Chapter 359: The Great Bluff

“Get on.”

Jiang Ran stopped the hoverbike behind Sang Biao.

“Get on your ass! Fuck off! I—”

%#$@()—*&$%#…@$)

…

“Hehe, my friend.”

Sang Biao sat on the back of the hoverbike, arms wrapped tightly around Jiang Ran’s waist, looking utterly thrilled:

“I was a little loud just now. Please, don’t take it to heart.”

“Heh.”

Jiang Ran chuckled, gripping the handlebars:

“Brother Biao, just act normal. I preferred your rebellious attitude from before.”

“Hey, what are you saying, my friend! How could I do that!”

“You’re not mad that I call you Sang Biao?”

“Mad? Why would I be mad! It’s the perfect summary of my innate disposition! Both downcast and fierce! Fierce and downcast!”

Sang Biao was racking his brain, desperately trying to suck up:

“But speaking of which, my friend, Pompey’s treasure… you promised you’d leave it for me, right!”

“Of course. We’re like family. What’s yours is mine, and what’s mine is yours. Once I become the Counting King, I’ll help you fulfill any wish you have!”

“No problem.”

Jiang Ran steered the hoverbike toward a ventilation duct below:

“But Sub-level 42 is huge. I don’t know where Pompey hid his treasure, so you’ll have to look carefully.”

This time, after waking up in the year 2045, Jiang Ran first went to a watch shop to claim a free watch, then got on the hoverbike to find Sang Biao.

He had previously verified that stopping time could prevent the Virtual World from crashing and rebooting. But that was too inconvenient. Today, he decided to solve the problem with a more radical approach—

Deceive Cheng Mengxue’s perception, and in doing so, deceive the entire world.

WHOOSH.

WHOOSH.

CRASH!

The three of them slid down the ventilation duct to Sub-level 42, crashing through a plastic grate and tumbling to the ground.

Dozens of excited Rhine Cats instantly surrounded them, singing, dancing, and scattering flower petals.

“Roller coaster!”

Jiang Ran waved his hand grandly:

“Here we go!”

After another stomach-lurching ride, Jiang Ran, Sang Biao, and the unconscious, foaming-at-the-mouth third man arrived as planned at the silver gate at the end of the park.

“My… my friend…”

Sang Biao swayed on his feet, stumbling like a drunken master:

“D-do we have to do it like this? That was way too intense!”

Jiang Ran steadied him:

“You know that Pompey came here the day before he killed himself. But he didn’t have any clearance to enter this gate, so if he was really going to hide something… it’s most likely hidden somewhere in this Hang City Paradise.”

“Hurry up and wake the third man, then search the area. I’m going inside the silver gate to take care of something. Don’t disturb me!”

Then, Jiang Ran pressed his palm against the gate, and the colossal object, weighing hundreds of billions of tons, opened lightly…

He walked inside and looked up. Like a sleeping beauty, Cheng Mengxue was still suspended in mid-air. Above her, hundreds of millions of shimmering threads drifted endlessly, like inverted tree roots radiating out to the entire world.

“Xiaoxue!!”

After he called out, Cheng Mengxue opened her eyes and recognized Jiang Ran below. Then, all the shimmering lights above her shattered into snowflakes, drifting down with her.

“Jiang Ran!”

Cheng Mengxue’s eyes were filled with panic:

“Where is this!”

“Xiaoxue, don’t be nervous. Don’t let your mind race. Just listen to me!”

Jiang Ran cupped Cheng Mengxue’s head in his hands, preventing her from looking around, and began to “brainwash,” “hypnotize,” and “deceive her subconscious”:

“This is the Virtual Digital World. It’s like the fictional worlds in online games, not the real world. So… things that defy common sense will happen. Don’t be afraid!”

This was the first layer of psychological Suggestion.

First, he had to make Cheng Mengxue realize this wasn’t the real world. That would greatly increase her level of acceptance and imagination, which would at least ensure the stability of the current environment and prevent the terrifying sight of the buildings above disappearing to reveal the open sky, like what happened before.

“Huh?”

Cheng Mengxue was bewildered:

“But… I clearly remember we were on our way to the college entrance exams and got into a car accident… Why are we here?”

“This is also part of the treatment.”

Jiang Ran continued his bluff:

“But this Virtual World is very small, consisting of only the city of East Sea. In the world outside, other cities and countries don’t exist.”

This was the second layer of Suggestion.

Since reducing the server load could delay the Virtual World’s collapse, a more radical approach would be to simply “delete” all areas outside of East Sea City. This would naturally reduce the strain on the processor and save storage space.

If Jiang Ran’s guess was correct, he could stay here for a full two hours without experiencing any reboots.

“Oh…”

Cheng Mengxue hadn’t fully processed it yet, but she accepted this premise quite naturally.

She wasn’t an idiot, after all.

If Jiang Ran had actually told her that this place was a technological simulation of the real Earth, she wouldn’t have believed him! ‘How could such outrageous technology even exist!’

She slowly raised her head, looking at the ceiling so high it was out of sight:

“Then… where is this place?”

“This is the central control room, the place with the highest authority in the entire Virtual World.”

Jiang Ran began the third layer of Suggestion.

This was also why he had been holding her head the whole time, not letting her look back:

“Behind you, there’s a whole bank of control consoles. Among them is a computer that can query all the database files. As long as a file exists in the Virtual World, it can find it.”

Something miraculous happened in that instant.

Cheng Mengxue merely blinked and thought for a moment.

Behind her, out of her line of sight, a vast array of sophisticated equipment and hundreds of monitors suddenly appeared.

‘I think I’ve seen a scene like this in some sci-fi movie,’ Jiang Ran thought. ‘This must be what a central control room is supposed to look like in Cheng Mengxue’s mind… cool and flashy…’

But in reality,

a control room wasn’t a property management security office. Why would it need a whole wall of monitors?

However…

‘This is good.’

‘So far, everything is going according to plan.’

As long as he could make Cheng Mengxue’s subconscious believe that “this is real” and “the central control room should have a computer with the highest authority”… then anything was possible. Words would become law, and wishes would come true.

The main reason this worked was that Jiang Ran’s three layers of Suggestion hadn’t broken Cheng Mengxue’s perception of reality; they were all within the bounds of her acceptance.

Jiang Ran had held her head from the start, preventing her from looking back. Thus, Cheng Mengxue had no idea what was behind her. To her, the space behind her was in a chaotic state, a superposition of multiple possibilities.

It was a bit like the “observer effect” in quantum mechanics: the state of a quantum particle is indeterminate until it is observed. By extension, the phenomenon being observed is disturbed by the very act of observation.

For example, the parts of the world that Cheng Mengxue saw before her were already fixed and unchangeable because she had observed them.

If Jiang Ran had tried to trick Cheng Mengxue by saying, “Look, even though there’s nothing in front of you right now, a supercomputer is about to pop up right here,” it definitely wouldn’t have worked.

Because Cheng Mengxue had already observed that there was nothing on the floor in front of her, her perception wouldn’t allow something so illogical to happen. Even if this was a Virtual World, she still couldn’t convince her subconscious to defy her common sense.

Therefore, when it came to this ability of Words Become Law—

the smarter a person was, the harder it was to master. They had too many reservations and overthought things, making it difficult for them to fully believe in the reality of something or to deceive their own subconscious.

Conversely, those who lacked common sense and had lower intelligence were better able to wield this power. Because they weren’t burdened by knowledge, they could truly be unrestrained by the laws of the universe, becoming lawless and making their wishes come true.

‘When you think about it, this counter-intuitive deduction is actually quite interesting.’

‘No wonder Sang Biao is so fixated on Pompey’s treasure. To be honest, the person best suited for Cheng Mengxue’s ability is none other than Sang Biao himself.’

‘Because the man doesn’t use his brain at all, believes everything he’s told, and is so self-contradictory he could probably even deceive himself when he gets worked up.’

Jiang Ran released his hands from Cheng Mengxue’s head, and she immediately looked back:

“So that’s how it is.”

She showed no surprise, because in her mind, this was exactly what a central control room was supposed to look like:

“So this is the central control room…”

“Get lost! I’m busy looking for something! I’m not playing!”

Suddenly, Sang Biao’s angry shouts came from outside the silver gate.

Jiang Ran and Cheng Mengxue looked over.

Dozens of Rhine Cats were trailing behind Sang Biao like a conga line, frantically trying to hustle him into playing the amusement park games, much to his annoyance.

“Wow!! Live Rhine Cats!!”

Instantly, Cheng Mengxue’s eyes lit up. She grabbed Jiang Ran’s shoulders and shook him hard:

“Jiang Ran! Look! There are live Rhine Cats here! This world is amazing! I used to dream of having an amusement park full of Rhine Cats!”

Heh.

Jiang Ran couldn’t help but laugh.

‘Of course,’ he thought. ‘The amusement park outside was created by Cheng Mengxue’s subconscious while she slept… A normal person would have been scared to tears by such a creepy sight, but she was the only one excited and eager to try it.’

“Jiang Ran! Can I go play with the Rhine Cats!”

“Go on, go on.” Jiang Ran waved his hand dismissively.

After getting his permission, Cheng Mengxue ran out with a gleeful chuckle.

“Get the hell away from me!”

Sang Biao had been backed into a corner and pulled out a gun, aiming it at the Rhine Cats:

“Don’t fucking make me shoot! I’m not playing!”

“I’ll play! I’ll play!”

Cheng Mengxue waved her arms and dove into the pile of Rhine Cats:

“Ah, this is pure bliss~ It’s like I’ve gone to heaven!”

The Rhine Cats, lonely for more than a decade, had finally found a kindred spirit willing to play their games. A crowd of them lifted Cheng Mengxue onto their shoulders with their short arms, scattering petals and meowing as they rushed toward the amusement park.

“…”

Jiang Ran watched the comical scene unfold and sighed with heartfelt emotion:

“This is truly a match made in heaven.”

With that, it was time to get down to business.

He walked over to the newly materialized control consoles and looked at the complex, flashy machines.

He didn’t understand many of the devices. They were all products of Cheng Mengxue’s imagination, after all, and were probably just for show.

However, the “computer that can query all data” that he had strongly Suggested should exist, as the concept was very easy to understand.

“Found it!”

Soon, Jiang Ran found the computer, which was indistinguishable from one in the real world. It had a monitor, mouse, and keyboard, and even came with speakers.

Jiang Ran sat down in the chair and began using the search tool on the computer.

He first searched for a series of historical questions but discovered… that most of the history in this Virtual World was only recorded starting from the year 2028. As for earlier history, aside from some descriptions of a massive global catastrophe, he couldn’t find any valuable information at all.

“This… was it really necessary to save storage space like this?”

Jiang Ran scratched his head.

In reality, these text records wouldn’t take up much storage space. He didn’t understand why Pompey would have left the previous history blank.

‘Was it to make people completely sever ties with the real world and embrace the Virtual World wholeheartedly?’

‘I should search for the names of my acquaintances first, to see if they’ve entered the Virtual Digital World.’

He first entered Qin Feng’s name.

Several results popped up, but the age, photo, and identity information didn’t match. It wasn’t the Qin Feng he was looking for.

He then entered the names Wang Hao, Chi Xiaoguo, Fang Ze, Zhang Yang, Xu Yan, Nan Xiuxiu, and others…

Coincidentally, he couldn’t find a suitable result for any of them. The searches only returned people with the same names.

“That’s strange.”

Jiang Ran was puzzled:

“Why haven’t any of the people I know entered the Virtual World? Could they all have died in the great catastrophe of 2028?”

He then entered his own name and, similarly, found no matching results.

‘No way.’

‘It can’t be that everyone around me was wiped out, with not a single one left, right?’

“Hahahaha! Hahahahaha! My friend! My friend!!”

Behind him, Sang Biao and the third man burst in, laughing heartily, holding a large, magnificent golden Treasure Chest above their heads:

“My friend! Look! We found Pompey’s treasure! Hahahahaha!”