Eileen's Abilities

Eileen had the ability to burrow into other people's dreams—and according to her, she could do more than just enter them. To a certain extent, she could even influence how the dream unfolded, like pressing the end-of-exams bell in a dream to summon a dump truck or something.

To be honest, if used properly, it seemed like an incredibly powerful skill. She might even be able to perform high-level operations such as psychological suggestion, mental parasitism, and memory restructuring.

But Yu Sheng seriously doubted how much of the doll's bragging about her abilities was reliable. Judging from what he had seen so far, she was useless even in dreams, to the point that she couldn't even hide properly in a patch of grass.

And even after entering a dream, she was still trapped inside that oil painting.

Eileen's oil painting floated in front of Yu Sheng. The doll maiden inside the frame looked somewhat awkward, while Yu Sheng found her current state increasingly strange the longer he looked at her. Floating in midair like this was even worse than hanging on a wall.

"You can only stay inside the painting even in dreams?" Yu Sheng tugged at the corner of his mouth and finally asked the question that had been bothering him. "I thought that since we're in the mental realm, you could at least come out and run around a little..."

"Isn't that why it's called a curse?" Eileen said helplessly. "I'm trapped inside the painting in reality, and it's the same in the mental world. No matter where I go, I can't leave this painting unless I find a suitable vessel. Freedom? There's none of that even in dreams."

"That really is pretty miserable." Yu Sheng sighed from the bottom of his heart.

"Hey, but dreams are still somewhat different from the real world!" Perhaps she felt she was losing face, because the moment Eileen saw Yu Sheng's sympathetic reaction, she hurriedly tried to save herself. "I'm a little freer here than in the real world. Look, I can even float around... Don't laugh! There's—there's more than that!"

Yu Sheng raised an eyebrow at that, genuinely curious. "More than that?"

Eileen thought for a moment, then struck a pose like the power-up stance from King of Fighters '98. She began straining inside the oil painting as if she were activating some ability. Even Yu Sheng was fooled, instinctively becoming serious as he watched the person in the painting change. Then, in the next second, a layer of psychedelic light truly rippled across the surface of the oil painting!

As Yu Sheng's eyes gradually widened, the oil painting finally went bang—and turned into a poster in an eighties style.

Eileen had switched to the color palette of an old movie. She stood inside the poster and stared wide-eyed at Yu Sheng.

Eileen: "I can change art styles."

Yu Sheng: "..."

"You laughed out loud!!"

Yu Sheng forced his face into a serious expression. "I didn't."

"Your inner voice!"

Yu Sheng didn't want to bother with the doll anymore. The huge fox was still lying nearby, and he still hadn't figured out what was going on with her.

Eileen was instantly a little hurt. Seeing that Yu Sheng was ignoring her, she floated off to the side and began muttering to herself. "I can turn into other things too, like prints and scrolls... I'm still researching how to become a relief sculpture. Then I'll have depth, and you won't be able to say my character setting is shallow anymore..."

Yu Sheng really couldn't stand her muttering any longer. He suddenly turned his head and said, "First, when have I ever said your character setting was shallow? Second, that isn't how you use the phrase 'shallow character setting.' By the same logic, even if you turned into marble, that wouldn't make your character setting deeper."

Eileen opened her mouth as if she wanted to say something, but before she could speak, she went bang and turned back into an oil painting. Her transformation time had run out, lasting less than three minutes in total.

Yu Sheng was dumbfounded. He knew the doll was useless even in dreams, but he truly hadn't expected her to be this useless...

But Eileen didn't look disappointed this time. She had finally noticed the white fox lying on the grass nearby—or rather, she had finally sensed that the huge fox seemed strangely out of place in the surrounding dreamscape. Her curiosity shifted her attention. "By the way, what's up with this fox? Why is her color different from everything around her?"

Noticing the puzzled look on Yu Sheng's face, she added, "Things in an ordinary person's dreams generally tend toward a unified color palette. Even if the dreamer doesn't notice it themselves, I can see it while observing. Take your dream, for example—the sky and grass are both gray and hazy. That's the 'base color' of your dream. But this fox... she looks like she wandered onto the wrong set."

She paused there and eyed Yu Sheng suspiciously. "Why is something this strange appearing in your dream?"

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

"I know. She's obviously a fox..."

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

Eileen froze. Her not-so-reliable memory finally began to turn, and she recalled what Yu Sheng had told her before.

Her expression became wonderfully animated. She stared wide-eyed at the enormous demon fox, opening and closing her mouth several times before finally forcing out, "What?! How did you trap her in your dream...? No, wait, how are you powerful enough to imprison a person..."

"I didn't bring her here, and I don't think she's really 'trapped' here either. This should just be something like a shadow? I can't explain it very well." Yu Sheng had no choice but to explain. "I saw her not long after I fell asleep, but I couldn't wake her no matter what I did."

Eileen looked at Yu Sheng, then turned to look at the demon fox. Her gaze shifted back and forth between the two "people" several times, as if she were trying to sort out the logic behind what was happening. Clearly, that wasn't easy.

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

Yu Sheng immediately frowned. "What's that supposed to mean? If I'm not human, are you?"

Eileen continued staring at him, her expression more serious than ever. "All right. A human being, an ordinary person, who has lived in the Otherworld for a long time without realizing it, then entered another Otherworld and encountered a malignant entity. Not only did he survive and escape, he even cut off a 'local specialty' from that entity and brought it back, stir-fried and ate it, remained lively afterward, and can now store another consciousness inside his own dream—the original body of that consciousness is even trapped somewhere else.

"All these ridiculous things happened to you, and then you say—you're human? An ordinary human?"

Under the stare of Eileen's scarlet eyes, Yu Sheng gradually began to feel awkward. He instinctively shifted his gaze and thought that she had left out one thing: coming back from the dead. Compared to that final matter, all the other ridiculous things barely counted...

"It's true that a lot of strange things have happened. I'm a little confused myself. But if we have to put it that way, even you count as one of the 'strange things' that happened to me recently." Yu Sheng spoke helplessly. "Stop looking at me. How would I know what's going on? Huli won't wake up no matter how much I call her. If I could wake her, maybe I could ask her what happened."

Eileen stared at Yu Sheng for a while longer. Apparently confirming that he wasn't joking, she slowly withdrew her gaze and returned her attention to the silver-white demon fox.

She thought for a long time.

"I have an idea."

Eileen suddenly spoke.

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

"I'll try burrowing into this fox's dream. If she happens to be dreaming right now..." Eileen raised a hand and pointed at the demon fox. "Her current state looks a lot like a mental lockdown. But no matter how tightly a mind is locked down, dreams are difficult to defend. Maybe I can 'see' something. It would be even better if I could take the opportunity to wake her up here."

Yu Sheng was genuinely surprised. Just moments ago, he had been lamenting how unreliable the doll was, yet now she had thrown out such an advanced plan. He couldn't hide his astonishment. "You can do that too?"

"It isn't difficult. She just has to be dreaming... Even if she isn't, your minds are clearly connected right now. I can still 'squeeze' my way over and take a look. It's just that... there's some risk involved, so I need your help."

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

"Because jumping between minds is like deep-diving in unstable waters, if the 'connection' breaks midway, I might get trapped on the 'other side.'" Eileen looked at Yu Sheng very seriously. "So I need a 'rope,' and you're going to be that rope.

"You need to 'dive' down with me. From your own dream, we'll continue sinking into the depths of this huge fox's mind. You'll also have to share some of the pressure, so I can spare enough attention to find our direction. And if something really does go wrong during the process... I'll use somewhat more forceful means to 'wake you up.'

"Your awakening has the highest priority in this chain of dreams. It'll pull my mind back along with yours, so both of us can safely return to the real world. But I should warn you first: my method of 'waking you up' may not be very comfortable."

"How uncomfortable are we talking?"

"...Probably like dreaming that you're taking the national college entrance exam, then hearing the end-of-exams bell ring before you've even written your name. Before you can figure out what's happening, a dump truck crashes into the examination hall, turning you and the person you had the deepest crush on in high school into paper people—ones with particularly shallow character settings..."

Yu Sheng had absolutely no idea what Eileen was talking about with that bizarre analogy.

But he figured it probably wasn't a big deal. It was just being jolted awake. No matter how unpleasant it was, could it really be worse than dying?

Compared with that small hesitation, he was more eager to figure out Huli's current condition and what exactly was going on with his dream.

"No problem. Let's begin." Yu Sheng took a light breath and nodded solemnly at Eileen. "What's the first step?"

"Go over and get close to the big fox. As close as possible... Just lie down on her tail.

"Then hold my frame, close your eyes, and we'll jump in the dream."