Yes, Madam Prime Minister

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However, Ronan is still in this fake world, which means that although he safely completed a meal, it does not mean that he has finished the game.

Ronan wasn't surprised. The dining rules weren't difficult to begin with, and there was no special entity that would actively try to "contaminate" him, let alone someone like him who was wary from the start. So, Ronan never expected that he could simply finish his meal safely and pass the test.

The question is, how do I get through this? Do I go to the third floor for the special hot pot and then emerge unscathed? Or do I unravel the mystery of this cafeteria and restore normalcy?

"In any case, let's observe for a while before making a decision."

Ronan decided to refrain from taking any action and simply observe.

There was one thing Ronan was quite concerned about: the first and second floors were full of people who violated the rules, but these people who broke the rules, cutting in line and wasting things, did not cause any bad consequences.

For the next two days, Ronan continued to strictly adhere to the rules while carefully observing everyone eating in the cafeteria.

Violations remain the norm; those who do not violate the rules are rare.

But let alone any negative consequences, there wasn't a single abnormality to be seen.

Before we knew it, a new week had begun. On Tuesday, Director Wang's car broke down, and Ronan, who was going the same way after get off work, offered to drive him home.

When they arrived at the entrance of the residential area, the sky was still overcast and not completely dark yet. Director Wang did not get out of the car, but instead lit a cigarette.

Seeing a hint of surprise flash in Ronan's eyes, Director Wang took a deep breath and exhaled smoke rings. "Little Ronan, at my age, I'm stuck in a rut, with neither a high nor a low position. My wife and kids are like that, so you know how it is. The only time a person has to be free is a little while smoking in the car before going home."

"That's right, a wife who can't be satisfied and a son who can't be taught," Ronan remarked.

Pfft, cough cough cough, Director Wang choked on a puff of smoke, "Xiao Luo, what are you doing here making such a fuss about when you haven't even gotten married yet?"

"I just came up with a random idea," Ronan replied casually.

"Young man, you should look on the bright side," Director Wang advised.

In fact, most leaders are like this: when they are no longer your leader, they are all good people.

But when he is in charge, neither he nor you are human beings; you are part of what is called the system.

"Do you remember what you wrote that day?" Director Wang suddenly asked.

“I remember,” Ronan replied. In truth, he had long forgotten. For the Ronan of this world, it might have been three months ago, but for the real Ronan, it was a matter of two worlds, more than twenty years apart. Who would still remember such things?

"There are a few points that are still lacking. There are also a few points that I wrote when I was young, and I wrote them better than you. We need to stand at a new perspective and have a broader vision to carry out some reforms in order to better serve the people, right?" Director Wang said, half with emotion and half with doubt.

Ronan did not respond.

"But I'm just waiting for the hot pot on Wednesday," Director Wang said, exhaling a long puff of smoke, as if it were not smoke but his own breath.

The day after tomorrow feels like tomorrow, and also like today; only hot pot proves that tomorrow truly is tomorrow.

"See you tomorrow." With that, Director Wang got out of the car.

Ronan drove away.

What if he hadn't traveled through time? What if he had traveled through time but hadn't met Dinia? What if he had met Dinia but hadn't chosen to help her?

So, could he be the next Director Wang?

I don't know, since people can't be generalized, but sometimes, people really aren't that different.

The next day, Ronan decided to take the risk.

He followed Director Wang to the third floor to eat hot pot.

He had eaten the hot pot in the cafeteria before, but that was "three years later". The hot pot in front of him was just like the one in his memory: a stand with a solid alcohol in it and a small round pot on top. This was the standard hot pot in the Three Gorges area: beef brisket with pork intestines, plus side dishes such as potato slices, lotus root slices, and cabbage.

This pot of rice only costs 20 yuan in the canteen, enough for two men to eat with rice, but if you put it at a street stall, it would cost at least 78 yuan.

Director Wang ate with great relish. Was he eating a mini hot pot? No, he was a big shot in this small county town, why would he care about a mini hot pot in the canteen? He was eating his life, his youth that he could never return to.

For a director like him to bring Ronan to eat this is essentially the same as a man's desire to drag innocent women into his mess.

Ronan, however, didn't think about these questions. He was observing himself every second, trying to find any changes in himself, because he was certain that he had broken the rules. He had come to the non-existent third floor and eaten a non-existent hot pot.

However, it did not.

This is strange. If he is experiencing a supernatural tale based on rules, then by not following the rules, he should be considered to be "facing an evil god." How come nothing happened to him?

Unreasonable, so unreasonable.

After finishing their hot pot meal, Ronan and Director Wang went downstairs together. Just as they were about to leave the cafeteria, Ronan suddenly stopped, pointed to the sign, and asked Director Wang, "Director, why does it say here that there is no third floor and no hot pot?"

Director Wang paused for a moment, then looked at Ronan with a strange expression, as if he were looking at a lunatic.

"Don't work overtime these next few days, get some rest." After saying that, Director Wang patted Ronan on the shoulder and left.

It took Ronan a long time to realize what was happening.

It turned out that only he saw the sign, which seemed like a strange and bizarre rule, while everyone else saw the "normal" dining instructions.

He's the one who's gone mad, not the other way around.

He viewed nepotism, the abuse of power, and privileged status as abnormal.

When did he start going crazy?

“No, I’m not crazy, the world is crazy. No, that’s not right, the world isn’t crazy.” Ronan suddenly woke up. “At the signpost in the maze, I chose right. Yes, I’m right, but my brain is always left. My brain can’t decide my butt, and my butt can’t decide my brain.”

"This is the real me, Ronan."

"There is no maze; the maze is myself."

"If this is a world of strange and bizarre rules, then I am the juvenile evil god in this world."

"What matters is not the rules, but myself."

"In a world on the right, just go left. No, it doesn't really matter."

Ronan realized something—or rather, rediscovered his original indifference to everything around him.

And the original intention is the way out.

Chapter 501 Leaving the Maze, Magic Recharged, Suddenly Interrupted

Luo Nan's "original aspiration" was certainly not his initial thought when he first entered the system, but rather the "original aspiration" that emerged after three years in the township.

There's no need to try to change yourself or adapt to the ever-changing trends, nor is there any need to try to create a trend and propel yourself onto it.

Be yourself; if you can ride the wind, then so be it; if you can't, then so be it.

Left or right, it doesn't matter.

The important thing is the choice made after understanding yourself.

With this "original intention" in mind, I ate in the cafeteria a few more times. The people who cut in line with their children were gone, the red armbands were gone, and the third floor was really gone. Everything returned to normal in my eyes.

Soon after, Ronan escaped the maze and his consciousness returned to reality.

At this moment, Ronan was in a spacious, enclosed room. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all a grayish-white, silvery-toned matte color, with a familiar texture somewhere between metal and stone.

Behind them, a massive, closed door.

About twenty meters ahead, there was another huge, closed door, and in front of it stood three people observing it.

Giovanni, "Black Dragon" Bricht, and "Healer" Toldo.

These three got out of the maze faster than Ronan, while the others were still trapped inside.

Ronan walked forward, and Giovanni noticed him, turning around as if it were expected, showing no surprise. "Mr. Artes is still impressive."

"It was mostly good luck," Ronan replied casually.

Giovanni chuckled mischievously. "It seems His Majesty the Emperor and the Duke were both a little unlucky."

Ronan shrugged. "Luck is something you can never really predict."

After staring at the giant gate for a long time without being able to glean anything from it, Giovanni lost interest in looking any further and started chatting with Ronan instead.

Giovanni's labyrinth was originally structured no differently from the one Ronan encountered: a crossroads, a stone tablet, and three choices.

"So which one did you choose?" Ronan asked, but his attention was on the massive stone gate in front of him.

“A stupid and lazy person like me would naturally choose the middle route of exhaustive search,” Giovanni replied with a hint of pride, and then recounted his encounter in the maze of consciousness that followed, “…In short, I met a group of women who insisted that I choose one of them.”

"So who did you choose?" Ronan asked, as if he were playing the straight man, but his attention remained on the huge stone gate in front of him. After looking at it for a long time, he still couldn't figure it out.

As a "reader," Ronan had gleaned important information from the ruins many times when he was stuck there in the past, but now he had gained nothing.

Either the mystery isn't in this door, or some mechanism here hasn't been activated yet.

“Of course, I want them all,” Giovanni said. Judging from his tone, it was impossible to imagine that he was a seventh-tier mage at the peak of his life, already in his eighties or nineties.

Both in appearance and in his daily behavior, he seemed more like a dissolute aristocratic young master.

After telling his story, Giovanni asked Ronan, "And yours?"

“I chose to go up there and reminisce about when I first became an official,” Ronan replied.

Giovanni clicked his tongue twice. "It goes without saying that it's a story of a passionate young man's downfall."

"Ha, more or less," Ronan replied casually.

No sooner had he finished speaking than "Black Dragon" Bricht suddenly interjected, "So that's how it is."

Everyone present looked over immediately. "Black Dragon" Bricht pointed to the ceiling, and Ronan and the other two looked up as well, noticing that the hands on the dial-like disc in the center of the ceiling had moved.

At that moment, Ronan, Giovanni, and "The Healer" Toldo simultaneously felt their own magic dissipating.

Now they understood that this was drawing magic power, and they figured that once the magic power was drawn and the pointer spun around, something would happen.

Ronan was just a little curious, because according to Stefan, this "Black Dragon" Bricht had very special magic, like wearing a seamless magic-immune armor, with extremely strong resistance to interference. This was also verified when he opened the golden coffin before, so he shouldn't be the first to feel the abnormality.

“Ha.” Giovanni chuckled, as if he could read Ronan’s mind. “You’ve been in such deep contact with the Transmutation type, don’t you know that the Transmutation type’s favorite thing to do is to split something off from its body? The Transmutation type itself is ‘dull,’ but the thing it splits off is very sensitive.”

Ronan nodded, agreeing. Dinia also liked to grow mushrooms everywhere, but he hadn't discovered anything that "Black Dragon" Bricht had separated.

Giovanni patted Ronan on the shoulder. "No need to worry about it. I can't sense it either. People at the seventh level always have some strange and unusual things about them."

As soon as he finished speaking, Dinia came out, followed closely by the old man Stefan.

In an instant, the pointer jumped one notch, and its spinning speed visibly increased slightly.

Ronan looked at Dinia, whose expression was a mixture of weariness and a hint of pleasure.

"What's going on?" Ronan asked.

Dinia tossed her hair and said, "It's nothing, just that I got to experience the feeling of flipping a table after a long time, and I killed hundreds of scumbags like you. It felt pretty good."

"Am I a scoundrel?" Ronan asked in exaggerated surprise.

“That’s how it is,” Dinia replied.

Old man Stefan glanced around and couldn't help but joke, "Trouble, the guide is lost."

The guides he was referring to were, of course, Fies, who was still trapped in the maze, and Hyman, the old man with the hunched prosthetic leg; both of them had been here before.

The group had no choice but to wait quietly.

Quite some time had passed, and the hands of the clock on the ceiling had rotated clockwise to the ten o'clock position, but the two "guides" still hadn't come out; only Emperor Antolo had emerged.

Antoro looked at the people present, his fists clenched so tightly that his nails dug deep into the flesh of his palms.

In his view, this maze is a test of the mind and will.

It's one thing for three seventh-tier beings to be ahead of him, but their minds are already on a completely different level from ordinary people. It's normal for "Healer" Told, a man who has dedicated decades to studying medical techniques for ordinary people and has saved countless lives, to be ahead of him. He had heard of Dinia, a patriot, so it's not unacceptable that she's ahead of him.

Who is Ronan? A bureaucrat who used despicable means to launch a sneak attack on the Rhine region and rose to power through women is actually ahead of him.

Just as Antolo was getting increasingly agitated, Duke Gene of Kirk appeared.

As soon as he reached the seventh level, the dial accelerated again.

"Tsk, to actually lose to His Majesty the Emperor." That was the first thing Duke Gene said when he came out.

Antolo, however, did not respond this time.

"It's coming, the big one is coming."

Ronan looked at the clock face on the ceiling and said that the hands were rapidly approaching the twelve o'clock position and were about to complete a full circle.

Less than half a minute after Ronan finished speaking, the pointer reached its position.

The next instant, characters began to appear on the huge stone gate in front of him. Ronan looked over and the familiar feeling returned. The characters that he couldn't understand at first glance were translated directly in his sight.

"Those who come here will..." The text abruptly stopped there, and then the door opened.

Ronan felt something was off. The text he had just read seemed to be a level description, but before it was finished, the door opened.

Chapter 502: The level was skipped, something's not right, another Ronan.

This place doesn't play by the rules!