me?"

“No, I’m only doing this for my own benefit,” Lavender said bluntly. “Because I need you to help me find a way out of here, I will do my best to maintain your basic survival.”

"...It was clearly a nice thing to say, but your interpretation has distorted its meaning." The doctor frowned.

Although Lavender is very straightforward and always says what she thinks, this personality can be quite troublesome at times.

"Why is that?" Lavender asked. "I'm just explaining our interests to you; I think this will make cooperation more effective."

"But it's not good for increasing favorability," the doctor joked.

"Favorability...?"

Lavender's language system is stuck.

These seem to be words that require some time to understand.

"Ah." Then, she understood.

“I think this is unnecessary,” Lavender said seriously. “In Rhodes Island’s environment, any behavior that builds a partnership that goes beyond mere interests is negative and will only reduce the efficiency of both parties when necessary.”

“But I can understand your reasonable need for emotions as a human being.” Lavender’s eyes twitched along with the branches of her body, as if she was deliberately trying to be cute. “It’s just that I am not the right person to ask for your emotions, so please take it back. After all, living on Rhodes Island means that you could die at any moment, and death would turn all the emotional foundations you have built into a heavy burden on the individual, which would not help you to save yourself from the predicament.”

"Why are you suddenly talking so much..."

The professor was slightly taken aback when he saw Lavender suddenly spouting long and complex sentences for no apparent reason.

"It's just explaining the pros and cons." Lavender swayed her stem. "It's necessary for our future relationship, and it can also prevent you from having some meaningless fantasies about me, even though I don't understand what's so attractive about my appearance to you."

"Uh... no... I really didn't mean that. Your thoughts are wandering a bit too far." The doctor's lips twitched. "You clearly have no memory, yet you can master this way of speaking. I wonder what you were like when you had a complete memory."

“I don’t know either,” Lavender replied, “but I suggest we don’t stand here and talk; if possible, we should talk as we walk.”

"Excuse me."

Realizing he had stopped walking, the doctor immediately resumed his normal walking pace.

The upper level of the prison consists of two somewhat cramped corridors, with cubicles arranged in a strict, orderly fashion on either side.

Of course, there were no prisoners in the cubicles.

There were no bodies either.

The iron-framed bed was covered with clean sheets and pillows, and although the toilet and sink were old and dusty, they were not dirty. It gave the impression that no one had ever used them.

"Click-"

Pulling the iron door of the cell to the side, the doctor reached for the faucet on the sink and turned it on.

Nothing came out.

This is the second-best result.

The best outcome would naturally be the outflow of clean, drinkable water. However, the next best outcome would probably be the outflow of a large amount of unidentified liquid or unidentified organisms.

"squeak."

With a mindset of conserving water, the professor turned the tap back on.

"Even if you have water, do you have a container to hold it?" Lavender, watching the doctor's actions, asked a crucial question.

"Yes, this one."

The doctor took an empty glass bottle out of his pocket.

The moment the glass bottle was pulled out, Lavender instinctively took a step back.

Thank you segment.

Thanks for the blade, thank you.

Chapter 155, Chapter 154: The Night Awakens Him Again

back.

The instinct of living beings is to seek advantage and avoid harm.

When exposed to flames, fingers instinctively retract. When seeing food, saliva instinctively wells up.

Therefore, moving forward means following one's desires, while retreating means avoiding risks.

Lavender saw the risk in the empty bottle in the doctor's hand.

"What is that in your hand?"

All eyes were now focused on the glass bottle in the doctor's hand.

If she could make expressions, the sheer number of eyes swirling around her would create a truly spectacular display.

However, as a substitute for an expression, the branches on her body were trembling.

It was like a toothed beast that arched its body and let out a low growl.

"Tell me quickly, what is that?" Her tone didn't reveal her disgust and fear of the object, but many things can be perceived without such superficial emotional imagery.

"It's just a bottle that once held seawater; there's nothing inside anymore. Calm down," the doctor tried to explain to her.

"seawater."

The lavender branches trembled even more violently.

"Seawater...is this the taste of seawater? Is this what seawater tastes like? No, I don't know what seawater is...but I know this taste..."

Lavender is rambling incoherently.

She now resembles a tree rapidly withering, even her once full and robust eyeballs droop.

"Calm down!" The doctor had never had the experience of persuading such a strange person before, so he couldn't come up with any effective words for a moment and could only tell her to calm down.

However, the lavender is no longer listening to the doctor's advice.

"No, no, no, no, no, that's not right, no, no, no, no..."

"The sea shouldn't be like this. I've never seen the sea, and I don't know what the sea is."

"Ultimately, what is the sea?"

"I've smelled this scent before, but I don't know what the sea is. I...I...I...I...I..."

As a listener, the doctor realized that Lavender's language system was gradually becoming disordered and even collapsing.

But he couldn't help, he couldn't help at all.

Moreover, he couldn't understand it.

Logically speaking, Originium and seawater have opposite properties. All the strange creatures he had encountered had the characteristic of craving seawater and rejecting Originium, but lavender was different.

She feared both of these things at the same time.

Moreover, their fear of seawater is even greater than that of Originium.

When the Doctor placed the Originium directly in front of her, she was only restricted in her abilities and movement, without suffering any real harm. However, when the Doctor revealed the empty bottle that had only contained seawater, she seemed to be possessed, falling into a state of delirium, or rather, madness.

So even the supernatural can go mad? The doctor felt he had gained new knowledge.

Although now is not the time to summarize new knowledge.

"There's no other way but to try fighting poison with poison." The Doctor stuffed the empty bottle back into his pocket, took out the bottle containing Originium, and brought it close to the lavender.

However, little effect has been achieved.

Or you could say it had no effect whatsoever.

"Could it be that the effect through the bottle isn't enough? Do we have to remove the stopper and let her come into direct contact with the Originium...?"

The doctor was deep in thought.

But his thoughts were interrupted by a cold touch.

Those were lavender branches. At that moment, the branches were draped over the doctor's arm, conveying a faint message.

"There's a name in my head."

She lifted one eye from its lowered position and looked at the doctor.

"What?" The doctor grasped her branch and looked back at her. "What's your name? Tell me."

"No, I can't, I can't do it." Lavender's whole body trembled violently with the sound of her words. "I can't pronounce that name."

"Who is that name? Who is that person? Do you know them?" The doctor crouched down, looking up at her downcast eyes, his voice low and soft as silk, "Is there anywhere in your memory that name?"

“I…I have no memory.” Lavender repeated what she had said when she first met the Doctor. “I have no memory at all, but for some reason, this name keeps echoing in my mind, and I can even hear the voice of the person who owns this name.”

"A voice? Is it a man or a woman?" the doctor tried to elicit the information.

He had experienced madness before, so he understood that to escape it, he had to maintain contact with the normal world, because madness is addictive; once you get used to it, you can never go back. While the Doctor didn't know why Lavender had fallen into madness so easily, he knew he couldn't sever his connection with her.

"It's...a woman, a woman." The lavender vines that had been resting on the doctor's hand began to climb up, wrapping around his forearm and upper arm, while imprinting the trembling frequency of their own bodies onto the doctor's body.

"Woman... what did this woman say to you? What was she saying?" the doctor continued to ask, maintaining Lavender's last remaining sanity.

"She said, she said—"

What followed was a language that the Doctor had never heard before, overflowing from Lavender's mouth.

Those languages had repetitive and monotonous syllables, and although the Doctor understood that language was neutral, merely a tool for interpreting the world and conveying thoughts—he still sensed a kind of evil in the pronunciation of those syllables.

Disorderly, hasty, monotonous, and with a strange rhythm.

He didn't even know how such a weirdo who claimed to have lost his memory could extract so many languages from an empty brain that seemed to come from nowhere.

Then, everything suddenly became quiet again.

"I remembered."

The branches that were wrapped around the doctor's arm were full of thorns, cold and icy, just like her tone.

Her body stopped trembling, and Qunsheng's eyes stopped moving.

Everything felt like it had returned to the time when I first met her.

It's like a boymeetsgrl.

But this is Rhodes Island.

There are no lovers here, only the distant Altair.

"What...did you remember?"

Enduring the cold, stinging pain in his arm, the doctor gazed at the lavender and asked her a question.

"I remember her name."

Lavender's eyes were vacant, and her voice sounded like the electrocardiogram of a deceased person.