The Undying Prisoner

The moonlight was like water, gently falling upon the veil-like mist in the mountains, creating a dreamlike and ethereal atmosphere.

At the foot of the mountains, in the tranquil little village, as the smoke from the fireworks gradually dissipated, the lights in most houses had gone out. Only a few homes still had lights on, with the lively sounds of card games and mahjong coming from within.

In one of the two-story houses, a junior high school student named Fang Zheng was engrossed in playing a sandbox survival and building game called MC, also known as "Minecraft."

"Ugh, ugh, ugh..."

"Bang!"

The roars of zombies and the explosions of Creepers echoed from the screen.

(You have failed!)

(Player attempted to swim in lava)

"Ah! My enchanted diamond armor!"

Watching the character he controlled being swallowed by lava, only to be burned to death before he could even climb out, Fang Zheng slapped his thigh in frustration as his hard-earned enchanted diamond armor also fell into the lava.

In Survival Mode, he had spent several hours mining to finally assemble this set of enchanted diamond armor.

However, while he was enthusiastically mining in a new pit, he was attacked by zombies. Then, while fighting the zombies, he was repelled by the shockwave from a Creeper's explosion that had crept up silently, causing him to fall into the lava in the mine and die.

How could he stand for this?

Without hesitation, he switched to Creative Mode, quickly conjured a brand-new set of diamond armor for himself, muttering, "This isn't cheating, I'm just taking back what's rightfully mine..."

After playing for a while longer, he noticed that the sounds of firecrackers and fireworks from outside had finally stopped. He checked the time; it was already 2 AM.

He stretched, turned off the tablet in his hands, washed up briefly, and lay down in bed, yawning, "This MC game really eats up time. Before you know it, I've played for several hours. I need to sleep, I have to go to a banquet tomorrow."

As sleepiness washed over him, he fell into a deep slumber.

"Hmph..."

"Hmph, hmph, hmph..."

In the darkness, the snorting sounds, like someone speaking with their nose plugged, came from all around. This was a sound all MC players were intimately familiar with – the sound of Villagers, or NPCs that players jokingly called "hanging-face men."

This continuous, familiar sound made his groggy consciousness in the darkness wonder, "Did I not turn off my tablet?"

However, before he could fully regain his senses, the sky suddenly lit up.

Awakened in the darkness, Fang Zheng dazedly stared at the blocky, pixelated world before him.

Houses made of brown pixel blocks, green grass blocks, and the hanging-face Villagers walking around, constantly making unpleasant snorting noises, as well as the tall Iron Golems passing by.

Looking up at the sky, a large glowing block hung in the sky, with blocky pixel clouds drifting across it.

There was also the inventory bar at the bottom of his vision and the settings menu at the top, all so familiar that the still groggy Fang Zheng felt bewildered.

"Am... am I dreaming?"

Standing in the village, Fang Zheng, a blocky pixel person whose own body was simply constructed from blocks and pixels, stood there dumbfounded, his pixelated face expressionless.

He instinctively waved his hands rapidly, and with a series of thuds, the blocks of the Villager houses beside him were shattered piece by piece from a distance.

"Creative Mode?"

"Am I having a lucid dream?"

Fang Zheng recalled the descriptions of lucid dreaming he had seen online.

He was excited about this entirely new experience.

He immediately opened his inventory, eager to have a blast in this rare lucid dream.

Although the perspective was the same as the MC game screen on his phone or tablet, there were no control buttons. He could only control his actions with his mind, and the blocky person's movements were far more convenient than touch controls.

In just over ten minutes, in Creative Mode, the blocky person could sprint through the air, running up and down in the sky, destroying the village with a lava bucket, setting the forest ablaze with a flint and steel, and building towers to the block height limit by combining lava and water buckets.

Then, he used Soul Sand and Wither Skeleton Skulls to summon over a dozen Withers and battle hundreds of Allays.

Unconsciously, 20 minutes passed. The blocky sun unique to the MC world rose and set, plunging the world into night, and the blocky moon rose and set, ushering in the light.

In the game of MC, one day only lasts 20 minutes in real-world time.

After this day ended, however, Fang Zheng stopped placing blocks.

He realized something was wrong.

"Even in what they call a lucid dream online, it shouldn't be this clear, right?"

The blocky head turned left and right, observing everything in this blocky pixel world of MC. He watched the logic of how the blocks operated, paying attention to the details.

Becoming somewhat panicked, he stood still, thinking and waiting, trying to fall back asleep in this lucid dream and wake up again.

But as time slowly passed, in his growing panic, Fang Zheng watched the blocky sun and moon in the sky cycle over 20 times, at least close to seven or eight hours, yet he felt no fatigue whatsoever, nor any sign of falling back asleep.

He started to panic, trying various methods.

He tried to sense his sleeping body but discovered with despair that, apart from sight and hearing, there was nothing else...

Oh, right, there was a slight vibration when he broke blocks.

He tried to perform other actions with this blocky body, but he could do nothing beyond the actions inherent to the character in the MC game.

He couldn't wave his hands, open his mouth, lie down, crouch, bend over, or even bend an arm or a knee.

He tried to build a bed, hoping to sleep when night fell to see if he could truly fall asleep. But he could only despairingly discover that as his vision went black and then bright again, the night was simply skipped. There was no fatigue, and sleeping was completely impossible.

He tried to kill the Ender Dragon to beat the game, but after frantically building the End portal and then killing the Ender Dragon to finish, nothing happened.

In a panic, he fumbled through the inventory and settings in his view. He found the Survival Mode option in the settings, switched to Survival Mode, and jumped off a cliff, into lava, and fell into the Void. All he saw were the prompts "You failed" and the option to "Respawn."

He tried flying at high altitudes with Elytra at top speed, wanting to see if he could spot unrendered areas at the edge of the horizon.

Then, in his anxiety, after more than a dozen blocky day-night cycles, he used TNT and Pistons to build a crude Ender Pearl Cannon. He attempted to use Ender Pearls to teleport beyond the map's boundaries.

But even at the edge of his vision, in all the areas the Ender Pearl Cannon could reach, there was still an endless expanse of land constructed from blocks...

After several days, hundreds of blocky day-night cycles, and countless failed attempts to leave this so-called "Lucid Dream," Fang Zheng gave up.

He stood frozen in place, filled with anxiety, his gaze fixed on the blocky sun and moon cycling in the sky, continuing to wait...

Although he wasn't a hardcore player, just someone who played occasionally in his free time, Fang Zheng still knew the common sense of Minecraft.

Twenty minutes in the real world was equivalent to one day in Minecraft. A full 24 hours in the real world corresponded to 72 days in the Minecraft game.

One day, two days, three days... As time passed, the blocky sun and moon rose and fell. After a period that was definitely more than one or two weeks in the real world, Fang Zheng finally resigned himself to his fate.

He understood a bitter reality.

"Either I've transmigrated..."

"Or someone dug out my brain and turned me into a Brain in a Vat..."

In the darkness, gazing at this monotonous world made of blocks and pixels, listening to the unpleasant howls of zombies spawning in the dimly lit areas around him, Fang Zheng cried out in despair.

However, no matter how desperately and sadly he wailed, this blocky, pixelated body, that pixelated, blocky head remained expressionless.

He couldn't even shed a single tear, not even one made of pixels...

He was trapped, trapped in this desperate cage of blocks and pixels.

The book is starting. I'll announce the contract in the group chat. Please cast your remaining monthly votes at the end of the month.