Chapter 7: The Horizon is a Painted Wall
The sensation of Phase-Shifting was like being pulled through a straw made of liquid light. One moment, Lin Feng was roaring through the stale air of Warehouse 99, the next, gravity inverted, his stomach lurched, and the vintage motorcycle slammed onto wet asphalt with a teeth-rattling screech.
Lin Feng didn't crash. He drifted, the tires carving a perfect arc of smoke and sparks as he brought the machine to a halt. The engine died, leaving only the sound of falling rain and distant, muffled traffic.
He sat there for a moment, gripping the handlebars, waiting.
He waited for the click of a locking mechanism. He waited for the heavy hand of the God of War on his shoulder. He waited for the soft, terrifying perfume of Su Qingxue to fill the air.
But there was nothing.
Only the smell of ozone, fried oil, and cheap cigarettes.
Lin Feng opened his eyes. He wasn't in the Villa's high-security garage. He wasn't in a holding cell. He was in the "Old District"—a sprawling, neon-lit labyrinth of street vendors, shady pawn shops, and noodle stalls that the corporate elite of the city pretended didn't exist. It was dirty, loud, and chaotic.
It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
[SYSTEM DIAGNOSTIC: COMPLETE.] [LOCATION: SECTOR 4 — OLD DISTRICT.] [PROXIMITY TO HEROINE: UNDETECTED.] [TRACKING COLLAR STATUS: DORMANT.]
Lin Feng let out a breath he felt he had been holding for forty-eight hours. "I did it," he whispered, the vibration of his own voice feeling strange without the echo of a prison cell. "I actually hacked the coordinates. I sent myself to the slums instead of the castle."
He dismounted, his boots splashing in a puddle of oily water. He checked his reflection in a shop window. The diamond collar was still around his neck, but the violet light was dead. The "Spirit-Masking Vapor" he had inhaled earlier must have fried its internal transmitter during the Phase-Shift.
For the first time in 999 lives, the Villain had completely ghosted the narrative.
He began to walk. He didn't run—running attracted attention. He walked with the casual swagger of a local thug, blending perfectly into the crowd of late-night workers and drunks. He bought a pack of cheap cigarettes from a vending machine using a crumpled bill he found in the jacket pocket. The smoke burned his throat. It tasted like freedom.
"Hey, handsome! Want a bowl of noodles? Best spicy beef in the city!"
An old woman with a scarred face and a kind smile waved at him from a steaming cart. The smell of star anise and chili oil hit him like a physical blow, waking up memories from his 300th life as a wandering beggar.
Lin Feng stopped. He shouldn't stop. He should be finding a safe house. He should be contacting the Shadow Web to arrange a new identity. But the tension of the last few days had left him hollow.
"One bowl," Lin Feng said, sitting on a plastic stool that wobbled dangerously. "Extra spicy. And a beer."
"Coming right up!" the woman chirped, tossing a handful of noodles into boiling water.
Lin Feng sat back, watching the steam rise into the neon-soaked night. He looked at the people around him. A couple arguing about rent. A group of teenagers laughing at a video on their phone. A stray cat gnawing on a fish bone.
They were so delightfully ordinary. They weren't Protagonists with destiny in their veins or Heroines with world-ending obsessions. They were just NPCs living their script-less lives.
[SYSTEM REMARK: ENJOY IT, HOST. THIS IS THE FIRST TIME YOU HAVE BEEN 'OFF-SCREEN' IN A MILLENNIUM.]
"Don't jinx it," Lin Feng muttered, taking a sip of the cold, watery beer.
He ate the noodles with a voracious hunger. The spice brought tears to his eyes, or maybe it was just the overwhelming relief. He had outsmarted a Regressor. He had beaten a God of War. He was free.
"You look like you've had a long week," the old woman said, wiping down the table.
"You have no idea," Lin Feng replied, chuckling darkly. "My ex is... possessive. I had to break a few laws just to get some dinner."
The woman laughed, a raspy, warm sound. "Ah, young love. It's always a battlefield. But you have kind eyes, young man. She'll forgive you."
"I hope not," Lin Feng said. "I'm hoping she forgets I exist."
He finished the meal and stood up, leaving a tip that was worth more than the entire cart. He felt recharged. His mind was sharp again. Now, it was time to disappear for good. He would head to the docks, find a smuggler, and get off this continent before Su Qingxue realized her bird had flown the coop.
He walked toward the edge of the market, where the alleyways grew darker and the city noise faded. He needed to find a vehicle.
As he turned a corner, a gust of wind blew a discarded newspaper against his leg. He kicked it away, but something about the motion felt... wrong.
He stopped.
The wind blew again.
Lin Feng counted. One, two, three, four.
Another gust. Same intensity. Same direction.
One, two, three, four.
Gust.
Lin Feng frowned. Weather wasn't rhythmic. Weather was chaos. He looked up at the sky. The heavy clouds were glowing with the reflection of the city lights, a sickly orange-purple bruise above the skyline.
He narrowed his eyes. In his 700th life as a Grand Mage, he had spent a century studying the patterns of the stars. He knew the constellations of this world better than he knew his own face.
There were no stars tonight. Just clouds.
"System," Lin Feng whispered, the hair on the back of his neck standing up. "Scan the atmospheric composition."
[SYSTEM SCANNING...] [OXYGEN: 21%. NITROGEN: 78%. POLLUTANTS: 1%.] [CONCLUSION: NORMAL URBAN AIR.]
"Scan deeper," Lin Feng commanded, his heart rate beginning to climb. "Scan for 'Etheric Interference'."
[SYSTEM SCANNING...] [RESULT: NEGATIVE.]
Lin Feng grit his teeth. His System said it was real. His eyes said it was real. The spicy beef in his stomach felt real.
But the wind... the wind was on a loop.
He turned back to the noodle cart. The old woman was still there, wiping the same spot on the table. A new customer sat down—a man in a blue coat.
"Hey, handsome! Want a bowl of noodles? Best spicy beef in the city!" the woman chirped.
The intonation was identical. The pitch was identical. The wave of her hand was identical to the millimeter.
Lin Feng felt a cold dread wash over him, colder than any ice wall he could conjure. He looked at the stray cat. It was gnawing on the fish bone. It swiped its paw left, then right, then shook its head.
He waited ten seconds.
Left. Right. Shake.
"No," Lin Feng breathed, stepping back. "No, that's impossible. I Phase-Shifted. I moved through space. I felt the G-force."
He turned and ran. He sprinted down the alleyway, ignoring the "local thugs" who shouted generic insults at him. He ran toward the edge of the district, toward the darkness where the city ended and the ocean began.
He ran for ten minutes, his lungs burning. The buildings began to blur. The neon lights faded. Ahead, he saw the chain-link fence that marked the boundary of the Old District. Beyond it lay the sea.
He crashed into the fence, gripping the cold metal, staring out at the black water. He needed to see the waves. He needed to see the chaos of the ocean.
But the water wasn't moving.
It was a static image. A high-resolution, perfectly rendered texture of "Dark Ocean" that simply rippled with a repeating shader effect.
Lin Feng reached through the fence. He picked up a rock and threw it as hard as he could.
The rock sailed through the air. It should have splashed into the water.
CLANG.
It hit something solid about fifty meters out. It didn't hit water. It hit a wall. A wall painted black.
The sky flickered.
For a microsecond, a grid of blue hexagonal lines flashed across the "clouds," revealing the curvature of a massive, metallic dome.
[SYSTEM ERROR DETECTED.] [REALITY CHECK FAILED.] [RE-CALIBRATING LOCATION...] [LOCATION UPDATED: 'THE BIRDCAGE' - SUB-BASEMENT 4 OF THE SU ESTATE.]
Lin Feng dropped to his knees. The cigarette fell from his lips.
He hadn't hacked the coordinates. He hadn't escaped to the Old District. He hadn't even left the property.
The "Phase-Shift" gate in Warehouse 99... it was a trap. It was a localized teleporter that had beamed him directly into a simulator. A simulator built underground.
Su Qingxue had built an entire city block. She had hired actors. She had installed wind machines. She had programmed a fake sky.
She had given him a world where he thought he was free, just to see what he would do with it.
"Did the spicy beef taste like home, Feng'er?"
The voice came from everywhere. It came from the sky. It came from the fence. It came from the noodle cart behind him.
The "static ocean" suddenly dissolved. The black wall slid open, revealing a blinding white corridor.
Su Qingxue walked out.
She wasn't wearing her CEO dress. She was wearing casual jeans and a white sweater—the exact outfit she used to wear in their 1st life, back when they were innocent students. She held a tablet in one hand and a remote control in the other.
Ye Chen walked behind her, carrying a sleek, silver chair. He placed it down on the "beach," looking at Lin Feng with a mixture of awe and pity.
"You built a city," Lin Feng whispered, his voice trembling with a rage he couldn't articulate. "You built a fake city just to mock me?"
"I built a sanctuary," Su Qingxue corrected him, sitting on the chair and crossing her legs. "I know you, Lin Feng. I know that if I just locked you in a room, your mind would break. You need to feel clever. You need to feel like you're 'winning.' So, I built you a playground."
She tapped the tablet.
The "Old Woman" from the noodle cart walked out of the shadows. She pulled off a latex mask, revealing a young, terrified tech support employee.
"Did he enjoy the meal?" Su Qingxue asked the employee.
"Yes, President Su," the girl stammered. "He... he tipped 5,000 credits. He said the spice reminded him of the past."
Su Qingxue smiled, but her eyes were full of tears. "See? That's the Feng'er I love. The one who is kind to strangers even when he's on the run."
She looked back at Lin Feng, who was still kneeling in the mud—mud that was probably synthetic.
"I gave you 45 minutes of freedom," Su Qingxue said softly. "And what did you do? You didn't hurt anyone. You didn't plot to blow up the city. You ate noodles and thought about the ocean. You aren't a villain, my love. You're just tired."
"I am a villain!" Lin Feng roared, standing up. He tried to summon his System, to summon a weapon, anything.
[SYSTEM WARNING: ADMIN PRIVILEGES REVOKED.] [ZONE AUTHORITY: HEROINE.]
"You were a villain," Su Qingxue said, standing up and walking toward him. The "rain" stopped instantly as she approached, the artificial weather system obeying her proximity. "Now, you are the star of the only show that matters."
She reached out and touched the collar around his neck. It buzzed back to life, glowing brighter than before.
"The Phase-Shift gate was a test," she whispered, leaning in until her forehead touched his. "If you had tried to kill Ye Chen, the gate would have incinerated you. If you had tried to destroy the warehouse, it would have paralyzed you. But you chose to run. You chose to survive. That means you still have hope."
She kissed his cheek. It was cold.
"And as long as you have hope, I have something to crush."
She snapped her fingers.
The "Old District" vanished. The neon lights, the buildings, the smells—they all dissolved into holographic static, leaving them standing in a massive, empty white room made of reinforced steel.
The only thing that remained real was the chair, Su Qingxue, and the God of War blocking the only exit.
"Welcome to Level 2 of your rehabilitation," Su Qingxue said, her voice echoing in the vast emptiness. "Here, there are no distractions. No NPCs. No fake exits. Just you... and me."
Lin Feng looked at the white walls. He looked at the woman who had spent more money than the GDP of a small country just to simulate a bowl of noodles for him.
He realized then that he hadn't just lost a battle. He had lost his reality.
[SYSTEM UPDATE:] [NEW MAP UNLOCKED: THE WHITE ROOM.] [ESCAPE CHANCE: 0.00%] [CURRENT OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE THE HONEYMOON.]
Lin Feng laughed. It was a broken, jagged sound.
"You're crazy," he said.
"I'm devoted," she replied. "Now, sit down, Feng'er. We have a thousand years of marriage counseling to catch up on."
Author's Note:
"REALITY CHECK FAILED."
Did you trust the noodle lady? Did you smell the rain? Lin Feng did too.
This chapter marks the end of the "Introduction Arc" and the beginning of the "Psychological Horror" phase. Su Qingxue didn't just trap his body; she trapped his perception of reality.
WSA UPDATE: We have officially crossed the 12,500 word mark! The story is accelerating.
Question of the Day: If your partner built a fake city for you, is it romantic or terrifying? Vote with Power Stones if you think Lin Feng needs to burn the White Room to the ground! Next Chapter Preview: "The Honeymoon in Hell." (Things are about to get very intense...