“Go wash your hands first!”
His mother passed by him carrying a dish, urging him without even turning her head.
Her tone was natural.
It even held a touch of annoyance.
“You just got back and you're already sitting at the table. Do you know how many things your hands have touched?”
“Got it.”
Jiang Huan answered reflexively.
He slipped into his slippers and walked down the familiar hallway into the bathroom.
The light turned on, revealing khaki tiles, the washing machine, and the towel hanging on the wall.
On the sink sat the bottle of hand soap, used until only a fraction of it remained.
Everything was exactly where it belonged in his memory.
Jiang Huan turned on the faucet.
Warm water flowed over his fingers.
He raised his head and looked into the mirror.
His movements suddenly froze.
The face in the mirror was not his own face as Jiang Huan.
Chestnut hair.
Pale eyes.
Pale skin.
It was Elias Rockland.
Or rather, it was the face he had grown accustomed to seeing.
Jiang Huan stared at the mirror for a moment, then lowered his head to finish washing his hands thoroughly.
The lather from the hand soap was washed down the drain by the stream of water.
He raised his head again and blinked.
The face of Elias in the mirror vanished.
Replacing it was the face he had almost forgotten.
“If you're going to make an illusion, at least make it consistent!”
Jiang Huan leaned closer to the mirror, looking left and right.
“What's taking you so long just to wash your hands?”
His mother's voice drifted in from the living room.
“Did you fall into the toilet?”
“Coming!”
He answered out of reflex, took one last look at the mirror, and turned to walk out of the bathroom.
The dishes were already laid out on the dining table.
Beef rolls, vegetables, and meatballs.
The split hot pot bubbled continuously on the induction cooker.
The steam, mixed with the familiar aroma of hot pot, washed over his face.
Jiang Huan pulled out a chair and sat down.
Just as he picked up his chopsticks, he froze.
Floating in the clear broth was an nameless white flower.
Its petals were thin and delicate.
Its color was pure white.
Instead of being scalded and ruined by the boiling broth, it slowly unfurled amidst the rising steam.
A few tiny rootlets extended from the bottom of the stem, clinging to the inner wall of the copper pot as they dug downward.
Meanwhile, in the spicy red broth on the other side, the meat slices were continuously multiplying.
One slice became two.
Two became four.
Fresh red meat surged up from the bottom of the pot, quickly covering the entire side of the spicy broth.
The boiling broth pushed the meat slices up and down.
Yet no matter how long they boiled, they did not diminish.
Instead, they piled up more and more.
It was as if the entire pot was growing flesh and blood.
Jiang Huan's face instantly turned from nostalgic to vigilant.
Even more bizarrely.
The roots of the white flower were crossing the copper divider in the middle of the split hot pot.
Those slender roots dug into the red broth, intertwining with the continuously growing flesh.
One white.
One red.
They tangled together.
As if they had originally grown from the very same entity.
An indescribable sense of eeriness rose from the depths of Jiang Huan's heart.
He gripped his chopsticks tightly and carefully nudged one of the still-writhing slices of meat.
The tip of his chopsticks touched it.
The entire pot of meat instantly lost its vitality.
All the slices stopped multiplying and sank limply to the bottom of the soup.
The red oil washed over them once more.
The mass of flesh that had almost crawled out of the copper pot vanished without a trace.
Only the white flower remained, slowly spinning in the clear broth.
Jiang Huan stared at the hot pot.
“What are you dazing off for?”
His mother sat down opposite him, acting as if she had seen nothing.
She picked up a few normal slices of beef and dropped them into the red broth.
“Eat.”
Jiang Huan watched the meat slices sink into the exact spot where the writhing flesh had just vanished.
For a moment, he didn't even know if he should warn her.
“Oh.”
He muttered.
Just as he was about to speak and probe further, the television in the living room suddenly emitted a harsh burst of static.
Zzzt—
The image playing normally on the screen suddenly distorted.
The color picture quickly disintegrated into a massive, flickering sheet of black-and-white static.
Jiang Huan's body, which had just relaxed, tensed up once more.
He silently placed his chopsticks back on the table.
He quickly scanned his surroundings.
The dream demon had already stuffed two sequences into this illusion that did not belong to his memories.
Who knew what would appear next.
His gaze swept across the living room; nothing appeared.
He turned his head slightly.
The next moment, his gaze suddenly locked onto the balcony.
To be precise.
It was the reflection in the balcony glass.
A strange woman was standing there.
Her figure was somewhat blurry.
Her clothes were indistinct, and her face was obscured.
He could only tell that she was a very young woman.
She held a black sapling in her arms.
Its pitch-black branches reached upward.
Nestled quietly among a few tender twigs was a single white flower.
Jiang Huan's pupils contracted slightly.
Familiar.
Of course it was familiar.
That was clearly the same white flower in the clear broth.
He immediately turned to look at the hot pot.
The white flower was still floating in the clear broth.
He looked back at the balcony glass.
The flower in the woman's arms had not vanished either.
The two flowers were identical.
As if the same object was existing in two places simultaneously.
Just as Jiang Huan was about to speak, the woman in the glass suddenly raised her head.
She seemed to be looking at him.
Her blurry lips moved slightly.
“Will you return this time?”
The voice was very soft.
Yet it cut clearly through the television static and fell into his ears.
“What?!”
Jiang Huan stood up abruptly.
The legs of his chair scraped harshly against the floor.
“I told you to eat more meat!”
His mother's somewhat impatient voice came from beside him.
She held a strainer, scooping twice in the red broth.
“I told you not to shout in the house!”
Jiang Huan froze.
He looked at his mother.
Then he whipped his head back toward the balcony.
The glass showed only the reflection of the indoor lights.
There was no woman.
No black sapling.
And no white flower.
As if everything that had just happened had never existed.
Jiang Huan slowly sat back down.
Aren't there a few too many bugs in this dream demon's illusion?
He muttered to himself.
The residential area and Xuan-shao earlier had been quite detailed.
But once he reached home, first the person in the mirror was wrong.
Then the hot pot started growing meat.
A person spawned on the balcony.
And the TV was responsible for providing horror movie sound effects.
He had thought that after preparing for so long, the dream demon would pull off some grand spectacle.
But the moment this thought arose.
The mocking look on Jiang Huan's face slowly faded.
The materials the dream demon used to construct illusions came from its prey's imagination and memories.
The residential area, Xuan-shao, his home door, his mother.
All of these could find matches in Jiang Huan's spirituality.
But what about that frozen ruin?
What about the eleven figures in the blizzard?
And the black sapling and the white flower.
And the strange woman holding the tree.
Whose memories were those?
Jiang Huan looked down at the hot pot.
The white flower was no longer visible in the clear broth.
Only a few red dates rolled up and down with the boiling water.
Opposite him, his mother was still looking down, scooping meat.
Her movements were natural.
Her expression was peaceful.
Jiang Huan opened his mouth, but in the end, he asked nothing.
He knew he had to maintain his rationality.
He should immediately look for flaws in the illusion and cooperate with Jack in reality to deal with the dream demon.
But no one knew.
How badly he wanted to stay here just a little longer.
Even if it was just one more minute.
He wanted to tell his mother that he wasn't dead.
He wanted to tell her that he had gone to a place very far away.
There were no cell phones there.
No internet.
People traveled by horse carriages.
He wanted to say that he had changed his face and his name.
But he was still alive and well.
But what was the point of saying these things?
The person in front of him was merely a shadow patched together by the dream demon from his memories.
She wouldn't remember.
And his mother in the other world would never hear him.
Jiang Huan's grip on his chopsticks tightened.
Just then.
The boiling soup in the split hot pot suddenly grew quiet.
Between the red and clear broths, a milky-white flame silently ignited.
The cluster of fire rose from the depths of the illusion, passing directly through the copper divider in the center of the pot.
The light was not dazzling.
Yet it was so stable that nothing could distort it.
The Sacred Candle.
Jack had already taken action in reality.
As the candle flame flickered to life, the overhead lights sputtered twice.
And went out.
The static on the television abruptly vanished, leaving the screen pitch-black.
The phone resting on the edge of the table also went dark.
Next was the view outside the window.
The flashing signal lights atop the distant skyscrapers.
The streetlights.
The shop signs.
The countless lights of the city were going out one by one.
Darkness rapidly swallowed the residential area.
Swallowed the streets.
And finally, swallowed the horizon.
Only the milky-white flame in the center of the split hot pot, coming from reality, remained completely stable.
The illusion was shattering.
Fine cracks began to crawl across the walls.
The edges of the table and chairs started turning transparent.
The aroma of the hot pot faded rapidly.
Jiang Huan slowly stood up.
His mother looked up at him.
She didn't seem to notice the changes around them.
Nor did she notice that her son's face was turning into someone else's.
She simply asked casually, just like she had on countless ordinary nights:
“Are you going out again?”
Jiang Huan looked at the face he had missed day and night.
For a brief second.
He almost wanted to sit back down.
To tell Jack in reality not to light the candle.
And not to grab the pan.
Just let him stay a little longer.
But in the end, he only gave a gentle nod.
“Yeah.”
The clothes on his body were changing.
The short-sleeved shirt belonging to Jiang Huan began to fade from the cuffs, gradually turning back into the Henley shirt he had been wearing on the island these past few days.
His skin and hair were bit by bit covered by Elias's appearance.
Jiang Huan was disappearing.
Elias was returning.
“Then come back early,” his mother's voice urged him, just as she had on countless ordinary nights.
Elias felt a lump rise in his throat.
There was so much he wanted to say.
But in the end, he only smiled and responded, just like every other time he had stepped out the door in the past.
“Okay.”
Everything dissolved into a distant echo.
His mother's face grew blurry.
The dining table, the hot pot, the living room, and that front door dissolved layer by layer in the milky-white firelight.
Elias clenched his fists.
His fingernails dug into his palms.
But soon, he slowly released them.
He couldn't stay here.
Fake was fake, after all.
At the final moment before the illusion shattered completely, countless unfamiliar images flashed before his eyes once more.
In the frozen ruins.
Eleven flames flickered ahead.
He followed at the very end of the line, raising the torch in his hand against the howling blizzard.
The scene shifted.
A sky full of stars blanketed a boundless darkness.
Black roots and white flowers wound around his arms, boring into his skin bit by bit.
A somewhat familiar girl was kneeling below.
She kept her head lowered, her shoulders trembling as she sobbed in a suppressed voice.
Elias tried to see her face clearly.
But the final image had already begun to collapse.
Before he could recover from this wave of flashbacks, his 【Malice Perception】 suddenly registered a slight response.
Danger.
From behind.
Elias snapped his eyes open.
Immediately after, a massive force slammed violently into his head.
Clang!
A crisp, loud sound exploded within the small lighthouse cottage.
Elias's head lolled to the side.
The milky-white flame of the Sacred Candle in front of him instantly split into six or seven.
His ears buzzed loudly.
One moment he was saying goodbye to his mother.
The next, he was sent right back to reality with a frying pan.
Elias endured the pain radiating from the top of his head and forced himself to raise a hand.
Signaling that he was awake.
“Stop...”
“I'm awake...”
His voice was somewhat weak.
Perhaps because he hadn't fully recovered from his emotions.
Or perhaps because that hit with the pan had indeed been quite heavy.
He turned his head.
Jack was standing by the chair.
He was gripping the frying pan tightly with both hands.
His expression was grave, his posture textbook perfect.
The bottom of the pan was aimed directly at the crown of Elias's head.
Clearly, the young man from Landon had strictly remembered Elias's prior instructions.
If he didn't wake up the first time.
Then hit him again.
At this moment, Jack had already raised the frying pan high again, driving power from his core, preparing to deliver the planned second physical reboot.
Elias's eyelids twitched violently.
The slight melancholy from his parting just now was instantly wiped clean by his survival instinct.
“I'm awake!”
“I'm fucking awake!”
“Put the pan down!”
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