Time rewound to three minutes earlier.
Bent over the sink, splashing cold water on his face, Qin Manjiang suddenly felt someone watching him. He stopped cupping water in his hands and turned to look.
A boy of seventeen or eighteen, with dark skin and a canine tooth protruding past his lip, crouched on the floor, watching him with his head tilted.
It was Dog.
Qin Manjiang looked at him. He still did not know why Kong had sent Dog.
But if Dog had only set out the moment Kong gave him three minutes, wasn't he far too fast?
Had he been nearby all along?
Forget it... now wasn't the time to think about that.
Just then, Dog suddenly tossed him a mask!
Qin Manjiang hurriedly reached out and caught it.
It was a white mask, completely enclosed except for narrow, upward-slanting openings carved at the eyes.
Qin Manjiang glanced down at it. Could this thing... work?
If a mask worked, why would I have come to Moon City?
"It, [Hypocrisy]," Dog said, looking at the mask in Qin Manjiang's hands.
Hypocrisy?
Was that the mask's name?
"It belongs to Snake," Dog said earnestly, repeating what Kong had told him. "Snake is a companion. Has two masks, [Honesty], [Hypocrisy]."
"[Hypocrisy] can only be used inside ghost stories. Blocks all emotions."
Qin Manjiang's eyes lit up. He was about to speak when Dog said, "Kong said, the mask isn't yours to keep."
"And, doesn't work in reality."
Did it really not work in the real world? Qin Manjiang had his doubts.
In fact, the [Eye Realm]'s definitions of reality and games were very vague.
Some games took place in the real world, while others instantly transported people to an isolated place.
The exact boundary between games and reality was ambiguous. If it