This is terrifying, I ticked View > Whitespace and my 142 page doc now reports 196 pages. No damage done, I tick again and size is back to 142, but it scares the pants off me.
Version: 26.2.0.3 (X86_64)
Build ID: afbbd0df0edb6d40b450b0337ac646b0913a760c
CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 6.1; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-CA (en_CA.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded
→ How to Report Bugs in LibreOffice - The Document Foundation Wiki
see also 168972 – [DOCX] [OPEN] Page count in Writer's Property Statistics is completely wrong
View>Whitespace should always be enabled for WYSIWYG rendering. When disabled margins and page separation are suppressed, resulting in a more compact display. It should not change the total page count. If it does, there is something else in your document.