Deep in the Dream

Eileen's task was fairly simple.

Basically, she just had to find somewhere out of the way, lie down, and avoid getting up to cause trouble.

Yu Sheng came to the still-sleeping silver-white demon fox and circled once around her enormous body and huge cluster of tails, finding what looked like a comfortable spot—a hollow where two large tails overlapped.

He bent down, tugged at the fur on Huli's tail to adjust its position, then patted the other tail's fur to make it a little fluffier. Eileen watched from the side, utterly bewildered. "Are you making a bed?"

"It's so I can lie down comfortably." Yu Sheng spoke naturally as he leaned against that large, fluffy silver-white tail. "Who knows how long you'll need, and I'm someone with very high standards when it comes to sleep quality..."

Eileen immediately gave a "tsk." Once Yu Sheng had lain down, she floated over, then let her entire painting frame drop straight onto his chest. "Catch."

Yu Sheng hurriedly caught the frame that had fallen from midair, even briefly wondering if Eileen was taking revenge for the laugh he'd stifled earlier and trying to smash him to death. "What the heck! Could you say something before dropping down?"

At least he had caught Eileen and hadn't been crushed to death by her frame. He adjusted his position, half reclining against one of Huli's enormous tails, holding Eileen's frame in both hands. Then he let out a soft breath and waited for the moment he would sink into the dream.

Sinking into another dream while already descending through his own dream was truly a completely unprecedented experience.

Eileen's low humming came from the oil painting. It was some kind of ancient ballad, seeming to carry a distant, nostalgic atmosphere. He couldn't understand the lyrics, but he could feel a steadily calming force seep into the depths of his heart little by little. Yu Sheng felt his eyelids growing heavy, and while his consciousness hovered between sleep and wakefulness, he lowered his head to glance at the oil painting he held before him.

It was almost like he was holding someone's memorial portrait.jpg.

Yu Sheng: "..."

How did this puppet always manage to create situations where it looked like the person in the picture was still alive?

The next second, his thoughts abruptly broke off in the midst of that somewhat wild idea. Then he suddenly sank through a stretch of nothingness, plunging straight into the deepest part of the dream.

He felt as if he had suddenly lost control of his body—or rather... he could no longer feel that a body existed. He seemed to have become a nonexistent point of view, rushing through a series of memories, thoughts, and sensory information that did not belong to him. Shadows overlapped all around him, as if countless fragments of interwoven images had formed a continuous curtain, and the curtain had become a tunnel with no visible end.

Sounds rumbled and buzzed as information poured into his mind. He could not even determine whether those were sounds he was truly hearing or memories directly surfacing in his mind—

Someone was shouting in alarm. Something exploded. A howling sound came from the power structure of the immortal shuttle. They were falling. The immortal shuttle had broken out of its trajectory and plunged into a world that was not on its route, a world that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.

The impact was immense. The immortal shuttle crashed into a pitch-black mountain. The artifact spirit ran out of the Hengtian artifact and got into a fierce fight with the immortal driving the shuttle, arguing about things like "skimping on spirit stones," "reckless driving," and "reporting you to the immortal sect." Then, amid another explosion, the artifact spirit died, and many others died as well.

Those who survived died one after another too.

Every death and separation became a series of fragments rapidly flashing before Yu Sheng's eyes. He saw those yellowed, blurred figures die of hunger, die from poisonous creatures in the mountains, die in fights born of despair, die from... the omnipresent malice filling every corner of this valley.

The valley itself wanted to kill them, using the power of hunger.

That seemingly endless "tunnel" suddenly vanished. Yu Sheng found himself lingering in a faded scene. After passing through countless chaotic fragments of memory, he had finally truly arrived in Huli's current dream.

Just as Eileen had said, the colors in the dream tended toward uniformity. Everything here had an old, lifeless, gray quality: a pitch-black sky, dim woods, filthy gray soil and stones. Just looking at it made him feel unbearably oppressed.

"Eileen?" Yu Sheng tried calling out to her in his mind, because he couldn't see her anywhere.

"I'm here."

"Where are you?" Yu Sheng looked around. "Why can't I see you?"

"I'm with you." Eileen's voice seemed to come directly from his mind, and the sensation was very... strange. "You can't see me, and you can't see your own body either. We're two 'foreign consciousnesses' that have infiltrated this place. Having a point of view at all is pretty good."

"Oh, so that's how it is." Yu Sheng understood, then immediately began searching the woods for Huli.

He did not search for long. In fact, almost the instant he thought of looking for her, he heard a sound coming from nearby.

It was the sound of digging through soil.

Yu Sheng immediately followed the sound. His point of view drifted through the shadowy trees, and before long he saw that flash of white.

A silver-haired girl in a tattered dress was kneeling at the edge of a clearing in the woods. Her originally fluffy, beautiful fox tails were filthy and bedraggled, caked with mud. She kept her head lowered and dug desperately into the soil, muttering as she did so. All around her were large and small pits she had dug out with her hands.

Yu Sheng "floated" over to Huli's side.

Huli could not see him and continued digging with all her strength, repeatedly clawing her hands into the soil.

Eileen's voice suddenly entered Yu Sheng's mind. "Talk to her. Say something."

"She can't even see us."

"It doesn't matter. Just speak to her. This is a dream, so she'll respond—nothing is unreasonable in a dream to the person having it."

Yu Sheng thought for a moment, then looked at the fox girl. "What are you digging for?"

"Daddy... Mommy..." Huli, as expected, showed no surprise at suddenly hearing a voice. She answered naturally, "I remember burying them here... They were definitely buried here..."

For some reason, Yu Sheng's heart sank. He subconsciously asked another question. "Why... why do you want to dig them up?"

"I... I miss them." Huli gradually stopped, her eyes carrying a trace of confusion and emptiness, yet she still answered instinctively. "I'm so hungry. I want to tell them that I'm so hungry... But I held on. They told me not to listen to that monster. I kept holding on, but... I'm so hungry..."

Huli lowered her head and looked at her mud-covered hands, then continued digging. As she worked, she muttered as if talking to herself. "They should be here. They must be here, safe and sound beneath this ground... I listened to them. I always listened to them. I didn't listen to that monster..."

"Her mental state is wrong." Eileen's voice entered Yu Sheng's mind. "Very wrong..."

"I know. I could tell her mental state was off the first time I met her." Yu Sheng answered in his mind as well.

"That's not what I mean. I mean... it seems like something else has mixed into her mind. Something is trying to intervene and interfere with her thoughts." Eileen explained, trying to describe a complicated situation to Yu Sheng, a layman. "There is someone else's voice in her voice. Her own will has been holding on, but the foreign thoughts are almost making her give up."

Eileen suddenly fell silent.

Huli stopped digging. With a dazed expression, she stood and walked a few steps to the side, then stood blankly in the middle of the clearing.

Yu Sheng immediately followed her. In the next second, he seemed to hear a faint, indistinct voice.

That voice seemed to ring directly from the depths of his heart, almost as if he himself had spoken it softly—

"Dig. Dig them up...

"You only want to see them. You only want to make sure that you really did listen to them properly. You haven't seen each other in a long time, have you...

"'I' miss them so much..."

Huli turned around blankly and looked at the pits she had dug.

"I miss them so much..." she said softly.

Yu Sheng abruptly realized that the voice he had just heard coming from his own heart was the "foreign intervention" Eileen had mentioned!

His dream and mind were connected to Huli's, so what he had heard just now had not come from his own "heart," but from the depths of Huli's heart!

Huli slowly turned toward another part of the clearing, seeming to intend to continue digging.

Every handful of soil was gradually digging through her own mental defenses.

Yu Sheng finally understood what that voice was trying to tempt her into doing. A chill suddenly surged from the depths of his heart, making him shout instinctively, "Huli!"

The fox girl stopped blankly and turned to look at the empty edge of the woods.

After a long while, a trace of clarity returned to her eyes, and she remembered where she had heard that familiar voice.

"...Benefactor?"

Yet the woods were empty. Yu Sheng's voice did not come again, and that call seemed to have been nothing but an illusion.

Huli stood blankly in the clearing. After a while, she finally noticed the large pits she had dug all around her.

Terror gradually appeared on the fox girl's face.

She had awakened, jolting awake at the final step before her defenses collapsed.