Chapter 348: Speculation and Connection

Two days later, the morning sun shone perfectly.

Jie Ming met Amy and Victor as planned at the landmark Star Orbit Plaza in the city center.

When he arrived, Amy was already waiting, waving enthusiastically.

“Over here, over here!” She was dressed in lively casual clothes today.

Victor remained as impeccably academic as ever, nodding at Jie Ming.

After quickly settling on the itinerary, they decided to first visit the largest commercial complex, Universal Mall, to pick a gift for Amy’s aunt, then wander freely and catch a movie.

Walking along the broad, spotless streets where hovercars glided silently overhead, Jie Ming casually observed his surroundings.

His gaze repeatedly swept across the massive public holoscreens on the facades of towering buildings.

They were broadcasting, in startlingly realistic full-holographic footage, news of the “Frontline Stellar Campaign”: colossal starships exchanging fire in the depths of space, energy beams crisscrossing, silent explosions blooming like flowers of flame.

The announcer solemnly described the ferocity of the battles and the valor of their own soldiers.

Yet this war footage stood in stark contrast to the utterly peaceful atmosphere around them.

There were no recruitment stations, no wartime rationing notices, no trace of tension that should accompany a state of emergency.

At the bus stops, young men and women excitedly discussed the latest fully immersive holographic games and the scenery of a newly opened tourist planet.

In the parks, elderly folks basked leisurely in the sun, chatting about community dance parties.

Every face carried an almost habitual calm. The existential war playing on the screens seemed to evoke… nothing at all.

No fear, no fervor, not even basic concern, as if it were mere entertainment from another dimension, utterly unrelated to daily life.

“Is distance making it beautiful? Or have they grown numb?” The doubts in Jie Ming’s heart deepened.

Neither explanation felt right. No matter how he looked at it, a civilization locked in fierce interstellar war should never feel this relaxed.

Whether it was fervor, despair, or tension, anything would make sense; anything except this serene peace.

At Universal Mall, they went straight to “Star Sea Cinema Fun,” a chain store specializing in movie merchandise.

The place was packed with posters, figurines, and prop replicas from films Jie Ming had never heard of.

Looking at them, he realized this was yet another vast expanse of “real” information outside his knowledge base.

While Amy and Victor enthusiastically browsed and discussed, Jie Ming pretended to be interested while quietly absorbing fragments of this world’s culture.

Amy eventually settled on a limited-edition villain spaceship model, deciding it perfectly matched her aunt’s “unique” tastes.

Gift purchased, the three wandered the shopping street.

Suddenly, Jie Ming froze. His gaze locked onto a gigantic holographic billboard in the center of the plaza.

A high-tech product launch was being live-streamed.

Standing at the podium, confidently presenting, was a white-coated chief scientist.

And that face belonged to yet another wizard Jie Ming had glimpsed once during the expedition muster!

“Another one…” Shock rippled through him. He silently memorized the company name and the “scientist’s” appearance.

At Amy’s strong insistence, they went to see the current blockbuster interstellar epic.

Throughout the film, Jie Ming confirmed once more that the storytelling, aesthetic style, and underlying values were completely distinct from both Earth and the wizard world’s art forms; an independent, mature cultural product.

By the time the movie ended, dusk had fallen.

As they exited the mall with the crowd, a cool yet faintly lazy female voice rang out behind them.

“Amy?”

Amy turned, her face lighting up. “Auntie!”

Jie Ming followed her gaze. When he saw the woman clearly, his pupils contracted sharply; his breath nearly stopped.

Standing there was a tall, graceful woman with flowing silver-gray hair that danced lightly in the evening breeze. Her features were exquisite, her skin pale, her aura aloof yet laced with an indescribable intellectual mystery.

Most importantly, Jie Ming knew that face far too well.

It was Senior Viola!

Amy happily grabbed Viola’s hand and introduced them. “Auntie, these are the friends I told you about: Jie Ming and Victor.”

Viola; or rather, this world’s “Viola”; turned her gaze to the two boys. A warm, approachable smile appeared on her face, strangely harmonizing with her naturally distant, cool demeanor.

“Hello. Amy talks about you all the time. I graduated from the same university you’re attending now, so feel free to call me Senior Viola.”

Jie Ming’s eyelid twitched violently. His heartbeat involuntarily accelerated.

Senior again?

Fortunately, “Viola’s” attention quickly returned to Amy. She smiled and asked, “What brings you all here today?”

Amy proudly presented the beautifully wrapped gift. “Auntie, early happy birthday! This is what we picked out together for you!”

Viola’s expression showed just the right amount of delighted surprise. She accepted the gift with a gentle, radiant smile. “Thank you, Amy, Jie Ming, Victor. You shouldn’t have.”

Her performance was flawless; exactly the warm elder touched by her juniors’ thoughtfulness.

Yet Amy tilted her head, openly wary and suspicious as she scrutinized her aunt.

Viola blinked, feigning confusion. “What is it, Amy? Something on my face?”

Amy wrinkled her nose and declared bluntly, “Auntie, your reaction today is super weird!”

“How so?”

“Because with your usual personality, if you received a gift chosen with friends, you’d definitely say something like… ‘Hmph, even the best of friends will eventually part for one reason or another. This kind of relationship can never last forever’; something super depressing!”

Victor looked shocked, clearly unable to reconcile this description with the gentle woman before them.

Jie Ming listened with a forehead full of black lines. That personality… was absolutely Senior Viola.

Viola’s “confusion” vanished instantly, replaced by a bright, mischievous grin. She lightly tapped Amy’s forehead with a finger and said in a sweet, melodic voice:

“I’m not going to say that today. Because, you see; not saying it will make you suffer even more.”

“I want you to keep carrying that unease. I want you to keep agonizing over this question with no answer. And if one day you really do part ways with your friends, only then will I lean in close and whisper…”

She leaned forward slightly, her smile growing ever more brilliant, enunciating each word:

“‘You had it coming.’”

Amy: “…”

Victor: “!!!”

Amy’s face turned red. After a long moment, she stomped her foot. “Auntie! Your personality really is as awful as ever!”

Victor looked utterly shaken by Viola’s vicious streak.

Jie Ming, standing off to the side with a face full of black lines, unexpectedly felt a strange sense of relief; “As expected.”

He was even secretly grateful that in this fake world, his assigned identity wasn’t more deeply entangled with “Senior Viola.” Otherwise, the past days would have been far more “eventful” and hellishly dangerous.

Viola chatted casually with Amy for a bit longer before a nervous-looking young man in a suit approached from nearby, apparently on urgent work business.

After bidding the trio farewell, she turned gracefully, her impeccable gentle smile still in place, and naturally handed her handbag to the man.

He took it as if receiving a treasure, a blush rising on his cheeks as he followed her obediently.

Amy watched their retreating backs, shook her head helplessly, and muttered, “Another poor soul…”

Jie Ming and Victor looked at her questioningly.

Amy sighed. “My aunt… does the same thing at her company. She loves using that vague, flirtatious attitude to toy with her male colleagues. When they finally fall hard and think they’re about to succeed, she rejects them mercilessly.”

“And then; in her own words; she ‘savors the exquisite agony on their faces as their dreams shatter.’ And because she’s so beautiful, the trick works almost every time.”

Jie Ming and Victor exchanged a glance, cold sweat beading on both their foreheads.

In their eyes, the man carrying the handbag had already become a sacrificial lamb.

“What a… terrifying person,” Victor said dryly.

Jie Ming silently wiped away cold sweat, thinking this was indeed perfectly in line with the Senior Viola he remembered.

The three soon parted ways at the mall entrance.

On the way home, Jie Ming claimed he wanted to take a walk and deliberately took a long detour.

He passed through different districts, observing the world’s details more extensively.

When he walked past a public elementary school with colorful running tracks and children’s laughter, his steps involuntarily halted again.

Through the white fence, on the playground, a burly man in sportswear was playing games with a group of seven- and eight-year-olds, his face overflowing with affectionate smiles.

His movements were agile yet careful, afraid of bumping the children; his booming voice carried encouragement and joy.

Jie Ming’s pupils contracted once more.

This man… he remembered him too!

A Tier-5 wizard from the expeditionary force!

Jie Ming’s impression of him was particularly strong; even a single glance back then had revealed the violent, tyrannical aura pouring off the man.

Yet now, he was apparently a beloved P.E. teacher at this elementary school?

Watching the overwhelming satisfaction and happiness on the man’s face, Jie Ming felt a surge of absurdity.

He stood silently for a moment before turning and quickening his pace home.

Locking himself in his bedroom, Jie Ming leaned back against the door, took a deep breath, and began systematically organizing the information he had gathered today.

First, and most importantly: the density of “familiar” faces was unnaturally high.

This city had tens of millions of residents, yet within his limited range of activity; school commute, downtown commercial district, and today’s deliberate detour; he had consecutively encountered Kevin (former school bully), the high-tech company’s “chief scientist,” Senior Viola, and the “P.E. teacher.”

These were only the ones he could recognize from a single glance.

Remember: the wizards he could identify were an insignificant fraction of the nearly two million who had fallen here.

What did this imply?

It implied that the number of individuals scattered across this world, constructed using fallen wizards as prototypes, might be unimaginably vast!

Second, the authenticity of these “acquaintances” far exceeded that of his “parents.”

Whether it was Kevin’s thug attitude, the chief scientist’s elite demeanor, the P.E. teacher’s sunny kindness, or Viola’s malice carved into her very bones; they all displayed vivid, consistent personalities and independent life trajectories.

Unlike his “parents” with their templated stiffness and obvious flaws, these people overflowed with the complexity and realism of actual human beings.

Third, the sheer volume of independent cultural products in this world.

Movies, games, art styles, news…

All the elements forming this world’s backdrop lay far beyond his personal knowledge base, yet they were logically coherent, forming a complete, authentic civilization system.

If someone had constructed such an enormous and realistic alien culture solely for him, the cost would be incomprehensible.

Connecting all these clues, a bold, heart-racing hypothesis gradually took shape in Jie Ming’s mind:

Could it be… that this so-called “false world” was not a cage built just for him?

But one that contained all two million fallen wizards at the same time?

Each of them, perhaps like him at the beginning, implanted with different identities and false memories, scattered across every corner of this world.

Like droplets merging into the sea, collectively forming part of this “reality”?

If that were true, many contradictions suddenly made sense.

The authentic knowledge could come from the contributions of other fallen wizards.

Those vivid “acquaintances” were simply the real individuals living under their false identities.

The vast cultural backdrop was synthesized by the plane’s rules from the aggregated cognitive material of all the trapped!

“A super-massive stage with at least two million ‘actors’?” The more Jie Ming thought about it, the more certain he became.

More importantly, this also explained part of why the Mysterious Astral Mortal Dust Barrier had failed.

The enemy didn’t need to break through the barrier’s protection at all; they only had to arrange the entire plane accordingly.

Like

The Truman Show

: when the entire world is a meticulously crafted real stage, even the Mysterious Astral Mortal Dust Barrier becomes powerless.

“But that still doesn’t explain how the false memories were created…”

Jie Ming shook his head, setting the question aside for now, and turned his focus back.

To verify this hypothesis, the key was to confirm whether there were other “real people” around him; fallen wizards from the wizard world who, like him, were temporarily blinded.

His gaze involuntarily fell on the “Viola” he had met today.

Instinct told him the chances were extremely high that Senior Viola was real.

After all, sadists of her caliber; who derived pleasure from others’ suffering; were exceedingly rare.

Even if he racked his brains to fabricate one, he doubted he could come up with lines like “not saying it will make you suffer more” and “you had it coming.”

That bone-deep malice and razor-sharp insight into human nature felt like pure, unfiltered Viola.

“Time-wise, it fits too. If Senior was part of the first reinforcement wave that fell here…” Jie Ming recalled the expedition timeline.

Viola had indeed mentioned being selected for an elite combat unit and dispatched to reinforce this strange plane. It all checked out.

Testing someone familiar would be far easier and more informative than testing a stranger.

“Decision made. Next target: confirm Senior Viola’s true state.”

With a clear next step, the confusion that had plagued Jie Ming finally eased somewhat.

He lay down on the bed, closed his eyes, and once more sank his mind into his dantian.

Under the relentless “adaptive evolution” of his Body Forging Art, the efficiency of spiritual power mobilization had improved slightly again.

The estimated time until full reconnection with his inner world had shortened once more.

…

Dawn’s faint light filtered through the curtains, casting long streaks across the floor.

Jie Ming slowly opened his eyes. Bloodshot veins laced the whites, dark shadows ringed them; exhaustion was plain.

Yet in stark contrast to his haggard appearance, his eyes blazed with irrepressible excitement, and the corners of his mouth curved in unmistakable relief.

Success!

After an entire sleepless night of total concentration and painstaking guidance, that thread-thin, lead-heavy strand of spiritual power had finally, at the break of dawn, barely touched the invisible barrier at the entrance to his inner world!

Jie Ming could finally exhale.

Truthfully, he had been lucky.

If “meditative trance” in the cultivation system weren’t treated as a realm of mind and comprehension rather than a pure mental-strength ability, with his currently mortal-level spirit, he would never have been able to introspect his dantian and perform such delicate operations.

His own spiritual power was inherently a fusion of essence, energy, spirit, and spiritual qi, naturally bearing the imprint of his will.

The instant that slender thread connected with the entrance…

Hum!

A peculiar resonance rang out. Jie Ming felt his spirit suddenly lighten, as if breaking through a thick membrane. A familiar, intimate aura instantly enveloped the tiny wisp of mental intent he had sent forth.

He was in!

Though only an extremely faint strand could enter, the moment it crossed into his inner world, that wisp became noticeably more lively and agile!

No longer shackled like it was outside, forced to dance in heavy chains.

“As expected… my inner world has already begun forming the prototype of a plane with its own foundational rules. It can partially counteract the suppression of the external plane!” Understanding dawned in Jie Ming’s heart.

Unfortunately, the total amount of mental power he could project was too small. This tiny “liberation” only made controlling that wisp slightly more flexible; far from enough to shatter the external restraints.

Without delay, he directed the wisp straight toward the automated factory in the core region.

Inside the factory, all the precision instruments still hummed in orderly operation.

His “gaze” immediately locked onto the timer on the main console, its numbers constantly ticking.

The clear digits entered his “vision”:

6 years, 4 months, 17 days, 8 hours, 32 minutes…

Jie Ming’s heart first sank, then he let out a long breath of relief.

Over six years!

From the moment he fell into this plane until now, more than six whole years had passed in the outside world!

The ten-year deadline given by the second expeditionary command was already more than half gone!

A wave of icy urgency surged through him, but relief quickly suppressed it.

Thank goodness; time wasn’t up yet!

Nearly four years remained.

It wasn’t generous, but it at least gave him room to struggle and break free; he hadn’t yet reached the worst-case scenario.

His intent swept across the black giant legions standing silently like dark mountains in the distance, and the ghostly patrol units gliding along the spatial barriers.

They were in perfect condition, brimming with energy, quietly awaiting their master’s call.

Jie Ming tried using this wisp of spirit to send a small scouting talisman-witchcraft device outside his body.

But the moment his intent moved; nothing. Like a stone dropped into the sea.

The device was blocked dead at the spatial entrance by an invisible, overwhelming force; it couldn’t pass through at all.

“As expected…” Jie Ming wasn’t too disappointed.

The suppression of transcendent power was comprehensive, clearly including spatial blockades.

With his main spirit so heavily restricted, it was like a feeble man with an arsenal locked behind an iron gate; he couldn’t drag the weapons out.

Directly breaking the situation using his inner world’s reserves seemed, for now, nearly impossible.

“Still, confirming the time flow is already the greatest harvest!”

His intent turned to the information terminal set up within the space.

The terminal activated smoothly, the holoscreen lighting up, but it displayed a glaring red warning: NO SIGNAL.

“Even information flow is completely intercepted… This plane’s isolation is even more thorough than I imagined.” A chill ran through Jie Ming’s heart.

This meant transmitting information to the outside world through his inner space was also virtually impossible.

Calming his mind, Jie Ming slowly withdrew the wisp of spirit.

Consciousness returned to his body. Overwhelming exhaustion crashed over him like a tide.

After resting, Jie Ming steeled his resolve; the plan had to accelerate!

In the following days, Jie Ming’s behavior at school subtly changed.

He no longer passively absorbed classroom knowledge; he began actively and purposefully devouring every available moment to study this world’s various knowledge systems.

From foundational sciences to social humanities, he sought to understand the operating rules of this “stage” more deeply.

At the same time, he began casually asking Amy more about her aunt Viola: her work habits, frequent haunts, recent schedule, etc.

This unusual interest alarmed Amy. She looked at him worriedly and earnestly warned, “Jie Ming… you’re not actually interested in my aunt, are you?”

“Listen to me; absolutely do NOT! With her personality, getting close will only make you miserable! You’re our school’s top bully with a bright future; don’t let beauty cloud your judgment!”

Jie Ming could only laugh awkwardly and brush it off. Fortunately, though worried, Amy still; under his subtle guidance; let slip a crucial piece of information:

In about ten days, Viola was apparently going to participate in a “Clean Beach” environmental volunteer event in the southern district.

“Clean Beach” volunteer event… Jie Ming silently began recalling. “That could be a good opportunity.”

He wasn’t unfamiliar with the event; after all, the news had been constantly broadcasting it these past few days.