“What do you mean by ‘memories different from others’?”

“I mean my entire life.” Yan Zhichun said. “This isn’t a difference in one event or one detail… but incredibly chaotic differences over many years…”

“This…” After hearing this, Doctor Zhao lowered his head in thought for a while, then quickly frowned. “In the real world, I’ve indeed never heard of such a situation, but that doesn’t mean there’s no way to explain it.”

“This can be explained with medical knowledge…?”

“It’s not really medical knowledge anymore.” Doctor Zhao sighed. “Miss, whether you believe it or not, the memories in all of our minds right now are all false.”

“Ah…?” Yan Zhichun and Jiang Ruoxue both expressed confusion simultaneously. “All false?!”

“No, no, no…” Doctor Zhao smiled. “Perhaps I made it sound too frightening, but the actual situation is like this: it appears that our brains help us remember many things, like a library storing many of our memories, but the truth is that every brain makes errors when storing information. Some unimportant information, or information we didn’t observe, the brain will subconsciously ignore.”

“Errors…?” Yan Zhichun nodded. “Then how large is the scope of these errors?”

“Just some very minor details.” Doctor Zhao continued. “What’s interesting is that when we retrieve these memories again, the brain will ‘re-fabricate’ them according to context, logical sequence, and other factors, thus making the memories complete.”

“What…?” Yan Zhichun was slightly stunned. “You’re saying the brain has the ability to ‘self-repair’ incomplete memories…?”

“Right, ‘self-repair,’ that’s a good term.” Doctor Zhao smiled. “Actually, the so-called ‘Mandela Effect’ is precisely the human brain constantly rewriting past memories based on existing information and events from recent years, causing many people to think their memories are confused. But in fact, the vast majority of people in this world have incorrect memories—it’s just that the degree of error differs.”

“This is too abstract…” Yan Zhichun said. “You mean that everyone has no way to trust their own memories… how is this different from being crazy?”

“No, no, no…” Doctor Zhao quickly shook his head after hearing this. “Miss, you’ve got it backwards. It’s precisely because our brains can repair memories that we remain sane.”

“How so…?”

“Hmm… let me give you an example.” Doctor Zhao looked at the cans beside him and said, “I clearly remember taking the cans from a shelf just now, but that shelf has five levels in total. I only remember the cans were in the middle position, but I forgot whether it was the second, third, or fourth level. Does this help you understand?”

“Yes.” Doctor Zhao smiled. “My brain might, a very long time from now, when I recall this event, tell me that this can was placed on the third level of the shelf. But whether the can was actually placed on the third level isn’t important—it’s just to make this memory complete. This is the ‘rationality’ our brain grants us.”

“I still don’t quite understand…” Yan Zhichun slowly frowned. “If my brain didn’t repair the information about which level of the shelf, what consequences would occur?”

“Of course there would be.” Doctor Zhao answered. “Let’s compare it to a computer. If our brain is a precise computer and lost the positional information of the shelf, every time the brain recalls this event, it would only tell you ‘you took the can from the void,’ because you didn’t remember the detailed position, and your brain didn’t either. If it cannot fabricate a reasonable explanation, it can only tell you it was ‘the void’ or ‘unknown,’ sounding like a computer game with a bug. If you repeatedly retrieved such incomplete memories, that’s when you would feel like you’ve gone crazy.”

Doctor Zhao’s example was very straightforward, allowing Yan Zhichun to understand the principle of ‘memory repair’ while even understanding some things that had happened to her.

“I think I understand…” Yan Zhichun said. “Because my memories have massive gaps, in order to keep me from going insane, my brain forcibly stitched these memories together. Although it looks very chaotic, at least it made them reasonable… otherwise I would only recall myself constantly shuttling through the ‘void’…”

She slowly narrowed her eyes, because in her memory, Qinglong seemed to have said something similar, but no one would have thought that a madman like Qinglong would casually speak the truth.

“That’s probably the only way to explain it, right…?” Doctor Zhao said. “Although I don’t know exactly what happened to you, ‘memory confusion’ is completely possible, especially with some details…”

“It’s no longer a matter of ‘details.'” Yan Zhichun interrupted. “Doctor Zhao, what’s the most extreme repair you’ve heard of?”

“I have seen people directly forget the existence of family members.” Doctor Zhao said. “What kind of memories the brain can repair depends entirely on the person’s needs. Some post-traumatic stress can also cause the brain to directly ‘repair away’ painful memories. The principle is the same. Each of our brains is ‘alive’—it will repair according to different circumstances or the person’s different states.”

Only now did Yan Zhichun feel that this doctor’s abilities were indeed excellent. It was just a pity she had underestimated him at first.

“I see…” Yan Zhichun nodded after hearing this. “Thank you… Doctor Zhao.”

Now she felt like she had connected all those chaotic memories together, including that time when she discovered her own corpse in Baiyang’s office…

At that time, Baiyang said something that made her concerned again:

“How are you already here now…?”

Logically speaking, due to certain reasons at that time, she had been “replicated” earlier, which caused her to see her own corpse and exceeded Baiyang’s expectations, which was why he said that.

Not only was that statement strange, but Baiyang’s repeated statements of “there’s nothing here, you saw wrong” were also suspicious. There was clearly a corpse there, so why would Baiyang tell such an absurd lie?

He was Baiyang, after all.

Thinking carefully, this must also have been a kind of suggestion he wanted to convey to her brain.

Unfortunately, this suggestion didn’t take effect, because seeing her own corpse was truly too memorable.

Even if she didn’t remember anything else in that room, she would remember her own corpse lying there, so her brain did not repair this scene.

“If I could repair it normally, I would connect the memories together…” Yan Zhichun murmured to herself. “If I couldn’t repair them… I would feel like I had a ‘momentary lapse’… it must be like this…”

Little did they know that while several people were chatting, Chu Tianqiu was leaning against the door outside, listening to the conversation inside with a thoughtful expression.