Illusions, All of Them Illusions

"Mr. Xiao, you must have met that woman named Yang Jia about a month ago, right?"

Seeing Xiao Xiao remain silent, the Suit Man lowered his voice slightly, as if afraid of startling Xiao Xiao, and whispered:

"We have investigated you before. You suffer from severe headaches and sometimes even cannot distinguish between reality and hallucinations."

"However, according to our doctors' analysis, it was just that you were under too much pressure, which led to some sensory disorders at the mental level. This is a condition that is easy to control with medication and psychological counseling. But such people are exactly the targets they like to target. The more vulnerable you are, the easier it is for the mother body to capture you. That's when she induced you and hypnotized you."

"..."

"How is that possible?"

Hearing the Suit Man say this, Xiao Xiao couldn't help but interrupt him, a strong sense of resistance rising within him.

The scene of his encounter with Yang Jia flashed clearly in his mind.

At that time, I was in a state of severe panic, surrounded by monsters.

Driven by the City Will, they harbor endless malice towards themselves, even wanting to devour themselves.

If it weren't for Yang Jia's appearance, I would have already been eaten, right?

Mingming Yang Jia was the one who helped him see all of this and understand the world, but this Suit Man wanted to tell him...

... Did Yang Jia hypnotize himself?

"Mr. Xiao, I've studied your case and I know how you felt at the time..."

Seeing that Xiao Xiao's silence was somewhat unusual, the Suit Man could only soften his tone and try his best to persuade him:

"I know that the most distinctive characteristic of those captured by the Matrix is that they see the entire city turn into monsters..."

"But please think about it..."

His voice trembled slightly, as if he were under severe tension. "If this city really is a giant monster..."

"Why didn't you see it at first, but only after she pointed it out?"

"..."

"Whoosh!"

Upon hearing this, Xiao Xiao could no longer control himself and suddenly turned his head to look at the Suit Man.

"I have never tried to discuss this issue with the Indigenous people."

He appeared calm, but it was more like a calm shell; his voice already carried a hint of self-convincing.

"But you're saying everything I've experienced is fake?"

"Actually, at the beginning, I had doubts and didn't know if the monster I encountered was real or fake."

"After all, I've had experiences where I couldn't tell the difference between what's real and what's fake..."

"But by now, I've been through too much..."

"..."

As he spoke, Xiao Xiao calmed down, and the immense panic he had felt earlier subsided somewhat.

He even found it somewhat amusing.

Admittedly, this stranger who suddenly appeared surprised him and left him somewhat bewildered.

But I can ask Yang Jia about it later.

As for his claim that everything he encountered was just a huge illusion, isn't that... a joke?

Since leaving that bedroom where I had lived for four years, I have now seen terrifying and mutated Aberrant Creature, learned about Pain Substance, earned points that can make me stronger, and even owned my own Pain Hound and Old Gramophone. I even bought the Butcher selling meat on the street. All of this is so lifelike, yet you call it an illusion.

"You..."

However, when faced with Xiao Xiao's calm yet questioning gaze, the Suit Man fell silent for a moment.

Then, he said in a low voice, "Mr. Xiao, would you be willing to see some of the information we've gathered about you?"

"Um?"

Xiao Xiao raised an eyebrow, but did not refuse.

The Suit Man pursed his lips and quickly contacted someone. After a while, he took a huge metal box from a person in a white protective suit behind him, opened the box, and after a few operations, a projection appeared on the wall.

Xiao Xiao looked at the projections, his expression gradually turned somewhat horrified.

"Mr. Xiao, look at what you've done..."

The Suit Man operated the equipment in the metal box and said in a low voice, "In subway station No. 9, near your home, there is always a group of homeless people gathering there. They are the people forgotten by the city, and some people even regard them as dirty rats."

"Sometimes, one of them will die from illness or old age, but because of the city's indifference towards them, they will go unnoticed for a long time. We investigated this surveillance footage, which showed that you and that woman named Yang Jia went to collect the body of a homeless man who died of illness... This seems like a good thing, but from that moment on, you began to be deeply trapped in the womb."

"We also found that there is an abandoned factory in the Downtown District, where desperate people used to commit suicide by burning charcoal. Over time, it has started to attract more people with nowhere else to go to end their lives there. But we found that you and another member who escaped the organization went there to hold funerals for those corpses that had already begun to decompose."

"The funeral resulted in the warehouse being burned to the ground."

"I don't know what you've imagined has happened, but..."

"That neighborhood was Paradise for bankrupts, so it's perfectly normal for people to die there."

"And the Uptown District..."

"..."

As he operated the device, he projected another image, which vaguely showed chaotic streets and coffee shops. "There was a chaotic incident here before. Someone falsely reported that a bomb had been planted, causing panic among the crowd. Even in this panic, a heartbreaking incident occurred: a woman who had been bullied for a long time, who had just been discharged from the hospital, went to find her former bully."

"She was a coffee shop employee. She killed the employee and then shot herself..."

"This was originally a tragic accident, but it seems to have affected you deeply as well..."

"Besides..."

"..."

As he spoke, he showed various surveillance videos and explained them one by one, but Xiao Xiao was already starting to feel a headache coming on.

"That's enough..."

He suddenly spoke up to stop them, and even though he initially didn't approve of these indigenous people, he couldn't help but want to refute him:

"Are you trying to explain that this is all just our delusion?"

"So, what about that twisted and terrifying Rat-Man? I even shot it dead..."

"And what about the suffocating doll?"

"That swamp of despair, again..."

"..."

"Mr. Xiao..."

But before Xiao Xiao finish speaking, the Suit Man suddenly interrupted him, saying in a low voice:

"The Matrix is a symbiotic collective illusion."

"Being constantly under the influence of this massive illusion will cause you to exhibit strong delusional symptoms. You will see things that don't exist, and you will quickly weave a huge, even logically sound, lie for yourself based on details that have occurred in reality. And since you share the same illusion with them, you reinforce this lie with each other..."

"We have studied a case where there was an ordinary middle-aged man who was clear-headed, calm and rational. However, he firmly believed that he was a political figure in a certain country and that he was hiding in a mental hospital to avoid assassination by his political enemies. The caregivers and doctors around him were his bodyguards in secret. When the doctors were treating him, they tried to break his logic, but found it difficult."

"Because he will keep making up reasons to explain all of this, to provide evidence for his other identity."

"And you possess the same characteristics as him."

"It's just that you two are symbiotic, and you've even built another set of rules for survival for each other..."

"For example, you mentioned that a monster called the Rat-Man appeared in the subway station, and you shot and killed it..."

"But have you ever found bullet holes or spent cartridge cases there?"

"..."

Xiao Xiao was suddenly stunned, realizing that the question was actually difficult to answer.

Of course, no trace could be found in the subway station, because it had all been swallowed up and restored by the city's blood and flesh.

Even the Suffocation Puppet couldn't be found as evidence, because everything had been burned to ashes...

"Mr. Xiao, you can carefully examine whether the things you experienced actually happened..."

The Suit Man had already switched to the last projection, which was a hotel private room. He could see familiar faces, Xiao Xiao could even see himself in it, sitting silently and warily among the crowd, appearing introverted and timid.

"We investigated your first encounter with Yang Jia ..."

The Suit Man mustered his courage and looked Xiao Xiao in the eye. "Through some questioning, we've learned what happened back then. You have a classmate named Jiang Cheng. He initially tried to hide it, but later told us. He said that he did say some threatening things to you in the restroom that day because he also likes Yang Jia and hopes you won't have any unrealistic expectations..."

"You were very agitated at the time, and even punched and smashed a mirror, which scared him and he never mentioned it again."

"It's a pity there are no security cameras in the bathroom, otherwise we could show you these images too."

"..."

"Jiang Cheng..."

Xiao Xiao's body suddenly trembled slightly.

Isn't it said that after repelling the city's malice, these indigenous people would lose that part of their memory?

But Jiang Cheng actually still remembers?

But what he remembers is the truth of a different situation?

A sense of uncertainty and doubt made him increasingly panicked. Suddenly, he remembered something: the bizarre experience of seeing the video on the dock in that pink office. He subconsciously activated his three eyes.

Yes, the truth can be seen through these three eyes.

However, before he could adjust the three eyes to the projection position, the monitor on the Suit Man suddenly flickered violently.

His expression changed, and he urgently stopped him. "Mr. Xiao, stop..."

Are you trying to manipulate the power of the Matrix?

"That will only exacerbate your perceptual distortion, making you see what she wants you to see..."