Abyssal Wanderer.

With a determined heart, Jiang Zhou pulled the trigger.

As the muzzle flash seared his palate, the bullet pierced his brain with pinpoint accuracy.

The skull, reinforced after the upgrade to Depth 3, now actually enhances the bullet's destructive power—his head has become a solid, enclosed space, and the bullet can only release its kinetic energy by constantly bouncing and spinning.

And just like that, the constantly bouncing bullet completely shattered his brain, which was almost repaired.

The guards outside reacted swiftly, bursting through the door almost the instant the gunshot rang out—they had the key, but in an emergency, rushing in was faster.

Even so, they were still a step too slow.

Jiang Zhou was slumped in his seat, a Glock pistol that was like a toy to him in his mouth, his face covered in charred blood, and faint smoke drifting from his mouth and nostrils.

This P7-level employee of Pluto Deep Dive Company, the temporary head of the executive department of New Prison Abyss Studio, and the holder of the "Glock Guardian of Human Intelligence Medal" personally awarded by the Jupiter Group, died here inexplicably.

Upon seeing this scene, the two Depth 3 guards exchanged bewildered glances, their hearts sinking.

Ruined……

They read similar emotions in each other's faces.

Bring Theseus back to headquarters Tartarus—this was an order personally given by that director, and with His perception, He probably already... the moment the gun went off.

As they expected, in the next instant, another consciousness simultaneously took over their bodies and souls.

"waste……"

Minos said this as he looked at the body that had died by suicide.

It's unclear whether He was evaluating Jiang Zhou or these two subordinates He himself had sent.

The two men trembled as Minos manipulated their bodies to examine the corpse of "Theseus," not daring to breathe loudly or have a single distracting thought—for fear of interfering with the director's examination.

"He's really dead?"

After inspecting the area with a skeptical attitude, Minos couldn't help but ask this question.

Could it be that he had already uploaded his consciousness to the Dark Web, and was willing to abandon this body in order not to expose his secrets?
Thinking this way, His consciousness left the two bodies, carrying the data He had previously collected.

Before leaving, He did not order the two guards to commit suicide, but instead entered the consciousness of the aircraft's safety officer, instructing him to pilot the aircraft directly to the ground and destroy all evidence.

Even if she does that, Christie will definitely cause a scene afterwards...

Minos felt a headache coming on at the thought of this.

Especially now that she's been hired as the CEO of Theseus Freight, if she really causes a ruckus, the entire Pluto Deep Dive will have to think twice about the potential losses.

To be honest, He hadn't originally intended to do anything to this kid. He just wanted to take him back to Tartarus, lock him up, and give him a thorough check-up—he was just an employee He had temporarily transferred there, so what He did was completely legal, compliant, and reasonable.

I never expected this guy to be so ruthless; he just died right in front of Him.

So... what exactly is this kid thinking?

Minos couldn't understand it, but he was deeply shocked.

But for Jiang Zhou, none of these things that happened after his death ever happened.

Time reversed and went back 24 hours.

That was exactly when Christie knocked on his door.

…………

"Dong dong dong."

Who is it?

"These are all old jokes from so long ago."

As Christie said this, she pushed open the door and walked in—well, what came in was the humanoid interactive interface that looked like it could go on stage and hold a concert. As for the twenty-meter-long mechanical dragon itself, it was currently being maintained and waxed in the hangar.

Christie was carrying a black box with a cobalt blue lightning symbol on it. As soon as she entered, she saw Jiang Zhou staring at her with wide, bloodshot eyes.

She tilted her head towards Jiang Zhou and said:
"Don't look at me like that... This is my room. I was just knocking to politely let you in. Let me tell you, back when I was in the band, I'd run into hot-blooded young couples several times on my way back to the dorm without knocking..."

Jiang Zhou felt a sudden headache.

Half of it was because he had recently (or perhaps soon?) shot himself in the head, and the phantom pain was still lingering; the other half was because this woman was speaking so casually, and he didn't know how to respond to her overly bold remarks.

"No, no, no, I'm very grateful that you vacated your room for me. And what I just did was because I had a nightmare and was a little stressed..."

As Jiang Zhou spoke, he raised his hand to cover his eyes.

At this moment, although the field of vision was completely dark, the pop-up window of the Janus program still started the timer.

[Current steady-state regression time: 9 minutes and 17 seconds]

This is the ability he gained after connecting to the adjuster of the Sibyl Path at Depth 7—Death Rewind.

A week has passed since the crisis at the Nord settlement. During this week, he and Christie stayed at the Nord settlement to cooperate with the investigation, as they needed to deal with inquiries from the Human Ethics Oversight Committee.

They were only allowed to leave after the preliminary reports were filed, and together they flew away from Nord aboard the "Ghost" antigravity space transport aircraft provided by Pluto Deep-Sea.

During his time in the Nord resettlement area, Jiang Zhou devoted almost all his energy, apart from dealing with interrogations from various parties, to studying the mechanism of this "death rewind" ability.

Of course, if we have to be honest, there are some elements of coercion involved in these "studies".

Those who came to inquire about them, although nominally members of the Human Intelligence Ethics Oversight Committee, actually had backgrounds with Olympus Corporation—especially the Jupiter Group.

They were extremely interested in the terrifying entity that nearly crippled Neptune Transport, the sudden occurrence of the Styx tides, and the reason why Christie inexplicably became the CEO of Theseus Freight.

Fortunately, Jim Ritter had decided to retire completely, so he took all the blame.

He first openly admitted that he had established contact with a being from the Abyss, which not only completely solved the problem of the Second Will, but also saved the entire Nord settlement from the hands of the Sea God.

As for Theseus Freight, it was with the approval of that being that the shares of the Goddess of the Moon were transferred to him. And to ensure the future safety of the Nord resettlement area, he chose to cooperate with Christie, inviting this independent studio leader, who played a crucial role in resolving the entire Category II crisis, to serve as CEO.

It's worth mentioning that Pluto Deep Dive's publicity department immediately jumped out at this point, emphasizing that New Prison Studio actually had close ties with them, and that they even provided support for Christie's entire operation.

In response, Christie directly released their "severance statement" to the Jupiter Group, and Dionysian leader Theta also mobilized her media power to assist.

In the end, Pluto Deep Dive could only salvage some of their reputation by leveraging Jiang Zhou's employee status, proving that they had made a contribution—after all, from an employment perspective, Jiang Zhou was originally seconded to the Prison Abyss Studio.

In short, all the attention of the Committee and the Olympian Order was drawn to Jim Ritter, and Jim, facing the questioning of the investigators… well, trying to find out the truth by questioning a Depth 7 Orpheus Pathfinder, was quite a heavyweight even among the many jokes circulating about the Committee. Jim had now completely dispersed his Nyx Factor, becoming one with the entire Nord Resettlement Area, and after stating his identity and demands, he had fallen into complete silence—unless a large-scale cyberwarfare was launched, or some Olympian Order board members personally intervened, no one could extract anything from him.

However, for one reason or another, no Olympus company has yet been seen to have similar plans.

There wasn't even a test.

Incidentally, the current chairman of Neptune Transportation remains unconscious.

Perhaps unable to obtain information from Jim Ritter, after he fell completely silent, the committee began to try to find a breakthrough by talking to Christie and Jiang Zhou, who were among the first to experience the events.

Jiang Zhou, in particular, became a key focus of the committee's attention because he illegally advanced to Depth 3 of the Theseus Path during the war, even with the guarantees from Christie and the emcee afterward.

Various probing methods and detection equipment were used in an attempt to extract valuable intelligence from him.

Although Jiang Zhou felt he was fully prepared—the ice wall was protected by the mark left by Lady Hecate, the interrogation was slightly distorted by Jim Ritter, and there were even zombies within the committee providing intelligence as inside agents.

Even so, he still managed to expose himself twice.

On one occasion, a director specializing in hacking personally took action. He deciphered the mark left by Hecate and found the path to the City of Sages inside Jiang Zhou's ice wall. Compared to the access route that caused the chairman of Neptune Transportation to crash, Jiang Zhou instantly exposed the fact that he was also connected with that terrifying existence.

On another occasion, the event was even more significant. A director of the Theseus Path secretly dispatched his high-ranking puppet to the Nord resettlement area. The puppet first used a sneak attack to anesthetize Jiang Zhou, and then scanned his brain model and uploaded it back to the director's mental database.

The director planned to investigate the information in Jiang Zhou's mind by absorbing Jiang Zhou's mental model.

Well, this idea is somewhat similar to the Dionysus game from back then...

Therefore, the fate of this director is somewhat similar to that of the Dionysus Bureau.

That night, the world's headlines were all about the loss of contact with Olympus Space City and the disappearance of all network nodes within the World Wide Web that symbolized the Jupiter Group.

Then, a massive thunderbolt completely evaporated the Nord resettlement area.

The long-awaited thunderstorm for Neptune Traffic has finally arrived.

Jiang Zhou, who was blasted into basic atoms along with the Nord resettlement area, also used this death to naturally rewind to twenty-four hours earlier.

Incidentally, when Jiang Zhou was exposed because of the City of Sages, he chose to commit suicide to rewind time.

It was through these two backtracking sessions that Jiang Zhou summarized the "death backtracking" mechanism he had obtained after connecting with Sibyl.

First, the definition of death seems to be brain death, but this determination is somewhat broad.

When Jiang Zhou first attempted suicide by shooting himself, he underestimated the defensive capabilities of his head. He aimed the Gauss pistol at his temple and fired. The wound was not fatal, and with Christie nearby, Jiang Zhou believed he could likely be saved.

But after he completely lost consciousness, the regression was immediately activated.

In some ways, this is good news.

If the trigger for rewind is complete loss of consciousness, rather than complete brain death, then one might not have to worry about being "dead" due to being kept alive while unconscious.

However, at least for now, Jiang Zhou cannot be completely certain of this.

Then, each time he rewinds, he has a ten-minute recharge period—meaning he absolutely cannot die within ten minutes after the rewind is complete.

This is determined by the countdown of the "current steady-state return time," and he doesn't know why.

But since that's what the instructions say, he doesn't intend to try and see what would happen if he violated them.

In this respect, he is very receptive to advice.

Then there's the longest backtracking time, which is called "reserved continuous steady-state time" in the backtracking program. The upper limit is 24 hours, while the shortest is about 10 minutes—that is, the charging time.

He can go back up to 24 hours ago at most, and at least 10 minutes ago.

Furthermore, each backtracking consumes all the reserve time at once, and the specific time point for backtracking cannot be selected manually.

In other words, usually after his death, he would be regressed to the day before.

Of course, if he is in a dangerous environment, the time he can go back to may become less and less.

Come to think of it, including the time I was assassinated by the Super Zombie, this would be my fourth time going back in time...

Jiang Zhou recalled the feeling of the bullet bouncing inside his skull.

"Did you have a nightmare?"

Christie stepped forward and slammed the box with the cobalt blue lightning symbol onto the table.

She looked at Jiang Zhou with great interest and said:
"Having just completed adjustments and renovations, an unstable mental state makes one prone to nightmares... Tell me, what kind of nightmares are they?"

"I dreamt of thunder."

Jiang Zhou casually lied.

Christie smirked at his words, then glanced down at the thunder symbol on the box.

"What a coincidence! The 'Glock Guardian of Humanity Medal' awarded to you by the Jupiter Group just arrived... Actually, there was supposed to be an award ceremony, but I canceled it for you since you said you didn't want to go."

"Thank you, thank you..."

Jiang Zhou expressed his heartfelt gratitude.

No need to guess, the so-called awards ceremony is 100% a trap, who knows what tricks they have up their sleeves.

"Speaking of which, aren't you curious about what this medal looks like?"

At this moment, Christie said mysteriously.

"Um……"

Jiang Zhou could only respond with silence.

It must be said that twenty-four hours earlier, when he first saw the box, he was indeed very curious about what the medal looked like.

But for him at that moment, hearing this question could only be described as a strange feeling.

It wasn't entirely because of the previous flashback that he already knew what the medal looked like.

The more crucial reason is that, just now, he used this "medal" to commit suicide. (End of Chapter)