A Psychiatrist's Bizarre Game Journey / Dream of the Mist

Finally, Zhou Ke'er broke the silence, saying, "Although I didn't expect... I would be so twisted, thinking about it this way, it makes sense. The important thing now is what the cause of my death really was..."

Before she could finish speaking, a person suddenly appeared out of nowhere beside her. She was still in the forward-leaning motion and couldn't stop in time, crashing directly into the sofa, almost knocking Zhou Ke'er, who was sitting on the sofa, overturned.

Zhou Ke'er was talking when she was completely taken aback by this situation. She was startled and stared at the girl for a second before looking at the person. To her surprise, it was... Finger Sand.

Caught off guard, she bumped into the corner of the sofa, feeling dizzy and disoriented. She lay on the sofa for a while, recovering before rubbing her head and standing up to look around.

"Sand between your fingers? What happened to you? How did you end up here?"

Seeing that she seemed to have come to her senses, Zhou Ke'er finally spoke up and asked.

The words "Sand Between Fingers" were prominently displayed above her head; there was no doubt about it, she wasn't some kind of imposter or a consciousness entity, she was definitely the player herself...

"Ha! So you've ended up here! This is a room, right? The door's locked... That's a dead end, you can't escape now!"

Seeing Zhou Ke'er's surprised expression, Zhijiansha ignored what he had said, immediately looked around, and then uttered... a very standard villain's line, just short of summoning "Po Huanlong" to appear.

As she spoke, she suddenly pounced on Zhou Ke'er, looking as if she wanted to devour Zhou Ke'er alive. It was terrifying, as if she hadn't eaten for days.

"Hey! Hey! Let's talk this out! Why are you getting handsy? Don't you know men and women shouldn't touch each other?! Although I am a dashing and handsome man, known as the 'White Dragon of the Waves,' the 'Jade-Faced Gentleman,' and the 'Peerless Jade Gentleman of the World'..."

But you can't be this thirsty! If you keep this up, I'm going to scream!

Upon seeing this, Zhou Ke'er, though not understanding what was going on, instinctively used both hands and feet to jump up from the sofa and leap to the side, shouting at the top of her lungs, just like a virtuous woman who had been wronged and harassed in the street.

"???"

Upon hearing this, Zhijiansha paused subconsciously, revealing a puzzled expression. She carefully examined Zhou Ke'er for a few moments. "So charmingly shameless, are you the real deal? Oh right, you have a name on your head! I was too anxious just now and didn't notice. I mistook you for someone else. Sorry, sorry."

"My lord? What happened to you?"

As Zhou Ke'er spoke, she glanced at the girl and saw that she was listening intently and didn't seem to have any intention of speaking, so she asked the girl with her fingers.

He was actually thinking of the "self" he had first encountered in that alley.

If the place where Sha Honghe and the others appear is the same as Zhou Ke'er's, and they should have been on that floor... then they could very well encounter the "Zhou Ke'er" who was tricked into staying on that floor.

"What else could it be but running into you! I appeared right at the beginning... wait, who is this?"

She rolled her eyes, looking annoyed, and was about to speak when she suddenly noticed the girl who had been silent from the beginning and whom she had almost ignored. Realizing this, she quickly stopped talking and asked Zhou Ke'er.

"Don't worry about me, you guys continue."

The girl waved her hand and answered casually, looking like she was watching a good show.

Zhou Ke'er frowned as she looked at the girl.

Although he had indeed just deduced that the girl was his own "emotion"... now it seems that he is increasingly unable to figure out what she is thinking.

In other words, this thing is far too intelligent, and Zhou Ke'er simply can't figure out what it wants or what its purpose is...

This girl seems to be plotting something, but it also feels like she's not thinking about anything at all; she's just here to watch the show.

To put it strangely, compared to Zhou'er or Zhijiansha, this guy is more like a player, treating everything as a game.

She hadn't felt this way before, so how did it suddenly change like this? Zhou Ke'er almost wondered if this guy was a completely different person.

Her current behavior is completely different from how she acted when Zhou Ke'er exposed her.

"It's okay, don't worry about her, just keep talking."

Zhou Ke'er nodded to Zhijiansha, signaling her to continue. He wanted to know what that guy was really interested in... maybe she would be interested in what Zhijiansha had to say.

"Alright then." Seeing that Zhou Ke'er had agreed, Zhijiansha could only shrug and said to Zhou Ke'er, "I started in a gloomy little room with the corpse of a flamingo lying next to me. There was a chain around her neck, and it looked like she had been strangled. The other end of the chain was in my hand, as if I had done it."

But actually, that's not the case, because the side quest didn't trigger! If I knew the cause of Flamingo's death, the clue quest would be completed, but it wasn't!

This means I didn't know the cause of her death. Since I didn't know, then I didn't strangle the flamingo.

After that, I dragged the flamingo's body out of the room, because after searching it, I found nothing. I figured that having the body might offer some useful opportunity.

As Zhou Ke'er listened, she observed the girl's expression.

He noticed that when Zhijiansha mentioned "side quests," she didn't show the slightest hint of doubt, as if she already knew what they were. It was as if her face clearly said, "I have a problem," trying to provoke Zhou Ke'er into suspecting her. But wouldn't the system notification prove Zhou Ke'er's suspicions? How could there be such a mistake?

"Then, I ran into you in that long corridor. Well, I should say, the guy who looked exactly like you. He looked completely lost and kept muttering something to himself."

I noticed that his nickname wasn't displayed above his head, so I assumed it was just that nicknames weren't displayed in this module and didn't suspect anything, so I called out to him.

When he saw me, he looked like he'd seen a ghost, staring blankly at the flamingo's corpse in my hand for a long time. I was wondering why he'd suddenly become so timid when I heard him say something like, "So that's how it is! It really is? I'm the fake one? No, I'm the one who needs to find my true memories! So... what am I, really?"

Then, as he was talking, he suddenly ran away in a madcap manner.

She spoke at length, then paused to catch her breath.

Upon hearing this, Zhou Ke'er glanced around awkwardly, her gaze wandering.

That guy was really fooled! He was just being a bit immature at the time, casually making up a few lies and repeating what the guy had said a few times. He never expected that the guy would actually believe him. Plus, seeing the shocking scene of Finger Sand dragging the flamingo's corpse around was just too much. He completely broke down.

That being said, according to Zhou Ke'er's logic, if we assume the same logic applies, then what does "Zhou Ke'er" represent?

And what do the sand between our fingers, also here, and the flamingos somewhere else... represent?

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128. My Cause of Death (Part 9)

"Then I went to chase after that 'Zhou Ke'er,' and as I was chasing her, the corridor just started collapsing—not the kind of collapse that goes downwards, but... more like space itself shattering, like a mirror being smashed, and it was flying towards me from a distance."

Seeing that Zhou Ke'er didn't say anything, Zhijiansha continued to explain, "I originally thought that space here might have shattered, and I would be teleported to another place. I didn't expect that 'Zhou Ke'er' would just wave her hand and break open the space in front of her, creating something like a passage, and then she went inside..."

Naturally, I followed them in before the passage closed. By then, I was pretty sure that "Zhou Ke'er" wasn't the real person. It's impossible for her to still control the module's space, right? After all, we're all players; giving one player preferential treatment at the start would be too much.

"Um?!"

Zhou Ke'er was listening casually with her legs crossed when her eyes suddenly sharpened.

and many more...

Something's not right...

This sense of incongruity...

What went wrong?

The last words of the sand between my fingers... Yes!

Why didn't we realize this problem before?

Wrong! Completely wrong! The entire framework of the deduction was flawed from the very beginning! Although some settings in the deduction align with the hidden worldview, thus qualifying as a successful discovery, the actual direction of the entire deduction is diametrically opposed to the truth!

Zhou Ke'er stood up abruptly and slammed her foot on the table—damn, she overestimated her leg length, that hurts! No, but she can't lose face in front of everyone.

Zhou Ke'er endured the discomfort of her crotch being pulled, showing no sign of pain. She simply squinted at the girl and shouted, "You bastard! You lied to me again?! You never tell the truth!"

"!"

Before he could finish speaking, he was startled by the sudden interruption of Zhou Ke'er's fingertips. Looking at Zhou Ke'er, who had suddenly sprung up without warning, and then at the calm-looking girl, he wanted to ask what was going on, but decided not to cause any trouble for Zhou Ke'er for the time being.

She knew that when the brain is working at high speed and thinking, if it is suddenly interrupted by an external force, it is very likely to forget most of the conclusions that have just been thought of!

Although she didn't know the exact principle behind it, this situation did happen frequently.

After all... sometimes she would suddenly pause, then rack her brains, thinking, "Hey, what was I just thinking about?"

"Huh? What do you mean? I didn't lie to you~ Think about it yourself, have I ever said even one lie to you?"

The girl remained calm, looked at Zhou Ke'er who had approached, shrugged innocently, and answered as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

"..."

Zhou Ke'er's lips curled slightly. She subtly withdrew her numb leg and sat back down on the sofa. "Yes, you didn't 'lie,' although every word you said was ambiguous, and to my ears it sounded as if you were agreeing with my reasoning..."

You're misleading me! I only realized what you meant when I heard the last sentence from Fingers Sand... Ha, there are three players in total, so why is the background of this mod centered around one player?

Although I had doubts before, I didn't think about it in detail... But now that I think about it, why should I consider myself to be the so-called "id"? And according to this theory, what do the Red Crane and the others represent?

But why is this "my" mental space? Why is my status in this module different from that of the others, like the Sands of Fingertips and the Red Crane?

"..."

Zhijiansha scratched his head, looked at Zhou Ke'er, then at the girl, and looked completely bewildered.

What on earth is Zhou Ke'er talking about...? What's with this "mental space" and "id"? What does she mean by "representing"?

Although she really wanted to ask what was going on, Zhijiansha wisely kept quiet, not entirely to avoid disturbing Zhou Ke'er and the others—after all, Zhijiansha was a reasoning player who relied on her brain! This was a matter of dignity for a reasoning player in the team! Why should she be able to figure out what Zhou Ke'er could?

With this thought in mind, sand flew through my fingers as I stared into the air, my mind racing, and I was speechless for a moment.

"So, I didn't lie to you."

The girl shrugged.

"Tch, to be precise, you only gave up on deceiving me directly after I exposed that you weren't a demon."

Zhou Ke'er scoffed, "You realized that your fabricated reasons had too many loopholes, not only making them impossible to fool me, but also potentially allowing me to deduce the truth from the flaws in your reasoning, right? Therefore, you chose to seize upon the incorrect parts of my deduction and mislead me..."

I must say, that's indeed a good method; I almost actually fell for it. After all, I'm the kind of person who trusts myself quite a bit, and I generally don't overturn my own reasoning unless I discover a serious flaw. All you have to do is avoid deliberately guiding me away from the loopholes in my theory..."

"Let's assume you're right for now. Even so, what new theory have you deduced since your previous idea was wrong?"

The girl looked at Zhou Ke'er with great interest.

"...Don't look at me like that. Do you think I'm a toy for you to play with? That look in your eyes disgusts me..."

Zhou Ke'er looked at the girl and curled her lip in disgust. "However, it won't hurt to tell you my reasoning... This shouldn't be 'my' mental space, right? After all... the real 'me' is already dead, and a dead person can't possibly have any post-mortem flashbacks. That was indeed something I assumed at first, and I just glossed over it without a proper reason, but that's a huge flaw."

As for me, I'm probably just a fictional character in this world, like Red Crane and Sandfingers... Hmm... I can't think of a word to describe our existence, so just understand.

In short, the master of this world is definitely not me, nor Red Crane, nor Sand Between Fingers... it must be someone who witnessed the deaths of the three of us... well, to be more precise, it doesn't necessarily have to be a person, but some kind of being... Therefore, this world is either a "fictional deduction" within the mind to find the truth behind the deaths, or an unconscious retracing of events after witnessing the events, which is... commonly known as a dream.

Zhou Ke'er spoke at length, then took a breath. Seeing that the girl hadn't said anything and her expression remained unchanged, she gave up on observing the other girl's expression and simply immersed herself in her own thoughts, speaking whatever came to mind without even bothering to organize her thoughts. She spoke rapidly to herself:

"I'm more inclined to believe this is a dream of some being. If it's just internal deduction, then my initial appearances in those places—the alley, the school—are completely unnecessary, and the time I spent there was far too short to be of any help to the deduction."

If it's a dream, then it aligns with your previously mentioned and seemingly verified "layers" theory. Furthermore, those mixed and bizarre scenes would make sense in a dream. As for how to verify it... if we are indeed in a dream..."

At this point, Zhou Ke'er raised her hand and snapped her fingers.

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129. My Cause of Death (Part 10)

"Shh!"

As Zhou Ke'er snapped her fingers, the room's decor changed abruptly, the light dimmed instantly, and it transformed from a psychological counseling room into a place resembling an interrogation room. Incidentally, the girl was naturally sitting on the interrogation side, with handcuffs on her hands.

Zhou Ke'er tapped on the table that appeared in front of her, turned the lamp on the table around so that it was facing the girl, and turned the brightness up to the maximum, shining brightly directly on the girl's face.