Am I really hallucinating?

Chapter 366 Beyond the Entity
Inside the carriage, Yu Hao's group of three, Zheng Fan's group of three, and the group of four students all chose to leave the carriage one after another.

The office worker also arrived, but he didn't wake up his colleague.

After a brief stop, the doors closed and the subway train sped away.

"You don't seem to really want to come, so why did you come with such a long face?" Zheng Fan approached the office worker and struck up a conversation with him in a familiar manner.

This young office worker already has graying hair, sharp facial features, and deep nasolabial folds, which makes him look old even though his skin is actually well-maintained.

To Zheng Fan's words, he simply lowered his head, speaking softly and dejectedly: "Because I have to go to work tomorrow, if I go straight to the last stop, I'll probably be taken somewhere in the city. If it's nearby, it's fine, but if it's far, I won't be able to get back in time. The company won't accept such a ridiculous excuse... I should have known better than to try to save money. I was dragged into this social event and drank too much..."

"Wow..." Zheng Fan exclaimed, momentarily at a loss for words.

The students couldn't help but burst out laughing.

"That's such a pathetic excuse, old man!"

"This is what they call a corporate slave, someone whose edges have been worn down and who has lost their vitality."

"I feel that Yang Ningyu will likely end up like this after graduation."

"Nonsense..."

The office worker simply lowered his head silently, his expression numb, completely unconcerned by the students' teasing.

"Your name is Mo Mang, isn't it?" Zheng Fan recalled the name the other person had just introduced himself with.

Because the time was short, Zheng Fan's memory was still relatively fresh; otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to remember the name of such an irrelevant passerby. He might have forgotten it in another half minute.

"Yes," he replied honestly.

"Then let's do our best so we can clock in on time for work tomorrow." He turned to look at the blood-soaked street ahead and encouraged them.

The office worker was somewhat surprised, not expecting that someone as unusual as Zheng Fan would come to encourage him.

After saying that, Zheng Fan returned to Lin Yilin's side: "The illusion and reality overlap, this independent spacetime is quite something. If these flesh and blood baits are still there, then the infinite overlap should not have started yet. I didn't feel any extra connections, and fake things can't become real."

Boom——

In the distance, a colossal beast of flesh and blood strolled by, its terrifying form, faintly visible amidst the blood mist, intimidating everyone else present.

"An illusion from the Longevity Society?" Fried realized, and combined his knowledge to deduce the other party's identity.

Was it really that large-scale back then?
How was this illusion finally resolved? The intelligence reports say it was a bait-type illusion! Could a bait-type illusion of this scale really be easily resolved without mobilizing the entire power of Dadu?

Fried initially thought it was just a hallucination, and that the only way to escalate the situation was by exploiting the opportunity. He believed that the greater loss of life in Jiangwen Street was mainly due to the earthquake.

But in this situation, if Zero Metro isn't joking, then the events that happened in Jiangwen Street more than three months ago are really hard to piece together from just a few fragments of information.

A corner of hell unfolded before their eyes.

"It's time to act. We need three tickets. The sooner we get them, the sooner we can leave. We don't know how long this subway will wait for us." After being stunned, Yu Hao came to his senses. His normal human instincts were urging him to leave this place as soon as possible.

"What? The car won't wait for us?" The students quickly came to their senses, their expressions changing.

"Of course not. Although you can board the train anytime as long as you have enough tickets, and the train is an absolutely safe zone, the train will eventually leave. That's roughly when the final crisis will arrive, and a little later, it will be when the subway departs," Yu Hao explained.

The Zero Subway has a hidden time limit, and the way it alerts you is by the intensity of the crisis, which is indeed quite aggressive.

The fear of the unknown and the suffocating feeling of facing disaster were incredibly impactful for these students from a white world.

Yu Hao frowned.

It's true that unity is strength, but the quality of students is indeed extremely unstable. Take Luo Ye, for example. When he first showed his talent, he was just a middle school student; by university, he was already a guest of honor among the elite in the central government.

These young people were so frightened by the fact that their fantasies were shattered before they even began that they almost couldn't stand up straight.

Originally, he was at least hoping to persuade them to use his team as the core, and if they had the ability, they would invest and help them to leave a goodwill for the future; if they didn't have the ability, they would find an opportunity to sell them and reap some value.

But now it seems that the exact value of these students is questionable.

Forget it, I might as well just sell it and save myself the trouble.

“Our immediate priority is to confirm the location of the subway. We’ll try to collect tickets along the way, and once we find the location, we’ll focus on collecting them. Three tickets per person is relatively easy for us, but it won’t be so easy for you.” Yu Hao’s attitude was noticeably colder.

However, it could simply be due to the extreme difficulty of the dungeon; who knows?

gurgle...gurgle...

The sound of flesh writhing could be heard. They had only been there a short time when they were spotted by the flesh-and-blood beings nearby, who quickly moved closer to the real life force.

“My advice is to leave them alone,” Zheng Fan gently advised.

The tall boy picked up a steel pipe and bravely tried to rush forward, but after hearing Zheng Fan's words, he quickly ran back.

Yu Hao and his two companions had a lot of experience in dealing with things, and they tried to avoid getting too close.

However, if an attack lands on a flesh-and-blood human, and does not cause massive damage in one go, the flesh and blood will rapidly regenerate to fill the wound, making them almost like unkillable monsters.

Their first meeting left them somewhat overwhelmed.

Fried pulled out a coin and said to the nearest flesh-and-blood man, "Brother, can I borrow something?"

As he spoke, he flicked his thumb, and the coin landed on the flesh-and-blood man. Suddenly, a coin slot appeared where the two made contact, and the coin entered the flesh-and-blood man's body through it.

The flesh-and-blood figure's menacing movements abruptly ceased, then, with a gesture from Fried, transformed into a longsword. He wielded it with effortless skill, easily slicing down other approaching flesh-and-blood figures with dazzling flourishes. "That coin-operated illusion's ability is quite peculiar," Zheng Fan said, leaning closer to Lin Yilin as he looked at Fried.

Lin Yilin didn't look at Zheng Fan because she was also manipulating earthworms to fight off the approaching flesh-and-blood people.

These things seemed to spring up out of thin air; there weren't many a moment ago, but in the blink of an eye, they filled the street in front of them, making one's scalp tingle.

Hearing Zheng Fan's words, she also took a moment to pay attention: "Barewing? No, it's more like property... but it's clearly different from the usual standard property illusions. He's not 'buying' something, but rather renting it out by paying a deposit through coin insertion?"

The rocking horse that was common in the past allowed customers to use it for a certain period of time by inserting coins, but the rocking horse itself always belonged to the merchant. Fried's coin-operated illusion ability was probably like that.

Can you even lend something like this?
If we can buy them all, it seems like we can actually borrow them.

They fought and retreated at the same time. Most of the flesh-and-blood people were not fast-moving, which allowed them to escape the encirclement and shake them off.

After arriving at a relatively quiet area without any strange noises, the group took a short rest. Mo Mang, a student and office worker, needed to rest, as they hadn't even absorbed any blood-red factors and were just ordinary people.

Surprisingly, even Su Long, who seemed to have the best stamina among the students, was panting heavily after a long run, while Mo Mang calmed down after catching her breath and wiping away her sweat.

Some details show that he was actually very scared, but on the surface he maintained his composure very well.

"This is the first hurdle, isn't it? It's terrifying right from the start. Those things... can't we fight back?"

"If you want to become like them, you can fight back at will. Once you get touched, you can embrace immortality. Isn't that a good thing?" Zheng Fan responded to the student's complaint with a smile.

Zheng Fan made the students feel quite uncomfortable.

Just then, Yu Hao's team looked even more embarrassed, showing no joy at having survived the crisis. After searching their bodies, they couldn't help but punch the wall pillar next to them.

"What happened to Brother Yu Hao?"

"How could there be no ticket just now?!" Yu Hao asked, raising his voice slightly.

Zheng Fan raised an eyebrow slightly: "Normally, killing that many monsters will result in loot drops, you mean that, right?"

"Then there should be tickets. This isn't normal difficulty. In other words, what happened at this station just now was an appetizer to warm up each other!" another person next to Yu Hao explained.

Zheng Fan suddenly looked up and said, "That's really nothing."

Suddenly, eerie piano music began to play.

It should have been the sound of a violin, but it made my eardrums ache and my head spin.

A slender figure appeared above everyone's heads, which should have embodied purity and beauty, but her face was completely obscured by a black mess of characters.

The crowd could not see her actions clearly; they could only hear the shattered sound of the piano.

“Mr. Illusion… could that be…?” Lin Yilin’s expression changed slightly as she realized something.

But when she turned her gaze away from the figure, she found that Zheng Fan had already disappeared.

She shifted her focus to finding Zheng Fan, and then two "Zheng Fan" appeared in her perspective.

One of Zheng Fan's current panicked entities maintained the humanoid outline she was familiar with, and was also the Zheng Fan in her heart. It had probably just suddenly erupted and approached the side and rear of that scrambled figure.

Another "Zheng Fan" is slowly crawling out of the humanoid Zheng Fan's body, like an adult worm struggling to break out of its pupa, covered in a thick black liquid.

Dressed in the same manner, the hem of his black trench coat billowed irregularly, distorting the flow of air. His skin was pitch black, and his head was surrounded by an endless black vortex that seemed to devour everything in the world.

Sometimes, the closest distance can also be the furthest.

People like Lu Chongming and Fried can only see the tip of the iceberg of "Zheng Fan," which may already be part of the true outline of that behemoth, and they have glimpsed the "truth."

What I came into contact with was only the most superficial aspect of him.

Using the panic entity as a medium, following the clues, even for only a moment, Zheng Fan's power can be directly extended, thus forming another illusory yet real outline outside the physical entity.

The "Zheng Fan" figure reached out his hand to the familiar yet unfamiliar figure in front of him...

puff!

The black arms, or more accurately, claws, easily pierced through the opponent's seemingly delicate body, penetrating from the back to the chest.

The garbled text suddenly fluctuated violently, followed by an abrupt halt to the music, and the figure that Zheng Fan had ruthlessly thrown to the ground began to disintegrate and collapse.

Looking at the garbled code remaining on "another self's" hand, Zheng Fan's feigned gentle expression, which had been maintained since he manifested his physical form, seemed to have been torn off, replaced by an exaggerated and ferocious smile.

Instead of him speaking, it was the distorted entity floating outside his body that spoke, its voice indistinct and ethereal.

"What a pleasant surprise... Is it that things related to me are ultimately impossible for this space-time to record? Is it because I can't leave anything here, or is it because of the fear of this place that I'm avoiding the important issues?"

"Regardless of the circumstances, portraying my adorable little lamb in this way, your unofficial history is truly disgusting garbage..."

Zheng Fan looked at the three train tickets that the scrambled code in his hand had finally coalesced into. His expression slowly calmed down and returned to a state of serene nothingness.

His true form briefly appeared before quickly disappearing. The gap torn open in this spacetime by his true form was like an extra period of time. This time, which felt like only half a second, was extended for him.

Aside from that, the main body doesn't need to do anything more; just by attacking during this time period, physical strikes are enough to crush most enemies.

The others were completely unaware, as if they had all briefly lost focus, and when they came to their senses, the strange figure who had suddenly appeared with the sound of the piano had already vanished.

Then Zheng Fan appeared nearby at some point and found three train tickets.

(End of this chapter)