Infinite Terror: Infinite Reversal

Chapter 56 Rest and Analysis

"Now the situation is quite clear..." Mu Xiang adjusted his glasses. "We should have uncovered all the hidden storylines after the difficulty was changed, otherwise this ending wouldn't have been triggered. Now everyone should rest as much as possible, and then we can go find the Queen..."

“Not only that, we should also deal with the four newcomers—if they are still alive—by now, they must all be parasitized.” Chu Xuan said, “We can’t be sure whether the main god will include the aliens inside the human body in the count, but I think it will. If we don’t deal with them, even if we kill the alien queen and blow up the spaceship to escape, it may still be considered a mission failure.”

He reconnected some of the previously disconnected surveillance footage. "That's the downside of verbal descriptions... Who knows if the mission settlement will happen when we board the space shuttle and leave, or when all the aliens are blown up on the ship?"

Mu Xiang thought for a moment, then continued, "I think it's the former... Otherwise, if the entire spaceship explodes, even the Queen might be killed. At the very least, she'll eventually die in space. In that case, in a horror movie without time limits, why don't we just blow up the spaceship and leave? We can just wait for the Queen and the other aliens to die slowly. The Supreme God shouldn't be that stupid, and we won't be that easy either. So we should indeed deal with all the suspicious points and not leave any loopholes... If we miss any point and lose so much, although it won't mean the whole team will be wiped out—after all, we got a C-level reward for the whole team before, but we'll still get nothing."

"Elimination..." Chu Xuan's thoughts wandered off somewhere else.

Zhan Lan was at the other end of the control room, away from the others, helping Ripley walk. Chu Xuan and Mu Xiang said it was to alleviate the aftereffects of Ripley's short-term cryogenics and the shock from the alien, but it was clear they were just trying to get rid of the only character present. Zhan Lan, wearing a headset, listened to the discussion on the other end, occasionally whispering to Ripley.

At Mu Xiang's request, everyone drank another bottle of highly concentrated energy supplement. This couldn't be considered a waste, after all, they had each had a fierce battle before, and were about to fight the Queen, who was like a final boss... so it couldn't be blamed on him being overly cautious.

"Don't worry, drink it without worry. We can drink this like water when we get back... Besides, Zheng Zha is treating us." Mu Xiang reassured everyone. Zheng Zha, who had been inexplicably given the right to pay the bill again, looked completely innocent.

Zhang Jie chuckled and said, "Hey, you're right. You newbies don't really understand... If it were my previous team, they would have really been craving two bowls of porridge, drinking one and throwing the other away. It's good to have smart people around. Damn, what kind of miserable life did I have before?"

Ah, right, right, right...

Zheng Zha thought for a moment and then spoke up: "Although the gains were great, Li Xiaoyi is dead... Was this an oversight? So what exactly happened before? You two stop playing games."

Surprisingly, Zheng Zha still had a thirst for knowledge at this point... In the later parts of the original work and other works, Zheng Zha was practically devoid of intellect. A wise man is someone with an external brain, so why would he ask an external brain about various layout details...

Mu Xiang had been secretly searching through the footage of Li Xiaoyi's death, and he was currently watching Li Xiaoyi's battle against the two cat-like aliens. He was fairly certain that Li Xiaoyi had unlocked his genetic potential, and he even zoomed in to examine Li Xiaoyi's eyes... though he couldn't quite tell if they were "completely blank." This meant that three people had already unlocked their genetic potential in this battle.

Will the next one be another Ju-on movie? Will it be a team battle...?

Upon hearing Zheng Zha's question, Mu Xiang paused the previous recording and then looked at Chu Xuan: "Should you speak or should I?"

Chu Xuan glanced at him and said, "Go ahead and tell me. You know I'm not good at planning."

Is this someone already holding a grudge...?

Mu Xiang found it somewhat amusing, and the slight annoyance he felt while watching the video disappeared.

“Then let me explain…” Mu Xiang sighed, “It was indeed an oversight; we didn’t expect there to be four cat-like aliens.”

Based on the known clues, Ash and Ripley's side quests belong to two parts of the hidden storyline. Perhaps not all of them, but they tend to be. Killing the former and rescuing the latter is a cliché movie plot, but it's perfect for the Reincarnation Team's mission. The significance of controlling the control room is to find more clues and truly trigger these hidden storylines.

The plot in the control room wasn't something Ash could overhear. The Middle Continent team was far superior to Ash in both strength and intellect. Defeating Ash was far less difficult than rescuing Ripley, but the success or failure of the former would determine the fate of the latter.

If Ash isn't dealt with, they'll be in a passive position after rescuing Ripley. It's not like the Middle Continent team only needs to protect Ripley, but Ash has to consider many things before killing him, right? However, if they just crush Ash directly, it might mean Ash is gone before he can even use his trump cards. At that point, Ash's trump cards might be unknown, potentially ruining the mission to protect Ripley, or even the final battle with the Queen.

Therefore, Mu Xiang and Chu Xuan wanted Ash to believe he was at the table, giving him the opportunity to reveal his trump card. Judging from the surveillance footage before the alien outbreak, this trump card was likely the cat-like alien, also part of the hidden storyline… The Ash in this heavily modified horror film seemed to know far more about the aliens than the Ash in the movie, even suggesting he was researching them. The cat-like alien, parasitic and less intelligent than the other aliens, was most likely to be guided by Ash in some way and used as a trump card to kill Ripley.

Of course, this was just speculation before the actual operation... and in their haste, they didn't realize that the cat in the surveillance footage wasn't the same one. And in the surveillance footage after the alien outbreak, the cat disappeared, which is likely one of the difficulties the main god had created for the hidden side quest.

To allow Ash to reveal his trump card, Mu Xiang specifically included a reaction time in his battle plan. Given Ash's ability to remotely control the main control room, he likely knew Ripley's location as well. The control room's claim of not being able to speak was merely a pretext; their true purpose was to give Ash a false sense of strategic space. Mu Xiang's decision to have Zheng Zha's group depart later was precisely to give Ash an opportunity to release the cat-like aliens to ambush the weaker groups.

This was a calculated move by Mu Xiang and Chu Xuan: Ash hadn't released the cat-like alien earlier, presumably because he hadn't yet figured out the Central Continent Team's strength. But now that the Central Continent Team had made it clear they wanted to capture Ash while simultaneously rescuing Ripley, Ash couldn't afford to hold back his trump card any longer. If he didn't use it, and Ripley was rescued—Ash wouldn't know they had to fight the Queen, and would only assume they would run away with Ripley; but if Ash did use it, it would play right into Mu Xiang and Chu Xuan's hands, giving them the initiative.

In order to get Ash to release the cat alien, besides the aforementioned coercion, there was also the enticement of splitting forces to weaken themselves. When Mu Xiang heard Chu Xuan propose the plan to split forces, he knew that Chu Xuan and he were essentially conspiring. From the perspective of completing a horror film, the strategy of splitting forces was simply too clumsy and not something Chu Xuan could have suggested—unless Chu Xuan and he were on the same page. Only by luring the enemy out of their hiding place would splitting forces be a worthwhile strategy.

The results of the split-force attack were roughly in line with the initial plan. On the microscopic battlefield of the spaceship, the deployment was severely limited, but this also reduced instability. The only two oversights were the number of cat-like aliens, but this was irrelevant to strategy; and Ash's form. As a cyborg with extensive control over the spaceship, he chose a rather… rather novel combat method, but it was also defeated by the overwhelming force of Mu Xiang's group.

These are things that can be said to Zheng Zha and the others, but what follows is the dark part that is not suitable for Zheng Zha to hear, so Mu Xiang will omit it.

Mu Xiang and Chu Xuan communicated and reached a consensus on their plans to deal with Ash and rescue Ripley. However, Mu Xiang's scheme was not Chu Xuan's idea... His scheme began with concealing their search for the cat in the control room. Without mentioning this, Li Xiaoyi, with his intelligence and composure, wouldn't have imagined the cat-like alien—even if he had read fanfiction featuring cat-like aliens, his vigilance would have been greatly reduced after being guided by the battle plan of two wise men. Otherwise, such caution would have been Mu Xiang's, not Li Xiaoyi's.

Only by concealing the possibility of the cat-like alien's existence can the Ripley rescue operation, conducted simultaneously with the final battle against Ash, become a seemingly safe but actually more dangerous mission. Only in this way can Li Xiaoyi be persuaded to willingly walk into the trap.

If there had only been one cat-like alien, Ash would have definitely placed it in a weaker group, either to kill Ripley or to ambush Zheng Zha's group. However, unexpectedly, the presence of more cat-like aliens made Mu Xiang's plan easier to implement. Strictly speaking, the plan for Mu Xiang to kill Li Xiaoyi was actually executed by Ash.

After luring Ash into revealing his trump card, the rescue operation involving the cat-like aliens became another battlefield in the final showdown with Ash, even more dangerous than Mu Xiang's group. As for how dangerous it was, that was up to Ash to decide. The four on this other battlefield were Zheng Zha, who had unlocked his genetic potential; Zhan Lan, who possessed strong self-defense capabilities and was protected by Zheng Zha; and the guide, Zhang Jie… So, who would ultimately bear the danger of this mission?
The answer is Li Xiaoyi.

To better utilize her trump card, Ash switched the real-time monitoring feeds from directions 38 and 40, misleading the commander in the control room into directing Zheng Zha's group in the opposite direction. This is also why Chu Xuan reported the wrong direction. However, after reviewing the monitoring footage, Mu Xiang didn't believe Chu Xuan was unaware of this trick; rather, he thought Chu Xuan was playing along. Then, Ash remotely lowered the isolation wall on that side, dividing the battlefield.

Li Xiaoyi, as expected, escaped and fled into a separated space, where he happened to bump into another cat-like alien emerging from Cold Storage No. 38… Mu Xiang, after reviewing the surveillance footage, suspected that the cat-like alien had almost killed Ripley, but was instead drawn to Li Xiaoyi. Speaking of which, we must thank Li Xiaoyi; this contribution rivals even the contribution of his own death.

This can also be described as a trap set by taking advantage of the difficulty logic of the main god horror movie, where risks and rewards coexist, and Li Xiaoyi happens to be the most suitable person to take the risks.

So what was Chu Xuan doing while Ash was remotely controlling another battlefield? Besides commanding, Chu Xuan's mission in the control room included hacking into the ship's system, at least to confirm whether Ash had a backdoor to remotely input the ship's self-destruct command. However, Chu Xuan did even better than expected. Upon returning, Chu Xuan told Mu Xiang that he had cracked the ship's self-destruct authorization; even without Ripley, they could control the ship to self-destruct. In the meantime, he also dealt with a cat-like alien that had been lured into the control room… a true demonstration of his strength.

Chu Xuan saw through Mu Xiang's scheme almost instantly, but Mu Xiang didn't try to hide it from him... On the contrary, it would have been strange if Chu Xuan hadn't. Throughout the entire ordeal, Chu Xuan neither helped Mu Xiang carry out the scheme nor stopped him. Perhaps in his view, Mu Xiang's actions would lose the trust of his teammates... but that wasn't the case. Mu Xiang still kept his promise to his partners; the only one who might have objections was Zheng Zha. But competing with Chu Xuan for Zheng Zha's trust... that's really not difficult, is it?

This was Mu Xiang and Chu Xuan's plan for this horror movie. Their overt joint plan quickly resolved the hidden plot and unstable factors in the movie, while Mu Xiang's covert personal plan also successfully eliminated the unstable factors he saw... Although there were some twists and turns, it did not cause any loss to the team, so it can be considered a success.

After that, you can confidently face the Queen.

Yes, this chapter is an analysis, which I've already mentioned would be included. It's not counted in the narrative word count, so don't rush to accuse me of padding it out, haha.
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(End of this chapter)