C94 – Cognitive Dissonance

“Who is he…?” Mu Sichen asked after getting in the car, glancing at the young man beside him.

“Don’t worry,” Lin Wei replied. “His name is Shan Qi, he’s a logistics staff member. He’s only here to assist. You don’t need to explain anything to him—he won’t be interested.”

Lin Wei had done everything perfectly—almost too perfectly. And that was exactly why Mu Sichen decided to give him one final test.

He was 90% convinced that Lin Wei truly was a member of some special government department. But that last 10% of doubt still lingered.

Maybe it was because Lin Wei was so perfect—perfection, after all, often bred suspicion. Maybe it was because Mu Sichen couldn’t believe that someone could so calmly accept a story so bizarre—especially when he himself couldn’t even speak the truth out loud. Or maybe it was because even if Lin Wei believed them, his superiors might not. His clearance level might not be high enough.

After all, Mu Sichen had lived in danger for too long. Suspicion and wariness had become second nature.

In the car, Lin Wei chuckled and said, “It’s good to stay skeptical. If you had trusted me too easily, I’d probably suspect that everything you said was just a delusional young man’s fantasy. The fact that you constantly question things—that’s proof you’re in a real, dangerous situation, not just making it up.”

Mu Sichen was slightly unsettled to realize Lin Wei had seen right through him.

Lin Wei continued, “Maybe I was too well-prepared. If I’d started off aggressive, accusing you of being involved in the GM’s death, throwing out seemingly reasonable evidence, you would’ve been forced to try to convince me, try everything to make me believe you were involved in something supernatural.

“Wouldn’t that approach have made you trust me more?”

Mu Sichen imagined the scene and had to admit—Lin Wei was right.

Lin Wei went on, “You don’t need to worry about whether I can convince my superiors. Even if this thing is hard to describe or explain, I’ve got enough data and material to support my theory. I have enough evidence to make them listen.”

“Still worried?”

“…Can you read minds?” Mu Sichen asked with a sigh.

“Not exactly. It’s just experience—and interpreting body language,” Lin Wei said. “It’s not some superpower. You do this kind of work long enough, and it becomes second nature.”

Mu Sichen looked at him for a while, and finally made his first attempt.

“Give me a laptop,” he said.

The car they were in was fully equipped, even with medical tools. He Fei, still dead asleep, had been hooked up to a heart monitor by Shan Qi, who was keeping an eye on his vitals.

Lin Wei, always prepared, handed over a laptop.

Mu Sichen opened a browser and accessed the official site for My Ideal Town. He handed the laptop to Lin Wei and asked, “What do you see on this webpage?”

Lin Wei’s fingers flew over the keyboard. After a moment, he said, “A game that never got publishing approval. Its server is hosted in some tiny country nobody’s heard of, and there’s no way to trace its IP. You can’t find the game through any search engine. Seventy percent of the users chatting in the forums are using proxy IPs—in other words, they’re bots.”

“The development company is based overseas, and the listed owner is also a foreign entity. Totally untraceable. I don’t know how you guys even found this website.”

Lin Wei first ran a quick background check on the game, then started playing. It looked like a cheap Plants vs. Zombies knockoff. After playing for a while—nothing happened.

Mu Sichen handed his phone to Lin Wei again. Lin Wei opened the game app and, with admirable patience, played another round of the zombie-vs-plant clone.

The town interface that Mu Sichen could see was completely different from what appeared on Lin Wei’s screen—it remained just a cheap knock-off game.

“Judging from your expression, it’s clear the game I’m seeing isn’t the same one you are,” Lin Wei said as he handed the phone back.

Just then, Mu Sichen saw a new message from the in-game customer service:

Customer Support:

“Detected that the current app user is not the player. The player and Lin Wei exist on different dimensions, so what they see differs as well. The emotional state of the player is understood—support is helpful—but be careful not to let Lin Wei go too deep. Once someone with public authority is corrupted, the consequences are far more severe than with ordinary individuals. Protect his mind.”

The system’s tone was gentler than Mu Sichen expected. It seemed the information-blocking mechanism wasn’t the system itself, but rather the dimensional divide between worlds.

“I have one more thing I want to test,” Mu Sichen said to Lin Wei. “When we arrive at Chi Lian’s place, I want you to describe exactly what you see.”

“Of course.” Lin Wei was fully cooperative.

The airport was far from the city center, and it took them over an hour to reach Chi Lian’s home.

Mu Sichen first sent a message to their group chat: “I’m here.” Then he knocked on the door.

Cheng Xubo had been anxiously waiting. Without checking who was at the door, he flung it open and found Mu Sichen, half-asleep He Fei, and two uniformed strangers standing there.

“W-Why did you bring law enforcement?” Cheng Xubo stammered, clearly alarmed.

“Don’t worry, he’s here to help us,” Mu Sichen reassured him, briefly explaining what had happened at the airport. Then he asked, “Where’s Chi Lian?”

“She cried herself to sleep,” Cheng Xubo replied. After hearing that Lin Wei was here to help, a look of desperation lit up his face. “I didn’t kill anyone. I swear.”

“What? There’s a murder involved?” Lin Wei looked surprised. “Mu Sichen only mentioned that you guys ran into some trouble, not that it involved something like this. Can you explain?”

So Cheng Xubo told Lin Wei what had happened the night before, including screenshots of the red envelope transaction as evidence.

Because Cheng Xubo didn’t mention any in-game mechanics and simply stated real-world facts—that Yang Yunyun had cared for Chi Lian, then died, and he subsequently sent a red envelope—the message wasn’t altered. Everything was conveyed clearly to Lin Wei.

Even though Lin Wei had mentally prepared himself, the horror of the situation left him visibly stunned. “Where’s the body?”

Cheng Xubo looked helplessly at Mu Sichen, unsure whether to bring out the jar where Yang Yunyun was hidden.

Lin Wei said, “You don’t have to worry. If Yang Yunyun died earlier, we can confirm your innocence by examining the time of death.”

“That’s not the issue,” Mu Sichen said carefully. “It’s the way and place she’s hidden—that’s what’s… unusual.”

He turned to Cheng Xubo. “Bring her out. I also want to see what Lin Wei perceives.”

Reluctantly, Cheng Xubo opened a cabinet and retrieved a small clay jar.

He showed them the inside of the jar. Even Mu Sichen couldn’t see anything inside.

Then Cheng Xubo opened the game app and entered the skill simulation interface.

Within the game, the jar transformed into a handcart. Cheng Xubo “opened” the handcart and used his finger to “drag” Yang Yun-yun’s body out and place it on the floor.

At that moment, Mu Sichen saw a corpse materialize midair above the jar and slowly descend to the floor.

Lin Wei and Shan Qi clearly couldn’t see anything. They were still staring seriously at the empty jar until they noticed Mu Sichen’s gaze shift toward the center of the living room floor—only then did they realize that the body had already been “moved out.”

“We can’t see anything,” Lin Wei said.

“I’ll disable the skill now,” Cheng Xubo offered.

“Wait,” Lin Wei stopped him. “Let me make a record first.”

He quickly pulled out a notebook and jotted down:

“13:27, nothing visible on the floor.”

Next, he took a few photos with his phone, recorded a video, and noted the timestamp.

Finally, he used a voice recorder to narrate:

“Time: 13:27. Subject 4, Mr. Cheng, removed what appeared to be an empty jar. He claims to have taken a corpse from it and placed it on the floor. Subject 1, Mr. Mu, also states that he can see the corpse. However, both myself and Comrade Shan Qi see nothing at all.”

Lin Wei duplicated these records and saved them in multiple locations—cloud storage, email, and several encrypted devices.

Only after all this was done did Lin Wei nod to Cheng Xubo. “Go ahead.”

This meticulous process deeply moved Mu Sichen. It was precisely because Lin Wei was so methodical that he’d been able to deduce parts of the truth purely through observation and reasoning.

But even with such thorough preparation, could this really defend against the forces of the otherworld?

Mu Sichen wasn’t sure.

So he said, “Comrade Lin, just to be safe, could you send me copies of your records too?”

Lin Wei readily agreed and sent them to Mu Sichen as well.

Cheng Xubo finally deactivated the skill.

In Mu Sichen’s eyes, Yang Yunyun’s corpse still lay clearly on the floor—the skill’s deactivation had no effect on his vision.

But Lin Wei and Shan Qi’s expressions changed.

Their eyes first focused on the corpse in the center of the room. Then there was a brief moment of disorientation in their gaze, after which Lin Wei asked, “So Yunyun’s body was left out in the living room like this all night? And yet your neighbor who knocked didn’t notice? That’s bizarre.”

Cheng Xubo blinked, confused. “Officer Lin… what did you just say?”

“What’s the matter?” Lin Wei’s expression remained perfectly calm. “Didn’t you say yourself that after she died, you placed the corpse in the middle of the living room?”

“I never said that,” Cheng Xubo replied flatly.

Lin Wei frowned. “Why are your statements inconsistent… Wait—was it your testimony that changed, or is my memory at fault?”

Mu Sichen and Cheng Xubo didn’t respond. Instead, they both raised a hand and silently pointed at Lin Wei.

Lin Wei paused in thought, then said, “Mu Sichen doesn’t look surprised. So this outcome must have been expected. If I anticipated something like this, I would’ve made a record.”

He immediately flipped open his notebook and checked his phone. These entries, recorded before the event took place, were already objective facts—and they had not changed.

As he reviewed what he had written in his own handwriting, Lin Wei chuckled faintly. “Interesting.”

He calmly analyzed,

“According to the records, Yunyun’s body wasn’t here in the living room at first, and I was aware of that.”

“But the moment I saw her corpse, my memory rewrote itself. It seems the brain couldn’t accept that a body just appeared out of nowhere…”

“So it fabricated a memory to justify it.
My own brain betrayed me.”

Even someone as experienced and composed as Lin Wei found this realization terrifying.

He had been on active duty since the age of 18, with over a decade of experience. He’d been through wa_rzones, faced death, and hunted vicious sociopaths. He had always thought himself battle-hardened.

Yet in this moment, he felt an uncontrollable ripple of fear.

Because the brain he once took such pride in… had betrayed him.

If even his own perception and memory couldn’t be trusted—what could he believe in anymore?

Lin Wei looked at Mu Sichen’s young face, and for the first time, a flicker of respect welled up inside him.

To remain calm and composed in a situation like this—this young man was truly remarkable.

Though Lin Wei’s fear had only flashed for a second, Mu Sichen had still caught it.

After a moment’s thought, Mu Sichen said softly:

“Commander Lin, you don’t have to be afraid.”

“I actually think the memory alteration is your brain’s way of protecting you.
It sensed danger and didn’t want you to know too much—so it rewrote what you saw.”

After all, whether in another world or the real one, being truly aware—seeing clearly—was often a painful and dangerous thing.

Lin Wei’s brain wasn’t weak. On the contrary, it had loyally protected its owner.

“But I don’t want that protection,” Lin Wei said with a quiet sigh.

“I want to know what you’ve been through—and what kind of danger you’re all facing.
But if I can’t even perceive it, how can I possibly investigate further?”

Mu Sichen hesitated, then replied:

“I think… I might have a way. But I’m not sure whether using it will end up dragging you into all this.”

Then, Mu Sichen sent Lin Wei an image—his own Totem symbol.

On Lin Wei’s end, the image wouldn’t load. It was completely blurred, obscured by layers of digital interference.

Mu Sichen looked at him and said,

“If you’re sure you want to face this danger, I’ll grant you permission to download the image.”

Lin Wei didn’t hesitate.

His eyes were firm.

“I’m sure.”

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TN:

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