I Can See Dreams

Ten o'clock at night.

After splashing his face with water in the bathroom, Zhu Zhengwei looked at himself in the mirror. His face was haggard, his frame gaunt, and his hair thinning—the quintessential look of a netizen who had spent years "cultivating immortality" by staying up late.

Regaining his composure, he walked back to the dorm. His roommate, Wang Jun, was sitting in front of the computer, still using software to grind for "Initial Accounts."

This was a recently popular cultivation card game. To get a smoother start, many players chose to buy "Initial Accounts," and the two of them were currently working this trade for extra cash. A decent Initial Account could fetch twenty yuan.

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

"Not bad."

Wang Jun, a tall and thin young man, cursed under his breath, "Though I doubt we'll be able to make money for many more days. The professional, large-scale studios have already entered the market."

"If you ask me, this is just back-breaking labor. With the two of you doing this, you'd be better off doing part-time tutoring like me," chimed in Li Xiang, the roommate on the upper bunk. He was scratching his head while researching Bitcoin on his laptop, hoping to strike it rich.

"Isn't everything just manual labor at the end of the day?" Wang Jun curled his lip.

"Can't be helped. We're all destined to be corporate slaves, working our lives away just so the boss can drive a Mercedes," Zhu Zhengwei said with a smile. "I'm heading down to the cafeteria to grab some late-night snacks."

Zhu Zhengwei stepped out the door and gazed at the night sky.

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

Despite it being a local university, the two "animals" in his dorm were more competitive than anyone else, constantly finding ways to hustle—tutoring, playing the blockchain, or grinding games.

There were four people in the dorm, but only three were permanent residents. The last roommate was a rich kid who was never around; he rented an apartment off-campus to live with a female classmate, only returning on rare occasions.

Rain poured outside the dorm window as Wang Jun, still grinding accounts, lit a cigarette.

"Sigh, grinding, always grinding. It's all fated by the heavens. Our looks, our family background, our innate talent—they decide our starting point. Damn it, I heard from a senior that the internal competition in our line of work is getting more and more cutthroat."

Li Xiang chuckled, "Compete! Let it all go to hell! If only our lives were like this game of yours, where we could roll an 'Initial Account'—like making a doll, choosing our birth family, our martial arts talent, our wit, our hairstyle, our physique, and then being born."

"Pfft! Reality isn't a game; how could you ever decide your own birth? We aren't even sick, but look at Zhu Zhengwei—he was born with hereditary hemophilia, and even he..."

"Shh! Stop wagging your tongue, he hasn't gone far yet."

As their voices gradually faded, Zhu Zhengwei descended the stairwell.

He had long since accepted his life as a "porcelain doll." His hemophilia was hereditary.

Fortunately, it was a mild case, and regular medication meant it didn't impact his daily life. As long as he was careful not to bleed or suffer any bumps, there wouldn't be any major issues.

In a way, he was lucky.

He had met too many severe cases in patient support groups, including many who suffered from femoral head necrosis and couldn't even stand up.

Splash.

The night rain felt slightly chilly.

Zhu Zhengwei opened his umbrella, walked out of the dorm, and after a short while, arrived at the cafeteria.

Since it wasn't quite time for the food stalls to open, he sat down in a chair, feeling exhausted as he watched students walk into the cafeteria in twos and threes, umbrellas in hand.

The recent rush to grind accounts had left him mentally drained. The pressure of raising tuition fees and planning for his future felt like a massive boulder pressing down on him, making it hard to breathe.

Soon, an endless wave of drowsiness and fatigue, like the deep ocean, pulled him into a semi-conscious state.

BOOM!

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

Zhu Zhengwei jolted awake, startled into a state of shock. A mysterious, swirling mark flashed in his eyes.

Waking up from that half-dreaming state caused his head to ring, as if something hidden within his life had been pried open. He felt the entire world suddenly become clear and sharp.

Zhu Zhengwei rubbed his eyes.

He discovered, with a sense of dread, that a fat student snoring in a chair at a nearby table had a small, swaying bubble floating above his head. Inside the bubble, a hazy scene was reflected.

"Why is there a bubble on his head?"

He tapped the bubble above the sleeping fat student.

He instantly entered a hazy world of consciousness and saw the fat man working out, running while drenched in sweat.

"Lose weight, lose weight, lose weight."

"One, two, one."

"One, two, one."

The fat student's body trembled with every step, his face dripping with sweat as he wiped it with a towel on his shoulder, panting heavily while running on an endless road.

Zhu Zhengwei's arrival caused the fat man to look around in confusion.

The fat man seemed to lack any conscious thought, looking dazed. "Eh? Eh? Who are you? Are you a classmate here to lose weight with me? Then let's run together!"

Zhu Zhengwei was startled and quickly exited the bubble, looking at the fat man who was still dozing in the cafeteria chair.

"I just entered his dream??"

"Thoughts by day, dreams by night. Is this fat guy dreaming about losing weight?"

Zhu Zhengwei's heart hammered against his ribs as he quietly scanned his surroundings.

He realized he could only see the small bubble above the sleeping fat man; the other students who were awake and queuing had no such bubbles above their heads.

"Only when asleep?"

"Dream theft. Inception??"

His breathing quickened. He suddenly recalled a certain world-famous movie, suppressing his frantic heartbeat.

"Don't cut in line."

"Auntie, I'll take an egg fried rice!"

"The rain is nice today. Since this godforsaken school doesn't have AC in the dorms, it'll be cool tonight. Definitely a good night for sleep."

The clatter of the cafeteria drifted over as students, holding their meal trays, formed a long queue.

Zhu Zhengwei stood up to join the line, though his hands trembled involuntarily. He slowly tapped the bubble hovering above the head of the fat man still sleeping in a distant seat.

Huff, huff, huff!

The fat man was still panting as he ran, sprinting across an endless, hazy track.

Zhu Zhengwei entered the Dream Bubble, attempting to keep pace with him, and began to chat as they ran side by side.

"Sigh, you're here again, brother?" the fat man asked in surprise.

"Hey, handsome, I'm here to work out too. Are you here to lose weight?" Zhu Zhengwei gasped, breathless.

This dream was damn realistic!

Running, Exhausting, How was his own stamina in the dream so poor that he couldn't even outrun this chubby guy?

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

To his surprise, the fat man chatted away without any guard.

"There are too few girls in our major, but Xiao Yun is truly the goddess of our department. She actually took a liking to me, though she said that while she loves my inner self, my exterior is just too fat."

"But I don't have much time to lose weight usually. I've been working part-time every day lately. Goddess Xiao Yun's birthday is coming up, and she said she likes a lady's watch that costs seven thousand yuan. I have to save up to give her a surprise, so I just run a bit when I have the time."

"Life is so tiring, so tiring, so tiring. And I still have to prepare for the postgraduate entrance exam."

"I ate too much today."

"Yesterday at my part-time job, the restaurant owner called me ugly and stupid, a stinking country bumpkin. He said even going to college wouldn't change me, that I couldn't even carry a tray properly."

"But I believe I have a bright future."

Zhu Zhengwei kept pace and chatted the whole way, listening to the fat senior pour out his various recent life troubles.

He realized the fat man's consciousness was blurred.

Even the dialogue lacked logic, like someone half-asleep muttering unconscious dream talk while the surrounding scenery shifted constantly.

Soon, before they had chatted for long, Zhu Zhengwei was forced to exit the dream.

He was simply too tired; running and talking, he couldn't keep up with the fat youth and was left directly in the dust.

Whoosh.

The next second, Zhu Zhengwei exited the dream, and a wave of intense exhaustion and aching muscles washed over him.

He opened his eyes to find a female student looking at him with concern, touching his forehead. "You're finally awake! Why are you so groggy? You were sweating buckets, just like you'd run an eight-hundred-meter dash. I was almost about to call for help!"

Zhu Zhengwei froze, looking down at his own body.

He had only been running in a dream, yet he was drenched in sweat, his back soaked, his heart pounding wildly. It felt as if his body had truly sprinted eight hundred meters.

"Could it be... the dream is feeding back into the body?"

In that instant, all his fatigue and nonchalance vanished. His mouth was dry, his body felt cold. "I ran in his dream, and as a result, I did the same in reality?"

He looked at the fat man in the distance again.

He was still dreaming, but his body wasn't sweating. It was just a normal dream.

"Only I experience physical feedback from the dream? Everyone else just dreams normally? What an absurd Dream Bubble!!"

A wild thought took root in his heart.

"What is this? Psychological suggestion? Soul influence? Subconscious feedback??"

Ten minutes later, Zhu Zhengwei left the cafeteria with his late-night snack, his legs weak from the run, his heart racing from the encounter.

He gazed at the dormitory and teaching buildings shrouded in the rainy night. His previously dull eyes ignited with vitality, filled with a restless, eager excitement.

This was, perhaps... a life-changing opportunity!!

"No rush, no rush. I have to see what's really going on first." He took a deep breath, suppressing the agitation in his heart.

He soon returned to the dorm, handed out the snacks, and pretended to be nonchalant as he continued his work of grinding accounts.

But his heart was no longer calm. He waited, feigning normalcy, until the dorm lights were turned off.

"Let's not stay up late today. We've stayed up enough these past few days. Let's sleep," Zhu Zhengwei began to urge the other two.

"Right, I've been exhausted these last two days. Let's get some rest early tonight," Wang Jun said, rubbing his eyes as he went to wash up and head to bed.

"That's exactly the logic, let's get to sleep, I'm dead tired," Zhu Zhengwei said, secretly fanning the flames.

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

"There really are some!"

He discovered that he could see not only the bubbles of those two, but could also sense a surrounding circle of bubble worlds as brilliant as the stars!

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

"This??"

"These bubbles are just like the quest NPCs in games, the ones with exclamation mark bubbles hovering over their heads!!"

Zhu Zhengwei was completely dumbfounded.

Hundreds of exclamation marks from the entire dormitory building were piled together, looking like bubbles blown by dream-fish in the deep sea—magnificent, colorful, and reflecting one dream after another.

His mind went blank.

"Ah, is this... My empire?"

New author, new book, setting sail—please recommend and add to your library!