My Avatar Is Becoming the Final Boss-Chapter 49: Id

Even in a place like this, the sound of a single needle dropping would ring out like shattering glass, let alone footsteps.
In the deathly silent confinement chamber, Ji Minghuan woke from his sleep, lying motionless on the bed, keeping up the faint sound of snoring.
He glanced sideways at the slender figure in the dark.
The Instructor’s footsteps were getting closer, the hem of his lab coat brushing against the ground with a rustling sound.
This wasn’t the first time the Instructor had paid a sudden visit—there had already been many such times before.
Just like Kong Youling, the Instructor was a psychic-type Esper.
Perhaps it was because one's mental defenses were weakest during sleep, so he always tried to sneak into Ji Minghuan’s mental world while he was asleep, hoping to find some kind of answer.
This time was no different.
The Instructor stood by the bed with both hands behind his back, silently towering in the darkness. Behind the reflective lenses were a pair of narrow eyes, gazing at Ji Minghuan’s sleeping face.
He reached out and gently placed his hand on the side of Ji Minghuan’s head, closing his eyes.
When he opened them again, the Instructor saw an old attic. The bookshelves beside him were teetering, and yellowed books were piled in every direction. The floor creaked as if it might collapse at any moment.
It was a moonlit night, with a full moon hanging high in the sky outside the window.
He knew well that every person’s mental world had three layers, and their unconscious “id” was hidden in the third layer. As long as he found their id, the Instructor could ask any secret they had.
And this empty attic was the outermost layer of Ji Minghuan’s mental world.
The Instructor had been here several times before and knew the attic's exit was locked. So he moved around the attic, stepping on old bookshelves and dusty piles of books, jumping up to the skylight. He grabbed the eaves with both hands and climbed up.
But when he looked up this time, what greeted him wasn't the sky or the high points of the orphanage, but a quiet dormitory building.
Every dorm room door was shut, with masks hanging on them. Some masks said “Indifferent,” some said “Enthusiastic,” and others said “Playful.”
He walked down the empty corridor and looked through the peephole of the door with the “Indifferent” mask. Inside, a child with dull eyes was quietly playing with a puzzle. Alone, his eyes were as hollow as an abyss.
The Instructor checked the doorknobs one by one. The clicking sound echoed in the silent hallway.
Every door was tightly shut, each room housing a similar child, with different expressions: aloof, exuberant, mischievous, short-tempered...
Eventually, the Instructor found a door in the hallway that wasn’t locked.
He turned the doorknob and pushed the door open—his surroundings changed again.
This time, what appeared before him was a warm little house. The room was empty. Beside the TV was a photo frame of a young couple. The fireplace crackled with a warm fire, everything basked in a soft glow.
The wood snapped in the fire with a “crack.”
Following the route from his memory, the Instructor went up to the second floor and found a room nearly buried in toys and snacks. The floor was littered with torn paper, and every sheet had the word “Liar” written in red crayon.
Outside, wind and rain raged, thunder boomed.
With his hands behind his back, he stepped over half-torn snack wrappers, nudged aside a toy train track with his foot, and made his way to a corner of the room. He stopped in front of a wardrobe and raised his hand to knock gently on its surface.
There was a pause inside, then a voice said, “Come in.”
The Instructor smiled and slowly opened the wardrobe.
Looking down, he saw a boy in white pajamas curled up inside, hugging his knees and shoulders tightly.
“Hey, kid... what are you hiding in here for?” The Instructor bent down and asked close to the boy’s face.
The boy whispered, “Mom and Dad said... I should hide in the wardrobe and not come out until they’re back.”
He looked up, revealing a tender face, about four or five years old. The boy had wrapped himself over and over in tissue paper from the wardrobe, like a white cocoon.
As expected, this was Ji Minghuan’s “id” within his mental world.
The id would never lie to you. In countless past experiments, the Instructor had extracted desired information from many criminals’ ids.
But for some reason, with Ji Minghuan, he always came up empty.
“I want to show you a photo,” the Instructor said suddenly.
“Mm.”
“Do you recognize the person in the photo?” The Instructor pulled a photo from his sleeve. It showed a figure encased in a giant cocoon of black Binding Restraints, hanging upside down beneath a billboard, the shell lit by flashing police lights.
The boy in the wardrobe shook his head. “Don’t know him.”
The Instructor was silent for a moment, then asked gently, “I can take you out—do you want to come out of the wardrobe?”
“I don’t want to.”
The Instructor tried to pull his hand, but the chains of white tissue paper yanked the boy back, firmly anchoring him inside the wardrobe.
“All right then...” The Instructor paused, then added, “Have you ever thought that maybe Mom and Dad aren’t coming back?”
“They’ll come back!” the boy shouted, burying his head between his knees.
“What if they don’t?”
“They... they promised me.”
“They lied to you.”
The boy slowly looked up, his eyes filled with anger, like a fierce young wolf.
Then he closed the wardrobe again.
“Are you interested in Esper powers?” the Instructor asked after a moment, from outside the wardrobe.
“I don’t know what that is... I just want Mom and Dad to come back,” came the tearful voice from inside.
“Have you ever experienced something strange? Like suddenly discovering you have a superpower.” The Instructor paused. “If you had one, you could bring them back. You wouldn’t have to wait anymore.”
“Really?” the boy asked softly, gently pushing the wardrobe open. “If I had a power, I could bring them back?”
The Instructor froze: “Yes, then you—”
The boy’s eyes welled with tears as he looked up. “But I... I’m just an ordinary kid. If you have powers, can you bring them back for me?”
His expression was like a puppy soaked in the rain. The Instructor was silent for a long time, then reached out to ruffle his hair before standing up and slowly walking toward the door.
Pausing outside, he glanced back at the boy hiding in the wardrobe. The door quietly shut once more.
The rain outside grew heavier, as if it wanted to drown the world.
The time one could stay in someone’s mental world was limited. Prolonged exposure risked mental contamination and assimilation, eventually leading to loss of self.
If he didn’t leave now, it would be too late... as the sound of rain filled the air, the Instructor’s figure slowly faded away.
Once again, he had come back empty-handed.
After the Instructor left, the boy in the wardrobe suddenly pushed the door open and stepped out.
From beneath his feet, rolls of white paper spread out like a tidal wave, writhing like venomous snakes with real life, devouring the world in an instant.
As if scratching off a lottery ticket’s silver coating, a truer world revealed itself.
Ji Minghuan stood silently, still in the form of a four-year-old boy.
This was a library, and also the deepest part of his mental world. Every book here was tightly bound to his life.
After awakening as an Esper, each time he loaded a Game character’s memory, he’d find the library had gotten “new stock” from the outside.
Empty shelves would suddenly be filled with new books and photo albums.
Open a book, and you could read every thought the character ever had; read an album, and you’d see every single event they had experienced.
Right now, he looked up and saw two human figures hanging from the library’s ceiling.
One wore a black tailcoat and a red-and-black mask;
The other wore a white hoodie, with a handsome face.
Both had ropes tied around their necks, heads drooping down, bodies suspended motionless in midair.
They had clearly been dead for some time.
Glancing at the hanged “Black Cocoon,” then at the hanged “Chess Player,” Ji Minghuan suddenly felt a lot more at ease.
He wondered what the Instructor would think if he ever saw this real mental world of his.
“Really hope those two don’t come back to life someday...”
Ji Minghuan murmured, walking to the last row of the library and taking a seat. A white-haired girl sat beside him, keeping him company as they watched the sunset outside the window.
The reason he could mask his mental world so completely that the Instructor couldn’t find his true “id”... all started on the day Kong Youling awakened her Esper ability.