— When Words Become Weapons
Morning in Red Flag Village felt as though it had been sealed in shrink-wrap.
It wasn't cold, nor was it dead. It was something more absolute than death—an airless, soundless void.
Les stood beside the well. DouDou was next to him. The water was now stained a rusted brown, blood from yesterday's struggle session still seeping into its depths. A metallic tang rode the breeze.
"Do you still want to see it?" DouDou asked quietly.
Les didn't answer. He simply nodded.
He knew what stepping into today's illusion meant: he could no longer be a bystander.
He was the Meta-Matrix inheritor. And the system—was demanding that he witness. Perhaps even participate.
---
The sun hadn't risen, but the flag in the square already fluttered in the wind—a signal marker from CP-HUB, indicating that today's struggle session was officially recorded as part of the "Thought Reform & Reckoning Project."
The plaza outside the hall had been encircled into a massive ring of red.
Villagers stood outside the boundary, clutching bamboo poles, tools, even shovels.
The microphone on the stage activated. It was a CP-HUB issued amplifier, equipped with "psychological awakening functions."
The illusion auto-played.
"Today, we complete the final round of Red Flag Village's land redistribution.
But first, we must eradicate all remaining vestiges of feudalism!"
The speaker: the newly appointed Village Liaison—a Revolutionary Guard officer, designated XH-23.
He stood tall on the stage, his voice solemn.
"Bring them up!"
Two soldiers dragged three people onto the stage—an old man with white hair, a gaunt boy, and a young man of indiscernible age. Their expressions were numb, their steps faltering.
Each had a wooden placard hanging from their necks, the rough rope digging into skin deeper than the weight of the board.
Scrawled labels read:
"Landlord Remnant."
"Counter-Revolutionary Filth."
"Backward Thinker."
Some placards were soaked with blood, illegible, the rope chafing deep grooves into flesh. These weren't signs. They were sanctioned instruments of strangulation.
They stood with heads bowed, livestock before slaughter, uncertain if they awaited mercy or deeper shame.
The crowd below roiled silently. A storm of emotion brewed beneath the quiet.
They clapped—mechanically, in unison. No one spoke.
Les stood at the edge, feeling his body forced into "Mandatory Spectator Mode" by the system.
---
A deeper layer of the illusion triggered.
Les saw dozens of villagers line up. One by one, they ascended the stage to "express hatred."
They spat. They struck. Some knelt and shouted, "They deserve to die!"
More terrifying than their acts were their expressions: not rage, but numb obedience.
They were performing a ritual.
An evil theater, scripted by the system, recited by the collective.
Suddenly, Les noticed something: the illusion had silenced language.
At the peak of the struggle session, when everyone shouted slogans in unison—he heard nothing.
"It's not their voices," he murmured. "It's the words that have lost meaning."
In this illusion, language had lost direction.
"Landlord," "Traitor," "Enemy of the People," "Loyalty"—none of these meant anything now. They were tags. Execution justifications.
Les rushed onto the stage, trying to stop a young man swinging a broken iron hoe.
The youth's eyes were vacant. Blood stained his lips. He was seconds from bashing the final prisoner into unconsciousness.
"STOP!" Les bellowed.
The system shuddered. Code flickered.
Motion paused. A virtual interface unfolded:
Loop Collapse Alert: Historical Logic Chain Disrupted. Allow System Memory Intervener to trigger sequence break?
Les didn't wait. He activated Memory Trace mode.
Instantly, he was pulled to the moment before the land reform began.
A sealed document surfaced from the illusion.
The title read:
"Provisional Measures for Nationalizing Farmland and Central Redistribution via CP-HUB."
He froze.
Further down:
"After land reform, all cleared land shall be transferred to the Central Database. Future use will be allocated via annual tenant permissions."
"Private ownership is non-transferable. No inheritance. No sales. No partitioning."
"All interpretative authority on land usage belongs to CP-HUB."
The illusion trembled, as if external interference destabilized it.
The plaza's edges peeled like fading wallpaper. Reality unspooled from the phantom.
System restored.
Les now stood once more in the triangular square.
The young man's iron rod had been raised overhead.
Les shouted:
"Stop! Do you really think killing him gives you the land?!"
The crowd stalled, movements frozen like a short-circuited command loop.
He stepped center-stage, drew the document from his coat, and read aloud:
"The land you traded hatred for, cruelty for, the land you earned by becoming executioners—it will never be yours."
"You weren't fighting landlords. You were fighting yourselves."
At that moment, a vast virtual map appeared mid-air.
It was the CP-HUB backend allocation diagram.
Every parcel of Red Flag Village land was now tagged:
Asset ID: CP-HUB South Division, Tier-3 Ownership
Villagers stared up, blank confusion overtaking their faces.
"The land we got..."
"Who does it belong to?" someone whispered.
Les looked skyward, toward the hovering interface where the data seal pulsed.
He said:
"The biggest landlord was never in this village."
---
Silence fell.
---
Then, the illusion shattered.
Reality folded back like a snapped rubber band.
Les opened his eyes. His vision was murky, like clawing back from the depths.
He was back in the library chair, drenched in sweat and gasping.
Shawn and Lindsay stood before him, faces tight with concern.
"Les? Are you okay?"
He lifted his head slowly. His gaze still caught between dream and world.
Suddenly, he turned to the window, eyes wide, hand trembling as he pointed.
"They... they've come again!"
Across the sky, a blood-red fracture appeared. Dozens of fine crimson threads wove into the air, drifting like webbing, slowly descending.
The entire city was being covered.