Chapter 440

「Ha~」

Hui Yu blinked sleepily, yawned, pulled back the covers, and climbed off her special steel-wire bed rated for a theoretical load of two tons, slipped on slippers in the dark, and headed for the bathroom.

As a nanobot, she only needed to touch an electric socket or gnaw on a battery to replenish energy—no sleep required.

Yet sleeping, as a behavior, did effectively clear the disk, optimize hard drive transfer efficiency, and reconfigure system settings.

As for using the toilet—

Hmm, actually her stomach contained no gastric juice or acid, serving only to crush food into a mushy chyme. She could even eat.

Previously, she'd seen some short video claiming that a person's lifetime spent defecating added up to one and a half years, and one ought to make good use of it,

so now every time she went to the toilet, she brought a classic book inside—but each time, after flipping open the book for barely a moment, she'd start playing with her phone, and after all this time, her reading progress still lingered on the title page.

Squeak.

Hui Yu pushed open the bedroom door, about to press the living room light switch, when she saw the bathroom's heat lamp was on, orange-yellow light leaking through the door crack.

Through the crack, she could see Li Cheng's silhouette.

He crouched on the bathroom floor in a twisted posture, a massive NAS network-attached storage unit beside his feet. Fresh blood dripped from his sleeves, tracing a path across the bathroom's ceramic tiles, finally draining into the floor drain.

Li Cheng was fiddling with something, emitting a faint mechanical "shhh—shhh—" noise, accompanied by a continuous spray of blood.

Unnamed terror gripped Hui Yu's entire body; her throat felt clenched, unable to produce any sound.

"You're awake?"

Perhaps sensing Hui Yu's footsteps, Li Cheng whispered, slowly turning his head.

His face was caked in blood, expression calm, holding a blood-soaked bone saw; half his skull cap had been forcibly severed, his entire brain exposed to air, studded with data cables connected to the NAS.

As if detached from pain, he raised a finger and gently traced the grooves of his own brain, his voice unnervingly serene: "Do you remember the three classifications of illusion from Truth's Side during the day?"

"First, created by the caster—easily identifiable.

"Second, fabricated by the recipient themselves.

"Third, compiled by the surgeon's brain, layered with the power of law, infinitely extended, infinitely compiled, nearly impossible to escape.

We went to the Shabby Street restaurant—taste, touch, smell—all flawless. If this were an illusion, it could only be the highest-tier third-class illusion."

In Li Cheng's lake-still voice, a thread of excitement lingered. Hui Yu drew a deep breath: "Are you… alright?"

"Fine. Or rather, too fine."

Li Cheng toyed with his own skull cap, smiling lightly: "In the inverted pyramid realm, before I used my light-speed elbow strike to kill the hooded man, I fired an ape-reversion gun at my own brain's amygdala region,

preemptively sealing the pathway for fear generation, and I also carried the 【Ocean Soul-Locking Bell】.

Theoretically, this grants partial resistance to third-class illusions.

Unless I was already trapped in the illusion before I pulled the trigger.

After firing, every time I escaped the realm—from the first escape to this second one—has been part of the illusion.

The proof? This."

He tapped the NAS beside his feet, casually: "The hooded man, as an anomaly within the realm, ranks equally with the black-clad woman H—strength approximately Lv33.

No matter how far he extends his fear illusion, there must be a boundary. He cannot create an entire world.

Like a programmer designing a video game, they often render only the area around the protagonist with perfect detail.

All scenery lifelike, NPCs walking and conversing along fixed paths, maximizing player immersion.

Once the protagonist looks away or moves to the next zone, all objects in the previous zone freeze—saving computational power, optimizing frame rate."

Hui Yu's eyelid twitched: "So you—"

"I used Whale Song's hacking program to infiltrate fifty thousand computers worldwide—domestic and foreign, personal and corporate—and copied all their data onto this NAS."

Li Cheng tapped his temple: "Then, via these cables, I directly downloaded it into my brain."

"Huh?!"

Hui Yu gasped: "You'll go mad!"

The NAS held five petabytes—such a colossal volume of data, even Li Cheng's enhanced brain could never absorb it. "Yes. But before I go mad, the illusion must reveal a flaw. For instance—"

Li Cheng's cerebral vessels burst with blood from overload; he tore a tile from the floor with his bare hands and said slowly: "Our bathroom tiles have never been marble."

The next instant, sudden transformation.

Wall tiles peeled away, lights extinguished—the two were back in the forest of stone pillars.

The sea wind reeked of salt; the screams of Er Cha Shu and the others still echoed.

The hooded man, still seated in the Infinite Justice mech's cockpit, had shifted his arm's pointing angle slightly leftward from before—silently marking the passage of time.

Li Cheng's severed skull cap restored itself; without hesitation, he seized the levitation engine and unleashed another superluminal elbow strike,

reducing the hooded man and the Infinite Justice mech to dust.

This scene had happened before. Hui Yu froze, hesitated, then slowly plunged her arm into her abdomen.

Her stomach and intestines were empty—no contents. Completely inconsistent with the vivid memory of eating at the restaurant that day.

Hui Yu stood rooted, hesitantly speaking to Li Cheng as he strolled back: "We—"

"Still in the illusion."

Li Cheng used 【Assembled Puppet · Modified】 to remove his skull cap and pulled out a data cable from within.

He stared intently at the cable with his newly grown eyeballs, then burst into laughter: "Hahahaha! So that's how it is."

"What?" Hui Yu asked urgently.

"This isn't my fear illusion—it's yours."

Li Cheng wiped away tears from laughing, speaking lightly: "Your deepest fear isn't returning to the Narration Prison, isn't losing your power, not even death—it's being abandoned by me."

". What?"

"I am a part of your mind. Or rather, I am your subconscious itself."

Li Cheng regained his calm composure, speaking softly: "Because you harbored doubt, in the first illusion, I accompanied you to the Red Star Orphanage to search for clues."

Because you harbor doubt, in the second illusion, I will act alone—removing my own skull cap in the bathroom to further test the environment.

And because you don't want me to die, even if I stuffed 5PB of data into my brain, I'm still alive.

And because the loaded data volume was too great, the bug from the previous illusion carried over into this one, leaving data strands embedded in my brain.

Hui Yu's pupils trembled violently, "Then in the real world—"

"The hooded one is nearly successful."

Li Cheng nodded and said, "There's little time left—the hooded one is already digging out our eyes."

As long as you still fear being abandoned by me, no matter how many times you escape the illusion, you cannot break free.

As for the only solution, you already know it."

"No!" Hui Yu said, as if shocked.

"You can do it."

Li Cheng smiled lightly: "You're smarter and stronger than you imagine—enough to notice the illusion's flaws."

Because your subconscious refuses to submit, you've held on this long, unlike the Card Emperor, whose mental defenses were shattered and turned to puppetry."

Li Cheng lifted the shattered skull-powered hammer from Hui Yu's hand, pressing it against his own forehead, and shouted: "Remember! Everything that happened at the Red Star Orphanage is real! Cha Yu Ji is Cai Anjie!"

Don't be afraid—strike! Save yourself, and save me!"

A faint bell sound drifted from the end of the corridor; Hui Yu took a deep breath, no longer hesitating, gripped the hammer's handle with both hands, and slammed it down with all his strength.

Thud!

The skull shattered.

The surroundings instantly changed—the scene before Hui Yu's eyes showed the hooded one pressing his hand against Li Cheng's face, while Li Cheng, with his last strength, handed the 【Ocean Soul Lock Bell】 into Hui Yu's hands.