Chapter 27: Into the Depths of the Dream

What Irene needed to do was quite simple. Basically, she just had to find a spot that wouldn't get in the way, lie down, and refrain from causing any trouble.

Yu Sheng approached the still-slumbering silver-white fox demon. After circling her massive body and the heap of tails, he found a relatively comfortable spot—a depression where two large tails overlapped. He bent down, tugged at the fur on one of the tails to adjust its position, and patted the other to make it fluffier. Irene, watching from the side, was stunned. "Are you making a bed?"

"This is just to make sure I'm comfortable while lying down," Yu Sheng said naturally, leaning against the fluffy silver-white tail. "Heaven knows how long you'll need, and I'm someone with high standards for sleep quality..."

Irene let out a scoff. Once Yu Sheng was settled, she drifted over, and the entire picture frame dropped straight onto his chest. "Catch."

Yu Sheng scrambled to catch the falling frame, briefly wondering if she was taking revenge for his earlier inward laughter by trying to crush him. "Damn it! Could you give a warning before you drop?"

He managed to catch Irene without being smashed by the frame. He adjusted his posture, half-reclining against one of the fox's large tails, cradling the frame in his arms. He let out a soft breath, waiting for the moment to sink into the dream.

Sinking from his own dream into another—this was truly an unprecedented experience.

From the oil painting, a low humming emanated from Irene. It was some ancient melody, seemingly accompanied by a distant and nostalgic atmosphere. Though he could not understand the lyrics, he could feel a calming power slowly seeping into his heart. Yu Sheng felt his eyelids grow heavy. In the half-waking, half-dreaming state, he looked down one last time at the oil painting held against his chest.

It felt like he was cradling someone’s funeral portrait.

Yu Sheng: "..."

How does this doll always manage to create such "lifelike" situations?

The next second, his thoughts were abruptly severed by this whimsical notion. He plunged into a void, falling straight into the deepest part of the dream.

He felt as though he had lost control of his body—or rather, he could no longer feel its existence. He became a disembodied perspective, darting rapidly through a series of memories, thoughts, and sensory information that did not belong to him. Around him, shadows loomed; overlapping fragments of images wove together like a continuous curtain, and the curtains merged into an endless tunnel.

Sounds buzzed and roared. Information flooded his mind. He couldn't even tell if he was hearing these sounds or if they were memories surfacing directly in his brain:

Someone screaming, something exploding, the screeching sound coming from the propulsion structure of a Celestial Shuttle. They were falling. The shuttle veered off course, plummeting into a world that wasn't on their route, one that seemed to have suddenly appeared out of thin air.

A massive impact. The shuttle crashed into a dark, gloomy mountain. The artifact spirit escaped from the Heavenly Measuring Instrument and got into a violent fight with the immortal piloting the shuttle, arguing about things like "embezzling spirit stones," "reckless driving," and "reporting to the Immortal Gate." Then, following an explosion, the artifact spirit died, and many others perished.

Those who survived died one after another.

All the deaths and partings transformed into a series of fragments rushing past Yu Sheng’s eyes. He saw those yellowing, blurred figures die of hunger, of poisonous creatures in the mountain forest, of despair-fueled strife, and of the pervasive, malicious intent that filled the valley.

The valley itself wanted to kill them by driving them to starvation.

The tunnel that seemed to have no end suddenly vanished. Yu Sheng found himself in a faded scene. After passing through countless chaotic memory fragments, he had finally arrived at the true dreamscape of Hu Li.

Just as Irene had said, the color palette of the dream was uniform. Everything here had an old, lifeless, gray quality: the dark sky, the dim woods, the filthy, ashen soil and stones. Just looking at it made one feel suffocated.

"Irene?" Yu Sheng tried to call out in his mind, as he couldn't see her.

"I'm here."

"Where are you?" Yu Sheng looked around. "How come I can't see you?"

"I'm with you," Irene's voice came as if directly from his mind. It was a very... strange sensation. "You can't see me, and you can't see your own body. We are 'external consciousnesses' that have slipped in. Being able to have a perspective is good enough."

"Oh, I see." Yu Sheng understood, and immediately began searching the small woods for Hu Li.

He didn't have to look for long. In fact, almost the moment the thought crossed his mind, he heard a sound from not far away.

It was the sound of digging through soil.

Yu Sheng immediately followed the noise. His perspective drifted through the shadowy trees, and soon he saw that flash of white.

The silver-haired girl in tattered clothes was kneeling on the edge of a clearing in the woods. Her once fluffy, beautiful fox tails were filthy and disheveled, caked in mud. She kept her head down, digging frantically into the earth. As she dug, she mumbled to herself, and around her were pits of various sizes she had gouged out with her hands.

Yu Sheng "floated" over to Hu Li’s side.

Hu Li couldn't see him; she continued to dig with all her might, her hands clawing into the soil again and again.

Irene's voice suddenly entered Yu Sheng's mind: "Talk to her. Speak to her."

"She can't even see us."

"It doesn't matter. Just talk to her. This is a dream, and she will respond. To a dreamer, nothing in a dream is unreasonable."

Yu Sheng thought for a moment and looked at the fox demon girl: "What are you digging for?"

"Mom and Dad..." Hu Li, predictably, didn't question the sudden voice she heard, but answered naturally. "I remember I buried them here... they were definitely buried right here..."

For some reason, Yu Sheng felt his heart sink. He subconsciously asked another question: "Why... why do you want to dig them out?"

"I... I miss them," Hu Li slowed down, her eyes filled with a trace of blank emptiness, yet she answered instinctively. "I'm so hungry. I want to tell them I'm so hungry... but I held on. They told me not to listen to that monster, and I held on, but... I'm so hungry..."

Hu Li lowered her head, looked at her mud-stained hands, and continued to dig, muttering to herself as if in a trance: "They should be here. They must be here, still safely buried down here... I listened to them, I always listened to them. I didn't listen to that monster..."

"Her mental state is not right," Irene’s voice entered Yu Sheng’s mind. "It’s very wrong..."

"I know. I could tell something was wrong with her mental state the first time we met," Yu Sheng replied in his mind.

"That's not what I mean. I mean... something else has mixed into her mind. Something is trying to intervene and interfere with her thoughts," Irene explained, attempting to clarify a complex situation to a layman like Yu Sheng. "There is another voice within her own—her own will has been holding on, but the external thoughts are making her lose her grip."

Irene stopped abruptly.

Hu Li ceased her digging, stood up with a dazed expression, walked a few steps to the side, and then stood blankly in the clearing.

Yu Sheng followed immediately. The next second, he heard a faint, blurred voice.

It sounded as if it were echoing directly from his own heart, as if he himself had whispered it:

"Dig. Dig them out...

"You just want to see them. You just want to confirm that you really have been listening to them. You haven't seen each other in a long time, right...

"'I' miss them so much..."

Hu Li turned her head blankly, looking at the deep pits she had dug.

"I miss them so much..." she said softly.

Yu Sheng suddenly realized that the voice he had just heard from within his own heart was the "external intervention" Irene had mentioned!

His dream and spirit were connected to Hu Li’s, so what he had heard wasn't his own heart, but the voice inside Hu Li’s!

Hu Li slowly turned toward another direction in the clearing, appearing ready to continue digging.

Every scoop of earth was slowly digging through her own mental defenses.

Yu Sheng finally understood what that voice was trying to tempt her into doing. A chill surged from his heart, and he instinctively shouted: "Hu Li!"

The fox demon girl paused, dazed, and looked toward the edge of the empty woods.

After a long while, a glimmer of clarity returned to her eyes, and she recalled where she had heard that familiar voice.

"...Benefactor?"

However, the woods were empty, and no further sound came from Yu Sheng. That call seemed like a hallucination.

Hu Li stood blankly in the clearing. After a while, she noticed the large pits she had dug around her.

Finally, terror began to creep onto the fox demon girl’s face.

She had woken up, jolted awake just before the final step of her mental collapse.