My heart gave a violent jolt.

  I looked up—

  The hostages before me were no longer crying.

  They only stared, faces drained of fear or hope, eyes cold, appraising.

  “Why… aren’t you running?”

  My throat was dry.

  A sharp shhhrrk split the air.

  From the ground burst a vast web of golden threads, flaring with light, wrapping down from above.

  It closed over me like a cage, dragging me straight into the earth.

  “A trap,” I breathed—

  and before the words had finished, I was already falling.

  The world warped.

  The faces of the “people” twisted, then turned away in silence, vanishing as if they had never been.

  I struggled, but the net tightened, binding me fast, each thread biting deep.

  “Li!”

  No reply.

  “System?”

  Nothing.

  Not even a flicker of the usual prompt text.

  Silence.

  Utter, suffocating silence.

  No wind, no birds, no light—only a painted stillness, as if the world were a fragile diorama, ready to crack.

  I sat tangled in the net, yet the greater snare was in my heart.

  “Am I the fool,” I whispered, “or are you all just that good at acting?”

  I lifted my head toward the colorless sky.

  “Maybe I’ve never truly woken up at all.”

  And then the doubt came, creeping in like cold water through seams.

  Was this really the “Trial of Sloth”?

  Or had I never escaped the “Trial of Delusion”?

  Was this sword, this mountain, these people—just another script the System laid for me?

  I began to suspect everything.

  The sword — was it ever sharp, or just there to make me break?

  The “Li” — was he real, or only another illusion to lead me by the nose?

  The System — did it want me alive, or simply watching me struggle to die?

  And then I suspected myself.

  What if I wasn’t the protagonist at all?

  What if every so-called “breakthrough” was nothing more than the System’s program, gift-wrapped for me to believe in?

  If even my struggles, my anger, my thoughts are all scripted—

  am I even me?

  I closed my eyes and whispered, “What’s the name of this trap?”

  No answer.

  Only the gloomy sky above me, heavy and still, pressing down like an iron lid.

  Something was wrong.

  The air felt thick. I was sinking again—

  not into another prison, but something subtler, deeper:

  Doubt.

  The last poison.

  Doubt of others, doubt of truth, doubt of the self.

  Until you no longer dare to move—because if you break the illusion, what shatters might not be the world, but your mind.

  Somewhere above, the sky began to drip.

  Water? Or memory leaking through the cracks?

  I tried to speak, but my tongue felt bound by thought.

  Then, from deep in the dark, a voice rose—

  ancient, hoarse, familiar:

  “When the Five Poisons bind the heart, one falls into the cycle of rebirth.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Greed, wrath, delusion, pride, and doubt—all are chains of the self.”

  The tone was rough as cracked bronze, laced with dry laughter.

  “You stubborn brat. Ten lifetimes of arrogance, never once clean.

  If that heart-fire doesn’t die out, you’ll wake in your next life still a fool.”

  I froze.

  The voice—

  The Bald Monk.

  That year, my second brother tricked me into stealing a general’s seal.

  For punishment, I was sent to the ancestral hall to copy the ?ūra?gama Sutra.

  By the third line I was doodling mustaches on the Buddha’s face, and I’d flipped the incense upside down for good measure.

  The monk caught me, smacked my head into a cushion, and growled:

  “You think you deserve to chant scripture?”

  He dragged me by the collar. “What is greed?”

  “Uh… wanting food, sleep, and beauties?”

  “Greed has no end,” he spat. “You reach for the moon and only muddy the water.”

  “And wrath?”

  “You beat the servants yesterday for spilling tea. Wrath is losing the Way in anger. One fit of temper, and you’re lost.”

  “Delusion?”

  He snorted. “You chase laughter, mistake favor for love—that’s delusion.”

  “And pride?”

  “You sneer at your brother’s war manuals, call them tedious. That’s pride.”

  By then I was half-asleep, and he forced me to copy the Five Poisons Sutra thrice over.

  The fifth poison, he whispered at my ear:

  “Doubt is the most vicious.

  Doubt others, doubt truth, doubt yourself—

  and soon, nothing is real.”

  “Doubt the Buddha, doubt the law, doubt life itself—and you’ll never escape the six realms.

  If such a trial comes, boy, only you can deliver yourself.”

  And suddenly, in the net, I saw him again—

  the balding monk under the flickering temple lamp, chasing me with a broom.

  “Keep this up, and one day you’ll die doubting yourself to death!”

  My throat tightened.

  So greed isn’t just gold, nor wrath killing, nor delusion weeping, nor pride vanity—

  they are all ways of feeding the self.

  And now I was drowning in the last of them: doubt.

  How ironic, that I must use doubt itself to see through doubt.

  I looked down at my broken sword and murmured,

  “Not one truth in sight… only prettier lies stacked higher and higher.

  Can I still break this?”

  The wind gave no answer.

  Then the sky turned upside down.

  Everything vanished—props pulled from a stage—leaving only silence and dust.

  Even the net was gone.

  I stood alone.

  And from behind me came a calm voice:

  “You’ve finally made it this far.”

  I spun around.

  A man stood there.

  Me.

  Or something that wore my face—

  same clothes, same folding fan, even the same jade pendant.

  But his smile, easy and careless like mine, hid eyes dark as a well with no reflection.

  “Who are you?”

  He didn’t answer.

  He snapped open his fan, speaking slowly:

  “In the first trial—Greed—you desired what you thought was yours.

  In Wrath—you burned with what you couldn’t swallow.

  In Delusion—you clung.

  In Pride—you called it righteousness.

  And after all that, you think surviving the game means waking up?”

  He folded the fan, smirked.

  “Did it never cross your mind—who wrote the script?”

  My pulse stuttered.

  He lifted his hand—

  Crack.

  The air itself fractured.

  Two translucent interfaces appeared before me.

  One was the familiar, dull-gray System prompt:

  [Host Progress: 4/5 Trials Complete. Final Trial: Doubt.]

  The other, unfamiliar, pulsed with red text:

  [Main program anomaly detected. Mirror system rebooting. Do not trust any current output.]

  My heart thundered.

  “You… which one are you?”

  He laughed softly. “Does it matter? The question is—who do you trust?”

  He stepped closer, his voice low, sharp as a whisper through glass:

  “Ever think this System was never real to begin with?

  That your ‘protagonist’ title was just part of the play?”

  “You never chose your path. Never shaped your fate.

  Even that jade pendant—you wore it because someone told you to.”

  Sweat prickled my neck.

  “What are you saying?”

  “That none of it’s real. You, me, Nangong Manor, Lian, the monk, the general…

  Even your struggle, your doubts, your so-called awakening—”

  “All of it may be just another simulation.”

  I stumbled back.

  “Then what am I living for?”

  He almost smiled, pity in his eyes.

  “You’re living in its storybook,” he said softly. “Unless you believe me.”

  He opened his palm. The pendant glowed faintly in his hand.

  “If you want freedom—trust me. Break it.”

  My mind roared.

  The gray interface flickered violently:

  [Warning: Intrusive entity detected. Do not comply. Select ‘Trust Current System’ to maintain consciousness integrity.]

  [Trust Current System?]

  [YES] / [NO]

  I stood between two systems, two selves, two fates.

  Which one was real?

  Which one was me?

  Somewhere in the chaos, a thought broke loose:

  Perhaps, I had been doubting for so long—

  that even I no longer knew who was the dream,

  and who was the dreamer.