As he spoke, he patted his large belly, a look of regret on his face.
"It was only later that I gradually discovered that what I needed to eat was not food...but memories!"
Chen Xiao heard this, and made a "So that's how it is" expression.
When he heard that the old man needed to eat "memories," such a strange thing, he didn't seem very surprised. Perhaps it was because he had already known the answer, only to have forgotten it again.
It turned out it wasn't that he had to clear his memories after seeing or doing something, but that he was being taken out daily as someone's dinner.
Thinking of this, he couldn't help but complain: "Speaking of which, what kind of weird creatures has this crappy organization captured? There's the telekinetic little girl and the memory-eating old man. Are these settings even allowed to be so arbitrary?"
Complaints aside, Chen Xiao still needed to ask another critical question.
"So..."
"No way!" He had barely uttered a syllable when the old man flatly refused.
"Hmm... It seems I really have asked many times!" Chen Xiao thought.
Sure enough, the old man began to explain, "Every time I eat a memory, it gets detected, and who knows what kind of machine starts shouting "D-class anomaly, D-class anomaly!" So, you absolutely cannot fool it! Also, I can't make that machine react without touching your memory. And personally, I find your memory rather tasty!"
"D-class anomaly... Those words had been uttered during Meiko's time. It seems this organization has a machine that can track strange things!" Chen Xiao thought.
At the same time, he was silently complaining in his heart: "Damn! So, memories can have a taste..."
He made an expression that said, "Fine, fine, you're awesome, you win!" He really wanted to have a good chat with this old man about what flavors memories could have, but now was not the time.
"...meaning, I have to have my memories eaten by you every time I'm here, right? Can't you just not eat them all and leave some for me?" Chen Xiao asked.
"I can't control it, either I don't eat at all or I eat everything!" the old man explained with a helpless look.
Chen Xiao raised an eyebrow, obviously meaning, "Old guy, playing tricks, huh? Trying to fool me, right?"
The old man, seeing this, naturally understood what he meant, as he had done the same thing many times over.
"Ah, it's always troublesome when it comes to explaining this part!" the old man said with an impatient yet resigned expression.
"Memories have a sequence, so they must be eaten in order. I have to eat the recent ones before I can eat the older ones, and yours from about five days ago are quite chaotic; I can't access them.
Since I only eat but cannot read them, I don't know what happened then. Anyway, that memory is like a big rock, blocking all the memories before it!"
Chen Xiao thought back to the night Mr. Zou entered the orphanage, when his thoughts indeed became very chaotic, but now, trying to recall it, he somewhat couldn't remember clearly.
"Was I having a mental breakdown then?" Chen Xiao wondered, but soon, he stopped focusing on that thought, as if some force was preventing him from thinking too much about it.
"So, a normal person after arriving here is immediately eaten back to infancy, right? So, does that mean you can't get full from eating an infant's memory since they barely have memories? And I am more like a long-term meal ticket!"
The old man sipped some tea and nodded, "Yes, actually, you knew all this the second day you came here."
Chen Xiao frowned, thinking, "Turns out, I've been running in place all this while!"
So, the biggest problem now is, how can I get out of this room and keep my memories...
Chen Xiao thought for a while and came up with an answer.
There's no way!
Maybe I could negotiate with this old man to convince the guard not to bring me here tomorrow... but no, that's obviously telling others I'm up to something.
There must be some way.
Hmm...
Uh...
Chen Xiao pondered for a while.
"Dang it~there's really no way out!" he felt a sense of helplessness inside.
At that moment, the old man spoke, "Young man, that's about enough. You've been thinking hard every day, but... if you take too long, the guards will come in. They don't care about the mess; they're just here to do their job, so when they come, they will get physical."
While speaking, he pointed to Chen Xiao's arm, "Just the other days, you had to learn it the hard way and ended up getting beat up..."
Chen Xiao thought about the bruises on his arm, "So, it was me acting tough here that got me beat up, huh!"
Well, it seemed there really was no alternative at this point. Chen Xiao felt a wave of helplessness. Being in this room, he definitely couldn't retain his memories, so he would have to find another way with the time he had left.
Chen Xiao looked at the mark on his arm.
"Hmm... my memory is becoming habitual because I keep thinking about the same thing over and over. Does that mean my plan now is to stall for time? When I finally get used to it, can I immediately recall these thoughts every morning when I wake up? It's all unknown, and even if I can use this to avoid the trouble of losing my memory, escaping from this organization would be nearly as difficult as swimming out of a toilet! I guess I can only wait for an opportunity..."
While thinking, Chen Xiao sat across from the old man and scratched "D391" into his arm again with his fingernail.
Now, there was another issue, one that intrigued him the most at the moment.
He looked suspiciously at the man, his memory traces telling him that he would regret asking the question, but Chen Xiao asked anyway.
"Uh... speaking of which, how do you eat memory, sir?"
The old man, a bit embarrassed, scratched his cheek, "You ask me this question every day, and every time after I tell you, you regret it... Ah well, anyway, after I eat it, you'll forget it."
"So, how do you really eat it?" Chen Xiao had a very bad feeling.
The old man looked guilty, glanced at Chen Xiao, then quickly lowered his head and whispered a word.
"Suck~"
Chen Xiao's mouth twitched, "Huh??"
The old man slightly raised his voice.
"I suck it."
A profound look of vexation crossed Chen Xiao's face.
"How do you suck it?"
The old man, still a bit embarrassed, knew the inevitable was coming.
He stretched his neck towards Chen Xiao and then... opened his mouth.
And it kept getting wider, like a snake, his mouth stretching to his neck, big enough to swallow a… head!
Chen Xiao stared at the saliva sticking inside his mouth, his smoke-stained yellow teeth, and the wriggling tongue, even noticing some tea residue next to it.
At that moment, Chen Xiao finally understood where that panic he felt upon entering the room originated from.
"Hey hey... you're not really going to suck it, are you?"
As soon as he spoke, the large mouth snapped and engulfed Chen Xiao's entire head.
Then, like drinking soy milk with a straw, it began to "slurp" and "suck."
...