Am I really hallucinating?

Chapter 325 Earthquake Impact
Zheng Fan suddenly stopped, feeling a surge of intense emotion welling up inside him. In that instant, he grabbed the three little ones and the coffee machine. He awoke and returned to Zero One Agency.

He immediately threw off the covers, and after confirming that Lin Yilin was not in the office, he used his contact information to go to Lin Yilin's side.

The three little ones and the coffee machine were all dumbfounded and didn't realize what had happened. When they looked up, they found that Zheng Fan had disappeared, and the blanket had been thrown to the ground.

When Zheng Fan arrived, he found himself in a huge pit, with no sign of Lin Yilin.

then……

His contact with Lin Yilin disappeared.

It's almost the end of August.

According to predictions, the end of August this year will not overlap with any other world events; it will remain peaceful, with no non-existent black days and no inserted red days.

Only a very few people realize that this year is an "unexpected year" for most.

The unexpected is the norm, and the norm is the unexpected.

A powerful family that was gradually gaining dominance suddenly collapsed, a super free agent who had been away for many years suddenly returned, a towering lighthouse was cut down by someone, and a lamplighter was mysteriously "swallowed" by a world that no longer existed while he was out.

In a situation where most were already struggling to keep up, just a few days after the mysterious death of the lamplighter...

An earthquake has occurred that affected the entire metropolitan area.

At the same time, the integrated fantasy world's "earthquake" invaded Dadu.

Houses shook and collapsed in the violent earthquake, turning into ruins. The ground seemed to have turned into some kind of soft substance, producing visible waves, and most of the surface was covered with churned waves.

A tsunami struck the coastal area, and the towering waves added insult to injury, deepening people's despair.

It all started with the sudden self-disclosure of the mastermind behind it all, "Jacob."

The situation arose without warning when people were outraged by his actions and intended to condemn him.

No, it cannot be said that it was completely without warning. To be precise, everything that Yagui had been doing all along was a harbinger of all this, but apart from a few individuals, no one realized that his arrangements would lead to this outcome.

It's too late to think about these things now...

Bang!
After Luo Ye killed the earth and stone giant in front of him, he checked the scene, swallowed the illusion back into his stomach, and began to pick up the remains on the ground. At this moment, a sense of danger arose spontaneously.

She suddenly looked to her left, where there was only one tall building.

Boom——

There are no tall buildings here now. It was already a struggle to survive this earthquake, and now it has been easily broken and collapsed.

Grayish-white eyes gleamed from the smoke and dust as "Cheng Fei" stepped out, brushing aside the smoke and dust.

Luo Ye was not surprised and was about to speak.

"Where is Lin Yilin?" Cheng Fei asked directly.

"You're using a temporary, broken body, yet you act like you're about to kill me at any moment," Luo Ye said, tilting his head as he looked Cheng Fei up and down.

"Then I can kill you by disassembling this body, right? Speak up, stop talking nonsense." Zheng Fan patted the dust off the body.

"She's alright. You couldn't find her...did you lose contact with her?"

“It feels similar to when you banished me back then, but back then it was my side that was affected by you, this time it should be her side that was affected by something else.” Zheng Fan said, “What has happened recently?” “As previously speculated, Ya Gui has begun to implement the plan and take full action. By detonating emotions in an instant to bring back consciousness, he caused the phenomena to distort and form an earthquake... in the form of a ‘phantom world’.”

Luo Ye led Zheng Fan to a collapsed coffee shop by the roadside. Luckily, there were a few chairs there that were still neatly arranged, which Luo Ye and Zheng Fan used to sit down temporarily.

"However, after all, we've been interfering with it for a long time, and the arrangements weren't perfect. Even so, the current situation is much less dangerous than expected. Moreover, the lantern bearers reacted very quickly. It seems that because of the mysterious death of one of the lantern bearers, they went into a state of alert in advance. When I went to talk to them before, they were all very formal and said they would only believe me if they were notified by the authorities. Thanks to their efforts, that illusionary realm has been temporarily isolated."

Zheng Fan: "...Then why is Dadu still in this state?"

Putting everything else aside, seeing Luo Ye like this, Zheng Fan roughly realized that Lin Yilin should indeed be fine, at least for the time being, in terms of her life safety.

Luo Ye seemed to have foreseen even the loss of contact.

If the problem were truly serious, Luo Ye wouldn't be so leisurely chatting with Zheng Fan here.

At that time, Luo Ye will definitely be even more anxious than Zheng Fan.

“Yagui had more cards up his sleeve than we expected; he played a trap within a trap. First, as we anticipated, he spread his information by creating panic, which allowed the situation to develop for about two days. However, when he released the information, Yilin contacted me and directly tracked him down, eventually finding his location.”

"Why didn't you call me?"

“Because I’m here.” Luo Ye raised his chin, and when he saw Zheng Fan loosening his knuckles to get off Cheng Fei, he quickly reached out and said, “With me here and you having other things to do, she naturally won’t bother you anymore.”

Zheng Fan returned to Cheng Fei's body as if nothing had happened: "Fine, then why didn't you help her deal with Ya Gui?"

This question gets straight to the heart of the matter.

Luo Ye did not deny it, stating frankly, "I am not capable enough."

"Oh."

Seeing that Zheng Fan neither mocked nor ridiculed him, and didn't even bother to say anything more, Luo Ye could only continue: "When we found him, he had already completed the descent into the illusionary realm using the distortion of the illusion of panic. Do you remember those earthquake-related illusions he sponsored and cultivated over the past ten years? They were all prepared for this moment. Then he himself seemed to become a part of the illusionary realm, as if he had become an illusion himself. Then, using a mechanism similar to the transfer of illusions between hosts, he disappeared in a brief exchange."

"The illusory world then directly invaded reality. During this process, the prepared lamplighters tried to stop and separate them. Agui's response was to create an 'earthquake world'."

"Multiple worlds..."

"Yes, he found such a detached world in advance, and then had the illusionary world he summoned bring that detached world crashing into the reality of Dadu."

Luo Ye extended two fingers and pressed them against two pebbles on the table next to him. Then, he gently slid his hand, causing them to collide with another, larger pebble not far away.

These stones were not hard, and they immediately broke apart into smaller stones.

"It created a situation similar to the impact of the water world."

"That great disaster that happened decades ago?" Zheng Fan had heard Lin Yilin mention it.

At that time, the water world was caused by other illusions or similar things to crash directly into Dadu, which was much more terrifying than the small-scale overlaps on ordinary days, creating a disaster scene that could be described as a world-ending flood.

“This incident will probably be defined as an ‘earthquake impact’ after it ends,” Luo Ye sighed softly. “Then the Illusionary World will take advantage of the impact of the earthquake world to spread, dragging in a large number of people with strong memories and emotions about earthquakes. Yi Lin is among them.”

Zheng Fan blinked: "Does this sound like a very safe thing?" Although he didn't know exactly what the Illusionary Realm was, he had never even encountered it before.

"It's very safe. Whether it's used as a battery, a consumable, or assimilated, it can't do anything for the purpose. Even though it has taken various measures, the lamplighters have still done what they should. Now that illusion has been isolated by the lamplighters. Without the manifestation of reality, this nothingness can do nothing but maintain itself."

At this point, Luo Ye said, "So if you want to find Yi Lin, you must find that illusionary realm."

(End of this chapter)