Chapter One: The Immortal Prisoner

Moonlight flowed like water, gently spilling over the mist that draped the mountains like a delicate veil, creating an atmosphere both dreamlike and surreal.

At the foot of the mountains, in a quiet little village, the smoke from fireworks gradually faded. Most houses had long since extinguished their lights; only a few remained illuminated, filled with the lively sounds of people playing cards and mahjong.

Inside one two-story building, a middle school boy named Fang Zheng was deeply engrossed in a sandbox survival game called MC, also known as Minecraft.

“Ugh ugh ugh…”

“Bang!”

The snarls of zombies and the explosion of a creeper echoed from the screen.

(You have failed!)

(The player tried to swim in lava.)

“Ah! My enchanted diamond armor!”

Watching his character being swallowed by lava and burned to death before climbing out, with the hard-earned enchanted diamond armor lost to the molten depths, Fang Zheng slapped his thigh in frustration.

In survival mode, he had spent hours mining to finally assemble this set of enchanted diamond armor.

Yet just as he began eagerly mining a new pit, he was ambushed by zombies. While fighting them off, a creeper silently crept up and its explosion knocked him into the lava below.

How could he stand this?

Without hesitation, he switched to creative mode, quickly forged a brand-new set of diamond armor for himself, muttering, “This isn’t cheating. I’m just reclaiming what’s rightfully mine…”

After playing for a while longer, he noticed that the sporadic sounds of firecrackers and fireworks outside had ceased. Checking the time, it was already 2 a.m.

He stretched, shut down his tablet, washed up briefly, and lay down, yawning: “MC really kills time. Before I knew it, I’ve been at it for hours. I need to sleep… got to go to a banquet tomorrow.”

Sleep soon overcame him.

“Hmm…”

“Hmm hmm hmm…”

In the darkness, muffled groans rose all around—sounds every Minecraft player knew well. They were the villagers, also mockingly called “dangermen” by players, the NPCs of the game.

These familiar noises stirred his groggy mind. Was his tablet still on?

Before he could fully wake, daylight suddenly broke.

Awakened in darkness, Fang Zheng gazed blankly at the pixelated world before him.

Brown pixelated houses, blocks of green grass, villagers wandering about with their incessant, grating hums, and towering iron golems patrolling nearby.

Looking up, a large glowing cube hovered in the sky, pixelated clouds drifting lazily above.

Below his view lay the item bar, and above, the settings panel—all so familiar that his still-dazed mind reeled.

“Am I… dreaming?”

Standing in the village, his body a crude construct of blocks and pixels like everything else, Fang Zheng froze in place, expressionless.

Without thinking, he flailed his arms wildly. With each thudding sound, blocks from a nearby villager’s house broke apart midair.

“Creative mode?”

“Am I lucid dreaming?”

He recalled descriptions of lucid dreams he had once read online.

Excited by this brand-new experience, Fang Zheng immediately opened his inventory, eager to indulge in this rare lucid dream.

Though the view was identical to the MC game he had played on his tablet, there were no control keys; his character’s movements were guided solely by will, far more fluid than touch controls.

Within just minutes, the blocky figure sprinted through the air in creative mode, running along the sky’s expanse, destroying the village with lava buckets, setting forests ablaze with flint and steel, and constructing towers reaching the game’s block-height limit by mixing lava and water.

Moments later, he summoned numerous Withers with soul sand and Wither skulls, engaging hundreds of guardians in battle.

Unnoticed, twenty minutes passed. The unique Minecraft block sun rose and set, plunging the world into night—the block moon rose and fell, heralding dawn.

In Minecraft, one day lasts only twenty minutes in real time.

Yet as the day ended, Fang Zheng ceased placing blocks.

A strange unease stirred within him.

“Even a lucid dream online couldn’t be this vivid, right?”

He turned his pixelated head left and right, studying the Minecraft world’s inner workings and details.

Paralyzed by growing panic, he thought and waited, hoping to fall back asleep and wake anew.

But time flowed relentlessly. The block sun and moon had circled the sky over twenty times—nearly seven or eight hours by real-world measure—yet he felt no fatigue, no urge to sleep again.

Anxiety gripped him. He tried everything.

Reaching out to sense his sleeping body, he despairingly realized he had nothing beyond sight and sound...

Oh, there was a faint vibration when breaking blocks.

He attempted other movements, but beyond the character’s usual in-game actions, he could do nothing.

No waving, no speaking, no lying down, no crouching, no bending arms or knees.

He tried building a bed and sleeping through the night to see if rest was possible, but night was always skipped with a flash of black and light—there was no exhaustion, no true sleep.

He tried defeating the Ender Dragon to complete the game. After hastily building an End Portal and slaying the dragon, nothing happened.

Frantically, he explored the inventory and settings, switching to survival mode and jumping off cliffs, into lava, and the void—only to see the “You have failed” prompt and the “Respawn” option.

He soared high with elytra wings, hoping to glimpse unrendered areas beyond the horizon.

In restless frustration, after several Minecraft day-night cycles, he constructed a crude Ender Pearl cannon from TNT and pistons, attempting to teleport beyond the map’s edges.

Yet even at the furthest reaches reachable by Ender Pearls, the endless blocky world stretched on.

After days of effort, hundreds of day-night cycles, and countless failed attempts to escape this so-called “lucid dream,” Fang Zheng gave up.

He stood rooted, eyes fixed on the block sun and moon cycling endlessly on the horizon, waiting…

Though not a hardcore player, just an occasional one, Fang Zheng understood Minecraft’s basics.

Twenty minutes in reality equate to one Minecraft day; a full day in reality—twenty-four hours—corresponds to seventy-two Minecraft days.

As days faded into weeks in this pixelated realm, Fang Zheng’s hope finally died.

He faced a bitter truth.

“Either I’ve crossed into another world…”

“Or someone’s taken my brain out and made me a brain in a vat…”

In the darkness, staring at the dull world of blocks and pixels, listening to the shrill howls of zombies emerging from shadowed corners, Fang Zheng wept and wailed in despair.

Yet no matter how sorrowful his cries, his pixelated block body, that blocky pixel head, remained expressionless.

He couldn’t even shed a single tear, pixel or otherwise...

He was trapped—imprisoned in this pixelated cage of hopelessness.