“Huff… huff…”
A mass of colorful fireworks-like blobs, with human facial features and dozens of writhing tendrils sprouting from its surface—it was a strange, elastic entity that constantly expanded and contracted, producing bizarre breathing sounds.
Seeing this scene, an image surfaced in Li Ran’s mind: a type of virus from his previous life.
Viruses had always been seen under microscopes and through specialized equipment. Who would have imagined that one would appear, larger than a person, fully materialized in front of him—and even talking to him?
This was the form Madman Pang Lai had taken after his mutation. It was also what Li Ran had caught a fleeting glimpse of earlier through the [Mirror of Truth].
“Yes, that’s exactly what I saw in the glass of water.”
Li Ran quickly regained his composure. After these past eight days, what hadn’t he already been through? A mutated madman wasn’t enough to scare him anymore.
Unlike other mutated monsters, this one—the madman—still retained awareness of his identity as a monster.
His transformation wasn’t meant to attack Li Ran, but rather, to desperately confirm whether Li Ran had truly seen the same thing.
If Li Ran had claimed to see a pile of crap in the water, the madman might very well have turned into that pile of crap.
“This is the real truth of this world,” the monstrous Pang Lai said.
“The truth?”
“They are the true natives of this world!” the madman declared.
At those words, Li Ran was deeply shaken.
“If viruses are the natives, then what does that make humans? Invaders?”
“Who’s to say they’re not the invaders?” The Pang Lai creature extended a tendril and pointed to the ground. “Perhaps there’s life beneath our feet too. You think it’s too hot underground for anything to live; meanwhile, they believe the surface is full of poison—oxygen—and that no life could survive here.”
The madman-monster’s words were like a key that unlocked a new door in Li Ran’s mind.
“If viruses are the natives… then where did humans come from?” Li Ran asked.
The creature pointed a tendril straight at Li Ran. “The same way you came here—that’s how they came.”
Holy crap!
That one sentence from the madman struck Li Ran like a bolt of lightning.
He had been chosen by the eerie world to become a player.
Could it be… the so-called natives were also players who had been selected and brought here?
Just thinking about it made his head spin.
The natives were players?
What kind of sick joke was this?
Could it be that his wife and child—were they once players too?
“Can a player who dies in a world somehow become a native?”
Players dying… becoming natives?
No… that shouldn’t be possible, right?
Death is supposed to be a process of disappearing. But natives—natives were living, breathing people.
“Wait a second… maybe in this world, death doesn’t mean the end!”
“The Dark Palace!!”
Suddenly, as if something had clicked, a wave of chilling realization swept over Li Ran.
If the so-called “natives” in the world were actually players… and players must die—because living players would eventually leave the world…
Then here’s the question: how do players, upon death, become natives?
Reanimation?
“Yang Ping!”
Li Ran suddenly thought of someone.
Yang Ping, along with those three actors who played Zhao Yingzhi’s family, all came from the Dark Palace.
And they all had one thing in common: they were people who had already died!
Yet, thanks to the existence of the Dark Palace, those dead people had somehow come back to life.
Viruses and the Dark Palace... resurrection after death?!
“No way... is this really the truth behind this world?!”
Li Ran’s entire worldview was collapsing under the weight of these thoughts!
“And then there’s Zhao Yingzhi!”
He remembered Zhao Yingzhi, who had just left the Dark Palace.
In that instant, a lightbulb seemed to go off in his head—he began imagining all sorts of impossible possibilities.
Zhao Yingzhi had two souls in her body when she left the Dark Palace.
“If Zhao Yingzhi’s body was overtaken by another soul, then she wouldn’t be Zhao Yingzhi anymore—she’d be someone else entirely!”
“If Yang Ping’s memory extended beyond the day she died—if her looped memory of that final day was broken—wouldn’t she be able to live in the neighborhood just like the natives?”
“But then... after they left the Dark Palace, were those memories implanted, or were they their original memories?”
Li Ran felt like he was on the verge of insanity. His head felt like it was going to explode.
He turned to the madman-creature and asked, “Did you awaken?”
Meng Ge, Su Bingyao, Li Ziyang—and this madman too—seemed to all have realized that they were monsters. At the same time, they had reawakened their human consciousness. So, Li Ran saw this as a kind of awakening—an awakening of the human self.
The monster slowly reverted to Pang Lai’s original form. He walked to the cage, crouched down, and extended his hand. A tendril grew from his palm and swiftly coiled around the mutating white mouse.
“What is awakening?” Pang Lai asked, his pitch-black face stretched into a twisted, sickly smile.
Squeak!
The bound mouse let out a miserable squeal as its body rapidly shriveled up.
Li Ran watched with his own eyes as the white mouse was decomposed by the madman, disintegrating like a charcoal log reduced to fine black ash.
The ash fell to the ground. A breeze blew past—and not a trace remained to prove the mouse had ever existed.
“You should go,” the madman suddenly said.
Li Ran still had many questions to ask, but the madman had slipped back into his initial state of madness. He kept repeating one line over and over again.
“Do you believe it? This world is a cage. They watch us from above. If we don’t live by the program they designed... we’re exiled…”
At the same time, a cold mechanical voice sounded in Li Ran’s ears.
[Mission Complete: Pang Lai’s Trial]
[Rewards: Eerie Power +200, Points +2000, Rare Equipment x1]
He vaguely understood what the madman was getting at in his repeated ramblings. It seemed to mean he couldn’t say too much—had to follow the rules—or he’d face a horrible end.
There were deeper meanings in the madman’s words, meanings Li Ran could not yet comprehend.
He picked up the clothes on the ground and got dressed again.
He turned to look back at the madman, still muttering madly.
There’s nothing more terrifying than seeing the truth—only to have the blind call you insane.
Originally, Li Ran had just gone to the rooftop with the mindset of completing a quest. But when the mission ended, he felt as though his entire understanding of the world had been torn apart.
Didn’t he swear at the beginning that no matter what the madman said, he wouldn’t take it seriously?
Yet somehow, he had believed it all.
The [Mirror of Truth] had warned him before—everyone who glimpses the truth of the world goes mad.
“Damn it... am I going insane too?”
He could choose to ignore all of his earlier guesses.
But there was one theory—absurd as it was—that he couldn’t look away from.
The idea that the natives are players.
If that’s true, then every native in the neighborhood was once a player who died.
They had all had their minds taken over by the virus and had become NPCs, implanted with a programmed role to play in this world.
Even Su Bingyao!
Which leads to the real question—Su Bingyao has awakened.
Whose consciousness has she awakened?
(End of Chapter)