Chapter 27: Deep Within the Dream

What Irene needed to do was quite simple.

Basically, she just needed to find a place out of the way, lie down, and stay there so she wouldn't get up and cause trouble.

Yu Sheng approached the still-sleeping silver-white demon fox. He circled her massive body and her mountain of tails, eventually finding a relatively comfortable spot—a hollow where two large tails overlapped.

He leaned down, tugging at the fluff on Hu Li's tail to adjust its position, and patted the fur of another tail to make it more voluminous. Watching from the side, Irene was stunned. "Are you making a bed or something?"

"I just want to lie down comfortably," Yu Sheng said naturally as he leaned against the large, silver-white furry tail. "Heaven knows how long you'll take, and I'm a person with very high standards for sleep quality..."

Irene let out a "tch" and, once Yu Sheng was settled, floated over. Then, the entire picture frame fell straight down onto his chest. "Catch."

Yu Sheng scrambled to catch the frame falling from mid-air, momentarily thinking the girl was retaliating for the laughter he had just suppressed in his heart by trying to crush him to death. "Holy crap! Can you at least give a warning before you drop!"

He managed to catch Irene without being killed by the frame. He adjusted his posture, reclining halfway against one of Hu Li's large tails, cradling Irene's picture frame in his hands. He let out a soft sigh, waiting for the moment he would sink into the dream.

Sinking from one's own dream into another dream—this was truly an unprecedented experience.

From within the oil painting came Irene's low humming. It was some kind of ancient ballad, carrying a distant and nostalgic atmosphere. He couldn't understand the lyrics, but he could feel a gradually calming power seeping into his heart. Yu Sheng felt his eyelids growing heavy, and in the half-awake, half-asleep state of his consciousness, he looked down once more at the oil painting held before him.

It felt as if he were holding someone's funeral portrait.jpg.

Yu Sheng: "..."

How did this doll always manage to create such a "presence felt even in absence" situation!

The next second, his thoughts were abruptly cut off by this somewhat wild notion, and he suddenly plunged through a void, falling straight into the deepest part of this dream.

He felt as if he had suddenly lost control of his body, or rather... he could no longer feel the existence of his body. He felt like a void-like perspective, racing through a series of memories, thoughts, and sensory information that did not belong to him. Shadows loomed all around, as if many overlapping image fragments were woven into a continuous curtain, and that curtain converged into a tunnel with no end in sight.

Sounds roared and hummed, and information flooded his mind. He couldn't even judge whether what he was hearing was truly sound or memories surfacing directly in his mind—

Someone was screaming; something was exploding; a whistling sound came from the propulsion structure of the Immortal Shuttle. They were falling. The Immortal Shuttle had broken orbit and plunged into a world that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, far off the intended path.

A massive impact. The Immortal Shuttle crashed into a dark mountain. The Artifact Spirit fled from the Hengtian Tool and fought violently with the Immortal piloting the shuttle, arguing about things like "withholding spirit stones," "reckless driving," and "reporting to the Immortal Sect." Then, following an explosion, the Artifact Spirit died, and many people died.

Those who survived also died one after another.

All the deaths and partings turned into a series of fragments rushing past Yu Sheng's eyes. He saw those yellowed and blurred figures dying of hunger, dying of venomous creatures in the mountains, dying in struggles born of despair, dying of... the omnipresent malice that filled this valley.

The valley itself wanted to kill them, using the power of hunger as its tool.

The seemingly endless "tunnel" suddenly vanished, and Yu Sheng found himself lingering in a faded scene—after passing through many chaotic memory fragments, he had finally truly arrived in Hu Li's current dream.

Just as Irene had said, the color palette of the dream was consistent. Everything here possessed an old, lifeless, and grayish texture: a pitch-black sky, dim forests, and murky, gray soil and stones. Just one look felt incredibly oppressive.

"Irene?" Yu Sheng tried calling out in his heart, as he did not see her figure.

"I'm here."

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

"I'm with you," Irene's voice seemed to come directly from his mind. The sensation was... strange. "You can't see me, and you can't see your own body. We are currently two 'intruding consciousnesses.' It's a miracle we even have a perspective."

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

He didn't have to search long. In fact, almost the instant the thought of looking for her arose, he heard a sound coming from not far away.

It was the sound of digging dirt.

Yu Sheng immediately followed the sound. His perspective drifted through the flickering trees, and shortly after, he saw a white figure.

A silver-haired girl in tattered clothing was kneeling at the edge of a clearing in the woods. Her originally fluffy and beautiful fox tails looked filthy and wretched, covered in mud. She kept her head down, digging frantically in the dirt. As she dug, she muttered to herself, and all around the girl were various deep pits she had dug with her bare hands.

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

Hu Li could not see him; she continued to dig forcefully, her hands clawing into the soil again and again.

Irene's voice suddenly entered Yu Sheng's mind: "Talk to her. Strike up a conversation."

"She can't even see us."

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

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

"Papa and Mama..." As expected, Hu Li showed no doubt at the sudden voice; she answered naturally, "I remember burying 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 up?"

"I... I miss them," Hu Li gradually slowed down. Her eyes held a trace of blank emptiness, yet she still answered instinctively. "I'm so hungry. I want to tell them I'm so hungry... but I've held on. They said not to listen to that monster. I've held on this whole time, but... so hungry..."

Hu Li lowered her head, glanced at her mud-stained hands, and continued digging, muttering to herself as if in a monologue: "They should be right here. They must be here, staying safe under here... I listened to them. I always listened to them. I didn't listen to that monster..."

"Her mental state is wrong," Irene's voice entered Yu Sheng's mind. "It's very wrong..."

"I know. I felt her mental state was off the first time we met," Yu Sheng replied in his heart.

"I'm not talking about that. I mean... it's as if something else has mixed into her mind. Something is trying to intervene and interfere with her thoughts," Irene explained, attempting to describe a complex situation to the layman Yu Sheng. "There are other voices in her voice—her own will is holding on, but the external thoughts are making it hard for her to endure."

Irene suddenly stopped speaking.

Hu Li stopped digging. With a dazed expression, she stood up and walked a few steps to the side, then stood blankly in the clearing.

Yu Sheng immediately followed, and in the next second, he seemed to hear a faint, blurred voice.

That voice seemed to ring out directly from his heart, as if he himself had whispered it—

"Dig... dig them up...

"You just want to see them one last time. You just want to confirm that you really have been listening to them. You haven't seen them 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 coming from his own heart was the "external intervention" Irene had mentioned!

His dream and mental state were connected to Hu Li's, so what he had just heard wasn't from his own "heart," but from the depths of Hu Li's heart!

Hu Li slowly turned toward another direction in the clearing, seemingly wanting to continue digging.

Every handful of dirt was gradually digging through her own mental defenses.

Yu Sheng finally understood what that voice was trying to bewitch her with. A chill suddenly surged from the bottom of his heart, causing him to shout instinctively: "Hu Li!"

The fox girl stopped in confusion, looking back toward the empty edge of the woods.

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

"...Benefactor?"

However, the woods were empty. No sound from Yu Sheng came again; that recent call seemed like nothing more than an illusion.

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

Terror finally began to creep onto the fox girl's face.

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