Chapter 26: Irene's Ability

Eileen possessed the ability to dive into other people's dreams—and according to her, she could do more than just enter them; she could influence the direction of the dream to a certain extent, such as pressing a bell to summon a heavy truck in a dream.

Honestly, if used well, it seemed like a formidable skill. It could potentially be used for high-end operations like psychological suggestion, mental parasitism, or memory reshaping.

However, Yu Sheng was highly skeptical of how much of this doll's boasting was actually reliable. From what he could see so far, she was utterly useless even within a dream; she couldn't even hide properly in a patch of grass.

Furthermore, even inside the dream, she was still trapped within that oil painting.

Eileen's oil painting floated before Yu Sheng. The doll-girl within the frame looked somewhat awkward, and Yu Sheng found her current state unsettling—the way she floated in mid-air was worse than if she were simply hanging on a wall.

"You can only stay inside a painting even in a dream?" Yu Sheng curled his lip, finally asking the question that had been bothering him. "I thought since we're in the mental realm, you could at least come out and run around..."

"That's why they call it a curse," Eileen said with a look of helplessness. "Trapped in a painting in reality, and the same in the mental world. No matter where I go, I can't get out of this painting unless I find a suitable medium—freedom? That doesn't even exist in dreams."

"Then that really is quite miserable," Yu Sheng remarked with genuine sympathy.

"Hey, but there are still some differences between dreams and the real world!" As if feeling a blow to her pride, Eileen quickly tried to save face the moment she saw Yu Sheng's sympathetic reaction. "I'm at least a bit more free here than in reality. Look, I can float around everywhere... Don't laugh! It's—it's not just that!"

Yu Sheng raised an eyebrow, becoming genuinely curious. "Not just that?"

Eileen thought for a moment, struck a pose reminiscent of a character powering up in *King of Fighters '98*, and began to act as if she were exerting immense effort within the oil painting, clearly intending to activate some ability. Even Yu Sheng was momentarily intimidated; he instinctively watched the changes in the painted doll with seriousness. And in the very next second, a layer of psychedelic light and shadow actually rippled across the surface of the oil painting!

As Yu Sheng's eyes gradually widened, the oil painting finally went "pop"—transforming into an 80s-style poster.

Eileen had changed to an old movie color palette, standing within the poster and staring wide-eyed at Yu Sheng.

Eileen: "I can change art styles."

Yu Sheng: "..."

"You laughed out loud!!"

Yu Sheng kept a stiff face. "I did not."

"Your inner voice did!"

Yu Sheng didn't want to deal with this doll anymore. That big fox was still lying nearby, and he hadn't even figured out her situation yet.

Eileen felt momentarily hurt. Seeing that Yu Sheng was ignoring her, she began to mutter to herself as she floated to the side. "I can change into other things too, like woodblock prints, scrolls... I'm still researching how to turn into a relief sculpture. Once I do, I'll have some depth, and then you won't be able to say my character design is thin..."

Yu Sheng truly couldn't stand her rambling. He suddenly turned his head and said, "First, when did I ever say your character design was thin? Second, that's not even how you use the term—by that logic, even if you turned into marble, it wouldn't make your character design any 'thicker'."

Eileen opened her mouth to say something, but before she could speak, there was another "pop," and she reverted to her oil painting form—her transformation time had expired, totaling less than three minutes.

Yu Sheng was dumbfounded. He knew this doll was useless even in a dream, but he never expected her to be *this* useless...

But Eileen didn't look disappointed this time. She finally noticed the white fox lying on the grass nearby—or rather, she finally realized that this large fox seemed somewhat out of place within the surrounding dream environment. Curiosity shifted her attention. "By the way, what's up with this fox? Why does its color look so different from the surroundings?"

Noticing the confusion on Yu Sheng's face, she added an explanation: "In a normal person's dream, things generally tend toward a unified color tone. Even if the dreamer doesn't notice it themselves, I can see it when I'm observing. Like in your dream, the sky and the grass are both a hazy gray; that's the 'base tone' of this dream. But this fox... it looks like it wandered onto the wrong movie set."

She paused, looking at Yu Sheng suspiciously. "Why is such a strange phenomenon happening in your dream?"

Yu Sheng fell silent for a moment. He turned to look at the sleeping white fox and spoke slowly, "Her name is Hu Li."

"I know that, she clearly looks like a fox..."

"I mean her name, Hu Li," Yu Sheng corrected helplessly, then reminded her, "Remember what I told you before when I was trapped in that 'Otherworld'? I encountered a fox—white fur, red eyes, and a bunch of tails..."

Eileen froze. Her somewhat faulty memory finally began to churn, recalling what Yu Sheng had mentioned previously.

Her expression became vivid. She stared at the massive demon fox with wide eyes, her mouth opening several times before she finally managed to squeeze out words: "What?! How did you catch her and bring her into your dream... wait, no, how do you have such great skill that you can lock a person inside..."

"I didn't catch her, and I don't think she's actually 'locked' here. This should just be something like a shadow? I can't quite explain it," Yu Sheng had to explain. "I saw her not long after I fell asleep, but I couldn't wake her up no matter what I did."

Eileen looked at Yu Sheng, then turned to look at the demon fox. Her gaze darted back and forth between the two "beings" several times, seemingly trying to rationalize the logic of what was happening, but it was clearly not easy.

"I've never heard of anything like this..." she muttered in astonishment. Then, she suddenly leaned past the frame and stared intently into Yu Sheng's eyes. "Are you really a human?"

Yu Sheng immediately frowned. "What kind of talk is that! If I'm not human, are you?"

Yet Eileen continued to stare at him, her expression more serious than ever. "Fine. A human. An ordinary person. Someone who lived in the Otherworld for a long time without even knowing it, then ran into another Otherworld and encountered a malicious entity. Not only did you survive, but you even brought back a 'local specialty' from that entity, sautéed it, ate it, and now you're perfectly fine—and now you can even host another consciousness within your own dream, while the physical body of that consciousness is trapped somewhere else.

"All these absurd things have happened to you, and then you say—you're a human? An ordinary person?"

Yu Sheng felt increasingly uncomfortable under Eileen's crimson gaze. He instinctively averted his eyes, thinking to himself that he hadn't even "risen from the dead" yet; compared to that, all these other absurdities were nothing.

"It's true that... many strange things have happened. I'm a bit dazed myself. But if I had to say, even you are one of the 'strange things' that has happened to me recently," Yu Sheng said helplessly. "Stop staring at me. I don't know what's going on either. I can't even wake this Hu Li up. If I could, maybe I could ask her what's happening."

Eileen stared at Yu Sheng for a while longer, seemingly confirming he wasn't joking, before she slowly withdrew her gaze and refocused her attention on the silver-white demon fox.

She thought for a long time.

"I have an idea," Eileen said suddenly.

"An idea?" Yu Sheng asked curiously. "Let's hear it."

"I'll try to dive into this fox's dream. If she happens to be dreaming right now," Eileen pointed at the demon fox, "her current state looks a lot like a mental lockdown. But no matter how well a mind is locked down, it's hard to defend against in a dream. I might be able to 'see' something, and if I can take the opportunity to wake her up from this side, even better."

Yu Sheng was genuinely surprised. After all, he had just been lamenting how unreliable this doll was, yet now she was proposing such a high-level plan. He couldn't hide his astonishment. "You can actually do something like that?"

"It's not hard, as long as she is dreaming... Even if she isn't, your two minds are clearly linked right now. I have a way to 'squeeze' through to take a look. It's just... there's some risk, and I'll need your help."

Yu Sheng's expression instantly turned serious. "No problem. Tell me what to do."

"Because I have to jump between minds, it's equivalent to 'deep-sea diving' in unstable waters. If the 'connection' in the middle fails, I might get trapped on the 'other side'," Eileen said, looking at Yu Sheng very seriously. "So, I need a 'rope,' and you are going to be that rope.

"You have to 'dive' with me, continuing to sink from your own dream into the depths of this big fox's mind. You'll need to share some of the pressure with me so I can focus my mind on finding the way. And if something truly goes wrong during this process... I will use a rather intense method to 'wake' you up.

"Your sudden awakening has the highest priority in this chain of dreams; it will 'drag' my consciousness back along with you, allowing both of us to return safely to the real world. However, I must warn you, my 'waking' process might not be very comfortable."

"How uncomfortable can it be?"

"...Roughly like being in the middle of a dream where you're taking the college entrance exam, and before you've even written your name, the bell rings for the end of the test. Before you can even react, a heavy truck crashes into the exam hall, turning you and your high school crush into paper-thin characters with incredibly thin character designs..."

Yu Sheng was completely unable to grasp what she was saying through her bizarre metaphor.

But he figured it shouldn't be a big deal. It was just a sudden awakening; how much worse could it be than dying?

Rather than hesitating over that, he wanted to figure out Hu Li's actual situation and what was going on with his own dream.

"No problem. Let's start," Yu Sheng took a soft breath and nodded solemnly to Eileen. "What's the first step?"

"Go over there, get close to that big fox—as close as possible... Just lie down directly on her tail.

"Then, hold onto my frame, close your eyes, and we will leap within the dream."