Chapter 342: Unaware That Life Is a Dream

Ning Zhe was a post-2000s kid, still under eighteen.

Teenagers his age often feel a vague melancholy and confusion, forcing artificial sorrow to sound profound, and just happen to have stumbled into the postmodern trend that deconstructs everything—it’s a dangerous thing.

Nation, society, interpersonal relationships, even ideology—postmodern youths see anything and immediately want to deconstruct it, vowing to drag every lofty thing down into plain speech and crush it into the ground; they seem Qingxing , but are in fact nihilists.

Deconstruction is easy; construction is hard. Blindly deconstructing everything without rebuilding correspondingly, constantly tearing down without ever building up, easily leads to loss of subjectivity and an existential crisis—a dangerous self-destructive tendency.

For an ordinary person, this isn’t much of an issue; young people might post emotional texts online, complain about being “yu yu,” but after graduation, the pressure of life and society’s beatings will naturally teach these sheltered students to compromise with reality, and over time they’ll be ashamed of their own childish past.

But Ning Zhe is different—the law that material conditions determine superstructure doesn’t apply to him; ordinary people’s existence shapes their thoughts, but Ning Zhe’s thoughts shape his existence. I think, therefore I am; if I don’t think, I don’t exist.

A teenager’s baseless whining becomes, in him, a dangerous existential crisis—if he loses subjectivity, Ning Zhe will die.

So consciousness, self, memory, subjectivity… these ethereal things aren’t really meant to be taken seriously; once a person starts obsessing over them, they easily go mad.

Fortunately, Jue Yuan won’t let him go mad.

Jue Yuan’s eyes flared for only an instant; the dangerous doubt in Ning Zhe’s mind vanished instantly, forced out. When he opened his eyes, he felt Jue Yuan’s chains still binding him.

His thoughts had long been enslaved by ghosts; Jue Yuan forbade him from questioning his own identity even slightly—this was the absoluteness of the rule.

The rule is “absolute.”

Opening his eyes, Ning Zhe saw Mei Lin glancing at him with surprise; beside her, Fen Wu merely adjusted his skullcap with one finger and gave him a gentle smile.

Ning Zhe glanced down at his chest and hands, suddenly feeling a chill of dread.

“That was close.”

—He’d just begun deconstructing himself.

Ning Zhe had every reason to suspect Fen Wu had deliberately triggered this. Three months wasn’t long or short; it wasn’t hard to guess some link might exist between Jue Yuan’s mental imprint and the memory-erasing Tai Sui. But he’d never thought of it until now.

Why hadn’t he thought of it earlier? Why now? Why right in front of Fen Wu, when he started doubting his own identity and existence?

What the hell is Fen Wu trying to do?

Ning Zhe even suspected that the Lan Shiwen Xia Yubing met was actually Fen Wu in disguise—that Fen Wu deliberately revealed the existence of the Tai Sui worm just to provoke this situation, make him spiral into wild speculation, muddy the waters, and make him doubt his own memories, unsure what to believe, turning him into a headless fly harmless to Fen Wu.

Ning Zhe also suspected Mei Lin and Bei Dang had been brainwashed by Fen Wu—they were his actors. The gambler and the God of Wealth were under Fen Wu’s control too; everyone and every ghost in the opera house was performing.

Ning Zhe even suspected that over 9.99999998 billion of Earth’s ten billion people were puppets with memories altered by Fen Wu; across the entire world, only he and Fen Wu possessed true self-awareness.

The woman who had made love with him last night wasn’t Xia Yubing—it was Fen Wu who had possessed Xia Yubing’s brain…

Sure, throwing accusations like this is far-fetched; Fen Wu probably isn’t that powerful. But Ning Zhe is traumatized—he’d believe it if someone told him Fen Wu had tipped off the Trisolarans and exposed Earth’s coordinates.

“If that day ever comes, I’ll be the first to shout, ‘Trisolarans, please come in…’” Ning Zhe was lost in these chaotic thoughts when Mei Lin suddenly said: “I’ll go.”

“Alright.” Bei Dang nodded and immediately designated her as the next to toss a coin.

Mei Lin said nothing, picked up a copper coin, and tossed it into the cup. Golden droplets splashed onto the table; the gambler lifted his head.

“This is my stake.” Mei Lin pulled a fist-sized metal object from her bag and placed it on the table. Ning Zhe examined it—it was a candlestick, made of brass, filled with wax-yellow oil, emitting a faint stench of corpse.

“Corpse oil?” Ning Zhe was surprised. This looked like the corpse-oil lamps from Fanian Sa.

The gambler nodded, accepting the candlestick as a stake. Mei Lin exhaled in relief and pulled out a mirror from her chest.

It was a copper mirror, the size of a human face, also made of brass; on its back were carved two phoenixes entwined neck-to-neck—clearly from the Nine Provinces.

“Here.” Bei Dang also pulled a mirror from his chest—identical to hers—and handed it to Mei Lin.

Mei Lin nodded, stood up, and walked away.

By the principle of fairness, until the game ended and the final winner was decided, even a player who had already surrendered their stake could only temporarily leave the table—they couldn’t leave the independent space of the casino.

So Mei Lin, holding both mirrors, didn’t head toward the door. Instead, she walked straight to the viewing platform where Ning Zhe and Fen Wu had been talking, lifted the curtain, and stepped out.

“Wrong.” Ning Zhe reacted instantly, stood up, and chased after her.

He lifted the curtain—the viewing platform was empty. Mei Lin had just stepped out; Ning Zhe followed a second later, but she was gone. He gripped the railing and looked down—could she have jumped straight off the audience seats?

“Related to the two mirrors?” Ning Zhe frowned slightly: “But why two?”

He didn’t dwell on it. He lifted the curtain and returned to the room. He didn’t know how Mei Lin left, but he knew why—she was probably going to find her mistress.

In the room, the two people and the ghost still sat on the sofas beside the gambling table.

Fen Wu gently wiped the blood continuously seeping from his forehead with a napkin, watching the gambler, motionless in his seat, with keen interest.

“According to the rules, the player who last tossed the coin must designate the next one to toss.” Fen Wu suddenly said. “But that lady left in a hurry—she didn’t designate the next player before vanishing.”

And not just vanished—she left this entire “world.”

Fen Wu shook his head. “What a capricious woman. The game isn’t over. What should we do about her?”

Looking at the gambler, still sitting motionless, Ning Zhe suddenly smiled.

“No player may leave the casino until the game ends—that’s the gambler’s rule. Even it must obey it, because it, too, is a player.”

(End of Chapter)