His mind felt as though mud had been poured in, and darkness surged before his eyes in waves. No one could accept that everything they had experienced on this journey… was all false.

The people met, the wounds sustained, the blood and tears shed—all false?

“Shen Mo, think carefully—with so many teammates, why are you the only one still alive?” the demoness sighed. “Think carefully: how is it that you so conveniently received Wang Jingxian’s call in the middle of the mission? She has never cared about her own daughter—why would she ask you to go pick someone up? And think again: why do you always manage to escape death every single time?”

Shen Mo stood rigid, expression vacant, not saying a word.

“Is it because you’re exceptionally intelligent? Or because you’re supremely gifted and without rival?… Neither.” The demoness spoke in an extremely gentle, unhurried tone. “Every time you happen to guess correctly, completing those deceptively clever deductions—it’s because everything is your imagination…”

Because it’s imagination—no matter what crisis you face, you can always find a way back from the brink.

Shen Mo’s face went pale, his eyes gradually growing unfocused…

Could it truly be false?

His legs—whether from the snake bites—seemed to have lost all sensation… How was one supposed to distinguish between the real and the false…

Dark, slender snakes came crawling up—one after another… coiling around his legs, climbing to his waist, gliding across his chest, winding over his shoulders, biting into his neck…

The cool, smooth snake bodies. The sharp, piercing venom fangs…

Were these sensations real?

The demoness sighed nearby. “Wake up… Don’t you understand yet? This world is nothing but your imagination. The people around you were all crafted according to your preferences. Petty street thugs with righteous hearts, an elderly person who stands up against injustice, a headstrong and rebellious girl tamed by you… All of this—every last bit—is your delusion.”

Shen Mo stood in a daze. After a long while, his lips moved faintly: “You’re saying… they don’t exist at all?”

The demoness fell silent. After a moment, she spoke again: “I know you can’t accept it. But this is the truth—you are, without any doubt, trapped within your own spiritual world.”

He lowered his head.

Where had the snakes on his body gone? It was as though they had melted, leaving muddy streaks behind.

…And what had happened to the other players around him—why couldn’t he see anyone?

The space seemed to be distorting.

The demoness before him was growing blurrier and blurrier…

He stood in a quagmire…

The entire world seemed to be spinning.

The demoness’s voice echoed all around him, like a tide rising and falling ceaselessly at his ears—

“You were a cold, detached person from childhood… Your parents were joined through a family alliance, with no love between them.

Your father was a romantic dreamer—fond of traveling and writing poetry, never willing to stay home and put on a show of affection for your mother. Your birth was, to him, simply an additional family member, not the fruit of love—so over all these years, the relationship between father and son has been very distant.

Your mother was someone who placed self-interest above all else. She gave birth to you, raised you, yet never truly valued you. She cared more about her own family clan’s rise and fall. To her, you were the product of bowing to reality—of being forced to join with a man she did not love in order to make concessions to circumstance…

You appeared to have a privileged family environment, yet in truth, no one anticipated your coming into this world… no one cared about you. And you cared for no one.

Later, your mother died. You were placed in your maternal grandfather’s care. Though your academic results were outstanding, your grandfather believed you lacked passion for people and affairs—so he strongly advocated you attend a military academy, because… this was a profession where one only needed to follow orders to be competent, requiring no feeling of any kind…”

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