The moment the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes crawled out of their sockets, the densely packed eyeballs in the room seemed to be startled and rapidly shrank back with a series of popping sounds.
Even the drifting ghosts turned transparent and vanished.
"Go back!"
Ning Xiuyuan reached out and pressed down on his left eyeball, forcibly stuffing the "independent entity" back into its socket.
As his eyelid blinked, it turned into a pitch-black, round pupil.
"Is this my subconscious dreamscape?"
Ning Xiuyuan let out a long breath, venting the shock of opening his eyes to such a horrifying sight.
Yes, he had already stepped into the land of dreams.
Rather than being the grotesqueness of the land of dreams, the bizarre scene in the room was more like the disturbance caused by his personal dreamscape to a corner of Francis's dreamscape.
In his subconscious, he had always felt that he was being watched.
That was probably the origin of the densely packed eyeballs in the room, as well as those ghosts.
Ning Xiuyuan stood up and swept his eyes across the bedroom.
Most of the things in the room were still there, but everything looked somewhat distorted, like flowers seen through fog.
No!
The Crystal Lantern was still incredibly real!
It stood quietly on the bedside table, emitting a faint candlelight that did not belong to this world.
Ning Xiuyuan's gaze flickered.
After all, when entering the land of dreams as a mental body, one had to wrap anything they wished to bring along in spirituality beforehand.
Ning Xiuyuan had only wrapped himself. He had not wrapped the Crystal Lantern.
Yet this thing had still come along automatically.
Was this some conspiracy of fate? Or was the Crystal Lantern extremely special, capable of reflecting all the worlds?
The moment Ning Xiuyuan's thoughts arose, he suppressed them.
There was no point in thinking about such things now.
He had carefully observed the lantern with the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes before, but unfortunately, he still could not find anything unusual about it.
This basically confirmed that the power imposed upon the lantern was probably far beyond the rank of the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes! Since that was the case, thinking too much would only add to his fear. Why bother?
Ning Xiuyuan shifted his gaze away from the lantern and looked down at himself.
He was still wearing the Dawn Church priest's robe. With a thought, a protective suit, Pig-nosed Mask, oxygen tank... an extremely futuristic outfit covered his body.
It seems supernatural powers can still be used in the land of dreams!
That makes sense. Supernatural powers are fused with the self, and the mental body is also part of the self. Being able to use supernatural powers normally is nothing strange.
Ning Xiuyuan mused to himself. After conducting a brief experiment and confirming that he could disguise himself and come here in the future, he finally relaxed.
He reached out and picked up the lantern, then pushed open the dormitory door. A familiar yet unfamiliar scene appeared before him.
The familiar stable;
The familiar Francis.
What was unfamiliar was that, in the stable courtyard, the pit carved out by the deathly corruption of Lynn's aberrant body remained shockingly conspicuous;
In the distance, the church's radiance soared into the sky, like a divine miracle descending from heaven.
Outside the church, everything was gray and hazy. The buildings were twisted and bizarre, like ultra-modern architectural art.
Angela had mentioned all this to him before. Francis's land of dreams was influenced by the dreams of Francis's residents, and its overall layout resembled Francis.
However, its local details displayed varying degrees of distortion and aberration.
Unless absolutely necessary, one must never trespass into residential buildings.
This was not the deepest layer of dreams—the Dreamlands—where the environment, terrain, and city were extremely stable.
This was a land of dreams between the Dreamlands and reality.
The dreams of countless living beings intertwined here. The environment changed along with those beings. In densely populated residential areas, no one could predict what terrifying things their dreams might intertwine into.
Ning Xiuyuan took out his pocket watch and glanced at the time: ten ten.
He was ten minutes past the agreed time.
Perhaps Angela had been delayed on the way.
Ning Xiuyuan patiently waited for a while. Another ten minutes passed, but Angela still had not arrived.
This time, Ning Xiuyuan could no longer sit still.
He furrowed his brow slightly, thought for a moment, and left the Groom's quarters.
When he stepped onto the street, everything around him was empty. The entire city seemed to be shrouded in smog.
As Ning Xiuyuan walked, his expression gradually turned astonished.
Wherever the candlelight reached, several decrepit living corpses crawled around the street. Some had flattened heads, while others had broken legs.
In an utterly black alley, a huge werewolf monster was curled up in a pile of garbage, chewing on something. To the side of its lips, he could vaguely see toes rolling about.
Outside the street-side windows, several spider-like monsters covered in arms were sprawled across the glass, desperately peering inside.
When he reached the landmark clock tower and looked up, the enormous clock face had already become a giant eyeball, quietly staring at Ning Xiuyuan.
"Tsk, tsk. So this is Francis's land of dreams? I wonder what kind of reaction would be triggered if those monsters were provoked?"
Ning Xiuyuan clicked his tongue in amazement.
As the wielder of the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes, he saw through the essence of those terrifying monsters at a glance. They had been woven into existence by the dreams of countless living beings.
They were either urban legends;
Or the dead who still lived in people's hearts.
This made the entire world seem strange and terrifying.
Ning Xiuyuan crossed streets and alleys. At a corner two hundred meters from the convent, he saw Angela.
She was curled up in the middle of the road, hugging her calves, her small head buried in her knees as her whole body trembled.
"Angela!"
"Ah—" Angela suddenly screamed, trembling even harder. "Don't eat me! Don't eat me... Sob, sob... don't eat me!"
"It's me, Arthurs!" Ning Xiuyuan said, half amused and half exasperated.
"Ah?"
Angela shakily raised her face. The moment she saw Ning Xiuyuan, her emotions completely collapsed.
"Wah... Arthurs, I'm so scared! Wah... I don't want to come here again... Wah..."
Angela looked terrified. She sat collapsed on the ground, tears and snot streaming down her face.
Ning Xiuyuan was dumbfounded.
Are you kidding me? This is a supernatural being?
"What happened? What did you encounter?" Ning Xiuyuan approached and reached out to help Angela up.
Angela held on to Ning Xiuyuan's sturdy hand. The familiarity of a companion finally allowed her shattered state of mind to gradually recover.
Sniffling somewhat sheepishly, she began describing what had happened.
It turned out that after entering the land of dreams and leaving the convent, she had gone to find Ning Xiuyuan as agreed. Unexpectedly, she encountered too many monsters on the way. The farther she went, the more panicked she became, and the more panicked she became, the more her emotions fell apart. That was why she had lost control and curled up on the road crying.
Of course, that was Ning Xiuyuan's interpretation.
According to Angela, she had not come for several years, and Francis's land of dreams had changed too much. As a result, she had gotten lost. Then, after being attacked by monsters, she had lost control of her emotions.
Uh, all right. The two descriptions were actually more or less the same.
"You said before that you came here once when you had just become a supernatural being, and never came again afterward?" Ning Xiuyuan asked.
"Mm." Angela nodded, her gaze still somewhat fearful as she looked at the surrounding darkness.
Right.
A hothouse flower.
He had overestimated supernatural beings as a whole.
Viewed from another angle, so-called supernatural beings were simply people with a particular skill.
Timidity, cowardice, arrogance, rashness, perversity... All kinds of human weaknesses still existed in them.
"I'll escort you back. I know the way, anyway," Ning Xiuyuan said.
"No... No need. I-I'm fine. I can walk." Angela waved her hand and refused, feeling somewhat embarrassed.
When it came to supernatural knowledge, she had always regarded herself as Arthurs's senior.
Yet she had lost face here. She almost wanted to find a crack in the ground and crawl into it.
But... but she had really been so scared just now!
She clearly remembered that when she had first come to the land of dreams, she had stayed beside Priest Bulwo, and it had not been this frightening.
But what had she experienced just now? The eerie murmurs in the darkness, the ghostly shadows she could always catch out of the corner of her eye, the living corpses dragging their intestines along the road... Whenever she thought about them, the hairs all over her body stood on end, and she was filled with terror.
Yet for some reason, when Arthurs stood beside her holding the lantern, and she looked at the surrounding darkness, it seemed... it seemed not quite so frightening anymore.
"Are you really all right?" Ning Xiuyuan asked to confirm.
"I-I'm fine. Really, I'm fine." Angela gathered her courage and answered firmly.
"All right, then let's go."
Ning Xiuyuan did not try to persuade her further. He carried the lantern and walked toward the market in the north of the city.
That was where Francis's Dreamland Black Market was located.
They traveled in silence.
As Angela gradually advanced—first following behind him, then clutching the corner of his clothes, and finally hugging his arm—other living people finally appeared on the streets.
In groups of two or three, the living people entered the black market. Some openly revealed their true appearances, while others furtively wore masks that distorted their features.
Once they arrived, Angela's courage finally returned. She looked around curiously, occasionally letting out an exclamation of surprise.
As for this Dreamland Black Market, it did not look fundamentally different from a regular market.
The only difference was that the things displayed at the stalls were extremely strange.
There were also very few stalls here. Counting them all, there were only a dozen or so, and one could reach the end after walking just a few steps.
In fact, there were very few people in the black market as well.
There were roughly a few dozen people. It was unclear whether the market had not yet reached its busiest hour or whether there were simply always so few people.
Most of those who came here walked hurriedly. They would glance at the stalls, and if they found nothing they wanted, they would turn around and leave.
"Those people should be dedicated information sellers. They raise Dreamland creatures and can stay in the market for long periods. No one understands this place better than they do. If you need anything special, you can buy it from them."
Angela noticed Ning Xiuyuan's gaze lingering on several people crouched over tables in a corner of the market and explained instinctively.
Ning Xiuyuan nodded without asking further.
The two of them stayed in the black market for a while before hurriedly leaving.
Ning Xiuyuan decided to see things through and escorted Angela to the entrance of the convent. Only after watching her enter did he turn and leave.
He returned safely to the dormitory.
"Creak!"
The moment the door closed, a pitch-black protective suit suddenly emerged over Ning Xiuyuan's body. A tactical Pig-nosed gas mask locked onto his face, while a metallic oxygen tank was strapped to his back, concealing the Crystal Lantern within.
After completing all this, Ning Xiuyuan's figure vanished in an instant.
In the displaced spacetime of the land of dreams, he passed through walls and corridors, forcing his way through countless perilous residential buildings, and once again reached the edge of the black market.
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