Moonlight flowed like water, softly spilling over the gauzy mist among the mountains, creating a dreamlike atmosphere.
At the foot of the mountains, in the quiet little village, as the smoke from the fireworks gradually dispersed, most houses had already gone dark. Only a few remained lit, filled with the lively sounds of card games and mahjong.
Inside one of the two-story houses, a middle school student named Fang Zheng was completely engrossed in a sandbox survival-building game called Minecraft, also known as "My World."
"Urrgh..."
"Boom!"
The Zombie's roar and the Creeper's explosion rang out from the screen.
(You died!) (Player tried to swim in lava)
"Ah! My Enchanted Diamond Armor!"
Watching the character he controlled get swallowed by lava and burn to death before it could climb out, along with the hard-earned Enchanted Diamond Armor falling into the lava, Fang Zheng slapped his thigh in frustration.
In Survival Mode, he had mined for several hours before finally gathering enough resources for that set of enchanted diamond armor.
Yet while he was enthusiastically mining in a new mineshaft, he was attacked by a Zombie. Then, while fighting the Zombie, he was knocked back by the blast wave of a Creeper that had silently crept up behind him and fell into the lava below.
How could he possibly endure that?
Without hesitation, he switched to Creative Mode and quickly gave himself a brand-new set of diamond armor, muttering, "This isn't cheating. I'm just taking back what I deserve..."
After playing for a while longer, he noticed that the intermittent sounds of firecrackers and fireworks outside had stopped. Checking the time, he saw it was already two in the morning.
He stretched, shut off his tablet, washed up briefly, then lay down in bed and yawned. "Minecraft really eats up time. I played for hours without even noticing. I should sleep. I still have to attend a banquet tomorrow."
As drowsiness washed over him, he fell into a deep sleep.
"Hmm..."
"Hmm hmm hmm..."
In the darkness, nasal humming sounds seemed to come from all around him. Every Minecraft player knew that sound all too well—it belonged to villagers, NPCs whom players jokingly called long-faced men.
The familiar sound ringing out repeatedly made his muddled consciousness in the darkness wonder, Didn't I turn off my tablet?
Yet before his mind could fully clear, day suddenly broke.
Awakened in the darkness, Fang Zheng stared blankly at the square, pixelated world before him.
Houses made of brown pixel blocks, green grass blocks, long-faced villagers walking back and forth while constantly making unpleasant humming noises, and a tall Iron Golem passing by.
When he looked up, a huge glowing block hung in the sky, while blocky pixel clouds drifted overhead.
There was also the Inventory at the bottom of his view and the Settings Menu at the top. Everything was so familiar that the still-dazed Fang Zheng was utterly confused.
"Am I... dreaming?"
Standing in the village, Fang Zheng had become a crude Block Person made of blocks and pixels. He stood there blankly, his pixelated face completely expressionless.
He instinctively swung his arms at incredible speed. Amid repeated thudding sounds, the blocks of a villager's house beside him shattered one after another from afar.
"Creative Mode?"
"Could I be having a Lucid Dream?"
Fang Zheng recalled the descriptions of Lucid Dreams he had seen online before.
This brand-new experience filled Fang Zheng with excitement.
He immediately opened his Inventory, eagerly wanting to have as much fun as possible in this rare Lucid Dream.
Although the view before him looked exactly like Minecraft on a phone or tablet, there were no controls. With only his thoughts guiding him, the Block Person moved far more conveniently than it ever had through touchscreen controls.
In barely over ten minutes, the Block Person, capable of sprinting through the air in Creative Mode, raced up and down through the sky, destroyed villages with lava buckets, set forests ablaze with Flint and Steel, and used lava and water buckets to create towers reaching the maximum block-placement height.
Then he used Soul Sand and Wither Skeleton Skulls to create more than a dozen Withers, battling hundreds of Wardens.
Before he knew it, twenty minutes had passed. Minecraft's distinctive Block Sun rose and set, plunging the world into night, while the Block Moon rose and set, bringing back daylight.
In Minecraft, a full day lasted only twenty minutes in the real world.
Yet after that day ended, Fang Zheng stopped placing blocks.
He realized something was wrong.
"Even a Lucid Dream like the ones described online couldn't possibly feel this clear, could it?"
His blocky head turned left and right as he examined everything in this Minecraft pixel world, observing the operating logic of the various blocks and paying attention to every detail.
Growing increasingly panicked, he remained motionless, thinking and waiting, trying to make himself fall asleep again within this Lucid Dream so he could wake up once more.
But time slowly passed. Amid his mounting terror, Fang Zheng watched the Block Sun and Block Moon switch places more than twenty times. At least seven or eight hours must have passed, yet he still felt no fatigue at all and showed no sign of falling asleep again.
He began to panic and tried every method he could think of.
He tried to sense his sleeping body, only to discover in despair that apart from sight and hearing, he had nothing else...
Oh, right. There was also a faint vibration whenever he broke blocks.
He tried making other movements with this blocky body, but aside from the actions already available to Minecraft characters, he could do nothing else.
He could not wave, open his mouth, lie down, crawl, bend over, or even bend his arms or knees.
He tried building a bed and sleeping when night fell to see whether he could truly fall asleep. Yet he could only discover in despair that when his view went dark and then bright again, the night had simply been skipped. There was no fatigue at all, and he could not sleep.
He tried defeating the Ender Dragon to clear the game. But after frantically building an End portal and killing the Ender Dragon, nothing happened.
In a panic, he fumbled through the Inventory and Settings Menu in his view, found the Survival Mode option, switched to it, and jumped off cliffs, into lava, and into the Void. All that appeared before his eyes were the prompts:
(You died!) (Respawn)
He tried flying at high speed through the sky with an Elytra, wanting to see whether he could spot the unrendered area beyond the horizon.
Then, in his agitation, he spent more than a dozen block day-night cycles building a crude Ender Pearl Cannon with TNT, pistons, and other blocks, attempting to teleport beyond the map's borders with Ender Pearls.
But even at the edge of his vision, in every area the Ender Pearl Cannon could reach, there was still an endless land made of blocks...
After several days, hundreds of block day-night cycles, and countless failed attempts to escape this so-called "Lucid Dream," Fang Zheng gave up.
He stood there in restless agitation, staring at the Block Sun and Block Moon revolving on the horizon as he continued to wait...
Although he was not a hardcore player and only played Minecraft occasionally in his spare time, Fang Zheng still understood its basic rules.
Twenty minutes in the real world equaled one day in Minecraft. Twenty-four hours in the real world equaled seventy-two days in the game.
One day, two days, three days... As time passed, the Block Sun and Block Moon rose and fell again and again. After far more than one or two weeks had passed in the real world, Fang Zheng finally gave up hope.
He understood one bitter reality.
"Either... I've been transported to another world..."
"Or someone dug out my brain and turned me into a Brain in a Vat..."
In the darkness, gazing at this dull world made of blocks and pixels while listening to the horrible howls of Zombies spawning in poorly lit places around him, Fang Zheng cried out in despair.
Yet no matter how desperately or sorrowfully he wailed, that pixelated block body, that blocky head made of pixels, remained expressionless.
He could not even shed a single tear, not even one made of pixels...
He was trapped, imprisoned within this hopeless pixel-block cage.
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