Chapter 180 Lu Chan's Nightmare 2
Unfortunately, the fireflies I released have not yet found Chang'an's whereabouts.
Inside this secret hideout are many secret rooms that the "fireflies" cannot easily enter. Most of the explorable area is limited to the corridors, and one must constantly be careful not to be detected by the guards. These guards are not ordinary mall security guards, but strange beings with bizarre powers. They might notice the tiny specks of light floating in the air and realize that they are actually my eyes and ears as an intruder.
As for the deal proposed by the young girl Lu Chan, I chose to accept it.
Actually, I don't have many options. Even if I find Chang'an, I can't possibly use a fire teleportation to escape this place with anyone other than myself. The only ones who can enter and exit this independent reality through "legal procedures" are Dr. Silver Mask and Chenlong. I don't think I can force these two to do as they please. In the end, I'll probably still have to find a way to destroy this secret outpost of the Humanitarian Department itself.
I currently lack the means to accomplish this single-handedly through violence, and I also lack the confidence to destroy the enemy's stronghold with wisdom. In this situation, having such an assistant is like sending charcoal in snowy weather.
Admittedly, accepting the young girl Lu Chan, a "ghost whose background is still unknown," involves an element of risk, but I have never been afraid of taking risks.
With that thought in mind, I no longer hesitated and directly swung my sword at the straw rope binding the girl Lu Chan's hands and feet.
Upon seeing this, the young girl Lu Chan's expression changed, and she quickly called out, "Wait a minute—"
She was a beat slow to speak, and before she could finish, I had already freed her from the cross.
Suddenly free, she nearly fell, but managed to grab the cross behind her in time. After regaining her balance, she said urgently, "This is bad! The mechanical restraints here have built-in alarms. If they're forcibly broken, they'll immediately sound a piercing alarm and notify the nearby guards... you..."
As she spoke, her voice suddenly stopped, because the cross did not sound an alarm.
In my understanding, this is perfectly normal. How could something of this level of civilization—a wooden cross, a restraint device woven from straw rope—probably emit an electronic alarm? However, she probably thought it was something else entirely.
Perhaps this is evidence that my perception is distorting external objective reality. However, I was indeed careless just now. Since violently damaging the wooden yoke could trigger an alarm, violently damaging the cross would naturally do the same. My thinking was led astray by what I saw.
"...How did you do that?" The girl, Lu Chan, looked at me in confusion. "Speaking of which, I've been wondering from the beginning how you got into this special cell. Only Dr. Silver Mask and Chen Long should have the authority to open this door. You didn't seem to have forced your way in, otherwise the alarm would have been triggered..."
I got back to the ground and said, "I also have something to confirm with you. You can come down first."
She nodded obediently and descended from the metal base of the cross onto the ground. Like me, she was barefoot, wearing only a white straitjacket. The researchers at this secret base probably never intended for the test subjects to move around on their own two feet, so of course they wouldn't provide shoes; in other words, it might also be to prevent the test subjects from escaping.
It is said that in some places, human traffickers force victims to wear socks filled with sharp shards to prevent them from escaping. Compared to that, this place is actually considered "civilized".
The girl standing on the barbed wire floor was like a pure white flower quietly blooming in the depths of hell, her austere white straitjacket making her appear even more delicate and beautiful. But the thought that this body contained Lu Chan created an inexplicable sense of incongruity.
I quickly organized my thoughts and then told the girl, Lu Chan, about my strange cognitive phenomena.
To make my argument more convincing, I took out the iron key I had on me and used it to unlock the wooden shackles binding her hands.
She stared in disbelief at her freed hands, then looked down at the wooden yoke lying on the ground in two pieces, her face filled with utter bewilderment.
“…This thing is a ‘Mana Sealing Lock.’ As the name suggests, it can seal a demon hunter’s magic power, and its effects go beyond that…” she said blankly, “Even if you have the key to unlock it, you shouldn’t unlock it directly without completing the relevant verification procedures. Otherwise, the Mana Sealing Lock will inflict an extremely powerful curse on the wearer. Even I, a spirit, would be instantly annihilated…”
“In my eyes, this is just a simple wooden yoke,” I said. “And what bound you just now was just a cross.”
"Wooden yoke... cross..."
Her face simultaneously conveyed a mix of "What nonsense are you spouting?" and "What's wrong with this world?", before finally settling into a long sigh.
"...Is this base really not a dream?"
"How so?"
I felt like she was expressing more than just her shock.
“If this is a dream, everything can be explained. Not just my formation, but also your strange perceptions,” she said. “First of all, you were transported here through the spirit of that Lu Chan outside, right?”
"Yes."
I didn't personally witness the scene at the Humanitarian Bureau's secret outpost before being teleported here; rather, Lu Youxun first performed divination and hallucinations, and I was able to indirectly see the scene here by establishing a mental connection and synchronizing with him. Therefore, it's not an exaggeration to say that it was "through Lu Chan's spirit."
“Whether it’s Lu Chan outside or me, this place is a real living hell. Since you’ve synchronized with his consciousness, it’s not surprising that you perceive this place as a slaughterhouse and the various scientific research equipment as torture instruments.” The young Lu Chan patiently explained, “It’s not that the Lu Chan outside’s spirit is enough to distort your perception itself; the influence he has on you is like a thin layer of colored plastic film.”
"No matter how strong your eyesight is, as long as you perceive the colors through this colored film in this space, the colors you perceive will inevitably be distorted. And because this is a dream, there are no so-called 'objective things,' everything depends on perception. So whatever your perception is, the objects you come into contact with will automatically conform to your perception pattern."
"Because your mental strength is far greater than mine, even if the same object is touched by two people with different perceptions like us, the object's attributes will lean towards your perception. That's why the mechanical restraint device didn't alarm just now, and the magic sealing lock didn't inject a curse into me."
I added, "But the problem is... this isn't a dream, it's reality."
"Could it be that the senior researcher deceived you... No, the Black Rope Heart-Locking Ring can prevent that... So he was also deceived by Ying Lingyun? But if that's the case, all the researchers will become 'dream-based research,' and this secret base itself will become meaningless..." The young girl Lu Chan also couldn't figure it out. "Or is it that only you possess some element that allows you to 'treat reality as a dream'? But that wouldn't explain my birth..."
Numerous contradictions have become intertwined.
“Since we don’t have enough clues, let’s not start making deductions. Tell me what you can do first,” I said. “Do you have combat abilities? Can you use Lu Youxun’s 'Possibility Clone' technique?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t meet your expectations in terms of combat. As I said before, I was abandoned by the Lu Chan outside, symbolizing the ‘weak’ self,” she said. “As for ‘Possibility Clone,’ I am different from him. I have the qualifications to use this spell, but I don’t have enough mana to use it. You can think of it as a skill that requires 100 mana points, while my own maximum mana is only 10 points.”
"Qualifications?" I asked, puzzled. "I heard that Lu Youxun is unable to use the 'Possibility Clone' because of the aftereffects of human experimentation..."
“That’s a misunderstanding,” she said. “The ‘Possibility Doppelganger’ is a superpower that only fools who refuse to succumb to fate and believe in the infinite possibilities of themselves and the world can cultivate. In the past, as a pacifist, he knew very well what future the world would take, yet he still had a burning passion and hoped to change Luoshan and the demon hunter community from within; but now, the ‘clever Lu Chan’ who keeps talking about ‘the inevitability of history’ has long since parted ways with this power.”
"...Thinking about it now, I've always felt something was strange..."
I picked up on a question that had been lingering in my mind and tried to ask her: "Lu Youxun probably became a superhuman because he was so disillusioned with mortals, even developing hostility and hatred towards them. Yet he used to tell me that superhuman rule was the only justice for mortals, while governance would ultimately turn them all into slaves..."
"You mean to say that, driven by hostility and hatred, he chose a different path that sounds better for mortals, which doesn't make sense, right?" she asked.
I nodded.
Lu Youxun once used the Heavenly Court in mythology as an example.
Those that can guard the homes of gods and Buddhas are usually mythical beasts, and even heavenly soldiers and generals are not something that ordinary people can do.
While transcendence may not actually establish the mythical heavens, it also doesn't require mortals to do things for it—that's its argument.
“Your suspicions are correct. Although Lu Chan outside didn’t lie to you, he was definitely trying to mislead you,” she said. “The goal of transcendence is to become a true transcendent, to completely separate oneself from mortals, and not even need mortals to be one’s slaves… So the question is, if they don’t need mortals to do things for them, why would they go to such lengths to become the rulers of the mortal world?”
"You mean..."
I vaguely realized that what she was about to reveal to me was some more terrifying possibility.
She said coldly, "In their worldview, mortals can't even be good slaves; they only deserve to be 'resources.'"
(End of this chapter)
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