I Can See Dreams

Ten o'clock at night.

After washing his face in the bathroom, Zhu Zhengwei looked at himself in the mirror. His face was haggard, his body thin, and his hair sparse—the typical appearance of a netizen who had spent years staying up late cultivating immortality.

After gathering his spirits, he returned to the dormitory. His roommate Wang Jun was sitting in front of the computer, still using software to grind "Initial Accounts" for money.

This was a recently popular cultivation card game. Many players chose to buy "Initial Accounts" to get a smoother start, and the two of them were making extra money in this line of work. A decent Initial Account could sell for twenty yuan.

"How's it going?" Zhu Zhengwei asked.

"Not bad."

Wang Jun was a tall, thin young man. He cursed as he spoke. "But I probably won't be able to make money for more than a few days. The big, legitimate studios have already entered the market."

"If you ask me, this is hard work too. The two of you probably make less than I do tutoring part-time outside." Li Xiang, the roommate sitting on the upper bunk nearby, scratched his head. He was studying Bitcoin on his computer in bed, planning to strike it rich that way.

"Wherever you work, you're still just laboring away," Wang Jun said with a curl of his lips.

"Can't be helped. We're all destined to be wage slaves from now on, basically working to make sure our bosses can drive Mercedes-Benzes." Zhu Zhengwei smiled. "I'm going downstairs to the cafeteria. I'll bring back some late-night snacks."

Zhu Zhengwei walked out of the room and gazed at the night sky.

He was currently a freshman, studying Computer Applications at a third-rate university in a mountain city.

It was clearly only a local university, yet the two animals in his dormitory were more competitive than the other, desperately finding part-time jobs, tutoring, playing with Blockchain, and grinding games for money.

There were four people in the dormitory, but only three lived there regularly. The last roommate was a rich second-generation heir who was rarely seen. He rented a place outside, lived with a female classmate, and only came back occasionally.

Rain poured outside the dormitory window. Wang Jun, who was still grinding accounts, lit a cigarette.

"Sigh, grinding, grinding. It's all predetermined by fate. Our looks, family backgrounds, talents, and abilities determine that this is where we start. Damn it, I heard from an upperclassman recently that competition in our line of work is getting more and more intense."

Li Xiang chuckled. "Compete, all of you! Compete to the death! If our lives could be like your game, where we could grind 'Initial Accounts,' choose our family background like molding a doll, select our martial arts talent and literary gifts, style our hair, adjust our bodies, and then be born again..."

"Tsk! Reality isn't a game. How could we decide where we're born? Neither of us has any illness. As for Zhu Zhengwei, he was born with Hemophilia, and even he..."

"Shh! Don't gossip. He hasn't gone far yet."

As their voices gradually faded, Zhu Zhengwei walked down the stairwell.

He had long since accepted his porcelain-doll life. His Hemophilia was hereditary.

Fortunately, it was mild. Regular medication did not affect his life. As long as he was careful not to bleed or bump into things, there would not be any major problems.

In a sense, he was lucky.

He had met too many severely ill patients in the patient support group, including quite a few people with necrosis of the femoral head who could no longer stand.

Splash.

The night rain was slightly chilly.

Holding an umbrella, Zhu Zhengwei left the dormitory. After walking for a while, he arrived at the cafeteria.

Since it was not yet mealtime, he sat down wearily in a chair and watched students trickling into the cafeteria under their umbrellas.

He had been busy grinding accounts recently, leaving him mentally exhausted. Between saving for tuition and planning for his future, he felt as if life were a huge stone pressing down on him and making it hard to breathe.

Soon, endless drowsiness and fatigue engulfed him like a vast deep sea, pulling him into a half-asleep state.

Boom!

A sudden clap of thunder exploded in the sky outside the cafeteria.

Zhu Zhengwei jolted awake. His entire body shuddered, and a mysterious vortex mark flashed through his eyes.

Being startled awake from the boundary between dreams and reality made his head boom. It felt as if something hidden within his life had been pried open. Suddenly, the entire world seemed clearer and sharper.

Zhu Zhengwei rubbed his eyes.

He strangely discovered that on top of the head of a fat student in a distant side seat, who was leaning back in a chair and snoring, there was a swaying little sleep bubble. A hazy scene was reflected within it.

"Why is there a bubble over his head?"

He clicked on the bubble above the sleeping fat student's head.

He immediately entered a hazy world of consciousness and instantly saw the fat man working out, drenched in sweat as he ran.

"Lose weight, lose weight, lose weight."

"One, two, one."

"One, two, one."

The fat student's flesh jiggled all over. Wiping the sweat from his face with the towel over his shoulder, he ran breathlessly along an endless road.

When Zhu Zhengwei entered, he caused the fat man to look confused.

The fat man seemed dazed, as though he had no real ability to think. "Huh? Huh? Who are you? Are you a classmate who came to lose weight with me? Then let's run together!"

Zhu Zhengwei was startled. He hurriedly left the bubble and looked at the fat man, who was still dozing in the cafeteria chair.

"I just entered his dream?"

"People dream about what they think about during the day. Is this fat guy losing weight in his dream?"

Zhu Zhengwei's heart pounded as he quietly scanned his surroundings.

He discovered that he could only see a little bubble above the sleeping fat man's head. There were no bubbles above the heads of the other students, who were awake and waiting in line.

"Only sleeping people have them..."

"Dream infiltration... Inception?"

His breathing quickened. He suddenly remembered an extremely famous movie and suppressed his wildly beating heart.

"Don't cut in line."

"Ma'am, I'll have some egg fried rice!"

"The rain's nice today. This damn school doesn't even have air conditioning in the dormitories, but tonight will be cool. I'll definitely sleep well."

The cafeteria filled with scattered voices. The students carried their food trays and had already formed a long line.

Zhu Zhengwei also stood up and joined the line, but his hand began to tremble involuntarily. Slowly, he clicked on the bubble above the head of the fat man still sleeping in the distant seat.

Huff, huff, huff!

The fat man was still running breathlessly, running across an endless, hazy track.

Zhu Zhengwei entered the bubble world and tried to keep up with him. As he ran, he struck up a conversation.

"Huh, brother, you're back again?" the fat man asked in surprise.

"Hey, handsome guy, I came to exercise too. Are you here to lose weight?" Zhu Zhengwei panted so hard he could barely breathe.

This dream was damn realistic!

Running,

was exhausting.

Could his stamina really be this bad even in a dream? He could not even outrun this chubby fat man?

As they ran, Zhu Zhengwei probed the fat student from the side, trying to understand the strangeness of this dream.

The fat man chatted with him without the slightest guard.

"There are too few girls in our major, but Xiao Yun really is our department's goddess. She even took a fancy to me. She said she likes my inner qualities, but my appearance is just a little too fat."

"But I usually don't have much time to lose weight. I've been working part-time every day recently, and the goddess Xiao Yun is about to have her birthday. She said she likes a seven-thousand-yuan women's watch. I have to save up and give her a surprise. Normally, I only have time to run for a while when I'm free."

"Life is too tiring. Too tiring. Too tiring. I still have to prepare for the postgraduate entrance exam in advance."

"I ate too much today."

"I worked part-time yesterday, and the restaurant owner cursed me, saying I was ugly and stupid, a filthy country bumpkin, and that going to university wouldn't change me. I couldn't even carry plates properly."

"But I believe I have a bright future."

Zhu Zhengwei ran alongside him and chatted all the way, listening to the fat upperclassman talk about all kinds of recent troubles in his life.

He discovered that the fat man's consciousness was hazy.

Even the conversation was completely illogical, like someone who was half-asleep and muttering unconscious dreams. The surrounding scenery kept changing.

Soon, after barely saying a few words, Zhu Zhengwei had no choice but to leave the dream.

He was simply too tired. Running and chatting at the same time, he actually could not outrun the fat young man and was left far behind.

Splash.

The next second, Zhu Zhengwei exited the dream again. A wave of intense fatigue and aching muscles surged through his entire body.

When he opened his eyes, a female student beside him was looking at him worriedly. She touched Zhu Zhengwei's forehead. "You're finally awake. Why were you so dazed? You kept sweating all over, as if you'd run an eight-hundred-meter race. I almost called someone!"

Zhu Zhengwei stared blankly for a moment and looked at his body.

He had only run alongside the fat man in a dream, yet he was drenched in sweat, his back soaked. His heart was pounding, and his body felt as if he had really sprinted eight hundred meters.

"Could it be that the dream is affecting the body?"

In that instant, all his fatigue and carelessness vanished. His mouth went dry, and his body felt a little cold. "I ran in his dream, and as a result, my real body also...?"

He looked at the fat man in the distance again.

The fat man was still dreaming, but his body was not sweating. It was only an ordinary dream.

"Only my body is affected by what happens in dreams? Other people are still just dreaming normally? What an absurd Dream Bubble!"

A wild thought took root in his heart.

"What is this? Psychological suggestion? The soul affecting the body? Feedback from the subconscious?"

More than ten minutes later, Zhu Zhengwei hurried out of the cafeteria with the late-night snacks. His legs were weak from the run, and his mood was racing because of that cafeteria run.

He gazed at the dormitory and classroom buildings blurred by the rainy night. A spark of life ignited in his lifeless eyes, along with an eager excitement.

This might be a chance to change his life!

"Don't rush, don't rush. I have to figure out what's going on first." He took a deep breath and suppressed the excitement in his heart.

He soon returned to the dormitory with late-night snacks for the other two. Pretending nothing had happened, he continued studying account grinding and money-making.

But his heart was no longer calm. He kept pretending that nothing had happened and waited until the dormitory lights-out time.

"Don't stay up late today. We've stayed up enough these past few days. Let's sleep tonight." Zhu Zhengwei began urging the other two to go to bed.

"Right. I've been exhausted these past two days. Let's turn in early tonight." Wang Jun rubbed his eyes and went straight to wash up and sleep.

"That's right. Let's hurry up and sleep. I'm exhausted." Zhu Zhengwei secretly fanned the flames.

Soon, in the darkness, he saw two bubbles slowly appear before his eyes above his roommates.

"Just as I thought!"

He discovered that he could see more than just the bubbles of those two. He could sense a brilliant world of bubbles surrounding him, sparkling like stars.

They were clusters of bubbles above the heads of sleeping students throughout the entire dormitory building!

"What...?"

"These bubbles are just like the quest NPCs in games, with exclamation-mark bubbles floating above their heads!"

Zhu Zhengwei was completely dumbfounded.

The hundreds of exclamation marks in the entire dormitory building piled together, resembling bubbles blown by dream fish in the depths of the sea. They were breathtaking and dazzling, reflecting one dream after another.

His head went blank.

"Ah... is this my kingdom?"

This was a new author and a new book, setting sail. Please recommend and bookmark it.