I can rewind time to prevent death

Chapter 161 Tricky Silk Side Quest (Seven) (3/3, please subscribe, ask for monthly ticket, request recommendations)

Yan Junze saw a layer of black slowly covering his right index finger, the tip already showing signs of darkening.

"What the fuck, what's this all about?"

At that moment, Yan Junze was completely baffled.

It seemed he was still being affected by that strange blackness, even though he had not entered the Underground Space at all.

His mind was a tangled mess as he looked down at his fingertip that was gradually darkening, a bizarre idea suddenly occurring to him that he himself could hardly believe.

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"Could it be... that the infection I suffered from the Dark Poison during the last Rewind has been carried over to this timeline after the Rewind?"

Yan Junze knew that according to the function of the Spacetime Atlas, he was currently on just one timeline, regardless of whether it was before or after the Rewind.

Rewinding simply meant going back to a moment before on that same timeline; it didn't mean jumping to a different timeline, and as far as he could tell, there might not even be another timeline. Otherwise, the Spacetime Atlas would become chaotic and lose its purpose entirely.

But now, even though he had returned to an earlier point, the consequences of the encounters that had occurred later on this timeline seemed to have been carried back to the past.

Thinking about it, this was almost impossible.

Why was it like this?

Perhaps he had not noticed before and had already become infected upon entering the tunnel? That made some sense, because at the time, Yan Junze's attention had been entirely on the surrounding environment and the body of the man in the tunnel he had encountered, followed by being chased and falling into the Underground Space filled with numerous bodies.

Therefore, it was normal for him to have missed the changes in his fingers.

Although there were still doubts, Yan Junze could only choose to believe.

As for the conjecture of bringing the consequences of future encounters back to the past timeline, even he wouldn't believe it.

Now it seemed that even this tunnel should not be entered lightly.

Exactly at which point had the error occurred, leading to the infection by the Dark Poison? Now even Yan Junze himself was a bit confused.

After pondering for a while and glancing at his finger again, the blackness had already started spreading to his entire palm. Although he felt nothing, Yan Junze believed that like just now, once it spread to his arm, it would soon cause his muscles to start atrophying, and then the rest of his body would follow.

It was terrifying.

He could no longer enter this tunnel now.

Yan Junze chose to Rewind again, back to the moment when the Crawler Monster used its forked tongue to move away the second-to-last wooden box.

"Hold on, don't touch that last box yet," Yan Junze shouted to stop the Crawler Monster.

The Crawling Corpse shook its parted hair and looked at Yan Junze, not knowing why he had told it to stop.

But Yan Junze subconsciously glanced at his right index finger.

There was no problem, everything was intact.

But if he immediately removed the last box now, exposing the tunnel's entrance, the Crawler Monster was still highly likely to be quickly sucked in by the strange force, so he still couldn't let it stay here.

"Come back first."

After Yan Junze took it back into the Atlas, he went over to the entrance blocked by the boxes, crouched down, and first used a flashlight to carefully examine the revealed entrance. He saw no signs of blackness seeping and spreading through it.

Moreover, the box leaning against the mouth of the tunnel had no traces of black contamination either.

Could it be that infection only occurred upon entering the tunnel and not outside of it, unlike the second entrance, hence no Tricky Silk or blackness spreading out?

Yan Junze was deep in thought when he accidentally glanced down and was startled.

He discovered that his right index finger was turning black again, with a shadow of dark energy slowly creeping beyond his knuckle.

"It isn't safe here, either?"

Yan Junze stood up, his heart pounding fiercely at this moment.

The speculation he was reluctant to believe surfaced in his mind again.

Impossible. Within the timeline, only he could retain the memories of past experiences. This meant that things occurring after a point in time could not be transferred by his past self to his present self at this current time.

"Maybe it's still the tunnel's problem; I touched the tunnel entrance just now."

After some thought, Yan Junze performed a Rewind to the moment just after he had retracted the Crawler Monster.

Standing about seven or eight meters from the tunnel entrance, this time he did not approach it. He simply gazed at the tunnel mouth that was concealed behind the last crate.

From time to time, he looked down at his right index finger.

About two minutes later, the tip of his finger started to turn black.

Yan Junze's heart sank.

He lifted his head and observed the warehouse, cluttered with random items, cobwebs, and dust everywhere.

Had he been infected upon entering this warehouse?

The chances were slim. If that were the case, the warehouse would not be filled with so much clutter, and the seniors playing with spinning tops outside every day might have approached this iron door and come into contact with the warehouse.

If so, the affliction of the body turning black and withering would have been impossible to conceal and would have erupted by now.

"It can't have started from the moment I entered the storage room," Yan Junze rejected the thought.

This time he was in no hurry to Rewind; the speculation in his mind that he was reluctant to believe was very likely true.

If he had gotten infected before the last Rewind, bringing it forward to after the Rewind point, then it meant that the energy of the strangeness in this "Tricky Silk" mission was too terrifying.

He had only approached the hole entangled with Tricky Silk, touched the silk without even seeing the shadow of the strangeness, and now he was still getting infected even after the Rewind.

He recalled Huang Chen saying that the magnetic field of a strangeness was very strong, each possessing a unique field. Smaller fields were attracted to larger ones to some extent.

Moreover, after a larger field absorbed a smaller one, there was typically a period of rejection and assimilation, evident when Resentful Granny consumed the souls of her son and daughter-in-law.

If it were possible to bring a future outcome back to a point before the timeline, being influenced by the strangeness' magnetic field might make it feasible. But for that, the magnetic field of the strangeness would have to be unimaginably powerful.

Furthermore, Yan Junze believed that even the horrifying strangeness of the "Tricky Silk" mission might not have been aware of the extent to which its energy could impact others. After all, it couldn't Rewind.

"If it is as I suspect, I must have inadvertently come into contact with the Dark Poison and, for some reason, carried it back before the Rewind due to the influence of that guy's powerful strangeness magnetic field."

At this realization, Yan Junze shivered uncontrollably.

If this was truly the case, then he would have to be extremely careful when encountering higher-level missions or strangenesses in the future; otherwise, he wouldn't even know how he died when the time came.

And now, he was already facing this dilemma.

He had to find a way to remove the Dark Poison. Otherwise, no matter how many times he used Rewind, the Dark Poison on his finger had already become a part of him due to the influence of the strangeness' magnetic field.

Even at this moment, Yan Junze was beginning to suspect that although he had no intention of completing the main mission, the Dark Poison had already affected him. Could it be considered as if that horrifying strangeness had interfered with his journey?