The Decaying Dream of America: I Assemble Corpses and Confront Madness

The leaden sky spun before my eyes.

Lin Zheng's consciousness was like a crumpled piece of paper, its edges a sharp interplay of pain and lucidity.

Finch's language, like a cold blade, etched a mark of humiliation deep into his spirit.

He got it.

Professor Finch is not a god, but an engineer who manipulates the mind.

This barrier, called the "Memory Firewall," is a carefully designed creation, intended to format his senses rather than simply suppress them.

Lin Zheng knew he had to tear through this protective barrier.

An uncontrollable rage ignited within him.

That wasn't an outburst directed at external forces, but a roar against one's own self-control and emasculated dignity.

He no longer hesitated.

He decided to take the most violent and direct approach.

He rallied all his remaining spirit and will, like a seasoned surgeon.

His consciousness transformed into a sharp scalpel.

The blade is aimed at the most sensitive nerve deep within one's soul.

He suddenly pierced the mental shield circuit meticulously woven by Finch.

This is a form of psychological self-harm.

Each stab meant that he had to actively endure the excruciating pain of his consciousness being torn apart.

The excruciating pain swept over my entire body like a tidal wave.

A tearing scream emanated from the nerve endings, and alarm bells rang in the mind.

A massive amount of disordered information surged into the depths of his consciousness like an avalanche.

All of Finch's observations and analyses of him, those cold, hard data streams, poured out without reservation at this moment.

He "saw" Finch's predictive model of his behavioral patterns.

He "saw" how his every subtle expression and movement was digitized and labeled.

He even "saw" how Finch precisely constructed this dream, how he used his inner fears to materialize those inner demons.

This is a demonstration of technology, an outpouring of power, and a complete trampling of privacy.

Next came fragments of his memory, deliberately buried, about the cruel truths of the real world.

They were like a flood bursting its banks, carrying mud, sand, and gravel as they broke through his self-protective dikes.

He "saw" that in the port's "Gundam" assembly area, dismembered bodies were piled up like mountains.

The smell of formaldehyde and metallic corrosion, along with the sweet, metallic taste of blood and rust, filled his mouth and nasal cavity.

He "heard" the cries of those "nightmare fuels" who had completely lost their minds due to drug abuse.

Those figures struggling to survive on the streets and alleys, systematically abandoned by society, their life trajectories flash like slides in the torrent of information.

Those memories, like rusty razor blades, pierced his consciousness piece by piece. He remembered those abandoned by the system, huddled in the gaps between shipping containers at the port, their eyes empty like dead fish, their lips ulcerated and blackened from long-term inhalation of "nightmare fuel." There was a woman, barely in her early thirties, yet her hair was completely white. She held a "baby" wrapped in tattered rags, humming a lullaby out of tune. Her fingernails were all gone, the tips festering and oozing pus, yet she still gently patted the child that didn't even exist.

Lin Zheng's stomach clenched violently, acid rising in his throat. He gagged a few times, only vomiting up a mucus mixed with blood. Those images weren't hallucinations, nor fabrications of dreams—they were real events, memories he had witnessed firsthand, buried deep within his self-protective mechanisms. Finch dug them up not to torment him, but to make him see clearly: the world he inhabited was, in essence, a giant asylum.

The American Dream Company's manipulation of narratives and imprinting of the spirit, how those invisible forces turn hope into sacrificial fuel, all the operating mechanisms were stripped away before his eyes.

He suddenly realized that the brilliance of the "American Dream" company lay precisely in the fact that it never forced anyone. It offered choices—the choice to numb, the choice to forget, the choice to surrender oneself to a meticulously crafted narrative. Those who used "nightmare fuel" initially did so simply to escape the pain of reality. They didn't know that each inhalation was a spiritual tax paid to the "flesh-and-blood capitalism consortium." And Professor Finch was merely one of the most elite engineers in this system.

Lin Zheng's eyes were bloodshot, yet a dark fire burned deep within his pupils. It wasn't hope, nor courage, but something deeper than despair—the primal instinct for resistance erupting from the deepest recesses of his soul after being driven to the brink and abandoning all illusions. He no longer craved liberation, no longer fantasized about victory; he only wanted to do one thing: tear apart this meticulously woven cocoon, even if the price was shattering himself into pieces.

Countless terrifying hallucinations and self-doubt eroded his mind.

He "saw" himself become true "nightmare fuel," barely surviving in the cold winds of Emerald Dream City's port.

He was emaciated, his cheeks sunken, and his eyes held only a craving for drugs and a last-ditch struggle for survival.

He crouched in a dark corner, wrapped in a tattered blanket.

The surrounding alleyways were piled high with garbage, and the stench of rotting food and excrement assaulted the nostrils.

He even saw the wreckage of the "Gundam" he had assembled with his own hands, reflecting a despairing light in the cold rain.

Professor Finch walked toward him with a smile.

He wore a well-tailored tweed jacket, and his eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses were cold and devoid of any pity.

The scalpel in his hand gleamed coldly, its blade reflecting Lin Zheng's distorted face.

He bent down, his eyes filled with the satisfaction of a researcher facing a perfect sample.

"Look, Lin Zheng," Finch said softly, his voice cutting through all the noise.

"This is the most suitable place for you, a perfect example."

The voice carried the mockery of a victor, like the whisper of the devil, telling him that such foolish resistance would only bring faster destruction and utter madness.

Even more devastating, he even saw his mother.

Her face was no longer the warm and kind one I remembered, but appeared in the illusion in a distorted and bizarre way.

Her eyes were empty and numb, filled with a sense of judgment.

That look didn't seem like a mother's; it was more like that of an observer, a stranger filled with disappointment and doubt about her son's choice.

"Why did you choose this path?!" His mother's voice was hoarse, each word like a sharp blade piercing his eardrums.

"All you have created is pain and filth!"

She reached out, her fingertips stained with blood, pointing to the wreckage of the "Gundam" she had assembled.

Lin Zheng's body trembled violently from the excruciating pain.

He felt like he was being torn to pieces.

Consciousness is like shattered glass, each fragment reflecting a horrific scene.

My stomach churned, and waves of nausea rose in my throat, but I couldn't vomit anything.

Cold sweat poured down my forehead, mixing with dust and blood, stinging my eyes.

The deafening roar of countless disordered messages filled my ears, interspersed with Professor Finch's disdainful laughter.

"Struggle, my 'masterpiece'," Finch's voice echoed in his mind.

Welcome to the fantastical world of science fiction! The entrance is here:

"Your suffering provides the most valuable data for my research."

Finch's voice was calm and objective, without anger, only a sense of superiority.

His words were like invisible hammer blows, relentlessly striking Lin Zheng's crumbling defenses of reason.

He clung tightly to a vague yet real "connection point" on the barrier.

That was his most primal yearning for "truth".

That was his dedication to the most essential structure of life when he was dissecting corpses and piecing together wreckage as a "Gundam" assembler.

Lin Zheng roared.

His voice was hoarse, almost tearing his throat.

The voice carried the despair of a dying beast, and the resolute determination to fight to the death.

He used his most primal survival instincts to fight against the overwhelming spiritual erosion.

His eyes were bloodshot, and deep within his pupils gleamed an indomitable light.

He knew that once he completely let go, he would become Finch's plaything.

Even in his madness, he would maintain a sliver of clarity amidst the insanity, preserving his final integrity.

Time seems to have lost its meaning.

Pain, hallucinations, mockery—it all cycled endlessly, squeezing out every last shred of his remaining will.

He could feel the neurons in his brain being overstimulated and then breaking down.

Every breath felt like a burning sensation, and every heartbeat was heavy and slow.

It was as if an invisible hand was squeezing his chest, crushing his last vestiges of life.

"You cannot break through," Finch's voice rang out again.

"This is your own mental defense mechanism, which I'm just using appropriately."

"Admit it, you're just a pathetic cog in the machine, a part that can be easily disassembled."

Finch's words precisely struck at the deepest pain point in his heart.

His expectations before coming to the United States, his struggles in university, his numbness in the "Gundam" assembly area—all those negative emotions that he had suppressed were now dug out by Finch like a knife.

The alignment between that mental barrier and "a certain rule that he had once personally constructed" was now magnified into a terrifying self-betrayal.

This was not simply Finch's power, but rather a "safety lock" that Lin Zheng had unconsciously set up, which was now backfiring on him.

He felt a violent collision of energies within his body, a consequence of forcibly channeling his willpower into the mental shielding circuit.

The pain reached its peak.

His consciousness was as if it had been thrown into the center of a nuclear explosion, ignited in an instant.

"boom--"

A deafening explosion rang in his mind.

It wasn't a physical sound, but a "roar" as if the mental barrier had been forcibly torn apart.

Lin Zheng's forehead veins bulged, densely clustered at his temples.

His face was contorted with extreme pain and mental exhaustion.

His consciousness was almost crushed, like an iron door that was forcibly smashed open, and darkness and light poured out from behind the door, tearing at his soul.

Despite the heavy price paid for rationality, the madness that teetered on the edge of reason brought a unique sense of clarity at this moment.

His "intuition"—the ability to see the core weaknesses of things—was forcibly activated in a short period of time.

The distorted vision began to refocus.

His eyes were once again able to "see through" appearances.

The mental guardians before me, tall, bloated, twisted combinations of flesh and metal, are no longer incomprehensible chaos.

Lin Zheng saw it.

These guardians are pieced together from fragments of memory and remnants of emotion.

Their "skin" is made of fear, and those writhing muscle fibers are the embodiment of powerlessness in Lin Zheng's own deep memory.

Those rusty metal plates were a testament to his numbness in the face of the cold, mechanized rules of this world.

The steam emanating from their "joints" is an outlet for his inner struggles.

More importantly, he saw that their structures were not sturdy.

When Finch was building them, he didn't make each "Nightmare Creation" flawless in order to "efficiency" and "quantity".

Inside them, there are clear structural lines, which are the paths for energy conduction.

Those lines are flashing at a high frequency now, fragile and conspicuous.

Just like when he was assembling "Gundam", he could see through the arrangement of bones and nerves under the flesh of a corpse at a glance.

In his eyes, these spiritual guardians were no longer invincible monsters, but "works" that could be dismantled and defeated.

Their fragile structures, like highlighted code, danced on his retina.

A slight smile curved Lin Zheng's lips.

That wasn't a smile, but the ruthlessness of finding a glimmer of hope in a desperate situation.

He hasn't completely lost this psychological battle yet.

His right hand slowly rose, his five fingers loosely clenched. In his mind, the "scalpel" materialized again, its blade as thin as a cicada's wing, yet sharp enough to cut through the very fabric of the soul. His own face was reflected on the blade—pale, emaciated, with sunken eyes, but a cruel calm lingered at the corner of his mouth.

He knew that this thrust meant completely abandoning any hope of survival. He couldn't possibly emerge from this battle unscathed, nor could he maintain his mental integrity after tearing through firewalls and shattering guards. The only thing he could do was to use every fragment to wound the one who controlled everything before he shattered completely.

His rationality was slipping away like a tide, constantly eroding him.

But just as he was about to unleash his blade, a completely new sensation surged through his consciousness like an electric current—the cursor at the center of the matrix, the coordinates leading to Finch's core control room, was not stationary. It was slowly rotating, and with each rotation, it projected a holographic light screen, displaying not code, but human faces.

One face after another.

He recognized all those faces.

They were the workers in the "Gundam" assembly area, the homeless people who had disappeared from the streets and alleys, and the young faces who were attracted by the "American Dream" recruitment and eventually became "nightmare fuel." Their eyes opened in the light screen, empty and numb, but in the instant they met Lin Zheng's gaze, a faint, almost imperceptible light flashed.

The light is saying: We are still here.

Lin Zheng's pupils suddenly contracted.

He finally understood. Finch's core control room wasn't just the central hub for manipulating dreams—it was also a massive "storage tank," a collector of "nightmare fuel" in a spiritual sense. Those consumed by the system didn't completely lose their consciousness; rather, it was encoded, compressed, and stored by Finch as energy to maintain the operation of this dream world.

His intuition surged through his body like an electric current, confirming his suspicions.

That was the location of Finch's core control room in his dream.

Lin Zheng gritted his teeth, and tasted blood on his tongue again—the price he had paid for this moment.

His rationality was crumbling, but a new goal was also clearly presented before him at this moment.