An 80s female translator was spoiled rotten by a rough and jealous man.

Chapter 329 Is "He" Him?

When Meng's parents learned that their daughter had decided to take a civilian job in a remote border town, they were vehemently opposed and extremely unhappy about it.

According to their original plan, after their daughter graduated from university, they would either send her abroad for further studies, or let her work in the family company to gain experience and learn how to do business; if she didn't have any great ambitions, she could take the civil service exam, at least for a respectable and stable life.

To be honest, a civilian job in the military isn't so bad. If it were in a different city, like their hometown of Hangzhou, or Beijing where she went to university, Meng's parents would be more accepting. It's not that they dislike the benefits of smaller cities—after all, the Meng family isn't short of that salary—but rather that they feel those places are too far from home. They only have one precious daughter; what family would be happy for her to choose a place so far away from home? Moreover, the couple subconsciously have an overemphasis on the dangers of border cities.

The two men took turns calling their daughter to earnestly persuade her, almost wearing their lips out, but ultimately failed.

Sigh, the couple knew their daughter's personality all too well; she was stubborn and headstrong. From a young age, she had always been very opinionated, never easily changing her mind once she made a decision, and wouldn't turn back even after hitting a wall.

Enraged, Meng's mother turned her anger on her husband: "It's all your fault for spoiling our daughter! You just let her have her way, and now no one's opinion matters to her!"

Meng Youyou's stubbornness began to show when she was four or five years old, more like an innate recklessness. The community beach playground on weekends is a paradise for children. Some children love to run around and have fun, while others like to dig holes with a small plastic shovel. As for little Meng Youyou, she loves to build Disney princess castles.

However, one day, just as Meng Youyou was about to complete her princess castle, a little boy suddenly stepped on it and collapsed it. Meng Youyou looked up and met the boy's eyes, which were clearly filled with mischief.

It was the neighbor's little boy, two years older than her. But Meng Youyou wasn't intimidated at all; she pounced on him in a flash, grabbing his hair with her little hands. The two immediately started wrestling in the sand, scratching each other's faces and arms, their faces covered in sand and sweat.

The little boy was tall with long arms and legs and was very strong. When they fought, Meng Youyou was no match for him. In no time, her fair skin was covered with scratches and cuts.

But she wouldn't let go; instead, she gripped it even tighter, crying out again and again, "You owe me the castle! You owe me an apology!"

Finally, it was the adults who saw it and, with great effort, managed to pry the "little wildcat" off the little boy.

At that time, Meng Youyou's grandparents, maternal grandparents, uncles, aunts, and every adult stood in unison, advising the couple to be stricter with her, otherwise it would not be a good thing to raise a headstrong person, and she would suffer in the end when she grew up.

But Meng's father was a true doting father to his daughter and was completely unmoved by this. He would make excuses and agree in front of others, but at home he would completely forget about it and instead build a small beach in his backyard so that she could build sandcastles to play on.

At sixteen, Meng Youyou developed knee problems due to long-term dance training. After surgery, doctors said the chances of her recovering to a level where she could dance professionally within two years were slim. Her dance teacher and homeroom teacher both advised her to give up on pursuing dance as an art student and switch to academic studies as soon as possible, focusing all her time and energy on her academic subjects. Otherwise, she risked failing in both areas. At the time, almost everyone around her, including her mother, was inclined to let Meng Youyou give up dancing.

Only Meng's father gently knocked on Meng Youyou's door, sat down and said to her, "Baby, just do what you think is right. Dad has a way to cover for you. If it really doesn't work, come back when you hit a wall."

So, to be honest, besides her innate nature, her father is also largely responsible for Meng Youyou's consistently stubborn and self-centered personality.

Faced with his wife's reproach, Meng's father could only chuckle awkwardly, patting her back gently as he comforted her, "Our daughter is grown up and has her own ideas. Let her wander around outside for a couple of years. Once she's experienced hardship and can't take it anymore, she'll naturally come back."

Now that things have come to this, and seeing that it's impossible to change his daughter's mind any longer, Mr. Meng kept his promise and bought a fully furnished two-bedroom apartment in downtown Panzhou. She could move in right away, and he even provided her with a car.

...

In the evening, Meng Youyou dragged her tired body back to her apartment, took a bath, wrapped herself in a soft bathrobe, and slumped onto the sofa, applying a face mask while browsing Weibo.

She drifted off into her own thoughts as she scrolled through her phone, her mind no longer on it. How could the man she'd met during the day not have stirred something within her—he didn't know her, so who was he?
Do people who look alike even share the same habits? Just like him, when that person avoided her direct gaze, the corners of his lips would unconsciously purse slightly, but in an instant, they would quietly relax, as if it were just a meaningless instinctive action.

In response, Meng Youyou's innate decisive judgment seemed to be blocked, rendering it completely useless, and she was unable to reach a conclusion for a long time.

As she stood there, lost in thought, two faint blue halos suddenly flashed before her eyes. Meng Youyou subconsciously looked up at the balcony window—her apartment complex was near a large commercial district that frequently put on flashy light shows to attract customers. But right now, all she could see was darkness outside, with no brightly colored beams of light at all.

Meng Youyou frowned, wondering if she had been staring at the electronic screen for too long, causing eye strain and blurred vision. So she quickly turned off her phone, closed her eyes to rest, and started doing eye exercises to try and dispel the lingering effects.

However, the color of the halo in front of me grew darker and darker, and I couldn't shake it off no matter what I did... Just then, a faint electrical sound, as if from another world, reached my eardrums.

Upon hearing the sound, Meng Youyou was startled, but slowly, strangely, she calmed down.

Tiny pixels flickered continuously before her eyes, failing to form a clear shape over a long period of time. Meng Youyou displayed extraordinary patience, waiting for the illusory display screen in front of her to slowly load completely.

The border lines flickered between light and dark, and occasionally a few strands of blue "snowflakes" would fall out of nowhere, clearly indicating that the signal was not very good.

After another ten seconds or so, the screen finally stabilized, and then a line of text appeared—a font she couldn't quite define as familiar with—read: [Hello, this system's former host, Meng Youyou. I am Eric, the operations officer of the Munda System, primarily responsible for maintaining the system's normal operation and upgrades, including supervising the daily work quality of subordinate system administrators.]

It was actually familiar, but it had been far too long since Meng Youyou last saw it.

Meng Youyou asked expressionlessly, "Eric? What about the previous DouDou?" Only Meng Youyou herself knew how much effort she had to exert to restrain her hysterical impulse the moment the words left her mouth.

Eric: [System Butler DouDou, while in charge of the maintenance of Mission World No. 837, in order to boost individual performance, prematurely closed the communication channel between the system and the host, based solely on the progress bar reaching 99.99% displayed on the system's internal intelligent monitoring panel, even as the relationship between the host and the protected object was gradually progressing smoothly. He then improperly submitted a report to the system central authority indicating "success," constituting serious dereliction of duty and abuse of authority. He has now received the highest level of punishment from the system and has been permanently stripped of his system butler duties.]

Meng Youyou's eyes were icy cold, and her voice was filled with extreme chill: "What do you mean? Is a simple 'operational error' enough?"

"So, am I just a heartless tool? You've played me for a fool from beginning to end! You don't even ask me where you want to send me! You send me back whenever you want! It's all up to your whims!"

"It was all just to complete your damn mission." She sneered, her laughter sharp and sarcastic. "Ha! What exactly happened? Why am I, as one of the parties involved, completely unaware of anything?"

Meng Youyou finally lost control of her emotions. She loudly accused the lifeless and emotionless virtual character in front of her: "Do you know? For a long time, I doubted myself every day, wondering if I had a split personality? Doubting whether the person I love is a real person?"

He's like a madman.

"Why are you treating me like this?" Her voice suddenly became weak, only a faint sob remained. Seeing this, Eric quickly switched to a gentler tone, but the mechanical voice could not possibly carry any warmth to soothe the heart: "[Please don't get agitated! It's not what you think! On behalf of the Monda System, I would like to express my sincerest apologies for what happened to you, but this incident was indeed not something we could completely control. There were many uncontrollable factors involved."]

Please calm down and allow me to explain slowly.

Eric's output began scrolling rapidly: "[It was precisely because of the butler DouDou's aforementioned violation that the system's central control consistently classified the 837th mission world submitted by "ta" as a successfully completed mission world. This is why the system failed to detect the life-threatening crisis of the protected object in time, leading to such a catastrophe.]"

Of course, we had serious oversights in supervising our subordinate housekeepers and failed to intervene in a timely manner to correct their violations. This is my dereliction of duty, and I bear full responsibility for it. I apologize to you again!

Later, when your vital signs also disappeared in mission world number 837, the "causal anchor point" of the mission world was lost one after another (you and the object of protection), which directly caused the mission world to collapse and the resulting sudden destructive force backfired on the Monda system's central nervous system.

The system suffered severe damage, resulting in global command disorder, functional malfunctions, and significant failures of intervention modules. To prevent the adverse effects from spreading further, we had no choice but to activate an emergency "stripping strategy," forcibly severing the system's links to the mission world and several other heavily damaged mission worlds in the vicinity.

The reason for the delay in contacting you is that our system subsequently entered a prolonged semi-paralyzed state, consuming a significant amount of computing power and energy for self-repair before barely managing to bring its operation back on track. During this period of intense self-repair, we completely lost our ability to intervene in the world of Mission 837, ultimately leading to the catastrophic second collapse.

Meng Youyou listened without much reaction: "..."

Eric continued: "The mission world of No. 837 experienced two collapses. When the first collapse occurred, the mission world's built-in implicit self-defense code was automatically triggered, activating the 'stress regression mechanism'."

Therefore, under the mechanism's effect, the timeline of Mission 837 was rewound to the point in time before the host's transmigration, and you, as the host who failed to complete the guardian mission, were automatically sent back to the original timeline by the mechanism.

However, this "self-defense reversal" failed to effectively reverse the critical outcome of "the protected object's death," and the protection mission ended in failure once again, causing the mission world to suffer a second, and devastating, collapse.

Eric: [It needs to be clarified to you that the two collapses did not erase the objective existence of macroscopic time and space. The masses, social order, historical trends and even natural laws that are unrelated to or have very little connection with the "goal mission and main line" still operate according to their original trajectory.]

The collapse destroyed only the essential foundations necessary for carrying out the mission within that narrow worldview—after the second collapse, the link conditions for system intervention to protect the mission were completely lost, and it could no longer be repaired.

Therefore, we can only respect its established task loop and existing architecture, permanently abandon the task coordinates, and refrain from making any further interventions or changes.

Eric: [Similarly, the spacetime you are currently in is marked as mission world number 838 within this system.]

Given that World 838 is adjacent to World 837 and is subject to more severe damage, we have decided to abandon both of them after a multi-dimensional assessment by the system's central authority.

This dialogue is a temporary communication channel established to repair some remaining links in World 838. Once the dialogue ends, this link will be permanently closed.

This is the complete truth about what you've experienced in the past.

Meng Youyou finally looked up, her gaze fixed on the screen, her nails digging into the sofa fabric: "Then what about him? Was the person I met at the hospital today really him?"

Eric: [That's what I'm going to talk to you about next.]

Because the impact of the second collapse was isolated within several adjacent mission worlds by the system, the energy that could not be released continued to accumulate, eventually causing the "anchor point displacement" phenomenon, which is extremely rare in the history of Monda system operation and maintenance.

Just like when we initially choose a target host, it's not a random choice without any basis. Two fixed prerequisites must be met: first, there must be a "strongly related anchor point" in the original spacetime of both parties; second, the anchor point carrier must be in a state without vital signs.

"Anchor point displacement" refers to a situation where a "strongly correlated anchor point" is displaced and drifts to other spacetime dimensions under a massive external impact. The resulting extremely chaotic independent field, formed due to system separation, directly breaks the conventional anchor point transfer rules, relaxing the carrier admission standard from the stringent "no vital signs" to "nearly no vital signs."

Eric: [We must frankly admit that this is the first case since the establishment of the Monda system where internal negligence has led to an even more tragic fate for the protected individuals, which is completely contrary to our mission of "protecting the lifelong happiness of the protected individuals".]

We deeply regret this. To make amends for this grave oversight and minimize the harm, the system's central authority unanimously resolved to utilize its precious life-energy reserves, channeling it into the "near-lifeless anchor point" (i.e., a vegetative state body with zero probability of awakening) to which Huo Qingshan currently resides, thus enabling his extraordinary trans-temporal existence.

After a long silence, Meng Youyou slowly asked, "Then why did he lose his memory? Not only does he have no physical memory, but he doesn't even recognize me?"

Eric's blue screen flickered a few times, the ghosting of the text became more pronounced, and the signal from the temporary communication channel weakened significantly: [This is the result of multiple factors.]

Eric: [First of all, regarding the memory loss of this vessel - the life source energy used by the system's central nervous system is essentially a "survival guarantee energy" with extremely high priority, rather than a "comprehensive repair energy".]

The primary task of this batch of source energy is to anchor his original consciousness and maintain basic physiological functions, ensuring that he can awaken from a state of "near absence of vital signs." As for the carrier's own memory loss, it is a functional impairment inherent to this body and is a non-priority requirement in the system's energy allocation logic. The Monda system has just recovered from severe damage and is already struggling with its source energy reserves, so it is naturally unable to address this issue.

Secondly, regarding the reason why he doesn't remember you or your past, it's because when the world of Mission 837 experienced a second collapse, the destructive energy of the closed field directly tore apart his consciousness anchor—the core link that maintains the integrity of consciousness and anchors related memories, which is far more fragile than the body.

When signs of shattering appear on the consciousness anchor, the emergency defense mechanism built into the mission world will automatically activate, much like an airbag deploying during a car collision or a defensive gate falling in the event of an emergency. It will immediately pack and seal all memories bound to the causal relationship of the mission into the "information black box" deep within the consciousness, entering a locked state. The purpose is to isolate the continuous erosion of the collapsing energy and prevent dissipation.

The precise time point for the memory sealing is the moment when the system officially marks him as "Guardian Object No. 837" and opens the causal link of the mission world.

His memories before the network was opened belonged to the original trajectory of macroscopic spacetime, not bound to the mission loop, and were therefore preserved; however, after the network was opened, all experiences related to the mission, including your bond, were deeply bound to the loop and would be passively sealed away as the mission world collapsed and the consciousness anchor tore apart, so he naturally wouldn't remember you or the past.

Meng Youyou sniffed, and when she spoke again, her voice was slightly hoarse but carried a stubborn hope: "Then... is there any way to unlock those memories he kept in the black box?"

The blue screen flickered frequently again, and the text formatting output by Eric began to show slight disorder: "There is currently no mature and executable repair solution. This 'anchor point misalignment' is the first of its kind in the history of this system's operation and maintenance. There are too many unknown variables in the persistence of this type of memory, and our understanding of the 'information black box' remains only at a very limited theoretical level."

However, theoretically speaking, it's not entirely impossible. The black box is only locked in an emergency, not completely destroyed. To break through this barrier, one could try to use a momentary peak emotion to impact it—such as extreme joy, intense anger, extreme panic, or a familiar stimulus that can awaken deep emotional resonance.

This kind of impact must be a short-term, high-concentration, explosive tremor, like using a powerful key to break the lock of a black box; gentler methods of awakening are essentially ineffective. Furthermore, the success rate and aftereffects, such as whether it will cause mental confusion, are unpredictable, as there are no precedents to follow; everything is merely theoretical speculation.