Beating Instances through Words Left by the Dead-Chapter 382 - 212: The Goddess of Fortune Is Smiling

He Yun paused for a moment and said:

"Mercury asked me if I was uncertain and afraid to proceed with the next step. At that time, I was already filled with regret and self-doubt, and I told him I was indeed hesitating."

"Then Mercury presented an agreement, more precisely, a contract. He said he borrowed the ability from the god of commerce in mythology to add special clauses to the contract to deceive the Desire Stele and buy me time."

"The content of the contract was to authorize Mercury to develop and use Underground Shelter No. 88, with the reward being that Mercury would restore everything to its original state after the contract ended."

Wu Chang frowned, unable to immediately understand what He Yun meant.

"You mean the time loop in the Underground Shelter was due to the restoration clause in the contract?"

He Yun shook her head:

"Initially, I didn’t understand either. Mercury told me that it was equivalent to entrusting him with the content and rights of my wishes, allowing him to create a contract to substitute my wishes on the Desire Stele."

"If I was not satisfied with my wish, or if I had already thought of a proper breakthrough, I could terminate the contract at any time. Once the contract ended, the wish he made on my behalf would immediately become invalid. According to the contract’s special clauses, everything in Underground Shelter No. 88 would return to the state before I signed the contract."

"By then, I could continue unfinished matters under fully prepared circumstances."

"And the wish I made was for Underground Shelter No. 88 to return to the status before we started planning."

Mercury’s method was a bit convoluted, and it took Wu Chang a moment to understand Mercury’s operation.

In simple terms, He Yun did not write her wish on the Desire Stele herself but instead used a contract to have Mercury fill it in for her.

As long as the contract was in effect, the contents filled in by Mercury were equivalent to those filled in by He Yun with no difference.

The variable was that the contract between He Yun and Mercury could be terminated at any time.

Once the contract ended, the terms He Yun entrusted to Mercury would be directly nullified, the previous wish would be like graffiti, erased and not counted.

According to the scenario described by Mercury for He Yun, they could use this method to utilize the power of the Desire Stele to restore the Underground Shelter to before the plan failed.

If they restarted the plan and found a correct path, it would naturally be best.

If they failed, starting over with the same failure wouldn’t matter either, as He Yun could also prepare backup plans, using this additional time to prepare a feasible solution.

When she felt absolutely safe, she would terminate the contract, and according to the contract’s clause of restoring the original state, return to the moment she stood in front of the Desire Stele, hesitating.

If the plan succeeded, it would undoubtedly be a perfect free wish action.

But the crux of the problem was if Mercury’s contract could even deceive the Desire Stele, deceiving the already jittery He Yun wouldn’t be a big deal, right?

He Yun sighed, transformed into Xianglin’s wife, and said:

"I was really foolish, truly. At the time, under Mercury’s bewitching, I actually ignored the few revised descriptions he made."

"Before making the wish, the Desire Mother Goddess was already close to breaking loose. He said he was worried that the god in the Stone Divine Hall might break free from the seal and interfere with the return to the past underground shelter through the Stele, so he added a revision clause to the wish."

"He also said he was worried that I wasn’t fully prepared, so he added an anti-misfire clause, stating that only when I was fully prepared and completely sober without any hypnosis or hallucination effects could the contract be terminated."

Wu Chang listened on the side, gritting his teeth, feeling that the contract was a series of traps, cursing the group for having such dirty minds with contracts.

He Yun looked at Wu Chang helplessly, "There were many terms in the contract at that time, and I didn’t have time to review it carefully. Moreover, due to our circumstances, the Desire Mother Goddess was about to break free from the seal. The murmuring in my mind kept affecting me, making it impossible to concentrate."

"My thoughts were completely led by Mercury, and by the time I realized, I had already signed the contract in a daze. It was only with your help that I recalled the existence of that contract."

Wu Chang held He Yun’s hand tightly, conveying to He Yun with his eyes that it wasn’t her fault.

Clearly, He Yun was too young and fell for Mercury’s malicious trap.

From the beginning, Mercury’s goal was to get Underground Shelter No. 88 stuck in the limbo, so the contract he prepared was actually a prison.

The so-called revision clause was the culprit that caused the Underground Shelter to fall into a time loop. Only a stable plane status and an unbreakable time loop could better serve as the Pillar of the Present World, to be applied by larger organizations.

He Yun’s memory loss of the past and her confused state came from the anti-misfire clause.

Mercury used unknown hidden clauses, utilizing He Yun’s initial reluctance to face reality and desire to escape, to opportunistically seal her memory.

Through this period of contact with He Yun, Wu Chang could guess that the inner demons in He Yun’s heart should be divided into three parts.

Her former follower, He Yi, and herself.

Contact with the Calamity Fog and the manifestation of the zombie mecha represented her guilt over the followers’ deaths.

The forgetfulness of the Energy Mine and Upgrade Plan came from her guilt towards He Yi, who initially did not approve of deeply utilizing the Stone Temple’s power but supported pushing it forward due to his belief in He Yun.