Chapter 158

158 An Illusionary World

Selma Payne’s POV:

“You saw me, right? I saw you too.” Dorothy’s voice came from behind me. I turned around, but I could only catch an instant of her figure.

“I was standing before you earlier, and now I’m walking a few steps behind you. You can see me from behind, which means that the space we are in is overlapping orderly, and all the details correspond.”

“What?” It was like I had a hundred thousand whys, and I couldn’t think of anything other than asking questions.

“I knew you weren’t paying attention in class,” Dorothy complained in a low voice. “Master Mary talked about space problems before!

“In short, I need you to know that our previous inferences are wrong because we have confined our thoughts to ‘time’. We thought that the disorder of time had distorted space.

“But this is not right. There is more than one space. The dislocation and overlapping we see are the results of the gradual integration of space. The primary and secondary relationship between time and space has also been reversed. It’s the fusion of space that affects the order of time. It’s as if a fragment has suddenly been inserted into the axis of time, and time has been forcibly extended.

“As for our four groups, we went to different dimensions and encountered different spatial fusion fragments, which is why there is a time difference. It’s not that our time is faster or slower, but that the distance we walked is different, which creates the illusion of difference in time.”

“But it doesn’t make sense.” I thought of Frank and my watches. Frank and my team walked the same distance, but time is different, isn’t it?”

“This is because you are in different spaces!” Dorothy said firmly, “Although you can see and come into contact with him, it doesn’t mean that this is just an illusion created by the overlapping space between you and him.

“Do you still remember the mark you carved? Why did the other teams send out signals based on non-existent markings before you carved them?

“Because your space fragments were all intercepted! If I’m not wrong, the overlapping space doesn’t just include the cave’s environment and everything that happens inside. The space you marked was cut out and fused into the space of the other groups. The timeline did not change, which created the illusion that they sent the signal before you made the markings.”

“Alright, I think I understand.” After avoiding a tear in space, I asked while panting, “But is this of any help now? We still can’t solve the problem of spatial overlap.”

“No, we can solve this! Or rather... That’s not a problem at all!”

Dorothy suddenly appeared in front of me, and at that moment, a spatial tear pierced through her body, splitting her into two!

“No! Dorothy!” I screamed and caught her body, but she disappeared in a flash.

I didn’t have time to be sad when her voice appeared behind my head again. “I should have died, right? But I didn’t.”

“What... What?” I was stunned. “What’s going on?”

Dorothy appeared in front of me again. She looked completely unscathed, unlike the clothes and backpacks torn apart.

“I’ve said it before; all of this is fake, Selma.” Her face was calm as if she was not in danger. “I’ve been wondering. If everything is an artificial ‘game server’ as we initially thought, then there are too many bugs in it, right?

“Constructing space is not an easy task. Although the constructed space is fake, it must conform to all existing world laws. This means it cannot have too many bugs, or its existence will be self-contradictory, and it will collapse and disappear in less than a second.

“But look at where we are now. This place is a collection of bugs. No one can break the laws of nature to build such a place, not even the most famous sorcerer in history who is good at this.

“So, there is only one answer – everything is fake. There are no servers and no virtual world.”

My brain was unable to work. I asked in a daze, “Where are we now? Is this the second base in real life? Did someone use the power of space to ambush us?”

“No, although this is not a man-made space, we are still not in reality.” Dorothy tugged at the thick down-jacket on her body. “Can you feel it? The temperature is getting lower and lower. It’s as if we’re not in a cave but a world of ice and snow.

“No matter how many clothes we wear, we can’t avoid temperature loss because we only wear clothes in our fantasies. In reality, we don’t even have any clothes on our bodies.

“We are in an illusion, Selma.

“The danger we are seeing is harmless. It’s just a terrifying imagination.

“The thing that can kill us is the temperature.

“Selma, our bodies are about to freeze to death.”