Chapter 761: A Perfect Flaw
“Wait, what beast tide?”
Meng Chao was slightly startled as he asked, “There are only a few deformed and weak test subjects in the Hidden Mist Domain. Forget their combat ability, they can’t even survive for more than forty-eight hours on their own before they turn into piles of bones and get devoured by the Green Tide. How can a beast tide that covers the sky and earth attack you?
“Besides, the beast tide would have certainly left a lot of traces, but we didn’t find any prints or monster fur. Even your camp at the edge of the sinkhole was intact. The monsters didn’t bite into the packets of military rations on the portable crystal heating furnace either.
“Besides, even if you encountered an unstoppable beast tide, you would have still been able to to leave some information before you were completely annihilated. It’s impossible for the exploration teams that were scattered all over the jungle to disappear at the same time, right?”
“That’s right. When I slowly woke up in Peach Blossom Town, the people here told me that I had been covered in wounds and had drifted down Peach Blossom Creek. It seemed that I had a fierce battle with the beast tide and had no choice but to jump into the sinkhole. However, I spent a long time recalling and thinking, only to discover that was not the case.”
Lu Siya said with certainty, “Although I do remember the moment I fell into the sinkhole, the vivid image seemingly imprinted on my cerebral cortex, when I think about it carefully, the so-called beast tide and fierce battle are just the splicing of memories from a long time ago.”
“Splicing of memories from a long time ago?” Meng Chao narrowed his eyes.
“Yes, the beast tide I saw at the edge of the sinkhole was exactly the same as the beast tide I saw in the battle outside Dragon City half a year ago. Many monsters pounced on me, and they were also the monsters that left the deepest impression on me out of the countless battles in the past few years.”
“The monster that woke me up abruptly was a monster that was riddled with holes like a hornet’s nest. Yet, blood vessels and granulation were popping out of each of the holes. It could have caused a heart attack in agoraphobia sufferers on the spot,” Lu Siya explained.
“The problem is, I remember clearly that you had bombarded this monster with a large-caliber anti-aircraft machine gun during the attack on n.o.ble Descent Hotel. It was only then that it turned into an undead creature with the help of the Blood Flower.
“I was secretly cursing at that time, questioning whether I should have bombarded the monster into such a miserable state. It was a nightmare that would take three days and three nights just to a.n.a.lyze.
“It was impossible for the same monster to be killed twice by someone. Moreover, you were not involved in the latest exploration mission from the beginning. It was impossible for you to appear by my side.
“Therefore, I immediately understood that I did not encounter a real beast tide attack. Instead, I was attacked by a spiritual attack and affected by an illusion. Something similar to a ‘virus’ was implanted in my retina, cerebral cortex, and central nerves.
“The weird hallucinogenic spores, or the ‘mental virus’, managed to extract the memories that were deeply engraved in my brain. After editing and piecing them together, they turned into a brand-new scene.
“It was like taking clips from different movies and combining them into a brand-new video.
“It looks like the truth!”
Meng Chao was suddenly enlightened, and he immediately said, “I was also attacked by the UHV transmission tower that was entangled by vines at the edge of the sinkhole. We had no choice but to call for long-range fire support. Then, I was blown away by the shockwave before I fell down the sinkhole!
“On second thought, the battle was too weird.
“Firstly, all the UHV transmission towers should have been destroyed by the long-range fire that we called for in the previous battle. Ravaged by the shockwaves that were thousands of degrees hot and hurricane-like, even the toughest steel would be no different from plasticine. The steel and frames of the UHV transmission towers had long melted into sc.r.a.p metal. It would be impossible for them to be repaired by the vines and the carpet.
“Secondly, even if there are new ‘green giants’, their movements would be astonishing. It would be impossible for them to hide from all the eyes and ears that we have set up along the way. They would follow behind us silently and touch the edge of the crater together.
“Thirdly, the new round of high-level fire support came too fast. Almost as soon as we sent out the signal through the Peregrine Falcon, the bombardment of meteors and fireb.a.l.l.s followed. It doesn’t make sense!
“Sister Ya, now that you’ve mentioned it, I realize that in the two high-level bombardments, many fireb.a.l.l.s and shockwaves were exactly the same as the UHV transmission towers.
“Therefore, the first fierce battle and the high-level bombardments were real. The picture of the UHV transmission towers being destroyed left a deep impression on me.
“The second fierce battle and the high-level bombing were fake. It was a mysterious force obscured deep inside the Hidden Mist Domain that stimulated my cerebral cortex and released the ‘materials’ that I ‘stored’ earlier. It made me piece together a reasonable explanation and made me certain or at least not really doubt how I would appear in an extremely weird paradise for no reason!”
Their a.n.a.lyses were like two uneven jigsaw pieces that were pieced together seamlessly.
Apart from memories of falling into the sinkhole and the duplication of the materials in their memory banks, Meng Chao and Lu Siya also found more suspicious points.
The first was whether or not Peach Blossom Town existed.
If Peach Blossom Town was just a ruined wall covered by a Green Tide, with only three to five streets and a population of 800,000 people, it might be possible for them to hide from the comprehensive scanning of more than a dozen exploration teams above the sinkhole.
However, the Peach Blossom Town that the two of them saw had at least dozens of skysc.r.a.pers that were hundreds of meters tall or even more than two to three hundred meters tall. It had a permanent population of 30,000 to 50,000 people, and it also had a colorful, glittering Tree of Wisdom, which was a mysterious creature with an extremely strong sense of existence.
No matter how dense the fog above the sinkhole was, with all kinds of high-tech detection methods, how were they not able to scan the outline of the town?
There were only two possibilities.
Perhaps Peach Blossom Town and Dragon City were not in the same s.p.a.ce for one.
The Hidden Mist Domain was the most unstable place in Monster Mountain Range’s s.p.a.ce.
Since Dragon City had forcefully embedded itself in the Other World, it had set off spatial ripples, and every place was now filled with invisible valleys as well as hill-like spatial folds.
When the man-eating pomfret team went deep into the place, they had entered a “spatial fold area” and encountered a situation similar to “a ghost hitting a wall.”
If there was a subtle angle and deflection between the s.p.a.ce above Peach Blossom Town and a tear in the sky that could not be directly observed from above, it would make sense.
However, generally speaking, the area of the spatial fold would not be too big or too stable. It would only be a thin, winding path that connected the two ends of the s.p.a.ce that were hundreds of kilometers apart or even farther.
Maybe the monster could descend directly from the Hidden Mist Domain to the suburbs of Dragon City through the spatial fold.
However, Meng Chao had never seen a town of a certain scale that could be built directly into the spatial fold.
At least, not in this life.
That was the second possibility.
Everything in front of him was not real.
Peach Blossom Town was an illusory city. It was just a beautiful dream created by the hallucinogenic spores and the “mind virus.”
Meng Chao and Lu Siya were both inclined to choose this possibility because the real world could not have such a happy, beautiful, peaceful, harmonious, and natural place.
Just like there was no heaven in a world where everyone was equal and perfect.
There was also direct evidence, which was time.
Lu Siya mentioned that she had lived in Peach Blossom Town anywhere from ten days to half a month or more.
That did not make sense.
First of all, a strong-willed and perceptive person like Lu Siya would never forget how many days she had lived in a completely unfamiliar town that had a high probability of being controlled by the enemy.
Forget the number of days, if she could accurately time her sobriety to an hour, minute, or even every second, she still had to do it.
However, she just could not remember it. Her entire person was sometimes conscious, sometimes confused, and sometimes muddleheaded. She did not know what day it was, or where she was.
It resembled how it was impossible for someone who was in a dream to clearly remember how many minutes and seconds they had been in that state.
Moreover, from the time she disappeared to the time Meng Chao came to the edge of the sinkhole, less than seventy-two hours had pa.s.sed.
Stimulated by deviant flame and the contribution points, Meng Chao’s cell activity and self-healing ability were far stronger than that of other superhumans in the same realm.
Judging from the recovery of his wound, even if he had really fallen into the sinkhole, he should not have been unconscious for too long. Otherwise, all the scabs would have peeled off and the wound would have healed perfectly.
In other words, from Lu Siya’s point of view, she had been missing for at least ten days to half a month.
From Meng Chao’s point of view, however, she had only been missing for three to five days at most.
When the two timelines were compared, a flaw was immediately revealed.
“Peach Blossom Town is not reality, but it’s an illusory city. Only in an illusion would the flow of time be distorted to such a chaotic degree.”
Meng Chao said, “It seems that the exploration teams in front and behind were neither attacked by the beast tide nor entangled by the UHV transmission towers that had risen from the dead. Instead, they were all unknowingly attacked by the mind of a mysterious existence in the depths of the Hidden Mist Domain. They were trapped in a large-scale group environment and could not extricate themselves!”
It made sense that all the exploration teams did not have time to send their last words and warnings to the outside world before they went missing.
That was because they had not encountered any monsters or threats that could be seen with the naked eye.
Perhaps, after inhaling the colorless, tasteless, invisible hallucinogenic spores and having their brains invaded by the “mind virus”, they had walked to the depths of the sinkhole on their own in a daze.
As for everyone being trapped in the same dream and being able to communicate freely in the dream, was it possible?
Of course it was possible.
Humans released brainwaves all the time.
Brainwaves were also a kind of special information. In theory, it was possible to read them directly.
As early as the Earth era, when human brainwaves influenced each other, they could trigger a ma.s.s hysteria, allowing everyone to see an impossible existence such as a “fox G.o.d” at the same time.
The so-called “fox G.o.d” was probably an image that was sketched out in someone’s brain and transmitted to someone else’s brain through strong brainwaves.