Chapter 111

"Here's your corn juice." Through the narrow slot in the partition, Li Cheng tossed a can into the cell.

Gray Rain, still reading the newspaper, didn't look up—she caught the cold can, still beaded with condensation, snapped it open with one hand, took a deep gulp, and let out a satisfied "Ah~."

"This is what life should be like," she said, shaking her head. "What do you want to ask?"

Li Cheng had already prepared his questions—he pulled out the pink children's backpack and the crayon drawing. "Three questions: One, have you ever seen this backpack?"

Two, the exact conditions of each room.

Three, has anyone ever successfully escaped before?

The laser traps and gravity-sensing floors of the Reversal Room perfectly countered the bat-hook gun, and the five ∑ coins inside the children's backpack were exactly enough to buy the corn juice Gray Rain wanted—it was hard not to suspect this was tailored specifically for Li Cheng.

Gray Rain sipped her corn juice. "First, I've never seen this backpack. Second, besides the warden's office, there are five rooms: Flashback, Continuity, Reversal, Misdirection, and Protagonist Effect. All use Reality Distortion Engines and Narrative Ladder Arrays, generating traps and content based on the escapee's personal history."

"The Flashback Room's effect is to jump to the escapee's past or future—including pasts the escapee themselves never knew."

"Continuity—breaks narrative coherence by temporarily adding new elements. For example, a wall or a horde of monsters suddenly spawns outside the escapee's line of sight."

"Misdirection—literally uses every possible means to deceive and mislead the escapee. For instance, setting up a fake door or a fake button."

"Protagonist Effect—the most abstract and hardest to define room. Anything bizarre that ever happened to a protagonist in fiction might occur here."

Here, Gray Rain paused, savoring the moment. "As for whether anyone has ever escaped successfully? If the prison authorities and the Crystal Wall Resident Committee dared to write the Escape Guidelines on the walls, it proves they have full confidence in their security."

The facts confirm it—no escapee has ever passed all five Engine Rooms on their first attempt. And every attempt damages the escapee's narrative integrity."

"Like a novel's protagonist—if his origins or major life traumas are deleted or altered, is he still himself?"

This example is easy to grasp: if the Waynes in Gotham hadn't been shot in the alley, there would be no Batman, only Bruce Wayne, the playboy.

The world would also lose many of Batman's hellish jokes.

Like: "What walks down an alley with holes in its body?" "The Joker gave Batman a parental redemption voucher—but it expired." "Batman took a selfie with his camera to use as a family photo."

"That's the Crystal Wall Resident Committee's cruelty: many prisoners are both criminals and civilization's heroes. If they survive to release, they might become the people's chosen planetary leaders—so you can't simply break their limbs or freeze them into anesthesia."

The Design of the Narrative Cage presents prisoners with a cruel dilemma.

"Either serve your sentence quietly, never knowing when you'll be freed. Or attempt escape—and lose yourself, again and again, in failure."

Gray Rain said: "When I first arrived in this single cell half a year ago, the previous occupant—this Isaac guy—claimed he'd been imprisoned for ten years, tried to escape nine times, and nearly forgot his own name."

Three months ago, he was shouting, 'Give me liberty or give me death!' and 'The price of freedom is one generation; the price of enslavement is generations.'"

His last escape attempt? He never came back. Probably dead."

The prisoner in the lower-right cell has been here longer than Isaac, attempted escape more times—and is now completely catatonic."

Li Cheng thought for a moment, then asked cautiously: "Have you ever tried to escape yourself?"

This question made Gray Rain pause. She shook her newspaper to shield her face, then said coolly: "You should move on. The prison rule is: if you don't press the Engine Room button too long after initiating escape, the entire cage system resets."

"Shortest, a few hours. Longest, a day."

Li Cheng frowned and turned to leave. Though he'd gained information from Gray Rain, the more he thought, the more doubts piled up.

He walked to the vending machine. After the corn juice was taken, the next slot held a white rabbit plush toy in a transparent plastic gift bag—priced at 10∑. The next slot after that was a 70∑ suit from the Pishi Shuai brand.

The Pishi Shuai logo depicted a muscular man in a suit and tie, with a rugged face, a completely bald head, and a single spiky tuft of hair sticking straight up. He smiled earnestly—but his entire aura still radiated a dumb, thuggish vibe.

"No matter how many times I see it, this brand still makes me want to complain."

Li Cheng muttered, stepping into the corridor leading to the Misdirection Room, and pushed open the wooden door.

Like the Reversal Room, the Misdirection Room also had a second metal door.

He stood obediently on the gravity-sensing floor, right hand gripping the 170 Straight Knife, left hand holding the bat-hook gun, and the Thunder Horn—the most powerful device he currently possessed—belted at his waist. He waited for the metal door to slide open.

The door opened. Behind it was a narrow, unfinished cement room. In the center sat a single red button.

"Mr. Xue, Ms. Li, please look at this form."

In the therapist's office, the female doctor said gently: "Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) and Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) are not the same. The former involves one distinct personality manifesting at a time to control behavior. The latter involves at least two identities or personality states alternating control over the patient."

"Your son, Li Richeng, does not fit either description. He resembles more closely a tulpa—a fantasy friend."

"Fantasy friend?"

Li Zhao's expression shifted slightly. He turned to glance at the seven-year-old boy sitting in the corner of the therapy room, wearing thick glasses, sketching and writing on paper in his lap.

On his knees, the drawing clearly showed a boy stepping toward a red button inside an unfinished cement room.

"Fantasy friend is a term in child psychology. Globally, about 52% to 65% of children have them—it's a normal, common phenomenon. No need to worry excessively."

The doctor continued: "Your son, Li Richeng, possesses artistic talent and emotional sensitivity far beyond his peers. He incorporates daily troubles into his fantasies."

"To cope with loneliness after you both go to work, he imagined a character named Li Cheng—essentially his own projection—and gave Li Cheng unsupportive adoptive parents and distant cousins."

"Under these conditions, Li Cheng still grew into a courageous, wise, and kind teenager, enduring one adventure after another. You can understand this as your son's psychological defense mechanism."

Li Zhao hurriedly asked: "Then what should we—"

"Observe closely, let it unfold naturally. Most children gradually forget their fantasy friends as they grow older. Don't interfere too much."

The doctor paused, then smiled: "But you might consider enrolling him in an art class. With his drawing talent, he could become a cartoonist someday."

"Cartoonist? That was my childhood dream."

At the International Film Festival, the twenty-something film director Li Richeng scratched his head shyly into the camera. "But I got criticized for drawing badly, so I had to switch careers."

The reporter asked enthusiastically: "Do you think your past cartooning experience helped you as a director?"

"Yes. Without the imagination I developed back then, I never could've made this film: 'The Lord of the Rings vs. Terminator 2: Saving Xiao Shenke's Godfather.'"

With wrinkled fingers, the renowned director Li Richeng gently brushed the DVD case. Wearing reading glasses, he sighed and returned the disc—bearing the glory of his directing years—to the bookshelf.

In the elegant, cozy countryside villa, he was alone. His wife had passed away years ago. His two children had not inherited his artistic legacy—they'd both joined the Human Federation's aerospace program, busy year-round at the equatorial space elevator station, rarely returning home.

He sat on a soft sofa, flipping through the latest newspaper.

Headline: 【Terrorists detonate nuclear bomb in Proxima Centauri A Zone】. Content: 【An unidentified group of terrorists launched an armed assault last night on the skyscraper housing Junban Corporation in a bustling district of Proxima Centauri A. After causing thousands of casualties among company employees and military police, the desperate terrorists detonated a nuclear bomb exceeding 500kt in yield.】

A long-buried memory suddenly awakened. He bolted upright, eyes wide—then his heart seized in a sharp pain, sending him crashing to the floor.

The cylindrical household robot, watering plants at a distance, heard the noise and rushed over. It opened its chest, retrieved a quick-acting heart pill, and shoved it into his mouth. "Mr. Richeng, can you hear me? I've already called an ambulance."

His eyes stared at the ceiling of the countryside villa, vision blurring—again, he saw that unfinished cement room.

He flung his eyes wide, staggered to his feet, ignored the housekeeping robot's protests, lunged at the bookshelf, and with every ounce of strength wrenched out a stack of old, yellowed drawing paper, then drew with a trembling brush in his grip.

"Hello? Dad?! We're back to see you—open the door!"

Outside the house, the doorbell rang, along with the calls of sons, daughters, grandsons, and granddaughters.

He paid no heed to any of it, straining to draw the final scene—a youth gripping a heavy cleaver in his right hand and a bat-claw grappling gun in his left, pressing the red button.

"Hiss!"

Li Cheng snapped back to himself with a start, his pupils trembling violently, his palm shaking ceaselessly.

It was as if he had endured an incomparably long, incomparably real dream—vast quantities of half-real, half-illusory, blurred memories and emotions flooding into his mind.

Even though his brain had been long-trained by the Multi-Thread Brain-Domain Method, it was still overloaded, throbbing with stabs of pain.

Worse still, that feeling of an old man at death's door, clumsy and slow in his limbs, had carried over into reality, transmitting to his hands and feet, leaving him in discomfort all over.

He flung the button from him as if shocked, stumbled out of the room, and leaned in the narrow space between the wooden door and the metal gate, gasping in great heaving breaths.

Creak—

The wooden door opened; Hui Yu, who stood outside, seized Li Cheng at once, hauled him out of the narrow space, and dragged him into the corridor.

Once in the corridor, that drowning, suffocating sensation eased considerably. Li Cheng pressed a hand to his forehead and slowly rose, rasping to Hui Yu, "Thanks."

He glanced at the time displayed on the vending machine—barely sixty-odd minutes had passed since he entered the Misleading Room, yet it felt as if sixty-odd years had gone by.

"For a newcomer, making it through two rooms in a row isn't bad."

Hui Yu folded her arms across her chest, squinted, and asked, "What did you run into in there?"

"…Hard to explain."

Li Cheng rubbed the bridge of his nose; his dazed gaze gradually cleared.

From the very instant he stepped into the Misleading Room, the so-called Reality-Distortion Engine and Narrative Ladder Array had already begun to operate.

His existence was peeled away at the narrative level and replaced with a higher-dimensional "Li Richeng."

"Li Richeng" lived a relatively happy life—loving parents willing to pay attention to his psychological issues, letting him grow up healthy; after graduation, his career went smoothly, his family harmonious.

Had he not noticed the anomaly through a newspaper,

he really would have been perfectly "misled" into believing he was Li Richeng, and that the so-called "Li Cheng" was merely a fictional character / imaginary friend the latter had made up in childhood.

"Zhuangzi dreams of a butterfly, the butterfly dreams of Zhuangzi. What a nasty trick."

The shackles on his ankles vanished of their own accord. Li Cheng muttered to himself, looking down at his right palm.

He had originally been gripping that 170mm straight knife, but after leaving the Misleading Room, his palm held one extra thing.

A fragment of that newspaper: 【Terrorist Detonates Nuclear Bomb in Proxima A District】.

It was precisely this newspaper that made him suddenly recall his true identity amid the misdirection, forcing the room's system to trigger emergency angina in him.

"Something from a pure hallucination can actually be brought back into reality."

Li Cheng drew a deep breath, laid this newspaper fragment side by side on the floor with the 【Food Poisoning Case at an Urban School in Proxima A District】 newspaper he had earlier taken from the vending machine.

The two newspapers differed in layout, font size, and writing style, but both mentioned the same keyword: "Proxima A District."

Li Cheng was quite certain that within the false worldview the Misleading Room had created, the era was roughly the year 2070, when the Human Federation had just been founded and was still busy colonizing within the solar system—far from reaching the point of traveling to nearby star systems.

In other words, this newspaper was out of place; its true source lay elsewhere.

"Do you know anything about this so-called Proxima A District?" Li Cheng asked.

"…Don't know it." Hui Yu shook her head in denial. Seeing him rise to his feet, she asked in puzzlement, "What are you going to do?"

"Head to the next room." Without looking back, Li Cheng strode straight toward the Protagonist Effect Room.

"Are you insane?" Hui Yu said in disbelief. "Not even going to rest?"

Entering and exiting the Misleading Room once hadn't dropped his Spiritual Power much, but his Sanity had genuinely fallen from 240 to 159.

If the next room was the same type, there was no guarantee he wouldn't burn his Sanity dry and wish he were dead.

Li Cheng marched through the corridor at a great stride. "One, there's not enough time. Two, not enough time."

Once the jailbreak process had begun, if the engine-room button wasn't pressed for too long, the entire cage system would reset. And each room cleared damaged the escapee's narrative integrity—until they became an idiot, like the one in the bottom-right cell.

The player had one, and only one, chance.

Besides,

Li Cheng silently tucked away that newspaper fragment and, expressionless, pushed open the great door of the Protagonist Effect Room.

He had faintly grasped the pattern of this script mission.

(End of Chapter)