Doomsday Wonderland

"It's true, you really have all become believers, and that's the only reason the pocket dimension..." Jiang Tian stopped mid-sentence, letting the rest trail off into a weary sigh. It was the fourth time she had repeated this statement, not counting Ya Rong's nodding support beside her, yet it had no effect whatsoever.

Ya Rong, equally frustrated, waved her hand dismissively. "Believe it or not, it doesn't matter. Lin Sanjiu said this won't affect your lives either way..."

The group, having just been pulled ashore by Lin Sanjiu's Higher Consciousness net, lay sprawled across the narrow riverbank, gasping for breath. Most of them were still too dazed to process what had happened. Hina even suspected that the pocket dimension had malfunctioned.

"They still have a 5% chance of recovering," Lin Sanjiu whispered urgently to Ya Rong. "Don't give up, keep trying!"

After pulling everyone to the riverbank, Lin Sanjiu had discreetly assigned the two people most aware of the situation the task of explaining what had transpired in the pocket dimension. Perhaps resetting the truth in the believers' minds would help them recover.

She herself had tried once as well. Since the seven of them were her believers, shouldn't they trust her completely when she told them they had become believers?

But Lin Sanjiu hadn't anticipated what happened when she gave Tenny Voltz the slightest hint. His face turned pale in an instant, his expression wiped clean of all emotion. His lips twisted into an unnatural shape, as if something in his mind had shattered. Lin Sanjiu's heart sank as she belatedly realized another possibility.

If God told one of His most devout believers, "God doesn't exist," wouldn't the inherent conflict and implosion of such a belief system have a devastating effect on the person's psyche? Perhaps it was safer to let someone else try convincing them instead.

"This is impossible..." a soaking-wet Ya Rong groaned, burying her face in her hands like a lifeless doll.

Jiang Tian thought for a long moment. It seemed unbearable to her that she couldn't drive a simple, obvious truth into someone's head. Determined, she spoke again, "Let me explain the entire process in detail. Listen carefully."

Lin Sanjiu had already told them everything while they were still in the pocket dimension.

"You already know about the first half of the pocket dimension and what Guan Nan and Wen Ya did. The key lies in what happened when we began the second round of scene transitions..." Jiang Tian, now resembling a frustrated teacher scolding her students, clapped her hands. "Lin Sanjiu's home territory was the hotel, and her media was the newspaper. While leading the search for flammable materials in the hotel, she casually stuffed the newspapers into her bag. That was to prepare for the next step and to protect the media, because this way, no one would accidentally pick up her media and burn it."

3

Lin Sanjiu nodded in agreement.

"Many people have a misconception that the media must be handed out in its home territory. That's wrong," Jiang Tian explained. "The media can be taken out of its home territory; in fact, only when the media is removed does it truly have a chance to be picked up. Why? Think about it. If you leave one or two pieces of media in each scene, others won't think to guard against it because the quantity is so small."

Tenny Voltz let out a sudden "Oh!" of realization.

"Lin Sanjiu used this exact method. She had us gather flammable materials to prepare for the third scene. When we were in the dark, we were more likely to follow her instructions and actively search for fire-starting supplies..."

"But how did she get the newspaper into our hands?" Rodent-Face immediately interjected.

"Do you remember how Lin Sanjiu took ages to start a fire after we entered the darkness?" Jiang Tian said bluntly. "During that time, she placed several pieces of media on the desk in the office and also slipped a newspaper into the bag near Dr. Chen's corpse."

Ya Rong nodded in agreement. "If Wen Ya had used Dr. Chen's records to compare with the items in the bag, he would've found that the printed materials inside were only books and magazines, not newspapers. I deliberately misled him."

The young woman let out a sigh of admiration toward Lin Sanjiu. "I didn't expect your mind to work so fast... What I mean is, you're really smart... you even figured out who's creating the narrative."

Lin Sanjiu gave a wry smile. "It's not that I'm smart," she explained. "It's just that, compared to ordinary people of the Twelve Worlds Centrum, I've seen too many examples of people trying to use narratives to influence others."

"No, no, no, that's not right." Rob stubbornly shook his head. "In the dark, she said, 'I'm here,' and that's how everyone followed the sound to find the basin and threw the papers in. But if what you're saying is true, there's no way she could have been standing by the basin at the time."

Lin Sanjiu scratched her nose.

Ya Rong pointed to Tenny Voltz. "You're forgetting about him! Didn't he grab a recorder back on the beach to take notes? When Dr. Chen had just died, everyone was so scared they threw out all the recordings, right? Once the recorder left his hands, Lin Sanjiu quietly took it. A recorded voice isn't the same as a live one, so after playing a short recording, I was the one guiding everyone to throw the papers into the basin."

To be honest, when Lin Sanjiu had taken the recorder, it wasn't for the pocket dimension. She had been quick-witted, but not so much that she could predict ten steps ahead.

"I have an item that happens to work with a recorder, so I figured it'd be good to have a spare..." She barely got the words out before noticing the group's expressions shift again, and she immediately stopped talking.

"She used Guan Nan and Wen Ya's narratives to pressure them into taking the newspapers," Jiang Tian continued. "If Guan Nan insisted that a killer was lurking in the dark, she wouldn't have avoided grabbing something flammable. In Wen Ya's narrative, the paper couldn't possibly be anyone else's media except Dr. Chen's, so he wouldn't have any reason not to take it. In the end, Lin Sanjiu chose the right moment to reveal the truth about her identity and, incidentally, spread her message."

"When did she spread it? I didn't hear anything," Wen Ya sneered.

Ya Rong rubbed her temples, while Jiang Tian, with extraordinary patience, said slowly, "Her line, 'A barking dog never bites'... remember? To lay the foundation for her message and plant the idea in your minds, Ya Rong had also said something similar earlier."

"I suspected she was a posthuman for a while," Ya Rong said, unable to resist a hint of pride. "She didn't even recognize her own projection... So, I decided to cooperate with her early on."

The believers all turned blank stares toward her. Guan Nan frowned in thought and said, "No, that was my own thought at the time. I didn't hear it from her."

"I just happened to think the same thing as you at that moment," Wen Ya agreed.

Lin Sanjiu hadn't expected such strong resistance to resetting the truth. She exchanged a helpless glance with the two women, both seeing the same frustration mirrored on each other's faces.

"I've been thinking... if I'm the source of their belief at this moment," Lin Sanjiu mused, as if the believers couldn't hear her, "then when I'm right beside them, their state of belief should be at its strongest. It's like standing next to a bright light; you can't see clearly because it's too blinding."

Rodent-Face snorted through his nose, and Rob shook his head as if to say she was wrong. Not a single person showed the slightest doubt about themselves.

"You're all from the same place. If you make it back to Chimeric City, I hope you'll explain everything to them then. Maybe by that time, they'll start to recover." Lin Sanjiu looked at the two women and added, "Until you're sure you can leave, stay on this riverbank as much as possible."

Ya Rong was about to nod when she suddenly froze.

"You're leaving?"

Lin Sanjiu stood up. She had already changed out of the gray robe while still in the pocket dimension. Now, her T-shirt and combat pants were soaked through, heavy and clinging to her body. She stared at the rushing river in the distance and said quietly, "It's time for me to take the next step and figure out what the factory plans to do with the ordinary people."

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