Chapter Twenty: Illusory Realm

  What to do?! It's either go or not, but since we've already come in, I believe the oil and water gang won't easily retreat. The result is still going to be continuing forward. Might as well give the oil and water gang some face. "Die from being too bold, starve from being too timid, just follow your method, no matter what, charge in with a strong head".

  I don't know why, but Oil Barrel seems to have taken a liking to me, and wants to make friends with me. He asks for my opinion on every decision. According to the rules of the Tomb Raider's Guild, Oil Barrel is the leader of our group, and I'm just a lowly member. After getting my agreement, he orders Big Fortune and Great Wealth to "Let's go in now, you two take the lead, I'll follow behind". As soon as he finishes speaking, we rush headlong into the stone staircase that's only about 20 meters away from us. This staircase is two meters wide, curved and spiraling upwards, with no visible end in sight, kind of like a coiled spring. What's even stranger is that when we looked at the staircase from outside earlier, it was a pale blue color, but now that we're walking on it, it has somehow changed to transparent, and I can see through it to the endless depths below.

  "Hmm, hmm, thud, hmm, hmm, thud"... We kept running forward with our heads down, but I couldn't resist the temptation of curiosity and glanced at the ghost masks hanging on the wall a few times. These ghost masks were quite eerie, if you looked at them one by one slowly, you wouldn't notice anything unusual, but as we ran quickly now, I found that the expressions and mouths on the masks changed slightly when moving to the next one. First, the corners of the mask's mouth opened, then the mouth opened and closed, and the muscles on the face also changed with the opening of the mouth. Compared to the mouth shapes on the spectrum, they should be able to form a sentence when connected together. These masks might not be some kind of evil spell or something, but maybe they're about some secrets related to the demon king, who knows?

  For a moment, I was so stunned by my own discovery that I stopped in my tracks. I came back to myself and wanted to tell Oil Water Belly about my discovery, but just as I was about to speak, I was shocked stiff by the scene before me! At this moment, I wasn't at the Demon King's tomb, but in the home where I used to live with my uncle on Mount Er Long! The old, worn-out wooden bed, a small wooden stool and table in the center, a bow and arrow for hunting hanging on the wall in the southeast corner, and a trap belt. The hardened red earth floor was uneven. And at this moment, I was lying on a bed! What...what...how is this possible?!

  I slapped myself hard, "Whack!" It hurt! "Huh?" How did my hand become so small and thin? How did my body shrink too?!?! I couldn't believe it. As I touched this and that on myself, I accidentally fell off the bed. "Thud" I rolled onto the floor, bumping into the wooden table in the room, "Crash, crash~ Ahh!" A pained cry, accompanied by the sound of objects falling to the ground.

  "What are you up to again, puppy?" The scolding voice of my uncle came from outside the door. Although it was a scolding tone, but coming from my uncle's mouth, it sounded very warm and gentle. "Puppy" is the nickname that Uncle gave me! As soon as he finished speaking, Uncle pushed open the door and pulled me out from under the table, picked me up in his arms, and gently poked my nose with his finger: "Puppy, Uncle is getting old, these crazy tables were all made by Uncle himself, if you keep messing around like this, Uncle won't live long!" After that, he pinched my chubby right cheek a few times, everything was just like when I was a kid.

  My uncle is almost seventy years old, about 1.72 meters tall, with a straight back like a weathered cypress tree. He wears animal skin clothes and pants that look tattered and worn out. His eyebrows are curved and completely white, his beard is curled up like a sheep's wool and tied into a knot, his face is dry and wrinkled like the bark of a pine tree, with deep creases that make him look old. When he smiles, he reveals a big mouthful of dark yellow teeth. Now I can clearly feel the pain spreading through my body, could it be that I really had a dream, a dream that lasted for over twenty years?

  I'm confused, "Uncle, how old am I now?" I innocently asked my uncle. Looking back, I was quite innocent and lovely when I was young!

  My uncle pinched my little face hard and said, "You're 14 years old this year! Uncle will live for another decade or so and can see you getting married!"

  My eyes stung, tears welled up in my eyelids, and suddenly I couldn't hold them back. They dripped down onto my uncle's animal hide cloak. Really! It was really Uncle! Really! I was overjoyed to the point of madness.

  "Puppy, men would rather bleed than cry, listen up! Uncle is going out to get some stuff. Otherwise, you and Dahuang will starve to death tonight!" Uncle carefully wiped away the tears from the corners of my eyes and the tear stains flowing down my cheeks.

  I greedily stared at my uncle, making up for the emptiness of more than 20 years of dreams. My uncle hugged me for over ten minutes, and his arms were numb. I finally jumped down from the kang (heated bed) and let my uncle go hunting!

  After my uncle left, I ran out of the yard with a bounce, the yard was not big, about half the size of a basketball court. The yard was surrounded by a fence made of bamboo, on which grandfather's medium-sized gourd vines were crawling all over the fence wall. Big Yellow was still sleeping under the shaded part of the fence where sunlight couldn't reach, sticking out his tongue. After hearing my footsteps, he got up and barked "Wang Wang" twice at me before running towards me! Everything was so beautiful and peaceful!

  "Lu brothers... Lu brothers!" At this time, a faint voice suddenly echoed in my ear, and the voice was so familiar. It seemed to have been heard there before, I didn't pay much attention to it, thinking it was just my auditory hallucination.

  "Brother... brother... wake up quickly... wake up quickly"!!!!!

  There is another voice swirling around my ears, this voice is the voice of oil and water belly, this time it sounds very real, the Mandarin of oil and water belly has a very heavy Guangdong accent, in Guangdong it's nothing special, but in Guangxi it's particularly noticeable, special things always make people remember very clearly!

  Isn't all of this false? An illusion? I couldn't help but doubt in my heart, but everything is so real, how could it be fake? Two answers intertwined in my mind, and suddenly my head started to ache!

  At this time, the door inside the courtyard was opened by someone. It was Uncle! Why did he come back so quickly? Now it's just noon, and according to his usual schedule, he shouldn't have been able to come back that quickly. "Uncle? How did you come back so soon, it's still early?" I asked.

  "Puppy, it's already past six in the afternoon, isn't it late? Look, Uncle has caught two rabbits, enough for us to have fun tonight."

  Is it past 6 pm? But now it's clearly noon. What's going on?

  Suddenly, an idea flashed through my mind - what if the sun here doesn't move? What does it mean that the sun won't move? It means time has completely stopped here. Time not moving means this space is fake. This is really terrifying. To prove my point, I pushed my uncle into the house and observed whether the shadow of the fence outside had changed.

  Until my uncle called me in to eat, the shadow of the fence had not changed, and the sun was still hanging straight in the middle, scorching. Everything here is fake!

  There was a voice whispering in my ear: "Brother Lu, this is an illusory realm created by the mask. As long as you destroy the things you see in the illusion, you can wake up. Otherwise, you will be trapped in the illusion forever and slowly turn into a stone man, never to awaken again!"

  "Boom" I couldn't help but tremble all over! Now I can be sure that everything here is fake, and the people here are my uncle, Da Huang, and my house! Although these things are fake, how can I bear to kill my uncle, kill Da Huang, and destroy my house? This is my bottom line, I absolutely won't touch it.

  "Puppy, what are you still dawdling for? Everything is ready, if I don't even give you a cooked meal, it's all the same. Can't even eat a meal to put your uncle at ease!" The urging voice of his uncle came from inside the house.

  My mind was a complete blank as I walked into the house in a daze. My uncle had already prepared a bowl of food and was looking at me with a kind face. Da Huang was already on the floor eating a rabbit leg that my uncle had given him, wagging his tail from side to side. I went over to serve myself a bowl of rice and sat down next to my uncle to eat. My uncle saw that I was feeling down and picked up a piece of rabbit meat with his chopsticks, saying: "You little scamp, what's wrong? Are you thinking about your wife?"

  My uncle is a very humorous old man, usually if he teases me like that, I will definitely pull his goatee and pout, but everything here is fake and it's exhausting my smile!

  This is an illusion, everything is fake, the house, Uncle, Da Huang, they are all fake. If I die here, what will happen to my real uncle? How did Hei Zi really die and why did he betray me? And what kind of conspiracy does Liu Lao Tou have? Can I let these things go? But putting some things on a fake body is just because I don't have a reason, it's an excuse for finding a reason.

  Ah!... The hoarse and exhausted roar in my heart, how could I have such a ridiculous idea? Am I still human? Or am I a beast?! Have I slowly become someone with no bottom line?!

  ！！