Doomsday Wonderland Vol. 13: Sleepwalking in Dreamland

1578: NPC Wu Yiliu

"Is this... a pocket dimension?"

Looking at the female posthuman across from him, her mouth shaped like a tiny "O", Wu Yiliu, wearing a white robe over his upper body, sighed deeply in his heart.

Though the Changelings were sly and deceitful, the construction of the fake pocket dimension was completed on schedule. What Wu Yiliu didn't expect was that after the utilities were hooked up, the lights turned on, and music began to play, it actually looked quite decent. He had never seen a real pocket dimension, but if a real one was a Michelin three-star experience, then this fake pocket dimension was a fast-food combo meal: greasy, cheap, abundant, and offering the kind of low-quality temptation that made one feel they could indulge without restraint.

"How should I put it?" The female posthuman looked around, feeling that something seemed off. "I feel a bit... um, I can't quite put my finger on it..."

'It feels a bit cheap, doesn't it?'

Wu Yiliu added silently in his stomach, not daring to say it out loud. To control ordinary people, they were fitted with location trackers equipped with sedative needles on their ankles. The whole pocket dimension was filled with pinhole surveillance cameras. Even he and the middle-aged man standing on the other side of the candy house entrance had tiny monitors and microphones tucked into their collars to watch each other and the posthumans.

The posthumans might discover these devices, and that was fine; they wouldn't be hidden. But if they didn't notice, the NPCs wouldn't voluntarily reveal them—just like many other aspects of the fake pocket dimension, the same principle applied.

The chubby man who had come in with her frowned. "It's a bit artificial here. I feel like it's a man-made playground."

"This is indeed a pocket dimension," Wu Yiliu replied with a trained NPC's cheerful tone. "But your feeling isn't wrong; this is also a fake pocket dimension. For example, both of us here are NPCs as well as ordinary people."

"What do you mean?" The female posthuman furrowed her brow, looking around. The middle-aged man who had surrendered willingly was standing on the other side of the candy house door, with his hands clasped humbly in front of him. Wu Yiliu thought he probably looked the same.

"It's just as it sounds," Wu Yiliu said, smiling—he had heard that pocket dimension NPCs were generally friendly. "Many pocket dimensions have a theme, right? Some are amusement parks, some are playhouses, some are ocean liners... right? The theme of this pocket dimension is an artificially constructed fake pocket dimension."

Even though it wasn't his first time hearing this, he felt a chill as he spoke. This idea was too clever; he didn't know who came up with it, but they seemed to understand the psychology of posthumans perfectly. A playground pocket dimension—was it a playground or a pocket dimension? A fake pocket dimension pocket dimension—was it a fake pocket dimension or a pocket dimension?

The two across from him exchanged a glance, thought for a moment, and seemed to think they understood. "So, it's supposed to look like a fake pocket dimension; no wonder, even the name," the chubby man muttered.

"No, no," Wu Yiliu said. "This place is a fake pocket dimension."

"Alright, alright," the chubby man said, dismissing the point.

The female posthuman seemed much more relaxed, as if a knot in her mind had been untangled. "How do we clear this fake pocket dimension?"

Wu Yiliu, having proven his superior language and acting skills over the middle-aged man during training, thus handled most of the speaking roles. He immediately countered, "Clear? You want to leave?"