Chapter 313 Reality?

Chapter 313 Reality?

Headache.

Shoulder pain.

Arm pain too.

Thoughts muddled, consciousness hazy.

Qin Fei felt as if he had been thrown into a pool of icy cold stagnant water, sinking unsteadily downward.

His lungs were about to burst, breathing became increasingly difficult, and his temples throbbed with needle-like sharp pains.

At the moment when the suffocating sensation reached its peak, Qin Fei suddenly opened his eyes.

What met his gaze was a gray wall. Qin Fei stared at it for a few seconds.

He could feel that he was lying on a bed. It wasn't the wooden frame bed detached from reality in Tulou but a soft and elastic Simmons mattress.

The ceiling above his head was also white and smooth, with a simple border around it.

This place seemed to be...

His bedroom.

Qin Fei's eyes widened abruptly in the darkness!

He sat up suddenly, fumbled to turn on the switch beside him.

With a "click," the light came on, and Qin Fei got out of bed, pulling back the corner of the quilt.

Barefoot on the floor, the cold sensation made his mind clearer.

The last image in his memory was doing a task in Tulou.

The third floor of Tulou was hot like a steamer. Qin Fei, dressed in heavy wedding attire, knelt forward, with nervous players by his side.

First bow, second bow, third bow.

Amidst the melancholic music, Qin Fei lost consciousness after completing the ceremony.

When he woke up again, he was here.

So, the instance ended?

Did he leave the rule world and return to reality?

Qin Fei frowned slightly. Vaguely, he felt something was off, yet he couldn't pinpoint what exactly was different.

The young man walked quickly to the window and pulled open the tightly closed curtains.

The blinding light outside instantly illuminated the entire room.

Outside the window was a busy street. It was daytime, with cars and pedestrians bustling about.

Further away was a bridge leading to the city center.

This was indeed the view outside his bedroom.

That inexplicable feeling of strangeness dissipated a bit, and Qin Fei picked up the phone on the bedside table to check.

The time showed Thursday, April.

Qin Fei still remembered that the day he was drawn into the rule world was Wednesday.

After going through so many instances, meeting so many people and ghosts, it turned out only one day had passed.

Qin Fei let out a soft breath, suppressing the absurdity of disbelief in his heart.

What Qin Fei wanted to do most now was to find Mi Yang or Lu Cheng, or any other player from Black Feather.

Suddenly leaving the rule world, a strong sense of unreality enveloped his entire body, and Qin Fei desperately wanted to find more evidence to prove that everything was truly over.

But they were just passing players in the instance, and even their names might not be real.

Back in reality, he had no idea where to find them.

Qin Fei let out a soft breath, pushed open the bedroom door, and took a walk around the house.

Living room, kitchen, balcony.

Everything he saw matched his memories perfectly.

Qin Fei had worked in the community for several years, living in the same neighborhood. He was a local, residing in a two-bedroom apartment left by his parents, which was already over a decade old. However, the interior decoration was simple and beautiful, renovated by himself after starting work.

It was seven in the morning. Qin Fei thought for a moment and walked into the bathroom.

He planned to wash his face and go to work.

The bathroom was also very clean. After all, he had only been away from the real world for a day, not enough time for dust to settle.

Turning on the faucet, squeezing out facial cleanser, closing his eyes to wash.

Even though these were ordinary actions, doing them now gave him a surreal feeling of being in another world.

Qin Fei dried his face, stared at himself in the mirror for a long time, reached out, and gently touched the mirror surface.

His fingertips touched the smooth and hard glass surface, leaving a winding trail of water marks.

When Qin Fei arrived at the community office, the clock showed 7:59 AM—just in time.

The other colleagues had already arrived and greeted him as he entered.

"Good morning, Xiao Qin."

"Good morning, Teacher Qin."

"Xiao Qin, why didn't you come yesterday afternoon? You didn't answer your phone either."

Qin Fei responded to each greeting, pausing for a second when he heard this question.

The one asking was the director.

After thinking for a moment, Qin Fei came up with the most plausible excuse: "I realized I had a fever when I got home yesterday noon, so I took some medicine. I intended to take a nap and then call in sick, but I ended up sleeping until today."

"Oh!" The director pushed his glasses up, looking concerned yet slightly reproachful, "Are you feeling better now? You should have taken another day off to rest."

Qin Fei replied, "I'm all better now."

The director sighed deeply, "Young people do recover quickly."

Qin Fei smiled without saying anything.

If he were to tell the truth—that he skipped work yesterday because he was hit by a car at noon and thrown into an endless horror game;

that he spent months battling within the game before finally finding a way out;

and that he survived alongside a group of fellow players who were also trapped in the same predicament—

the director would probably think he had gone mad from a virus infection.

Qin Fei sat down in the corner of the office.

The new colleague, still on probation, had arrived early in the morning and filled everyone's water bottles. Qin Fei used the hot water to brew a cup of tea, sipping it slowly while opening his computer to review documents.

The morning passed uneventfully.

At lunchtime, Qin Fei went with his colleagues to a restaurant outside the community, ordered a bowl of Lanzhou noodles, and returned to the office together after eating.

The afternoon flew by quickly as well.

When it was time to leave work, Qin Fei walked through the sunset, feeling a sense of relief at returning to a peaceful life.

Not having eaten dinner yet, and not wanting to go out again, he opened his phone to order food delivery.

After hesitating among various options on the delivery app, he eventually chose KFC, which seemed fitting for a Thursday.

That evening, alone at home, he watched a family-friendly comedy movie on his projector, laughing so hard he almost couldn't stand up straight.

By 10 PM, after washing up, he lay in bed.

Qin Fei crossed his hands naturally over his abdomen, left hand resting on top of the right, subconsciously touching a certain bone on his right hand.

It felt like he was searching for something familiar, only to find nothing there.

His finger bones were empty.

Qin Fei closed his eyes.

He knew everything was wrong.

This was not the real world; this was still a scenario.

The young man's long, steady breaths filled the bedroom, but his thoughts were far from calm.

There were too many strange things.

First, upon opening his eyes and seeing this world, there was an indelible sense of dissonance.

The scene in this scenario was indeed very realistic, almost identical to what Qin Fei remembered.

If the player in this scenario were someone else instead of Qin Fei, they might be confused by the overly realistic content and believe they were overthinking.

But Qin Fei was different.

He trusted his intuition completely.

If his intuition sensed something was off, there must be a problem. If he couldn't find the issue, it meant he was looking in the wrong direction or wasn't being thorough enough.

Based on this intuition, Qin Fei went through the day naturally, catching countless inconsistencies.

The first inconsistency occurred during his morning wash.

While bending over to wash his face with warm water, his eyes tightly shut, he reached out to the side, a subconscious thought emerging:

I remember the facial cleanser should be here.

And then, in the next second, he actually touched the facial cleanser.

However, upon reflection later, Qin Fei clearly remembered that when he entered the bathroom, the countertop was empty.

From this, Qin Fei concluded:

Everything in this scenario is constructed based on his memory.

Parts of his memory that were temporarily missing would be set aside by the system, but once he recalled them, the related scenes would be gradually corrected and completed.

In other words, this is a fabricated reality world conjured by Qin Fei's own imagination.

This was proven once again on his way to work the next morning.

When Qin Fei stepped out of his home in the morning, the neighborhood was eerily empty.

At that moment, he thought: There are so few people; I clearly remember there should be many people heading to work at this time.

Then, as Qin Fei turned a corner and reached the next intersection, the number of residents passing by indeed increased significantly.

The most irrefutable evidence, however, came from the director's remark in the office.

—"Young people sure have good health."

The real director would never say such a thing to Qin Fei.

The director and all his colleagues in the office knew very well that Qin Fei's health was poor; climbing a flight of stairs left him breathless.

Community work was extremely busy, often demanding intense labor, with frequent visits to various places or late-night overtime.

However, due to his poor health, Qin Fei was never assigned the most strenuous tasks.

His colleagues also treated him with great care, for during the three years before entering the game world, Qin Fei's condition had indeed looked quite poor.

While not on the brink of death, he appeared frail, as if a gust of wind could knock him over or a single finger could end his life, like a sickly beauty.

Saying "good health" to him was almost impolite.

It was precisely this detail where the system made a mistake.

The replica world created by the system was indeed exquisite, comparable to the real world.

But fake is still fake; it could never be exactly the same as the real thing.

The young man, smelling the faint scent of soap from the bedding, began to ponder.

The purpose of the system creating such a replica was actually quite simple.

Clearly, it wanted to trap him.

To make him believe that this was the real world, thus causing him to be lost in the replica forever.

So how could he leave this place?

When Qin Fei woke up in the morning, he tried to open the player panel but received no response.

He was clearly in a replica, yet there were no replica prompts or requirements for clearing it.

Now that he had seen through the false nature of the replica, yet remained within it, it was evident that merely "seeing through" was not enough to leave.

Besides this, there was another matter that troubled Qin Fei.

He felt as if he had forgotten something very important.

Or perhaps someone.