210: Chapter Fusion, Self, Ego, and Superego

Lin Mo’s pupils contracted as he stared at “himself” sitting up on the hospital bed.

The person’s voice was hoarse, as if covered by the dust of time: “You’ve come...”

“Who... are you, exactly?”

Lin Mo’s knuckles turned white, and his uncanny power roared silently within his meridians, poised to strike.

“The answer lies within your own fragments... ‘Recall’ it!”

Before the words finished, an anomaly suddenly occurred!

It was as if a crack was forcibly chiseled open in Lin Mo’s mind.

“Congratulations, Host, for finding yourself. Honor Points are now being exchanged for memory fragments.”

The system prompt was a distorted, sharp mechanical noise!

The “Honor Points,” which had been growing like energy crystals, instantly disintegrated, turning into countless cold memory fragments that fiercely pierced into the depths of his consciousness!

The scene ripped apart—

Piercing cicada chirps broke the dead silence of midsummer.

The midnight wind carried a rusty dryness, billowing the curtains of a cheap rental room.

The computer screen glowed faintly, its pale light like a surgical lamp, coldly dissecting Lin Mo’s tired face.

On the screen, lines of text were like a curse:

“Human Brain Quantum Entanglement - First Generation Consciousness Iteration Experiment Application Form — Risk Level: Unknown (Mortality Rate 97.8%)”

Reward: 1 million.

A number that was enough to burn through his soul.

It wasn’t for some grand ambition.

Reflected in the screen was a crumpled lawsuit from the depths of his drawer—Wang Xiaoke.

That name was like a poisoned needle, piercing through the illusion of a “happy family.”

His parents’ lifelong blood and sweat, that heavy “betrothal gift” of 500,000, were casually swallowed by that honey-tongued mouth.

“Lin Mo, ah,”

The woman’s sickly sweet voice in his memory carried a sticky malice, throwing him a blood-stained straw,

“Looking at our ‘past affection,’ I’ll point you to a way out?”

She wiggled her fingers, painted with bright red nail polish, pointing at the experiment recruitment advertisement,

“Our medical company has launched an experiment. Sign up for this, and if you succeed, a million will be in your account! We’ll split it three-seven... no, you get forty percent and I get sixty percent. Consider it my sisterly care for you!”

A person with no way out has no choice.

He agreed to her! Signing that agreement, which was like a deed of sale, he walked into that cold white cage.

The scene flipped—a sensation of falling!

In the laboratory... a huge glass tank.

The suffocating sensation of being submerged in viscous liquid instantly enveloped him!

Dense neural probes pierced into his skull.

Consciousness was violently extracted, torn apart... like falling suddenly from a thousand-foot cliff, losing all sense of gravity!

“Sizzle—sizzle—” The “place” he landed was surprisingly the hotbed of his childhood fears—that familiar ancestral home!

The old, dilapidated television suddenly lit up with dazzling static, and on the screen was unmistakably footage from “The Ring”!

“Ah—!!!”

A woman’s shrill shriek erupted from the depths of the television!

A figure with disheveled hair was wriggling out of the screen, and under its wet black hair, a pale finger was about to touch the floor—

“Buzz—!”

Excruciating pain tore through the illusion! A deeper darkness swallowed everything... The psychologist Freud once proposed a three-tier theory of dreams.

These were shallow dreams, from which one could wake at any time.

Mid-level dreams, where one entered a fantasy world.

And deep dreams, from which one could not extricate oneself.

“Did I enter a deep dream?”

“But all of this is so real, without any hint of illusion.”

Lin Mo on the hospital bed slowly said, “You remember everything now, don’t you...”

Lin Mo nodded.

“I am you, and you are I...”

He smiled, Lin Mo smiled... Lin Mo met the gaze of “himself” on the hospital bed, their eyes intertwining and surging.

Countless starlight-like fragments overflowed from each other, colliding, merging, and finally collapsing into a chaotic halo of light, then suddenly retracting—

The buzzing ceased, and all sounds died down.

Only a more solid, deeper soul remained, slowly opening his eyes in the new silence.

“I understand, everything is clear now.”

The buzzing ceased, and all sounds died down.

There were no more questions, and no need for answers. The moment the souls merged,

countless chaotic information streams surged into his core consciousness like a tidal wave, no longer cold, no longer sharp, but transforming into... his own past dust.

“The Lin Mo who was originally on the hospital bed, in his twilight years... was the original me.

He was also the only ‘ego’ in this long prison.”

A moment in reality, a thousand years here... those endless years, every second was like bone-eating poison, gnawing at my will.

This deep dream is both a high-level battlefield and my absolute domain.

He was constantly subjected to cruel mental experiments by people in reality within this deep dream.

And the machine responsible for managing the data was codenamed: Lord of Mysteries.

Who knows how many years passed.

Lin Mo remained unyielding, a stubborn light suddenly erupting in his eyes, like an unyielding star in an eternal night,

“‘I’ never gave up! In the eternal torment, I stumbled upon a glimmer of life—‘Soul Splitting and Sowing’!”

He cast out strands of his own thoughts, specks of his power, like seeds sown in despair.

Peeling off the core, projecting them into the deeper crevices and more treacherous dimensions of this deep dream... letting them search, explore, and grow!

One day, they would rescue me.

And the price was... those ‘clones,’ those ‘other me’s,’ would forever forget their origin.

Becoming wandering lone souls, with false beginnings and vague purposes.

And I could only, at the moment of their birth, ‘graft’ a trace of remaining ‘source power’... to them.

This power became what they perceived as—the ‘System.’

“Double experience! Tycoon wealth! Ten times drop rate! Get stronger by showing off and slapping faces! Infinitely synthesize all things...”

Lin Mo was like a mad locksmith, repeatedly melting fragments of his soul, forging all sorts of bizarre ‘keys’... hoping that one of them could pry open this damned cage!”

However.

It never succeeded.

Never.

Every ‘attempt’... every clone carrying a ‘system,’ whether dominating another world or struggling to survive in desperate straits.

Eventually... when challenging a higher battlefield, they vanished without a trace, like snowflakes thrown into a furnace.

Leaving only me... in this eternal solitude, to continue forging... waiting... until that system appeared... [Empress System] It carried my coldest, most extreme desire for control over emotions and power deconstruction after being betrayed.

And you... carrying this power that even I myself found unsettling, crossed countless barriers... finally... returned before me.

You... are the one I waited for, the only ‘strong enough’ one, capable of ‘returning’... the ‘me.’

At this moment, Lin Mo let out a long breath, as if a great burden had been lifted.

“Six Ghosts, appear! Follow me to break through this deep dream! Destroy that Lord of Mysteries!”

He roared.

The Six Ghosts, who had been blocking monster attacks at various levels, appeared.

“My Lord!”