Recap
In times of crisis, let alone whether the imagined things were enough to dispel the fear in their hearts, many people might have a blank mind and couldn’t think of anything.
But Jin Nan, he did think.
At least after Song Yang proposed that idea, for a moment, he must have thought about what he could do to escape.
And when he was about to be completely swallowed by the bugs, he reached out his hand towards the clock.
—Time reversal was the method he came up with!
“But time reversed, and he didn’t come back to life. Only our time reversed, he still died!” Wang Yueran said in despair.
“The instance world has its own set of rules for materializing death imaginations,” Xia Jing said softly, as if talking to himself, thinking.
After throwing out this inexplicable sentence, he changed his tone and said, “By the way, the time reversal can first of all completely prove that the instance world we are in now is not real.”
The others didn’t follow his train of thought and were confused, only Song Yang understood what he meant.
Jia Qing asked dumbfoundedly, “What do you mean? Are instance worlds divided into real and unreal?”
Liu Yi was also a little confused, “Do you mean that the time reversal is not real? But I’ve encountered instance games before that don’t even distinguish between day and night…”
Xia Jing tapped his knee with his finger and said unhurriedly, “‘Real’ is relative.”
“For example, compare the instance world with your three-dimensional world—the instance world is obviously not real, the three-dimensional world is the real world for you.”
Song Yang was sensitive to the strangeness in Xia Jing’s words, but because his brain was spinning rapidly thinking about the game they were facing now, he quickly skipped this point.
Xia Jing continued, “Then let’s put this comparison back into the instance world we are in now.”
“There is also a relative distinction between real and fake in the instance.”
“We have already experienced 24 hours in this instance before, and time has been moving forward. This is also the law of truth in the three-dimensional world, the benchmark, the symbol of ‘real’.”
“But now, based on Jin Nan’s imagination, the instance reversed time back to two hours ago in front of us—”
Hearing this, Jia Qing finally reacted, “The instance world broke the symbol of ‘real’ and clearly gave us a signal of ‘unreal’!”
Xia Jing nodded, “Also, this time reversal was triggered by Jin Nan’s imagination.”
Song Yang finally spoke up, continuing Xia Jing’s words, “I previously speculated that the difference between Huang Mo and Xu Jin’s beds after death stemmed from the difference in the range of their materialized death imaginations. But judging from the fact that Jin Nan’s imagination can directly reverse time, and the double vision that appeared when the dizziness hit at midnight—”
Xia Jing slowly said, “The materialized range of each chosen player’s death imagination should be the entire instance world.”
The others were dumbfounded.
“Wait, I’m completely confused—”
Just as Jia Qing spoke, a knock sounded on the door again.
Outside dormitories 414 and 417, two teacher NPCs yelled sternly, “Why aren’t you asleep yet? What are you doing?!”
Everyone immediately fell silent.
After the NPCs finished shouting, there was no movement outside the door—they were eavesdropping quietly outside.
After an unknown amount of time, the people in the two dormitories looked at the luminous clock at the same time, time passing by.
In dormitory 414, Wang Yueran’s tears kept flowing down.
Because of the choking just now, there was still a foreign body sensation and swelling pain in her trachea. Coupled with the uncontrollable panic and sadness, she was almost suffocating from crying.
She had a bad feeling.
This premonition made her hands and feet cold and tremble slightly.
The old lady hugged her in her arms, her old voice sighing softly, “Don’t think, don’t think, child. Even if it’s not in the game, what you think about during the day will appear in your dreams at night, it’s not good for your health.”
Outside the door, the footsteps of the teacher NPC finally sounded, slowly moving away.
Jia Qing lowered his voice and asked, “Yang-ge, Brother Jing, I still don’t quite understand. If the entire instance world we are in now is an ‘unreal instance world’, a world materialized from Jin Nan’s death imagination, then where is the ‘real instance world’?”
Song Yang said, “Then we have to first confirm the true identity of this ‘unreal instance world’, and then find the passage to the ‘real world’.”
“Wait, isn’t the identity of the ‘unreal instance world’ just the materialized world of imagination? What other identity could it have?” Liu Yi was already confused.
Song Yang: “No, this is just the surface.”
Xia Jing and Song Yang fell silent at the same time.
This wasn’t thinking, because they already had the answer in their hearts.
This silence was more like them confirming each other’s answers.
Xia Jing raised the corners of his lips and said softly, “What you think about during the day will appear in your dreams at night. The old saying that Grandma said is not wrong.”
“‘Don’t think about it’ is because the things you think about will appear in your dreams at night.”
Hearing this, several people were stunned, and a guess suddenly popped up in their hearts.
What Xia Jing said next confirmed their guess!
“—The ‘materialized world of imagination’ we are in now is actually the dream world left behind by those players who have already died.”
In the two dormitories, the other five people widened their eyes in shock.
Xia Jing gave a clue: “I’ve been paying attention to the time. Jin Nan suddenly fell asleep one second before midnight. This kind of sleep wasn’t like it happened naturally, but more like the instance forced him to sleep. Presumably, Xu Jin encountered the same situation last night. This is enough to prove that the instance must make the selected player fall asleep first before it can start the next slaughter.”
“And the next development that ‘sleep’ can bring is ‘entering a dream’.”
Jia Qing was dumbfounded, he didn’t even know when Jin Nan fell asleep!
When he was talking about hotpot bases, Xia Jing was actually observing so carefully?!
And at that time, no one knew which player the midnight monster would choose tonight. Without knowing the answer, Xia Jing had to take the whole dormitory into view to be able to capture such details!
Xia Jing continued to analyze: “At midnight, we should all have felt dizzy, and at the same time, there was double vision.”
“—This should be a sign that Jin Nan’s dream had already begun. His dream world overlapped the previous world.”
“And the world before this should be Xu Jin’s dream world.”
Everyone reacted!
That’s right, when Xu Jin died last night, they also felt the same dizziness and saw double vision.
If this was the sign of the dream world overlapping, then this overlapping should have happened more than once. They should be in a dream within a dream, nested dreams!
Thinking of this, several people were dumbfounded. They never expected that the truth of a proper campus instance would be like this!
“In addition, the player’s dream should also be completely controlled by the instance, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to stay in this dormitory properly now, because human dreams are bizarre and illogical.”
“The instance should only choose the imagination most conducive to killing players, and use the previous player’s dream as a basis, mixing in new elements to create a new dream—such as Xu Jin’s green-eyed ghost, such as Jin Nan’s bugs, and this time reversal.”
Everyone was stunned again.
Wasn’t the time reversal a way for Jin Nan to escape death that he came up with based on Song Yang’s suggestion? Although this method didn’t bring Jin Nan back to life, how did it become the instance’s weapon to kill players?
Song Yang let out a breath and explained, “With the dream being controlled by the instance, the instance would never choose to materialize the player’s survival imagination and let the player escape death in the dream.”
In other words, the survival suggestion Song Yang made before was impossible to achieve.
“The reason why the instance chose to realize the time reversal that Jin Nan imagined was because it was conducive to killing another player in a short time.”
Everyone felt a chill, feeling the pressure from the instance.
Xia Jing stood up, stepping on the still wriggling bugs under his feet step by step, and said softly, “Human dreams are chaotic, full of irrationality and contradictions.”
“In reality, if a person really encounters a ghost, as long as they don’t have any underlying diseases, even if they are frightened and feel that their ‘heartbeat is so intense that they are about to die’, they won’t really die suddenly. But in a dream, anything is possible.”
Thinking of Xu Jin, Wang Yueran let out a whimper.
“In reality, when ordinary people dream of their own death, they may jump directly to another dream, or they may be awakened by this nightmare. But this is a horror game,” Xia Jing paused, raised his eyebrows and said, “If a player dies in a dream, they are completely dead. Their dream will continue, but death cannot be changed. This is the reason why the time reversal didn’t bring Jin Nan back to life.”
“And Huang Mo and Xu Jin, after they died, their bodies still remained alive, which is contradictory and unreasonable.”
It was already 11:58.
“In the dream, the instance, or rather the main monster of the instance, can use the chaotic nature of dreams to arbitrarily use the player’s imagination to kill them. The so-called midnight monster is just a knife in the hands of the main monster. Only by leaving the dream and finding the real instance world can the main monster possibly appear in front of us.”
Liu Yi said hurriedly, “Then how can we leave the dream world?”
Xia Jing stopped and turned around.
The young man stood in the darkness with his back to the moonlight.
His gentle voice formed a stark contrast with the chill brought by this nightmare.
“Please remember, the dream that everyone will face in this instance is a world built on your fear.”
“But a dream is a dream, it’s a fake world. Everything you fear that happens to you in the dream is also fake. Fake things ‘shouldn’t’ be able to kill anyone.”
“Unless you think you will be killed.”
“Then you will also be forever trapped in this dream.”
“If you want to live, face your fear and wake up from the dream completely.”
As his voice trailed off, a wave of dizziness struck everyone.
In dormitory 414, Song Yang and the old lady heard the sound of water droplets falling on the ground at the same time.
___
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Update: Monday, Wednesday, Friday
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