Visual Mindscape

The blinding white light gradually softened.

Lu Xiu blinked and found herself standing in a pure white space.

There was no sky here, no horizon, no shadows.

It was as bright as day above her, as bright as day beneath her feet. Nothing surrounded her, stretching infinitely ahead without any end in sight.

It was like a boundless photography studio.

[Welcome to the Construction Space.]

[Architect Level: Level 1 Architect]

[Maximum Constructible Instances: 1]

[Current Available Survival Points: 23]

[Beginner Tutorial Loaded.]

The next moment.

Countless pale blue lines of light intertwined in the air, and a simplified instance model gradually appeared before her.

It was a two-story house.

A wireframe structure.

Like an untextured 3D model.

At the same time, an explanation of the rules related to constructing instances appeared.

The content was incredibly complicated.

The table of contents alone was a long list, covering everything: scene structure, hostile units, mechanism events, emotional nodes, completion conditions, and more...

Lu Xiu gave the table of contents a rough glance and immediately felt her vision go dark.

Wait... was this really something she could finish in twenty-three days?

What made her scalp tingle even more was the final note—[After an instance is constructed, Survival Points must be consumed as a "Rule Stabilization Cost," depending on the scene structure and the scale of the instance.]

She was done for.

After all that effort, she would fail before she had even finished building anything.

The moment she saw that note.

Only one thought remained in Lu Xiu's mind. She completely broke down, covered her face, and squatted on the spot with a mournful cry.

I'm dirt poor right now!

Where am I supposed to get Survival Points to pay the Rule Stabilization Cost?!

Wait, there are operating costs too?!

I...

Lu Xiu immediately started cursing in her heart, and she cursed viciously.

After cursing for quite a while.

She finally lowered the hand covering her face, leaned forward slightly, half-hugging her slender, beautiful legs as she continued staring at the explanation... though she was still furious.

At that moment, she felt like a girl sold off to the depths of the mountains, already drowning in despair, only to discover that the person who bought her was a woman... and that woman claimed she had come looking for relatives.

What kind of joke is this?!

Lu Xiu leaned forward and extended a pale, delicate finger, repeatedly scrolling through the window and rereading the additional fee explanation, as if she could make it disappear by staring at it long enough.

But clearly, that was impossible.

She could only frantically search through the original owner's memories, trying to find a solution.

But just as she had an idea... a tutorial caught her attention.

"...Visual Mental Imagery Construction Method?"

Lu Xiu's pale finger paused. She temporarily pushed aside the fact that being an Architect required money and curiously opened the tutorial to view its details.

[Visual Mental Imagery Construction Method: In addition to conventional methods, Architects may recreate or create visual information in their minds; they may imagine specific objects, scenes, or images through memory or imagination, then project them into an instance. Memory imagery and imagined imagery are both acceptable.]

[Advantages: Saves time spent assembling materials. Allows the brain to see or experience things that do not currently exist, relying only on the individual's memories or creative imagination.]

[Disadvantages: The deviation between imagination and reality may be enormous. Unless the Architect fully understands every detail of the imagined scene, this method is not recommended.]

[Suggestion: Architects may use this function to establish the initial framework of an instance.]

As she read the description of the Visual Mental Imagery Construction Method.

Lu Xiu briefly shook off her dejection.

Mainly because this feature... seemed tailor-made for her.

The original owner naturally had no use for it, since she had never played games from another world.

But Lu Xiu had. Because she liked it, she had played through the PS5 version once and the VR version once. She knew the entire game inside and out.

Therefore.

Lu Xiu almost instinctively said, "Activate the Visual Mental Imagery Construction Method."

The moment she spoke.

The complicated rule explanation window instantly shrank and moved to the upper-left corner of Lu Xiu's vision.

A new prompt appeared.

[Activating... Please prepare, Architect. Use visual mental imagery to imagine the instance scene.]

When Lu Xiu saw the prompt, she forgot all about feeling depressed. She hurriedly stood up and closed her eyes.

She did not rush to imagine the entire game's progression.

Instead, she chose the game's most iconic and most shocking scene to test it out—the world-famous masterpiece, the Baker Family's "dinner."

That famous dining table...

That loving family...

Lu Xiu calmed herself and began forcing herself to recall the game's details.

But she quickly realized that there was no need to force anything. The moment she closed her eyes, the images flowed out like water, terrifyingly clear.

Many details she had not even noticed while playing were exceptionally vivid now.

Why?

Lu Xiu found it strange. Was it some bonus from transmigrating?

No.

This was not the time to think about that.

Lu Xiu quickly stopped letting her thoughts wander and focused on imagining the game scenes from Resident Evil 7.

Dim candlelight.

Rotting food.

The irritating buzz of mosquitoes and flies.

The insane and bizarre Baker Family.

The helplessness of protagonist Ethan Winters being tied to a chair and nearly forced to eat something indescribable.

Lu Xiu's breathing gradually slowed.

At the same time, the pure white space began to change, and ripples spread across the ground like the surface of water.

Then.

Behind Lu Xiu, a wall suddenly rose from the ground. Its wooden planks were mottled, covered in scratch marks, with mold spreading across them.

Immediately after—

The second wall.

The third wall.

The fourth wall.

Then.

The ceiling pressed down from above, sealing the space shut and enclosing Lu Xiu within it.

The pure white radiance was replaced by dim lighting.

The enclosed space gradually became an old dining room. The wallpaper had long since yellowed and blistered, its corners curling and peeling away to reveal damp wooden boards behind it. An outdated chandelier hung from the ceiling, its lampshade covered in grease and dust, leaving the room dimly lit.

A round wooden dining table stood in the center. Candles burned on it, while the tabletop was covered in knife marks and dark stains, its edges worn down by years of use.

And the table was piled with indescribable food.

Iron trays, ceramic bowls, and glass jars were stacked together in a chaotic mess...

Then Lu Xiu caught a powerful stench of decay.

She suddenly opened her eyes and found herself standing inside the game scene.

The round table was right before her. Its surface was sticky, piled with intestines and other indescribable food. Cockroaches crawled among the food, while flies circled above the disgusting heap.

Her breath caught slightly.

Lu Xiu observed the scene for a moment, then closed her eyes again and continued adding details.

Soon, the sound of chairs scraping echoed out.

Then came the sound of fingers scraping across plates, along with chewing, swallowing, and talking.

Blurry human silhouettes gradually appeared in the chairs.

That insane family sat around the round table.

"...Wake up, sleepyhead. Time for dinner."

The mother-in-law's voice rang out, speaking the line Lu Xiu remembered.

Lu Xiu opened her eyes again and saw a scene almost identical to the one from her previous life.

The father-in-law.

The mother-in-law.

The brother-in-law.

The three members of the Baker Family, jokingly called father-in-law, mother-in-law, and brother-in-law by players in her previous life, were seated around the round table.

And Lu Xiu was currently standing where the protagonist Ethan Winters had sat in the original work.

Exactly the same!

...Her heart almost stopped.

This was even more immersive than she had imagined.

For a moment, she even forgot this was the Construction Space and thought she had transmigrated into the world of Resident Evil 7 again.

[Determining... The Architect has completed a scene. Would you like to designate this scene as one of the core emotional nodes?]

Lu Xiu took a deep breath and suppressed her racing heart.

"Yes."

[Node Marking Successful: Extreme Oppressive Dinner Scene]

[Scene Stabilized.]

[Entering Manual Editing Mode.]

With the prompt, everything in the scene froze, including the buzzing flies.

Only then did Lu Xiu slowly let out a breath. There was nothing she could do about it—the memories of her death had just come rushing back at her... She had never experienced anything like this before. It was far more immersive than VR.

It was too realistic. It was only natural for her to panic a little.

But as everything froze, she finally felt the reality of herself creating an instance.

"So... I can just imagine it directly."

Lu Xiu examined the scene, identical to the original but more realistic, and raised a hand to support her fair, rounded chin, a thoughtful look appearing on her face.

This was far more efficient than manually piecing things together. Constructing an instance did not seem so difficult after all.

Honestly, it was pretty fun...

With a shortcut like this, finishing the instance in a short time would not be much of a problem.

The question was, could an instance of this caliber earn Architect rewards?

And could the instance she created really grant players who cleared it certain skills or items?

Hmm... she was not sure.

There was also the matter of the Rule Stabilization Cost.

Lu Xiu furrowed her delicate brows, a vague idea beginning to form...