Chapter 157
Chapter 157
“Hey, Alice! Are you ready yet? We’ve been waiting forever!” The Eyeless Rabbit took off its sunglasses and greeted Wei Sen. Its once-empty eye sockets now held a pair of remarkably bright, enormous eyes.
At the sight, Wei Sen calmly turned to the Mad Hatter and asked, “How many people are the Twins? Does the Dodo have feathers? Can that Rabbit see?”
The Mad Hatter froze. “Of course the Twins are two people! Why wouldn’t the Dodo have feathers? And that Rabbit’s eyes are even bigger than mine!”
Without betraying any emotion, Wei Sen took a step back toward the door.
She had only lost sight of them for a few minutes. Why were they all becoming… increasingly normal?
Was it because they had entered the Mad Hatter’s territory, causing them to become normal?
No!
Wei Sen pointed at the Rabbit beside the tea table and asked the Mad Hatter, “Who is that?”
“The March Hare.”
“And that Mouse?”
“The Dormouse.”
But the manor’s rules had explicitly stated that the March Hare was not a Rabbit and the Dormouse was not a Mouse!
Everything was in disarray. Reality itself was contradicting the rules.
It was Cognitive Contamination!
She had to get out of here as quickly as possible!
She was about to flee when she looked down and realized that the path beneath her feet was perfectly clean. There wasn’t a single footprint in sight.
But she and the Mad Hatter had just come down this very path. How could all their footprints have vanished?
She couldn’t tell whether this was Cognitive Contamination or a trap laid by the Eerie World.
The first rule clearly stated that she had to follow paths with footprints, or she would be lost in Wonderland forever.
She couldn’t go forward, which left her with only one option…
With that thought, Wei Sen quickly opened the windmill door, slipped inside, and locked it behind her.
Only after doing so did she realize that she was surrounded by dense fog. The air around her was bitterly cold.
Wasn’t this the Mad Hatter’s house?
Why was it filled with blinding white fog that obscured everything?
She slowly made her way forward and spotted what seemed to be a human silhouette in the mist.
She approached warily and found a young man around twenty years old, dressed entirely in black. A green Caterpillar hand puppet covered his right hand.
Suddenly, the puppet twitched. “Alice, you’re here.”
The puppet couldn’t speak, yet the man in black hadn’t opened his mouth either. The voice had simply sounded out of nowhere.
Wei Sen stood rooted to the spot. The man was performing ventriloquism for her.
“Alice?” the Caterpillar hand puppet “spoke” again.
Wei Sen tried to make sense of everything in front of her.
“What’s wrong?” Seeing that she still wasn’t responding, the young man finally spoke aloud.
“Who are you? Where am I?” Wei Sen stared at him coldly, ready to summon her cleaver at any moment.
The young man said, “That’s not your line!”
“My line?”
Just then, the lights came on and the white fog gradually dispersed. Wei Sen looked around and discovered that she was standing… on a stage!
Rows of empty seats stretched out before her. She was inside a dimly lit theater.
A figure emerged from backstage. “Have we been rehearsing too long today? Everyone seems out of it. Why don’t we call it a day and get some rest?”
Wei Sen turned toward the voice. The person walking out of the white smoke backstage was…
“The Mad Hatter?”
Hadn’t he been locked outside the door?
Wait…
Only then did Wei Sen realize there was no door on the stage!
But she distinctly remembered locking it herself!
The young man in black removed the hand puppet and rolled his shoulders. “Yeah, we should take a break. The performance isn’t until tomorrow night anyway. We can still rehearse in the morning.”
Wei Sen was beginning to understand the situation.
They were rehearsing a stage adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, and she was playing Alice!
Then was this Mad Hatter someone different from the one outside the door?
“Who are you?” Wei Sen studied the Mad Hatter. From head to toe, he looked exactly like the Mad Hatter she had just met, but his expressions, gaze, and mannerisms were completely different.
At the very least, the man before her appeared to be perfectly sane.
The Mad Hatter smiled gently, his gaze warm. “All right, rehearsal’s over for today. It’s getting late, so I’ll walk you back to your dorm.”
“Then who am I?” Wei Sen was even more confused.
She looked around and realized that all the white smoke from earlier had actually been dry ice.
Now that the smoke had cleared, Wei Sen spotted a full-length mirror backstage and hurried toward it.
She needed to know whether she was still herself.
She did not recognize any of these people, yet they had mistaken her for someone else.
Wei Sen reached the mirror and stopped dead.
The person in the blue princess dress reflected in the mirror was… Cheng Wanning?!
The same Cheng Wanning who had appeared in the Snowy Night Traveler Instance!
No. The person in the mirror was still Wei Sen. She had simply taken on Cheng Wanning’s appearance!
Why was this happening…?
Just then, the man playing the Mad Hatter came up behind her.
“What’s wrong? You’ve been acting strange for a while now.”
Wei Sen did not answer. She was too busy analyzing the situation.
A moment later, the male student dressed in black walked past them, carrying a Caterpillar hand puppet. “Ah Ze, I’m heading out. You two clean up the stage, okay?”
Ah Ze?!
Wei Sen stared in astonishment at the man playing the Mad Hatter behind her, watching him through the mirror.
Could he be…?
“Lin Ze?”
She spoke the name in disbelief.
Of course… The Lin Ze she had encountered in the previous Instance had used an Anomalous Artifact to disguise himself!
She had never seen what Lin Ze truly looked like.
If the person in the mirror was Cheng Wanning, then this man had to be Lin Ze!
Wei Sen stared at his reflection, still struggling to believe it.
This Lin Ze looked so young and vibrant. His eyes were innocent and clear, and his entire being radiated warmth. With that smile on his face, he looked like a harmless boy next door.
It was difficult to connect him with the Lin Ze waiting for her in the Origin Land, whose expression was always as cold as ice.
“Did rehearsal wear you out today?” Lin Ze asked, his face and voice full of concern.
Wei Sen turned around and studied him before asking tentatively, “Did you enter the Instance?”
Lin Ze looked confused. “Instance? Cheng Wanning, you’re acting really strange today. Let me take you to the campus clinic.”
The concern on his face was unmistakable.
“I’m Cheng Wanning now, and you’re Lin Ze…” Wei Sen murmured as her thoughts raced.
Could this Instance be rejecting the Lin Ze from the Eerie World because another Lin Ze already existed here?
The Lin Ze standing before her knew nothing about the Eerie World!
He had called her “Cheng Wanning,” not “Ningning.” That meant the relationship between Lin Ze and Cheng Wanning in this world had not yet reached the point where he called her “Ningning”!
But what exactly was the connection between the two versions of Lin Ze?
And how was the Eerie World she had just left connected to the world she was in now?
Why had she taken on Cheng Wanning’s appearance?
Countless theories flashed through Wei Sen’s mind.
Perhaps… the Eerie Fairy-Tale World from before was a projection of this Mirror Reality!
When she had met the Caterpillar Oracle in that world, the same cold mist had surrounded them.
The Caterpillar had never opened its mouth, yet she had heard it speak because the real Caterpillar was a ventriloquist’s puppet. It could not possibly speak on its own!
Everything that had appeared in the Eerie Fairy-Tale World had a counterpart in reality.
But everything in the fairy tale was fake!
Could it be…?
Wei Sen regarded the real Lin Ze before her with suspicion.
What if he was the Contamination Source behind the entire Instance?
Would killing him earn her a Perfect Clearance?
“Cheng Wanning?” Lin Ze called when he noticed her spacing out.
Wei Sen returned to her senses and said flatly, “Walk me back to my dorm.”
She decided to observe him a little longer. If she killed the wrong person, she might not have enough Merit Points to cover the penalty. She had to be absolutely certain.
Besides, she still needed to return to the previous world and obtain the White Queen’s Heart and the Red Queen’s Head. Using them to confirm the identity of the Contamination Source would be the safest approach.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Lin Ze asked.
“Stop fussing.”
Lin Ze froze, looking even more bewildered than before. “Okay… I’ll walk you back first.”
Wei Sen followed Lin Ze out of the theater, and brilliant sunlight fell across her face.
Sunlight slanted across tree-lined paths. The corridors buzzed between classes. Pens scratched over paper in classrooms, punctuated by the occasional yawn. Students sat reading in twos and threes on the lawns, while bicycle bells rang through the youthful breeze.
She was actually at a university!