Chapter 344: Unaware That This Is a Dream

Ning Zhe was born in 00 and has not yet turned 18.

Boys and girls of this age are more or less feeling melancholy and confused as they are forced to write new poems to express their sorrows. They also happen to encounter the postmodern trend that everything can be deconstructed, which is a very dangerous thing.

Country, society, interpersonal relationships, and even ideology, postmodern young people want to deconstruct everything they see, and they are determined to turn all the lofty things into plain words and trample them into the ground. They seem to be sober, but in fact they are nihilistic.

Deconstruction is easy, but construction is difficult. If we blindly deconstruct everything without carrying out corresponding renewal and construction, and only demolish without rebuilding for a long time, it will easily lead to loss of subjectivity and existential crisis. This is a very dangerous self-destructive tendency.

This kind of thing is actually nothing if it happens to ordinary people. Young people can just go online and post a few affectionate paragraphs and say a few words to their friends. After graduation, the pressure of life and the beatings of society will naturally make these students who are out of touch with the world learn to compromise with reality. In time, they will be ashamed to face their immature past.

But Ningzhe is different. The law that material basis determines superstructure does not apply to Taiyi. For ordinary people, existence determines thought, but for Ningzhe, thought determines existence. I think, therefore I am. If I don't think, I don't exist.

The whining of young people becomes a dangerous existential crisis for him. Once he loses his subjectivity, it can easily cost him his life.

Therefore, it is not appropriate to be too serious about consciousness, self, memory, subjectivity... these intangible things. Once people take them too seriously, they may easily become obsessed.

Fortunately, Jue Yuan didn't allow him to go crazy.

Jue Yuan's eyes lit up for only a brief moment, and the dangerous suspicion only appeared in Ning Zhe's mind for a moment before it was forcibly erased. When Ning Zhe opened his eyes, he could feel that Jue Yuan's chains were still binding him.

His mind had long been enslaved by ghosts, and Jue Yuan would not allow him to have even the slightest doubt about his identity. This was the absoluteness of the rules.

The rules are 'absolute'.

When Ning Zhe opened his eyes, he saw Meilin, who was standing across the table, giving him a look of surprise, while Fen Wu, who was standing next to him, just supported his skull with his index finger and gave him a gentle smile.

Ning Zhe looked down at his chest and hands, and suddenly felt a little scared.

"so close."

——He actually started to deconstruct himself just now.

Ning Zhe had every reason to suspect that this was deliberately instigated by Fen Wu. Three months was neither long nor short, and it was not difficult to guess that there might be some connection between Jue Yuan's ideological imprint and Tai Chong who deleted and modified his memory, but he just couldn't think of it.

He didn't want to get up earlier or later, but it happened now, in front of Fen Wu, that he began to doubt his own existence.

What the hell does Fenwu want to do?
Ning Zhe now even suspects that the Lan Shiwen that Xia Yubing met was actually Fen Wu in disguise. He took the initiative to expose the existence of the Chu Tai Chong worm just to trigger the current situation and make him have wild thoughts. He muddies the waters and makes him begin to doubt his own memory. He doesn't know what to believe and what not to believe, and finally becomes a headless fly that poses no threat to Fen Wu.

Ning Zhe also suspected that Meilin and Pétain had also been brainwashed by Fenwu, and that they were actors hired by Fenwu. The gambling ghost and the god of wealth were also controlled by Fenwu, and the people and ghosts in the entire opera house were playing themselves.

Ning Zhe even suspected that out of the 100 billion people on the earth, more than 99 million people were puppets whose memories were modified by Fen Wu. Looking around the world, the only two people with self-thinking were him and Fen Wu.

The one who had sex with him last night wasn't Xia Yubing, but Fen Wu who had taken over Xia Yubing's brain...

It is true that it is a bit far-fetched to put a label on someone like this, and Fenwu is probably not that awesome, but Ning Zhe is really suffering from PTSD. If someone comes and tells him that Fenwu tipped off the Trisolarans and exposed the coordinates of the Earth, Ning Zhe may believe it.

"If that day ever comes, I will be the first to call out to the Three Body Lady to come in..." Ning Zhe was just breathing heavily and thinking, when he heard Meilin suddenly say, "Let me do it."

"Okay." Pétain nodded and directly instructed her to insert the next coin.

Meilin didn't say much. She picked up a copper coin and threw it into the cup. Golden liquid droplets splashed onto the table and the gambler raised his head.

"This is my bet." Meilin took out a fist-sized metal product from her bag and placed it on the table. Ning Zhe took a look and saw that it was a candlestick made of brass, filled with waxy yellow lamp oil, and emitting a faint stench of corpse.

"Corpse oil?" Ning Zhe was a little surprised. This thing seemed to be the corpse oil lamp in Vanessa Castle.

The gambler nodded and approved the candlestick as a bet. Meilin breathed a sigh of relief and took out a mirror from her arms.

It was a bronze mirror the size of a human face, also made of brass. The back of the mirror was engraved with a pattern of two phoenixes entwined with their necks, and it was obviously something from Kyushu.

"Here." Pétain also took out an identical bronze mirror from his arms and handed it to Maryline.

Meilin nodded, stood up and left.

Out of fairness, before the game is completely over and the final winner is decided, even if the loser has handed in his bet and is "free" in principle, he can only leave the gaming table temporarily and cannot leave the independent space where the casino is located.

Therefore, after getting the two bronze mirrors, Meilin did not walk towards the door, but went straight to the stand where Ning Zhe and Fen Wu had been chatting before, lifted the curtain and walked out.

"No." Ning Zhe reacted quickly, stood up and chased after him.

When the curtain was opened, the stands were empty. As soon as Meilin walked out, Ning Zhe followed her. In just one or two seconds, she disappeared. Ning Zhe held the railing and looked down. It was impossible for her to jump directly from the audience seats?
"Is it related to those two mirrors?" Ning Zhe frowned slightly: "But why two?"

Without thinking too much about this issue, Ning Zhe lifted the curtain and returned to the room. He didn't know how Meilin left, but he knew the purpose of her leaving, probably to go find her mistress.

In the room, the two people and the ghost were still sitting on the sofa next to the gambling table.

Fenwu gently wiped the blood that was oozing from his forehead with a napkin, and observed the gambler who was sitting there motionless with interest.

"According to the rules, the last player to throw a coin should designate who will continue to throw the coin next." Fen Wu suddenly said, "But the lady left in a hurry. She disappeared before she could designate the next player."

And it wasn't just disappearing, it was leaving this 'world' directly.

As she spoke, Fen Wu shook her head: "What a willful lady. The gambling game is not over yet. What do you think we should do with her?"

Looking at the gambler who was still sitting there motionless, Ning Zhe suddenly smiled.

"No player may leave the casino before the game is completely over. This is the rule of the gambler, and he must abide by it because he is also a player."

(End of this chapter)

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