HI Chapter 103

Yan Wei did not move this time.

He neither responded to Yan Mingguang’s words as he had the first time, nor did he take out a short blade for self-defense as he had the second time. He simply turned his head and quietly looked at the man beside him.

At this moment, he was sitting on the single bed in the guest room, which still looked just like every other guest room in the castle. The ancient bronze mirror on the wall reflected their two blurred figures; he sat tense on the bed while Yan Mingguang sat at the edge. His room was still a bit messy—things had been knocked over when he was chased by the Malevolent Automaton.

The door was open, and Lin Zhen along with two Yu Feizhou stood at the doorway looking at him.

Lin Zhen directly and loudly knocked on the already open door, saying, “Hey, hey, hey, the other bomb you buried has already exploded, how come you just woke up? Are you a pig?”

The two Yu Feizhou at the door simultaneously said, “Don’t insult him like that.”

Lin Zhen scoffed.

Yan Mingguang frowned slightly as he looked at him. Seeing that Yan Wei did not speak, he did not ask further. He simply stood up, picked up the trench coat hanging at the head of the bed, and handed it to Yan Wei, saying, “Let’s go, players must have started catching people in the rooms.”

This action, identical to what had happened in the dream just now, made Yan Wei pause.

When the first dream occurred, he could completely immerse himself in it and pull away with the awakening of his consciousness. When he realized he was still in a dream the second time, he could clearly distinguish that the world was constructed based on his self-awareness.

But the third time, upon seeing the familiar action of the other, he still instinctively felt a disorientation between reality and the dream.

However, Yan Wei had already come to understand.

The blood sea filled with several iron ships was merely the deepest layer of his dream. But after waking up in that layer of the dream, he did not immediately awaken. This instance was originally about the existence of two players, one real and one fake; his dream just happened to collide with this point, causing him to sway not only between dream and reality but also between the true and false Yan Mingguang.

These mixtures of truth and falsehood made it easy for his consciousness to enter an indistinguishable blur, constantly questioning and struggling, ultimately unable to discern whether he was in a dream or if he was seeing the real Yan Mingguang.

This was probably also a part of the instance.

When entering the instance, the introductory background had mentioned—“He is unpredictable, he will entertain guests who come up the mountain, but he may suddenly kill them.”

When the Puppet appeared, Yan Wei had thought that the Man in Black Robe seemed to have no intention of attacking players; only the Malevolent Automaton and the players themselves would kill, so what did this so-called “sudden killing” refer to?

Now it seemed… this “sudden” referred to the people in the castle randomly falling into an inescapable dream.

Dreams might be the deepest visions of a person, but they could also be the deepest fears.

Desire and fear are precisely the two emotions that make it hardest for people to extricate themselves.

This instance was a torment and test of human nature, psychology, and will from beginning to end. It not only made players unable to distinguish their selves but also arranged for this kind of mental influence. To break free from these influences, other players could not help at all; one must find a clear lever on their own.

He suddenly realized he could rely on the Undying State, and when he truly could not find a flaw, he could use suicide to verify whether it was a dream or reality. However, this method had a fatal flaw. That is, dreams are all false; the passage of time he saw in the dream, the Undying State, might not be real either. One-Half Immortality was also a component of his cognition, unable to serve as a lever to break the world constructed by his perception.

Before him, Yan Mingguang’s hand, which was offering the trench coat, moved forward again, signaling him to hurry and put on the coat to leave.

Yan Wei did not move.

He blinked, his eyelashes fluttering, a hint of disdain flashing in his light tea-colored eyes.

He looked around, his expression serene.

After a moment, he chuckled softly and slowly closed his eyes. At that moment, all the surrounding images disappeared; with his eyes closed, he saw only darkness.

He spoke word by word: “…this instance, these designs, each link has captured my weakness due to my lost memories. Are you targeting me—”

“Lou.”

No answer.

Nothing happened.

Yan Wei naturally did not expect any answer.

He curled his lips: “Then do ‘you’ understand the principle of moderation? ‘You’ must have your own operating rules; otherwise, you would have killed me directly long ago, no need to use these tricks. Since the rules exist, the distinction between True Self and the other me, between dream and reality in this instance, is something every player might encounter. ‘You’ have increased my difficulty, and also increased others’ difficulty—but if I solve this problem, then for me, the difficulty of this instance decreases, because my opponent becomes weaker.”

His expression grew increasingly relaxed, and he had already shed all previous negative emotions.

“And—one or two layers of dreams might confuse me, but ‘you’ have made it too much. Too much, to the point that I have become accustomed to and adapted to it.”

And from this, he would find a central axis that could break his cognition, using this axis of consciousness as a boundary to compare with other things in the world, to break this situation.

Dreams are his consciousness; all the objects and people in the world can only be based on everything he has experienced, recognized, and seen. But precisely because of this, most people do not feel anything unusual when dreaming, as they are surrounded by constructs of their own consciousness.

What Yan Wei needed to do was find something that contradicted his own consciousness, and could be reused in a repetitive cycle, something that would not create memories in his brain after he used it once.

He slowly opened his eyes.

All this contemplation had only taken a moment; everything around him still looked the same as before.

He raised his gaze to Yan Mingguang.

“Yan Mingguang,” he said, “come a little closer to me.”

The person before him was slightly taken aback but did not ask him anything. Instead, under Lin Zhen’s urging, he put down Yan Wei’s trench coat and sat back down beside him.

Yan Wei shifted closer to Yan Mingguang.

At this moment, they were very close; Yan Wei could still smell the faint scent of pine from the other person, along with his warm breath. Whether in a dream or reality, it was a temperature completely different from Yan Mingguang’s apparent indifference.

Yan Wei calmed his emotions, glanced at the corner of Yan Mingguang’s mouth, took a deep breath, and looked at Yan Mingguang again with renewed intensity.

Then, he closed his eyes, suddenly leaned forward, and lightly kissed the corner of Yan Mingguang’s mouth.

The kiss that appeared in the memory fragments of the dream surged into his mind, swirling in his consciousness like a whirlwind. The warm water that enveloped him seemed to emerge from his memories, and Yan Wei felt as if he was burning all over, his cheeks flushed, and his hair began to get wet and soaked.

It was as if he was submerged in hot water.

—That was the giant elephant of his consciousness.

This layer was indeed still a dream.

Even so, he did not dare to open his eyes; his eyes were tightly shut, and his hands unconsciously clenched the edge of the blanket. The man in front of him seemed to have no reaction, no sound, and no movement.

This was the most effective central axis he could think of.

The feelings between him and Yan Mingguang had always been unclear. He felt that Yan Mingguang knew many things and also knew that he had forgotten many things, only remembering that kiss in the hot water, and the moment before entering the instance when Yan Mingguang thought he was pretending to sleep and kissed the corner of his eye.

But Yan Wei had never been in a relationship since he could remember, nor had he ever prepared to entrust his feelings to someone else. Regarding this matter, he had always maintained an attitude of not thinking about it if he could avoid it. Thus, there had always been a cognitive deviation between him and Yan Mingguang.

In his consciousness, he had a blank slate regarding Yan Mingguang’s attitude towards their relationship.

This was a reaction of Yan Mingguang that his conscious world could not construct.

He could certainly repeat the previous actions, first going out with these “Lin Zhen,” “Yu Feizhou,” and “Yan Mingguang,” and then searching for other things beyond consciousness, but that would take too much time. The longer he was trapped in the nightmare, the easier it was for his clarity to dissipate.

Suicide was the same. Repeatedly committing suicide also made it easy for him to lose track of whether he would actually kill himself.

Only kissing Yan Mingguang would remind him of those two lingering images. Those were the scenes that his reason, consciousness, and logic could not control, the images that would absolutely appear no matter how many times.

Usually, this would be a barrier that disturbed his mind. But in this instance’s dilemma, it unexpectedly became a central axis that Yan Wei could utilize.

The fastest and least disruptive method for his state of mind was this.

This instance wanted to keep him, but he was determined to break this maze in the quickest and most effortless way!

Except for feeling a bit…

Yan Wei felt his cheeks burning intensely.

In the next moment, everything around him vanished, and Yan Wei suddenly opened his eyes, abruptly sitting up from the bed. Beside him was still Yan Mingguang, who was asking him what was wrong, and the guest room was still somewhat messy, with Lin Zhen and Yu Feizhou outside urging him…

Yan Wei raised his gaze, looking at Yan Mingguang in front of him, quickly did another round of mental preparation, steeled his heart, and stood up to kiss the corner of this person’s mouth once more.

The scorching heat transmitted from his lips, and the surrounding air was once again filled with the haze of warm water, causing Yan Wei to wake up abruptly once more…

…

Yan Wei did not know how many times he had repeated this.

Actually, it wasn’t that many, but his mind was in chaos, with one side being the rational calmness of breaking the situation, telling him that the Yan Mingguang before him was all false, while the other side was his restless emotions, fluctuating unpredictably.

Again and again.

Suddenly, at the moment his lips touched the man’s mouth, he felt that the person in front of him seemed to have momentarily quickened his breath.

The other’s hand suddenly gripped his wrist tightly. Before Yan Wei could open his eyes, he felt Yan Mingguang grasp his wrist with one hand and press down on his shoulder with the other, forcefully pushing him back onto the bed.

He heard Yan Mingguang’s voice, smoother than ever, short and low: “What are you doing?”